“You seemed a little nervous, as was I, but maybe another time, we could just enjoy each other’s company.” Caroline paused and smiled. “With fewer beverages involved.”
“Absolutely.” Michael stood up and came around to Caroline’s chair. “I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing but I wasn’t quite sure how to ask you. What are you doing this weekend? There’s a party one of my friends is throwing. A farewell for our friend Thomas, who’s off to study in Toronto. There’ll be music and dancing and enough food to feed a small army. Would you like to come?”
“I’d love to,” she said, standing up. “If you can promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Absolutely no lemonade.”
Patsy was more excited about Caroline’s upcoming date than she was and taking more credit than she should for having convinced Caroline to speak to Michael that day. Monique didn’t see what all the fuss was about, but by Friday she was caught up in the excitement, too. Caroline had purchased an autumn-toned dress with her mother’s five silver dollars and Patsy was going to go home with Caroline after work to fix up her hair like a photo of Marilyn Monroe she’d clipped from a movie magazine: swept up and back with a fat ringlet cascading over one shoulder.
Just before closing, Mrs. Miner, who was in charge of the tellers, strode purposefully from her small office next to the vault and tapped Caroline on the shoulder.
“I need to have a word with you in my office, Caroline,” she said. She turned to the stout man who was next in line at Caroline’s window. “My apologies. We have to close this window for a few minutes but I’ll be with you shortly, if you don’t mind waiting.”
Caroline followed Mrs. Miner to her office where the woman gestured to a chair and picked up the telephone receiver from the top of her desk. She covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “There’s someone who would like to speak with you. I’ll finish up with your customers and close up your station for the day, so don’t feel like you have to hurry back out. Take all the time you need,” she said kindly.
The lead-coloured sky pressed against the high window in Mrs. Miner’s office and the relentless rain, which hadn’t let up for three days, tapped steadily against the pane. Mrs. Miner never worked directly with the customers. Why did she offer to take a turn at Caroline’s station?
“Hello?”
“Caroline? Is that you?” It was her father. His voice sounded detached, as though it clung to a balloon suspended somewhere above and away from her in the vaulted ceiling near the grand staircase. Ridiculously, it occurred to her that she had never spoken to him on the telephone before; it was her mother who always answered when she phoned home from Susan’s or Alice’s or, lately, from the pay phone in the lobby of her apartment building. Her legs folded and she crumpled into Mrs. Miner’s chair. “What is it, Dad? What’s happened?”
She pictured him standing in the empty kitchen, the stove cold behind him, her mother’s jacket flung carelessly over a chair.
“It’s Mum. I came home after lunch and found her on the kitchen floor. She couldn’t say a word, her face twisted up, and the one arm flopping back down on the floor like a sack of rocks when I lifted it. I carried her out to the truck and got to the hospital quick as I could. Dr. Alden says she’s had a stroke.”
Caroline’s breath caught in her throat. There was a sudden stuttering of her heart and she would remember that moment later, riding home on the train, the way she could feel herself looking down, as though she was seeing herself through the rain-blurred window, blinking and blinking, unable to clear the wash of tears from her eyes.
“Caroline? Are you there? Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes. Is she going to be okay? Did Dr. Alden say?”
“He told me to call you. He said you ought to come home, quick as you can get here. Can you do that, Caroline? We need you here. Your mother needs you. Can you get on the next train home?”
Her father met her at the station when she arrived just after nine o’clock the next evening, late by nearly an hour due to a problem with a switch at a rail crossing in Neepawa. On the way to the hospital, he told her Dr. Alden was worried about the length of time that had passed before he had found her mother. They assumed she had suffered the stroke early in the morning; the cream was still out among the dirty breakfast dishes. It was one thirty when he drove back to the yard with the tractor, wondering why she hadn’t brought his lunch out to the field, and found her on the kitchen floor. She had not opened her eyes or uttered a word, had not even stirred all the long day as her father waited by her hospital bed. Dr. Alden had told him the first seventy-two hours were the most critical, that he wouldn’t know how serious the damage might be until she woke up, if she woke up at all.
When they got to the hospital, Caroline insisted her father let her off at the front door while he parked the truck. She dashed up the front steps and had to stop at the front desk. In her panic, she’d forgotten to ask her father for her mother’s room number.
Dr. Alden and the night-duty nurse were there when Caroline ran in. The curtain was drawn around the bed and, as Caroline was about to pull it back, Dr. Alden stepped forward and grabbed her hand.
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” he said gently. “There was nothing we could do.”
The nurse, a pained expression on her face, placed her hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should just wait till your father gets here.”
“What is it? What do you mean?” She wrenched back the curtain. There was her mother; her freckled, worn-out hands crossed on her chest, face pale on the white pillow, eyes closed. “I have to talk to her,” Caroline cried, hysteria welling up inside her. “Dad told me you said it would do her good to hear my voice.”
“I’m sorry, Caroline. Your mother passed about half an hour ago,” Dr. Alden said.
Caroline collapsed on the floor. She felt her father’s arms lift her and her legs move unsteadily toward the door. She didn’t remember the ride home. Later, shivering in her coat at the kitchen table, she watched while her father brought in an armload of wood and got the fire going. They were too numb to speak and sat there in silence, each of them pondering their own heavy thoughts, as they listened to the wood crackle in the stove. How would they live without her?
After the funeral, Caroline stood at her bedroom window looking out at the garden. The pumpkins were not yet completely turned; dabs of orange poked through the blackened vines that stretched across the far end of the garden. There’d been a killing frost the night her mother died, spoiling the last of the tomatoes and cucumbers. Her mother would have saved them all by covering them with old sheets she kept in an apple box in the woodshed.
She watched as Anna and Anton Bilyk walked to their car. Anna carried a roasting pan she’d brought with a pot roast earlier in the week but Caroline couldn’t remember if she’d tasted it, or if she, in fact, had eaten anything that day or any of the days that followed, although she must have. There was more food than Caroline knew what to do with — cakes and casseroles, fried chicken and meatballs, plates of muffins and squares. She was grateful when Betty Cornforth arrived and took over the kitchen, directing Caroline to carry the food that would keep down to the cold floor of the root cellar, making coffee and tea, and setting out lunch for the neighbours and friends who kept stopping by.
Anna had hugged her at the cemetery after they’d lowered her mother’s casket into the ground. “No one knows how hard this is, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. You have to get through this in your own way, on your own time,” she said. “You have all those precious memories to hold on to. Never forget them.” Caroline was grateful Anna hadn’t said the things everyone else had said and she wished she’d told her so. Oh, your mother is better off with the Lord or She would never have wanted to be a burden or She was such a wonderful person.
How do you know? Caroline wanted to shout. How do you know how wonderful she was? Only Caroline herself knew how it felt to be loved by her m
other, safe and protected, like nothing in the world could ever do her harm.
There was a tap on Caroline’s door. Susan stood in the doorway, a concerned look on her face. “Is everything all right? You’ve been up here a long time.” She had come home for the funeral, arriving the day before on the same evening train as Caroline had taken nearly a week earlier. Caroline hadn’t yet had a chance to speak to her.
“I needed some space. If someone offered me another egg sandwich I would have screamed. But I see people are leaving. This whole thing has been so exhausting.”
Susan sat on the edge of Caroline’s bed. “Quite frankly, you look terrible. Have you slept at all this past week?”
“I didn’t for the first few nights. I kept dozing off and dreaming that I was running to catch my train, that I missed it completely, kept missing it day after day. And then I’d wake up, sick with guilt for not being there with her at the end. Like it’s my fault she died. That maybe if I’d never left for the city, she might still be alive.”
“You can’t think that way.” Susan stood and took hold of Caroline’s hands. “There’s not a thing you could have done to change this. It could have happened a few months ago while you were still at home, going to high school. You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I’m just not sure how we’ll carry on without her. Yesterday, I didn’t fall asleep until the sun was coming up, and when I came downstairs at ten o’clock my father was still sitting at the kitchen table, staring at his coffee cup. He hadn’t been out yet to do the milking or the chores. I shook him by the shoulder and he looked at me and said, ‘Violet, is that you?’”
“You poor thing. This is so much for you to deal with on your own. Sometimes I complain about that huge family of mine, but if something ever happened, at least we’d have each other.” Susan sat on the bed again. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do now?”
Caroline sighed. “I suppose I need to go down and help Betty and the ladies clean up and decide what to do with all that extra food.”
“No,” Susan said gently, “I mean, what are your plans? When are you coming back to Winnipeg? To your job?”
Until that moment, Caroline had not considered what she would do next. She’d put one foot in front of the other, going with her father to make the funeral plans, picking flowers for the casket, selecting her mother’s favourite hymns. She hadn’t given any thought to the weeks that would follow. What would she do? Leave her father and go back to the city and carry on as though her mother was still alive?
She’d phoned Mrs. Miner the Monday after her mother died and was reassured she could take a few weeks before she needed to come back. But a week had already passed and Caroline realized the bank wouldn’t wait for her forever.
“You can’t believe how incredibly quiet the apartment has been without you. I have no one to remind me to take my umbrella to class.”
“I don’t think I can just up and leave Dad alone. He doesn’t even know how to fry an egg.” Caroline sighed and turned to look back out the window. “The harvest isn’t over, either. That rain put a stop to everything and he’ll need someone to drive the grain truck to get the last of the crop in now that the sunshine’s returned.”
Susan stood and came up behind Caroline, wrapping her arms around Caroline’s waist. “I’ll be waiting. Before we know it, you’ll be back. The harvest will be over and before we blink, it’ll be Christmas. Just think of the fun we’ll have, skating in the park, attending all those holiday parties. I spoke to Patsy and she told me Michael’s been asking about you. You still need to go on that first date.”
Caroline could not turn around to look at her friend. Tears filled her eyes. She could not picture herself skimming along a pond on ice skates or laughing with Michael at a party. A dark hopelessness rose up inside her, along with the grim realization that she did not want to laugh or dance or act as though she didn’t have a care in the world. Her mother was gone and things would never be the same.
* * *
Old Smoky belched a puff of black smoke from under its hood as Caroline cranked hard on the steering wheel and pulled into the yard. She shifted the truck to neutral and coasted down the lane, pulling up twenty feet short of the grain bin before Smoky died with one last resounding clunk. She’d just picked up the last load of oats, stained and light from standing for weeks in the rain, but still good enough to feed the pigs through the winter. She would have to wait for her father to return to the yard with the combine and get Smoky running again so they could unload. Her arms and shoulders felt like they were on fire; she had to concentrate just to wrestle with the door handle and open the door. She slid one foot to the running board and jumped to the ground. How her mother drove Old Smoky all those years, she couldn’t imagine. She walked to the house, scooped a dipper of water from the pail and took a long drink. Her throat was raw, the water smooth and cool going down.
The kitchen was a mess. A mountain of dishes was stacked by the sink, and globs of grease from the frying pan she’d used for last night’s pork chops floated on top of the cold dishwater. It had been days since she’d swept the dirt from under her father’s chair. Two weeks had passed since her mother’s funeral, the days running together in a blur of cooking and washing and farm chores. The wringer washer was as temperamental as Old Smoky and she’d ruined a good blouse — a smudge of grease on the shoulder — when it jammed in the roller. She’d found a box of ripe tomatoes in the root cellar and it shamed her to phone Betty Cornforth and ask what she should do with them. It had never occurred to her to pay attention when her mother made the preserves. All those years she’d taken for granted the jars of pink crabapples and beet pickles and plump red tomatoes lining the shelves in the cellar. And her mother had never shown her what to do or asked her to help, spoiling her, Caroline could see now, hoping Caroline would have a different life, one without the tedious jobs demanded of every farm woman.
It was only three o’clock but Caroline was starving. She’d barely had time to eat her lunch, running back and forth to the field with all those bushels of oats. She was shoving an oatmeal cookie into her mouth when Lady barked twice, scarcely a warning. “Hello, old girl. You remember me, don’t you?” she heard Eldon say.
There he stood, looking at her through the screen door. Caroline tore off her mother’s red kerchief and plumped up her hair. She looked a fright, she knew, her face and arms coated with oat dust and her mouth full.
“Sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?”
“I just got in from the field. We’ve only just now finished the oats,” Caroline said.
“I can come back another time. I’m here to speak to your father,” Eldon said. He took off his hat and held it over his heart as though he had a favour to ask. “And I was hoping to see you, too, of course. I didn’t have a chance to speak to you after the funeral service.”
“Come in,” Caroline said. “Dad should be along shortly. He’s likely moving home now with the combine.” She was too tired to make a pot of tea so she sat down across from him and hoped her father wouldn’t be too long.
“How have you been managing?” Eldon asked, glancing about the room.
“Running a house is much more work than I thought,” Caroline said. “Yesterday, I had to throw away a box of apples. They went soft before I had a chance to get to them so I fed them to the pigs. I don’t know how my mother did it all.”
“A woman’s work is never done, there’s certainly truth to that. Vera is often still in the kitchen at eight o’clock, especially when there’s all the pickling and canning to do.”
Vera Kalyniuk was Elvina Webb’s housekeeper, a spinster who lived with her unmarried brother on his farm a few miles away. She was frail and thin, older than Elvina, and Caroline wondered how she kept up with all the chores, as well as keeping house for her brother. She imagined Vera bustling about the expansive rooms with a dusting cloth, bent and stooped, while Elvina sat in an upholstered chair.
Just then the Farmall came putt-putting down the lane pulling the combine and, a few minutes later, her father came through the door. There was a thin band of dust on his forehead and a smudge of dirt down the bridge of his nose.
Eldon stood up and extended his hand. Caroline’s father wiped his hand on the front of his overalls before he shook it. “You get all finished up, then?”
“I did. A couple of days ago. It was a good year, up till that last bad spell of rain.”
“Yep, it was. One of the better crops I’ve had in a while.” Caroline’s father pulled out a chair and sat down. “Where’s the coffee, then?” He frowned at Caroline, as if he expected his cup to be filled, waiting for him on the table with the cream and the sugar.
“The fire went out. And I used the last of the wood this morning,” Caroline said.
“That’s fine, Henry,” Eldon said. “I can’t stay long, anyway. I wanted to finish discussing the matter we were talking about at the elevator last week. I’ve had a chance to think about what you proposed.”
Caroline’s father was about to stand up, then changed his mind and sat back down, fidgeting for a moment with the buckle on his overalls. “Caroline, run out to the mailbox, why don’t you? I see you didn’t pick up the mail today and there’s a letter I’m expecting.”
He didn’t fool Caroline with his ruse. She didn’t care one way or the other about whatever it was her father didn’t want her to hear. Following Lady down the lane to the mailbox, she felt her spirits lift now that she was out of the house. It was still warm, even though the sun was starting its descent on this brilliant Indian summer day. The trees were mostly bare, the yellow leaves padding the ditches on either side of the lane, the field next to the house still not worked and golden with stubble. Harvest was over and there were only carrots and turnips to dig out of the garden. She’d have time to give the house a good cleaning, maybe even get out the ladder and wash the windows like she’d seen her mother do.
A Strange Kind of Comfort Page 9