When Eldon returned with two glasses of red wine, Caroline wanted to tell him she didn’t drink wine, but she took it anyway and let him clink their glasses together. “To a wonderful evening,” he said, which surprised her. She didn’t think he’d enjoyed the concert at all.
“So, what do you think of it?” Eldon leaned back on the chesterfield next to her and took a long sip.
She thought he was referring to the wine so she said, “It’s not very sweet,” and he tipped his head back and laughed. “I meant the house. What do you think of my house?”
“I thought this was your mother’s house.” Again, she’d said something without thinking, and she blushed when he chuckled.
“This house is meant to be mine someday,” Eldon said, growing serious. “My mother keeps saying all these stairs are getting to be too much for her and she’d like a house in town.”
“So why doesn’t she move?”
“We’re very close, my mother and I. You must know what it’s like to be an only child. She has my best interest in mind and she’s always said she won’t leave until I’m married and settled, with a wife and a family of my own.”
As a clock began to chime somewhere behind the stairs, it occurred to Caroline that Eldon might have had a family by now — a son nearly reaching his shoulder and maybe a little red-haired girl — if his engagement hadn’t been broken off all those years ago.
“Have you thought about it?” Eldon asked.
“Thought about what?” The last of the chimes echoed through the empty house.
“Becoming a wife. Starting a family.”
“Oh, eventually, I suppose. But I want to see a bit of the world first before I do that. There are so many things I’d like to do — dip my feet in an ocean, see Buckingham Palace, tour the ruins of Pompeii. And go to college, work at doing something I love. I want to make my own way before I become a wife and a mother.”
Eldon frowned. “Farm girls didn’t have such notions when I was in high school. Few of them even finished school.”
Caroline felt her face grow hot. What was wrong with wanting a bit of a life before settling down to the same endless routine as most girls? “I’m not the only who thinks that way,” she said. “Take my friend, Susan, for instance. She wants to be a linguist, or a professor, or the editor of a publishing house. I’d be happy enough to be a teacher working in a small town or even a country school, if it came to that.”
Of course, there were many girls, like Alice, who didn’t even consider other possibilities. They were content to finish school and just as quickly slip into a white dress and go straight from their father’s house to a pulpit, coming out the church door as some man’s wife, without knowing who they really were, or what it was that mattered to them. Without taking any time at all to listen to the singing in their own hearts. But that would never be enough for Caroline.
“Married life worked well enough for my mother and yours,” Eldon said.
Isn’t it wonderful that it’s 1954 and, in this day and age, not all girls want to do what their mothers did? She could see there was no sense explaining things to Eldon. He was just like her father; one foot still rooted in the first half of the century with his outdated ideas. She wanted to tell him so, but what was the point? Instead, she put her empty glass on the small side table, smiled politely and asked if it was possible for him to please drive her home; it was getting late and tomorrow was a school day.
SARAH
Most of the seats around the table set up in the middle of the dance floor at the community hall are taken when Sarah arrives. Lorna Marsden, from the Review, is standing by the coffee pot, scribbling in a notebook, talking to Sam Wawryk, chair of the committee. He looks up and, when he sees Sarah, he waves. It is her first meeting of the committee set up to save the local emergency services. The Health Authority is planning to close the emergency room at the Ross Prairie hospital and replace the ambulance with service from Locklin, where the regional hospital is located. Local residents are worried about response times — the thirty minutes it will take for the ambulance to drive the extra distance — and they aren’t willing to let go of the sense of security they have knowing the ambulance is parked nearby and ready to go. The committee was struck to convince the board to keep the service in town.
Lorna tucks her notebook into her purse and finds a spot at the table while Sam walks over to Sarah. “Thanks for coming. We’re glad to have you on board.”
She hasn’t been on a committee since the girls were in school and, even then, it was only for groups they belonged to. She’s kept her distance from the town since she married Jack. It wasn’t easy to forget the way some of the townspeople treated her family and it bothered her when the rumours about Jack persisted. All heads would turn and a hush would fall over the coffee shop whenever she or Jack walked in, so they just quit going. They were content to busy themselves with the farm and their family; everything they wanted was there within the broad spread of their arms.
But when she and Jack attended the public meeting to save the emergency service last month, and they asked for volunteers to sit on a smaller committee, it seemed a worthy cause. “Glad to be here. Hope I can help.”
There is one empty chair left, facing the door. She walks around the table and sits down directly across from Cady Rankmore, who is deep in conversation with a bleary-eyed Ted Hammond. Cady looks up, a furtive, sweeping glance, meant to look as though she’s checking the time on the clock or something else of significance above Sarah’s head, then turns back to Ted with an exaggerated flourish of her head and carries on with her story. It’s an art Cady has perfected over the years, this skill of looking through people.
Heidi Dixon, a young mother of two, finishes scrolling through her phone and puts it in her purse when Sarah sits down beside her. “Hi, Mrs. Bilyk. I hope Sam gets this meeting started,” she says, with a discreet nod across the table.
The meeting is called to order and, after Heidi volunteers to take notes, Sam takes off his reading glasses and parks them on top of his head. “Now, then. Tonight we need to decide the best way to present to the next meeting of the Authority board. Any ideas?”
“You’ll present, won’t you, Sam? With maybe one other person to attend for support?” Heidi says.
“I think we should all show up and let them know we’re not going to be pushed around,” Cady says, curling her lip like a Rottweiler with a warning. “There’s strength in numbers.”
“They already know we have the numbers behind us,” Ted says. “Their chairperson and a few other board members were at the community meeting. They saw how this place was packed.”
“They just nodded and listened,” Cady cuts in. “Typical. We have to go in to their meeting and let them know we mean business. We pay taxes. They can’t tell us what to do.”
“Actually, they can,” Sam says. “And it is meant to be a formal presentation. I don’t think we need to show up with too many people and overtake the boardroom.”
“I agree,” Sarah says. “We need to come in with two or three people and a well-articulated presentation. Maybe a PowerPoint?”
“What do you all think of that idea?” Sam asks.
Ted and Heidi and most of the others nod in agreement. Cady presses her thin lips together and scribbles on her agenda with a ballpoint pen. After a lengthy discussion about the content of the presentation, it is decided someone will need to go over the video footage the local-access television station recorded at the public meeting and summarize the comments from those in attendance, and Sarah volunteers.
“Once we have that summary, would you be able to spend some time to help me put it all together?” Sam asks, and Sarah agrees.
“Who will be going to the meeting with Sam?” Heidi asks.
Cady’s hand shoots up so quickly she knocks the pen she was doodling with onto the floor. “I can go.”
Eyes blink. Ted Hammond clears his throat. The coffee pot sputters in the corner. Finally, Sam says,
“Anyone else?”
“I think Sarah should go,” Heidi speaks up. “After all, if she’s made the notes and helped Sam put the presentation together, she’ll be the most familiar with the content.”
Again, everyone except Cady nods in agreement. “That’s decided, then,” Ted says, slapping the table with one hand. “Are we adjourned here?”
Sarah is tossing her coffee cup in the trash when Cady corners her. “Your first meeting and suddenly you’re picked to represent the committee?” She pushes her glasses up on her nose with a manicured finger and stares down at Sarah. She is taller by six inches and outweighs her by thirty pounds.
“It appears so.”
“Sam didn’t even call for a vote.”
“You could have volunteered to make the notes,” Sarah says, trying to step around her. Most of the committee members are gone and only Sam and Lorna, with her notebook once again in hand, stand by the door.
“I think I’m a little better prepared to present to a board of directors than you are.”
“That may be your opinion, Cady, but it’s not what the others decided.”
“What does Heidi Dixon know? A city girl married to a wannabe farmer. She’s not even from here.” Cady takes a menacing step toward her. “I think they made a big mistake.”
“I don’t really care what you think, Cady,” Sarah says. She won’t let Cady get the best of her so she pushes past her, clutching her handbag to her chest, and doesn’t even stop at the door to say goodbye to Lorna and Sam.
* * *
Sarah sits bolt upright, patting the bed until she locates Jack beside her and hears the soft puffs he makes when he sleeps. Before the girls were born, she used to wait up for him when he worked late, but after Allison was born she could never stay awake that long so Jack always told her not to worry, to just go to sleep; he was fine. Instead, she developed a habit of waking in the middle of the night when she’d gone to bed without him, feeling for him in the dark, to reassure herself he’d made it home safely.
She glances at the luminous numbers on the clock radio: 3:36. The lamp is off, her book closed beside her glasses on the nightstand. She came home from the meeting hoping to tell Jack about her run-in with Cady, but there was a note on the table saying he was at Shorty’s, helping him replace the transmission in his tandem. She intended to wait up for him but, as happened so often lately, she fell asleep with a book in her lap and the lamp still on.
She knows what he’d have said if she’d told him, anyway. What he always said. Not to waste a moment worrying about someone like Cady Rankmore. He would’ve kissed the top of her head, then rolled over and been asleep before his pillow was warm and she’d have lain there, replaying the scene with Cady over and over in her mind like she is doing right now.
Cady and Sarah are the same age; their birthdays are, in fact, only one day apart. Sarah can still remember the long-ago sting of being left out of the over-the-top birthday parties thrown at the sprawling Hubley home along the river at the edge of town; parties with pony rides and glittery dress-up clothes and, one year, a circus tent with clowns. Sarah endured Cady throughout junior high and high school until she finally left for university. Sarah wasn’t rid of her, though. Cady returned four years later with Hughie Rankmore — a city boy — and a wedding ring. Hughie took over the management of Hubley Ford and her father pulled some strings to get Cady hired at the elementary school. All three girls spent a year in Cady’s grade-four classroom. Sarah always dreaded facing Cady alone on parent-teacher days. The one time Jack came with her, Cady flipped through the pages in Toni’s notebooks, pointing out clever things Toni had written, fawning over Jack and acting as though Sarah wasn’t even there.
Now, as she sits in the dark, she pictures Cady picking up the phone the moment she got home from the meeting — no, she might have called Arlene on her cellphone while still parked in her Lincoln outside of the hall — and sharing her outrage at being passed over by the committee in favour of Sarah Bilyk. Sarah Bilyk, of all people! Can you just imagine? And Arlene (her best friend from high school) would have assured her, like she’s always done, that Sarah is so unworthy. Her? Really?
Sarah turns over her pillow and sinks back into it, closing her eyes. The sound of Jack’s breath is calming and Sarah feels her own chest begin to rise and fall in matched rhythm. She tries not to think about Cady, but then she is thinking about trying not to think about Cady and the last thing she remembers before she drifts off is Cady behind her desk in Toni’s classroom, the buttons of her too-tight blouse straining as painfully as the smile on her face while she looks at Jack as though he’s the only man in the world.
Sarah clutches the oversized gift bag and hurries through the parking lot at Sunny Haven. For the last hour she’s been listening to a troublesome ping coming from under the hood of her truck, no doubt from the air conditioning struggling to keep up with the relentless heat. When she pulled up to the end of a long line of traffic, a police officer walked over and told her there’d been an accident; the highway ahead was temporarily closed. She sat, waiting impatiently as she texted with Allison.
I’m going to be late.
Why? What happened?
I’m stuck in traffic.
It’s starting!
Still not moving.
On your way yet? Grandpa’s acting weird.
She steps through the main doors into air so blissfully cool, she shivers. On the main wall of the common room, a colourful banner (Happy July Birthdays!) is draped above a long banquet table covered with crumpled napkins and the plastic domes from three store-bought birthday cakes. Beneath the banner, the names Melvin, Joe, and Hazel, cut from blue construction paper, are taped to the wall. Four listless helium balloons tied to two empty chairs sway restlessly in the air-conditioned breeze.
She has missed the entire birthday party — the songs and games, the cakes and the candles. The room is empty, except for Melvin Hodgson, dozing in a wheelchair, and her father, on his knees, peeking out from under the table behind the plastic tablecloth.
“Geez, Dad. What are you doing under there?”
There’s a smudge of chocolate icing on his cheek and his cardboard party hat has slipped to the side of his head; it pokes out like a cow’s horn. Furtively, he brushes scattered cake crumbs into a pile on the floor, scoops them up, and licks them off the palm of his hand.
“Oh, Dad,” Sarah says. “Don’t eat that.” She reaches down and pulls him out from under the table. The front of his shirt is smeared with jam, raspberry by the look of the tiny seeds stuck to the breast pocket.
Sarah leads him back to his room. Across the hall, a new sign has been placed on Caroline’s door with her name on it, and Sarah wonders if she was wheeled out for the birthday party. She’s been here two weeks and, although Sarah has paused in the hallway a few times, she has yet to go in and say anything to her. Now, the door to Caroline’s room is closed and, behind it, Sarah hears a man’s voice.
When she has her father settled on his recliner, she hands him the gift bag. “Happy birthday, Dad. Sorry I missed your party.” He fingers the tissue paper, then he places the bag on the floor and looks at it.
“It’s a gift, Dad. For your birthday. From Jack and me and the girls,” Sarah says, plucking out the tissue.
He pulls out the gift and turns it over. It’s a replica of a 1960s vintage Mustang, cherry red, with a silver grill embedded with the iconic charging horse. It was always her father’s dream to own and drive such a classic car. He narrows his eyes and stares at it, before putting it back in the bag.
Just then, Addie appears in the doorway, holding an empty tray. “You made it. Finally. Allison left early. Connor was so antsy, she took off before we served the cake.”
“I can’t believe I missed everything. Who’d have thought it would take me two hours to get here?”
“You didn’t miss much. The same old,” Addie says, coming in and perching on the edge of a chair. “Maybe it’s the heat, but ever
ything seemed off today. The power was out for about twenty minutes, Linda couldn’t keep up on the piano during the sing-along, no one touched the coffee, and we ran out of iced tea.”
Sarah’s father kicks off his bedroom slippers, folds his hands across his chest, and squeezes his eyes shut like a child feigning sleep.
“How was he?” Sarah asks.
“His energy must have rubbed off on Connor, or vice versa. It was all Allison could do to keep them sitting in their chairs. She finally gave up and went home.”
“Oh, great,” Sarah moans. “Why did I think I needed to give him his gift today? He doesn’t know the difference anyway. I should have skipped the shopping and been here for the party.”
“Cut yourself some slack, for God’s sake. Hazel Marley’s daughter hasn’t shown up for the birthday party once since Hazel’s been here and what’s her excuse? She’s retired and has a lot more time than you do. You’d think those brothers of yours would show up around here once in a while.”
“Charlie’s coming next month,” Sarah says in defence of her youngest brother, who at least shows up every couple of years to visit their father. “He’d come more often if he could but it costs so much to fly here from the East Coast.”
“Good excuse,” Addie says. “It’s not fair, the way you’ve always had to hold things together for your family. You did it as a kid and you’re still doing it now.” She shakes her finger at Sarah the way she does when she’s trying to make a point. “It’s time your other two brothers got over themselves and stepped up.”
Sarah doesn’t want to get into it with Addie, who is very aware of her family’s history. Her father disowned Brian fifteen years ago when he found out Brian had forged a cheque for five thousand dollars from the retirement fund he’d set up from the sale of the repair shop. Sarah thought they should report Brian to the police and try to recover the money, but her father didn’t want to send him to jail again. Brian had already spent three years at Headingley in the eighties for fraud.
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 6