“Yes, it’s quite obvious who you are,” she said.
I had a long history of bad relationships with nuns and it seemed this one would be no different. Why was it that most brides of Christ seemed to be stuck in such an unhappy marriage?
Judy leaned across the table for some ketchup. “Sister Mary Catherine is our grade seven homeroom teacher, and of course she teaches religion across the grades,” she said.
The door to the staff room opened and Patrick strode in, rubbing his hands together. “I’m so hungry I could eat the leg off the Lamb of God,” he said.
My laughter died when I heard more tsking from Sister.
“Don’t encourage him, Rachel,” Judy said. “And for the love of God, don’t get him started on the fish puns.”
Dad had been a punster; I was pretty sure I knew all the fish ones.
“I don’t want to rise to the bait,” I said, “but I love puns.”
Patrick was reaching for a carton, but stopped. “They has their plaice.”
“Whale,” I replied, “too many give me a haddock.”
Judy slapped Patrick’s arm. “She might know more puns than you, Pat.”
“You cod be right,” he said.
“Speaking of cod,” Doug interrupted, “any seconds on the go or wha?”
“Yes, b’y.” Patrick pushed a brown bag towards Doug. “Sure this fish is so fresh it practically swam to the takeout.”
I had been sneaking sideways glances at Doug, and he caught me staring. Our eyes held for a few seconds, then he said, “I’ve been wondering, Rachel.”
Maybe it was my proximity to the nun, but I found myself praying he wouldn’t mention the Spider-Man incident. He didn’t. Instead, he asked, “What brings a mainlander down this way?”
His question coincided with a lull in the conversation; everyone turned to hear my response. I didn’t exactly blend in around here. I reached for my drink and took a long sip.
“Ah, I’m just here for the halibut,” I said.
Taking advantage of the scattered laughter, I made my exit, tossing the paper plate in the garbage and making a mental note to come up with a better answer before I was asked again. This job had been my only option, but they didn’t need to know that.
After school, I stopped for gas on the way back to Lucille’s. That morning I had briefly toyed with the idea of walking to school, but the rain changed my mind. Now I was glad to have my own little space, even if only for a few minutes.
I pulled in behind a huge pickup truck that was blocking the pumps. Its mud flaps had not lived up to their billing. I’d arrived only twenty-four hours earlier, but my car was caked in a thin layer of dust, like most of the vehicles in Little Cove.
Visible through the window of the gas station, a stocky man in a jean jacket and baseball cap leaned over the counter, his face inches from that of the woman at the cash register. When I pushed open the door, the tinkling bell above me was barely discernible over his loud voice.
“I got the wrong change in here last night,” he said. “You owes me three dollars.”
The woman behind the counter leaned away from him, hands planted on her hips. “Nothing to do with me, b’y,” she said. “I wasn’t working yesterday.”
I cleared my throat loudly and he jerked his head around. “What the Christ do you want?”
“Gas,” I said. “But your truck’s in the way. Would you mind moving it, please?”
“Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”
“Excuse me?”
“Excuse me?” he mimicked. “Miss Hoity-Toity, come from away, taking our jobs.”
“Oh, so you’re a French teacher?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
The woman behind the counter covered her mouth to hide a smile.
He stared at me for a good minute before finishing his transaction with the cashier. Then he brushed past me, a little too close, muttering, “Comes down from the mainland and thinks her shit don’t stink.”
He slammed the door and the bells jangled frenetically. “Well,” I said. “Someone’s in a mood.”
There was the sound of an engine being revved, and then his truck peeled out onto the road, a trail of dust rising in the air behind it.
The woman shrugged. “That’s Roy Sullivan for you,” she said. “He’s the most contrary man you ever laid eyes on.”
She began slotting chocolate bars from a large box into the display below the counter. “You’re Miss O’Brine,” she said. “Did you meet my Cynthia today? She’s right mad for the French.”
That didn’t sound like any student I’d met so far, but much of the day had been devoted to administrative tasks. I told her I hadn’t met everyone yet, but would be sure to look out for Cynthia.
“You gonna pump yourself?” she asked.
It took me a minute to realize she meant gas. Back outside, I shoved the gas nozzle in, wondering if Roy Sullivan had any children at the school. Then I noticed a piece of paper tucked under my windshield wiper, flapping in the breeze. I pulled it out. In big, black capital letters, someone had written, “You’re not wanted here. Go on back home.”
I slumped against the car. This was my home. At least for the next year. And who had left the note? Roy Sullivan had driven off immediately. He wouldn’t have had time. There was no one but me on the gas station forecourt. The dark windows in the cluster of houses across the road gave no clue. I crumpled up the note, shoved it in my pocket and went inside to pay.
3
How was your first day?” Lucille called from the kitchen before I’d even shut the door.
Not bad, just the one piece of hate mail, I thought, but didn’t say.
She was feeding sheets through a wringer, her face ruddy with exertion. I’d only ever seen a washing machine like that in a museum.
“Be back the once,” she said. “There’s a fine breeze so I wants to get these out.”
I said I’d help her peg, but she said no and pointed me to the table, where a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin waited. When she came back inside, she sat down opposite me, lit a cigarette and returned to her half-finished crossword.
“Classes all good?” she asked.
I considered telling her about the seal question, but then I wondered if hers was a trick question too. Hadn’t Patrick said that everyone knew everything around here? Besides, for all I knew, that particular French scholar was her nephew. I would have to save my stories for Sheila. And maybe Doug, although I wasn’t sure about him yet. So it seemed safest to say that everything had been fine. Lucille didn’t need to know that in the O’Brien household fine was code for “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ah sure Pat Donovan runs a tight ship,” she said. “Smooth sailing with himself at the helm. Hang on, girl.” She stubbed out her cigarette and disappeared into her bedroom off the kitchen, returning almost immediately with a framed picture. She gave it a polish with the skirt of her apron, then thrust it in my hands.
A younger, slimmer Patrick and a curler-free Lucille flanked a girl with short, dark hair, holding a certificate.
“That’s my Linda,” said Lucille. “The day she got her scholarship to go to the university. She was the only one in her year that went. She’s a teacher now, like you. Up in Labrador.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Twenty-five. Same age as I was when I had her.”
I coughed to hide my surprise. Lucille was the same age as my mother, but to my eyes, she looked decades older.
“She’s two years older than me,” I said, taking one last look at the photo before handing it back. I had a similar one of my university graduation upstairs on the dresser. It was just me and Sheila. Dad was already gone and Mom had been in Washington, the keynote speaker at a conference.
Lucille propped the picture frame on the table and went back to her crossword.
“Five across,” she said. “That’s one for you.” She pushed the paper towards me, her yellowed finger po
inting at the clue: “A quality not easily described (French, 2, 2, 4, 4).”
“Je ne sais quoi.”
“Je ne say wha?”
I took the pencil from her and filled in the answer. As she scowled over the next clue, I said, “I might go for a walk.”
Lucille reached for the purse hanging on the back of her chair. “If you goes left down the road, you’ll come to a little store. A can of milk would be good.”
“Keep your money,” I said. As I grabbed my jacket from the bannister, I found myself wondering if the store sold fresh milk. A few hundred yards down the road, I passed a woman pulling sheets from a clothesline.
“Hallo, Miss O’Brine,” she called. “Fine day on the clothes. Where you off to?”
When I mentioned the store, she shouted directions, and I soon arrived at the large brown house she had described far better than Lucille. A hand-lettered sign in the window read, “No tea bags ’til Thursday.” A few kids were hanging around outside, smoking.
“H’lo, miss,” one of the boys said.
I said hello back and walked up the steps, ignoring their whispers. No one was at the cash register, but behind it, a half-open door led to a kitchen. A few rows of white-painted shelves held random grocery items. Toilet paper was stacked beside cans of soup; cardboard boxes on the floor displayed potatoes, carrots and turnips. I saw cigarettes, matches, balls of yarn and chocolate bars. I’d secretly hoped for a celebrity magazine, hell, even a tabloid, but there were no magazines, and I didn’t see a fridge for fresh milk either. I grabbed a can of milk and was heading to the counter when several girls smirked their way inside.
“Whatcha buying, miss?” asked Trudy Johnson.
I’m looking for tampons, Trudy. Any particular brand you can recommend? I waved the can of milk at her. Would I be on display like this for the entire year, my every move and purchase critiqued? I rang the bell and a woman came out from the kitchen, folding her freckled arms when she saw me.
“You’re that new French teacher from the mainland,” she said. From the corner of my eye, I saw Trudy elbow her friend.
“That job belongs to a Newfoundlander,” the woman continued.
“Then maybe she shouldn’t have run off with the priest.” I winced, not wanting to have said it out loud.
I put the so-called milk on the counter and the woman snatched my five-dollar bill and made change. Then she picked up a broom and began sweeping her way out from behind the counter, the dust chasing me to the door.
I dragged my feet back towards Lucille’s house. The wind was up and it blew grit from the road into my eyes. I blinked hard. First Roy Sullivan, then the note, and now this awful woman. Why had I taken this job?
At the top of a hill, I paused to catch my breath. Behind me, a bicycle bell tinkled.
“There’s herself,” said Phonse, drawing alongside me. “How’s she going?”
I sniffed, looking away into the distance.
He put down one rubber boot, then the other, straddled the bike, and reached into the chest pocket of his sweater vest. Like a magician, he pulled out a clean, white handkerchief.
“It’s the wind,” I wailed, dabbing my eyes.
“Yes, girl, she’s blowing a gale.” He looked past me out to the sea, his gnarled fingers still gripping the bike handles.
“Phonse, can I ask you something?”
“Fill your boots,” he said.
I looked down at my shoes.
“Ask away.”
“Do people mind me being here?”
He ran a hand over his chin. “Maybe some.”
“What about the woman in the store?”
“Bertha?” He grimaced. “Don’t mind her. She’s not fond of mainlanders on account of her son.”
“Did he lose his job to a mainlander?”
“Worse.” His smile grew so big, his eyes disappeared. “He married one. He went out west four years ago and he’s not been home since.”
“And that’s my fault?”
Phonse put a foot back on his bike and began to pedal. “Seems like it might be,” he called over his shoulder. “Chin up, girl.”
Back at Lucille’s I wondered where to put the milk. Not in the fridge, obviously. Lucille was on the phone in the living room. She kept saying, “I knows, girl,” every fifteen seconds. Eventually she hung up and joined me in the kitchen.
“Jaysus, Mary and Josephine,” she said. “That was Bertha Peddle. She’s after threatening to bar me from the store. Says you were right saucy.”
“But I . . . she . . .” I stopped talking as, really, there was no excuse for my rudeness.
But then Lucille said, “Let her try and bar me.” She took the can from me and put it on a shelf. “I got more dirt on her family than muck on a pig. Sit down now, for the love of God. We needs to eat early. I got a meeting over to the church.”
She went to the wood stove and began lifting food from an iron frying pan. “Fish cakes,” she said, putting a plate down in front of me.
I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of fish twice in one day. But these deep-fried golden discs were a delicious blend of potato and fish. A feeling of warmth spread from my stomach to my extremities. “Lucille,” I said, putting down my fork. “The fish from the takeout for lunch was really good. But this”—I gestured at my plate—“this is amazing.”
She waved her hand. “Go ’way with you, maid.” But the curve of a smile softened her features for a moment. She took down a pack of cigarettes from a shelf over the stove and lit up. Then she lifted the smallest lid from the stovetop and dropped in the match.
“Tell me about your people,” she said, sitting down on the daybed in the far corner.
As she blew a long stream of smoke up to the ceiling, it didn’t feel like the best time to talk about Dad’s death from lung cancer just a few months prior.
“Actually, Lucille, I’d love to hear more about the teacher I replaced.”
She scratched her head between the curlers and sighed. “Brigid Roche. Her husband, Paul, died last year. He was only twenty-eight.”
“Oh my God, what happened?”
“He was driving home from Mardy with Ron Drodge, Brigid’s brother, and they hit a tree. Not a scratch on Ron, but Paul died straight away. People said Ron was drinking that night, but no one knows for sure. Police never made it out this way until hours after the accident.”
“Poor Brigid,” I said. “Imagine being widowed so young.”
Lucille came over to clear the dishes, stubbing out her cigarette in the leftover ketchup on my plate. “There’s many left a widow too soon around here, myself included. But you don’t see me running off with the priest, now, do you?”
She returned with a dishcloth and began wiping the table with quick, hard strokes.
“Seemed like Brigid was coming out of herself by Easter. And everyone said Father Jim was a big help with his grief counselling.” She sniffed. “Grief counselling with a priest? I never heard the like. You buries your man, you gives it up to God and you gets on with life.”
I thought about Mom sitting in Dad’s leather chair for weeks after he died, stroking the worn arms, deaf to any attempts at conversation.
Lucille took a few more swipes at the table, though I could see no crumbs. Then she threw the dishcloth in the sink.
“Do you think Brigid will ever come back?” I asked.
“I expect she’ll stay well clear,” Lucille said. “She’s brought too much shame on this parish.”
She reached for a scarf lying on the daybed and wrapped it around her head. “I’m off to see Father Frank, now,” she said. “He’s got some fancy notions he needs to be set straight on right quick.”
After Lucille left, I went upstairs and pulled Dad’s school sweatshirt from the bottom drawer of my dresser. I put it on and lay down on my bed, thinking that grief counselling didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
4
Bonjour, mademoiselle.”
A girl in jeans and a sw
eatshirt stuck her head in my classroom. I was mid-gulp of a cup of coffee, so I beckoned her in. She chattered her way up to the desk, telling me, in perfect French, that her name was Cynthia and she was in grade twelve.
“Bonjour, Cynthia,” I said. “I think I met your mom at the gas station.”
She nodded. “She told me. Oh miss, I loves French,” she gushed. “It’s my favourite subject.”
“Mine too,” I said and we both laughed.
“I wants to be a French teacher,” she said. “I’m trying for a scholarship to get to university, like Doug did.” She covered her hand with her mouth. “Mr. Bishop, I mean. We’re not allowed to call him Doug at school.”
“Wait,” I said. “Is Do—Is Mr. Bishop from Little Cove?”
She nodded. “His family lives two doors down from us. But I won’t come back to Little Cove like he did,” she said. “I wants to see the world.”
The bell rang then, so I told Cynthia I’d see her later that morning. “Can’t wait, miss,” she said.
I quickly scanned my lesson plan, waiting for the grade nines to arrive. I could hear the shrieks and staccato bursts of laughter as they approached. The noise continued as they took their seats in the classroom. Calvin was semi-horizontal at his desk and Trudy was blowing the biggest bubble I’d ever seen. I willed it to burst all over her face, but she sucked it noisily into her mouth.
“Trudy,” I said. “Get rid of that gum, please.”
She sauntered past me to the corner, stood over the garbage can and spit. There was a soft thunk as the gum hit bottom.
“Miss,” Trudy said. “Can I just say something?”
She was clearly destined to be a teacher because all of a sudden, she had everyone’s attention.
“What is it?”
“Bertha Peddle says you’re a proper slut.”
I heard myself gasp as shouts of laughter erupted, and I looked around to a mass of braying mouths.
“Get out,” I said, my voice trembling.
“But, miss,” she protested.
“Right. Now.” I pointed to the door, my fingers jabbing the air. “Go see Mr. Donovan and don’t you dare slam the door on your way out.”
New Girl in Little Cove Page 3