She has never felt anything but safe living in the country, walking or biking the gravel roads. An occasional rustle in the ditch grass might be a raccoon or a skunk, a harmless snake even, slithering through, but there was no reason to worry. She considers how she left herself exposed by the river just now. Who knew what was lurking along its banks?
“So no walks for a while.” Jack flips through the mail on the kitchen table, sorting it into two piles. “Did Addie mention anything to you about volunteering for the Community Foundation barbecue? Tom just called and wondered if I’d help him flip burgers.”
Sarah nods. “It’s the weekend Charlie’s here. Addie asked me to bring a salad.” She pulls a pan of leftover lasagna from the fridge. “Speaking of Addie … there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Addie and I talked about it today, actually.”
Jack looks up from his stack of envelopes.
“You heard that George Feschuk died. Across the hall from Dad?” Sarah lifts out two slices of lasagna and puts them on plates. “Someone’s finally moved in.” She places a paper towel on one slice, pops it in the microwave, pulls the romaine lettuce out of the fridge then fusses with each piece as she pinches it into a stainless steel bowl.
“And …” Jack says, tearing open an envelope, “who is it?”
Sarah squeezes in a dollop of dressing, tosses the salad, adds a handful of croutons. “It’s Caroline,” she finally says.
Jack doesn’t answer and Sarah can almost hear the dark thoughts in his mind. When she turns to look at him, he is tapping a leaflet against the edge of the table. “Do I look like I give a shit?” She was expecting this reaction but, even so, his barely contained anger and the look on his face catch her off-guard.
Sarah puts the second plate in the microwave. “Just thought I’d mention it, is all.”
Jack pushes his chair back, goes to the fridge, gets himself a beer. “Heard she broke a hip.” He sits back down. “You see her?”
“I did and I finally said something to her today.”
Jack grunts and takes a long swig of his beer.
“It’s got to be a huge change for her,” says Sarah, “living in there after keeping to herself all these years.”
“Hope you aren’t feeling sorry for her,” Jack says sharply. “The mighty have fallen, is all I can say. Always thinking she’s better than the rest of us, but she’s not. Ask Addie. Bet she’ll tell you Caroline’s shit stinks, same as anybody else’s.”
“Honestly, Jack. Isn’t it time to get over it? You can continue to hate Caroline if you want, but that doesn’t mean I have to.” She slides Jack’s plate across the table. “She was never anything but good to me. Stepping up, standing in, when I needed someone. Sometimes I think Becca resented me for that.”
At the mention of Becca’s name, Jack pushes away from the table. “You’re defending her? After what she did to Becca? To me?”
“I’m not defending her. I agree with you. It was a terrible thing, what the Webbs did. I’m just saying, let it go.”
“Swore I’d never forgive her and I won’t. Don’t expect me to.” Jack grabs his beer, drains it, then stalks out the door, the pane rattling when he slams it harder than he has to.
Through the window, Sarah watches him stride across the yard. She can hear him swearing, awful words he never uses in front of her or the girls. He kicks a plastic sand pail Connor has left out, sends it flying. It narrowly misses Anton, who is making his own way slowly across the yard, and he stops, says something to Jack, and an argument starts between them.
Sarah turns away and closes the window. Her head is spinning; she hasn’t eaten since breakfast, so she should be hungry, but she’s lost her appetite, too. She feels nauseated, a churning sort of queasiness at the back of her throat that reminds her of the way she felt during the first months of all six of her pregnancies. She puts a hand to her mouth and heaves. The air in the kitchen is suddenly too dense, too thick to breathe, and she adjusts the thermostat until the air conditioner clicks on, then she goes to the bedroom and stretches out on the bed.
She tries to imagine what Jack is thinking. He’ll be banging on some piece of equipment in the workshop, pounding a hammer against steel, or maybe searing a shovel or a shank with a red-hot weld, his helmet on, visor covering his face. She’s exposed a long-festering wound but she hadn’t expected it to bleed like it is; a torrent of anger and pain, still as raw as it was when Becca went away.
Shorty called her that day, told her to come. Jack was acting crazy; he didn’t know what else to do. When she arrived, Jack was pacing, smacking at the tears and the snot flowing freely down his face with the sleeve of his shirt, downing shot after shot of rye whisky straight up. She tried to calm him down and find out what was going on, but he peeled her hand off his shoulder and pushed her aside. She stumbled and Shorty caught hold of her arm. He wouldn’t tell them a thing about what had happened when he’d gone to the Webbs’, but at least Sarah convinced him there was no point in going back over.
He lost Becca that night, and so did Sarah. Becca had packed her bags, left town, gone away without another word, ever, to either one of them. Jack blamed Caroline and Eldon blamed Jack. It was the tinder that erupted the smouldering feud between the Bilyks and the Webbs, set it off like a runaway fire. And it would be years before Sarah learned the truth, before she knew what, between them all, they’d really lost.
CAROLINE
Caroline plucked the whistling kettle from the hot plate, filled her mother’s old teapot, and replaced the lid (broken, but glued together and still completely serviceable). She set out two biscuits and opened a jar of her mother’s raspberry jam.
“Breakfast’s ready,” she called as she poured the tea.
“Oh, botheration!” Susan said. “I can’t find my other penny loafer. Have you seen it?” She came out of the bedroom wearing a red plaid skirt and white blouse, waving one black shoe. When the girls had arrived in the city in the middle of August, Susan had cut her long dark hair into a shoulder-length bob with bangs, a style she believed more sophisticated for a college student, although Caroline thought she looked younger and even more fresh-faced than usual with it pinned back in barrettes like that.
“Did you look under my bed? I think I remember seeing them shoved up against the apple crate.”
Susan sat on the only other chair and slipped on her shoe. “There aren’t many places it can hide,” she said, sweeping her arm around the tiny apartment.
“Our chickens have more room in their coop than we do in here. That bedroom seemed so much bigger before we put the beds in,” Caroline said.
“It’s small and it’s quaint, but it’s ours.” Susan slathered a biscuit with jam and took a bite. Susan had always shared a room with two of her sisters, but for Caroline, listening to her roommate’s restless tossing and turning during the night took as much getting used to as the eerie cries of police sirens or the constant wash of yellow light on the bedroom wall from the street lamp outside their small window.
“Do you have study group tonight, or can we plan to do something?” Caroline asked.
“I have to do some reading, but I’m sure after I’ve spent time with King Lear, I can join you for a walk in the park this evening. We have to take advantage of this exquisite weather while it lasts. Before we know it, winter will bluster in and we’ll be stuck inside with nothing to do but listen to the radio.”
It surprised Caroline how quickly Susan was turning into a city girl, with city ideas, just like Monique and Patsy, Caroline’s new friends from the bank. They talked about the weather with little regard for the actual consequences of an early frost or a week of heavy rain in September, as though blackened marigolds in window boxes or cancelled plans for a picnic in Assiniboine Park affected their futures in the same way frozen kernels of wheat impacted Caroline’s. When she walked home from work on mild days, Caroline’s heart soared at the sight of a clear blue sky and radiant sunshine beaming down and she welcomed bri
sk westerly winds that flapped her skirt. She pictured her parents, working long hours at home, her father combining the last of the wheat, abundant this year, while her mother hauled it home and augered it into the empty bins, knowing it meant the bills would be paid with some money left over for her, finally, this year.
Before Caroline had climbed aboard the train in August, her mother had pressed five silver dollars into her hand and promised they would find the money to pay for her college tuition. She buried her face in her mother’s embrace, taking in the familiar scent of her, while her mother stroked her hair. “I’ve talked him into it,” she whispered. “If the crop comes off like we hope, we’ll hold off on the new grain truck for another year and you can start school after Christmas. You’ll be behind Susan, but it’ll give you time to work and maybe save up a little so’s you can have some extra stored up for when you’re in school full-time.” A sob rose up in Caroline’s throat, knowing it would be her mother doing without — another season steering Old Smoky over dusty roads, another year setting out pots to catch raindrops in the attic, another winter tucking newspaper into the soles of her worn-out boots. The conductor called, “All aboard!” and Caroline pulled away. Tears poured freely down her mother’s cheeks, too, and the sobs they’d both been holding broke free, making heads turn, but they didn’t care. Let them look. Her father handed her mother his handkerchief and she wiped her nose and tucked it into the sleeve of her dress before taking one last look at Caroline and turning away. Even her father had pulled her into a rare hug. “Off with you, girl. Go on and start your new life.”
Caroline picked up the empty mugs and plates and placed them in the dishpan. The sky had darkened to the colour of tarnished silver above the neighbouring apartment building and, over the morning hum of the wakening city, she heard the low rumble of thunder. She turned to see Susan crouched near her bed, poking and fishing about with the broom handle.
“Ah ha! The missing shoe,” she said triumphantly, sitting up with the loafer in her hand. She picked a webby blossom of dust and hair off her skirt and sneezed.
“I have to get to work,” Caroline said, heading for the door. “Don’t forget your umbrella like you did last week or you’ll get soaked again. See you after work.”
Caroline stepped through the glass doors into the bank. Monique stood in the foyer, shaking the rain off her umbrella. Monique was a tall, strapping girl in her late twenties, still unmarried and seemingly uninterested in men altogether, unlike Caroline’s other friend, Patsy, who routinely flirted with men of any age who came to her teller’s window.
Patsy was already at her window, counting a thin stack of ten-dollar bills. She wore the same navy skirt and white blouse as Monique and Caroline, the standard uniform of all the tellers. Caroline took her place at the wicket between her two friends and opened her cash drawer.
“He looked over here on his way up to his office to see if you were at work yet,” Patsy said, nodding to the stairs near the front doors.
Caroline glanced at the grand staircase that led to the second-floor offices for the managers, and half expected to spot him there looking down at her. Patsy was referring to Michael Wickstrom, a junior manager who approved small loans for automobiles and household appliances. He’d introduced himself to Caroline in the lunchroom on her very first day and then stopped at her window a few days later to ask her to change a twenty-dollar bill, pausing to chat about the weather and comment on the way her cardigan set off the colour of her eyes. Patsy kept looking over at her and when he left she squeezed Caroline’s hand, convinced he would ask her to the Labour Day ball game and picnic that weekend. As it turned out, he didn’t ask Caroline to go with him, but he spent the whole afternoon smiling at her helplessly from the outfield while softballs sailed over his head and, later, during the picnic, fetching her glass after glass of iced lemonade.
Monique grunted as she tore open a paper roll of dimes and dumped them into the proper compartment in her drawer. “For all the fuss he made over you at the picnic, we haven’t seen much of him since then.”
Caroline slid the elastic band from her twenty-dollar bills. “I think Michael’s afraid he made a fool of himself, carting over all those lemonades at the picnic.”
“You coulda told him to buzz off instead of taking them and then pouring them out.”
“Oh, Caroline’s too polite to say anything like that,” Patsy said. “Besides, the way she blushes every time we mention his name, I don’t think she really wants him to buzz off, do you, Caroline?”
“He seems like a very nice young man, even if he did act a little overeager at the picnic,” Caroline said as she piled the last of her bills into her drawer. “I’ve tried to catch his eye in the lunchroom, but he doesn’t even look my way. Maybe he’s just not that interested.”
“Of course he is. Who wouldn’t be? Maybe he thinks you’re not interested. What have you done to show him you are? You may not have noticed how many men queue up for your window even when Monique and I have much shorter lines.” Patsy sighed and shut her drawer. “You may be from a farm in the middle of nowhere, but you look like you stepped off a train from Hollywood,” she said enviously. “It’s got to be that glorious hair.”
Caroline blushed. “But it’s so easy for you, talking and laughing with everyone who comes to your window. I just get on with business and hardly know what else to say except, ‘What can I help you with today?’ What could I talk to Michael about?”
“Just try to relax and imagine yourself talking to one of us, or Susan or Alice, and try not to think about how amazingly gorgeous he looks,” Patsy said.
“That’s the problem. The words are there, locked away behind my teeth, but when it comes time I can’t seem to say a thing.”
“You need to make the next move. Put the ball back in his court, so to speak.”
“But how?”
“It’s up to you to figure that out. If you don’t talk to him and he gets away, you’ll always regret the chance you didn’t take,” Patsy said.
“Well, then, I’ll do it,” Caroline said, snapping shut her drawer. “Today, I’m going to go right up to Michael Wickstrom and strike up a conversation. What do I have to lose?”
On her morning break, instead of going to the lunchroom for coffee, Caroline headed up the curving staircase. Her hand skimmed easily over the polished banister and, when she reached the top, Patsy gave her a wave from her window below, as if to reassure her that she was doing the right thing, although Caroline was curiously aware of every step she took on quivering legs.
The door to Michael’s small office was open at the end of the hallway. He sat at a desk stacked with piles of paper, bent to his work, making notations in a document with a pencil. His sculpted hair was thick and sleek; thin rows from the teeth of his comb showed through like the swerving lines in a freshly harrowed field. His sleeves were rolled up, his striped tie loosened, tweed jacket hanging on the back of his chair.
“Hello, Michael.”
Michael looked up from his paperwork, startled, yet seemingly pleased to see her.
“Good morning, Caroline. How are you today?” He stood, fumbling a little as he cleared a stack of books from the only other chair in the room and motioned for Caroline to sit.
Without a window, the room was airless and warm, although a small fan whirred from the top of a narrow bookcase.
“I have a question for you, something I’ve been thinking about, and I thought you would be the one who could help me with it.”
“I’d be happy to,” Michael said, a smile instantly stretched wide. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s not for me, I’m not in the position to borrow any money,” Caroline said. “It’s my mother I’m thinking about.”
“I see,” Michael said, shifting a pile of papers from one side of the desk to the other.
“And I wondered,” Caroline continued, “if she were to take out a small loan, say for one hundred dollars …”
“Would
she like me to set something up for her here?” Michael interrupted, a puzzled expression on his face. “Wouldn’t it be easier for her to take out a loan from a bank there in Ross Prairie?”
“Oh, no. I’m just inquiring about the rates and the terms for repayment. She wants to buy an electric stove — she still cooks on a wood stove and my father doesn’t see the need for a new one — but I’ve been telling her she should have one and I need to have some idea of what she’s getting herself into. Borrowing money, that is,” Caroline said hurriedly. “Before she goes to the bank at home.” She felt her face grow hot at the elaborate story she was telling, making her mother sound like the kind of woman who would go behind her husband’s back, when in reality she kept telling Caroline she was perfectly content with the stove she’d cooked on for thirty years, that there was no point in wasting good money on a stove when the roof needed fixing.
“I understand,” Michael said. He opened a drawer and rifled through it until he found the paper he was looking for and handed it to Caroline. “Here’s a listing of our latest interest rates and the different terms she could choose from.”
“Thanks so much,” Caroline said, taking the sheet from Michael. She folded it in half on the only empty space on the desk. Somewhere nearby, a door slammed.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Michael asked. His green eyes were curious; there was a sweetness and openness about them.
“I wanted you to know, too, how much I enjoyed your company at the picnic. It was one of the most pleasant days I’ve spent since I moved here.”
Michael chuckled and seemed to relax, tipping his chair back and propping his shiny shoes on the pulled-open bottom drawer. “I would have liked to have chatted with you more than I did, but I appear to have been preoccupied with keeping you refreshed that day.”
“It was very kind of you to …”
“Bring you six glasses of lemonade?” Michael grinned.
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 8