It was late in the evening. The children were all tucked in and sleeping soundly. Stan was at home, completely sober. His friend sat in a chair, watching us from the kitchen. I was sitting in an old wooden rocker with a padded dark green seat cover I’d picked up at a yard sale.
“You’re thinking about leaving again, aren’t you?” Stan said on the couch across from me.
“What are you talking about?” I answered cautiously.
“You been spending a lot of time over at Jackie and Lyman’s.”
Jackie and Lyman were the neighbours directly across the street. Lyman’s brother, Laural, occasionally baby-sat for us.
“They’re just friends, Stan. Don’t be so paranoid.”
It was true I’d been thinking about how to get away from Stan, but I was denying it. Stan stood up and walked into the kitchen without a word. Something isn’t right, I thought. Becoming more and more agitated, he paced back and forth, then rushed to the cutlery drawer and yanked it open, pulling out a butcher knife.
“I’m going to kill you,” he said, running his fingers along the blade, pressing harder, drawing blood. “And the children. That way you won’t leave. We’ll leave together.”
Stan’s friend jumped out of his seat and fled the trailer. I prayed he would call the police.
“No, Stan, don’t…”
Staring at me as if he were talking to someone he’d never seen before, my husband seemed to see beyond the trailer and this world.
“All of us are going to Heaven,” he whispered.
Backing away from him toward the outside door, I glanced at the children’s room, but there was no sign of them. When Stan noticed my movement, he took a step forward.
“Please!” I shrieked, scurrying in reverse. I could sense the blade about to rip through me at any moment. My back struck the wall behind me. “Stan, please…”
“It’ll be better there,” he insisted, stalking closer, the tip of the knife mere inches from my throat.
“No, no…” I blinked the tears from my eyes, trying not to see the point of the butcher knife, attempting to look into Stan’s eyes instead, to get past the blank certainty. “We don’t need to die.” I wanted to raise my hands and shove the blade away but feared my hands would be slashed.
Stan loomed nearer. His lips tightened and his eyes lingered on the children’s bedroom doors.
I thought of snatching the blade. Now was the time. I eyed it, but my nerve was unsteady, useless. Stan was just too big. I yelled as the door to our trailer was flung open and men came storming in, heavy boots clumping on the floor.
“Put down the knife!”
Three RCMP officers advanced toward Stan. Two of them grabbed him while the third tried to pry the butcher knife from his hands as his own blood pooled on the kitchen floor. Stan clutched the blade harder as the officers worked to twist it free, but he wouldn’t let go. He grasped the keen edge until it cut deeper into his hands.
It took a few minutes for the police to wrestle him out of our home. The noise was terrible. I glanced back at the children’s room and saw Heather’s sleepy head peeking from the half-open door of the second bedroom. I rushed back to her and whisked her into my arms.
“It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.” Holding her close, I then tucked her into bed and whispered for her to go to sleep. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I promised, then checked Jody and saw he was still sound asleep.
None of the other children had woken during the scuffle. They were used to our fights, and this time neither Stan nor I had even raised our voices.
But then I thought Stan might have already visited my babies. I recalled the lost look in his eyes while he stared at their bedroom door. Earlier, while I was talking with Stan’s friend, Stan might have sneaked in there and killed them. I hurried toward Sonya and Jennifer’s bedroom door and flung it open. Kneeling beside Sonya’s and Jennifer’s beds, I touched their cheeks. Warm. Perfect, warm faces. I watched the covers for signs of my babies’ bellies rising in breath. They were sleeping peacefully, but they could have been dead.
We all could have been dead.
Stan spent six weeks under observation at Centracare, the Saint John mental hospital. I went to visit him once out of some deep-rooted sense of matrimonial loyalty. The minister at my parents’ church said I had to stay with Stan. It was what God wanted. We were united. Beryl told me God couldn’t be that mean.
I was nervous when I went to visit Stan at Centracare. It was an old stone structure on top of a hill beside Reversing Falls in Saint John. Once inside, I was obliged to sign in and a large male nurse led me through a labyrinth of corridors. At the end of each hallway we reached a new unit where people in varying stages of mental illness roamed freely. Two units in, a young woman, not much older than I, stared at me intensely, then walked toward me. “Do you know where my baby is?” she asked before the male nurse brushed her off and we continued on. At various times throughout the years some of these patients had escaped and turned up in the waters of Reversing Falls. Each unit was locked and barred. When we reached the unit holding Stan, I noticed the patients were secured in rooms.
“He’s on suicide watch,” the male nurse told me. “He’s been sedated.”
As I entered the sterile white room bare of everything except a bed, I couldn’t believe the change in Stan. Barely recognizing me, he was unshaven and wore blue pajamas. He gave me a slight smile that made him seem like a child happy to see his mother, but he didn’t move from the bed.
I felt a lump in my throat. Where I had feared for my safety all the way over, I was now overcome by pity. Quietly I sat beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. He tried to say a few words, but they made absolutely no sense.
I stayed for ten minutes, not knowing what to say or do. Then, checking for the male nurse who was watching through the opening in the door, I signalled it was time for me to leave.
Stan was declared sane and sent out of the province, back to Ontario by train. The psychiatric examination revealed a childhood of abuse. Without intense therapy he would never be a safe partner. And I wanted my children to be safe.
Ten years passed before the children and I saw Stan again. The next time it was on my terms.
1975–1990
FIRST TIME IN LOVE
It was the spring of 1975 and I had been hibernating in my trailer in Lincoln after finally freeing myself from Stan’s abusive hold. Although my husband had been shipped back to Ontario, I still feared stepping outside the door, thinking he might show up at any moment seeking revenge.
I was going stir-crazy, growing lonely in front of the television once the kids had been put to bed. The TV shows were getting on my nerves, sitcoms that mirrored nothing of my life, but there was little else to do. I had started to write again, mostly long, dark poems about my struggles with life, but it was a satisfying purge of all that had happened in the past few years. Because I’d taken a stand against my minister’s wishes, my ties with the church were severed, too.
I was twenty-four and craved the companionship of other adults. I hadn’t been out for a social drink in months, and it had been years since I’d kicked up my heels at a dance. I’d never been inside the local Canadian Legion, so when Anne, my baby-sitter, mentioned her parents were members and would love for me to join them at one of the regular