Page 17 - My FlipBook

T R A I L O F C R U M B S

That’s when he met Patty, and there was a sense that life
was firm again. Greta opened her eyes in the morning and
knew where she would sleep that night, and the next. Patty
worked in a restaurant and brought them warm pizza every
Friday night. They took trips to the park, with ice-cream
cones from McDonald’s. For their tenth birthdays, Patty
bought Ash a remote-controlled car, and Greta a red dress.
It was the first new dress she’d gotten in two years.

Roger and Patty got married later that year, and then the
fighting started. Patty quit her job at the restaurant “to look
after the kids.” Only she wasn’t usually up when they left for
school and wasn’t around when they got home. She called
family meetings about the chores Greta and Ash didn’t get
done or didn’t do well enough. For seven years Greta had
watched the lines grow deeper on her father’s face, his hair

thin across his scalp. Any suggestion, from anyone, that Patty
get a job provoked a tirade about how no one appreciated all
her hard work around the house. Greta wasn’t sure exactly
what Patty did besides opening bills and shouting about them.
They had moved into the basement suite over the
summer, after being slapped with a three-hundred-dollar-
a-month rent increase at the north-side condo. “Three
hundred dollars more, for one bathroom and carpets from
the seventies?” Patty had howled. For once Greta hadn’t

disagreed. Then her dad had found the basement suite on the
west end, and he and Patty talked about living cheaply to save
up for their own house. They moved just in time for Greta and
Ash to start their last year of school at West Edmonton High.

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