A Beauty

by Connie Gault

  It would be a salesman, she decided, insurance likely, since your ordinary Watson guy couldn’t afford a new car. She drove on more soberly, glancing in her rear-view mirror from time to time and seeing nothing but an unphilosophical sun in her eyes. As soon as she gave up doing that, from way down the road she spotted the convertible parked in the Gustafson farmyard. She had lots of time, before her truck rattled and bumped to a standstill in front of Maria’s house, to wonder who could be visiting. She pulled up right beside the car. It was longer than her truck. When she got out she wished her hands weren’t full; she would have liked to touch its gleaming blue paint and the chrome along its headrests and the ribbed leather seats. If she could have been sure no one would see her, she would have loved to open the wide door and slide inside, settle her back against the seat and run her fingers over the knobs and buttons on the dashboard.

  Maria shouted to come in. She sounded a bit breathless and was wiping her face against her sleeve. Aggie set the stack of empty casserole dishes and Tupperware down on the table and looked around the kitchen.

  “We’re eating in the dining room tonight,” Maria said. “We have a guest.” The word had wings attached. Up it flew to the ceiling while Maria led the way to the dining room. “This is Bill Longmore. And Bill, this is Aggie. You may remember dancing with her long ago.”

  “Aggie,” he said, rising from his chair to shake her hand and look into her eyes. “I believe I do remember dancing with you.”

  “Pshaw!” she said, louder than she intended, and heat rose in a line she could feel from her chest all the way to her forehead. She plunked herself onto the chair he drew out for her, and then she knew who he was. She opened her mouth to say so, but Maria interrupted. “He’s here looking for Elena Huhtala!” she said. Then she turned to Bill. “Tell her.”

  “I believe she’s on her way home,” he said. “She might be there already.”

  “There’s a car in the driveway!” Aggie said.

  “A rental, right?”

  “I don’t know. A new car.”

  “A two-tone brown Ford.”

  “Yes, I’m almost sure it was.”

  “That’s what she’s driving.”

  A pause followed that announcement while the three of them beamed at one another as if they’d orchestrated this miracle themselves. Then Maria suddenly said, “Eat, eat.” She was so emphatic, she made Bill laugh. Aggie shook her head and laughed too. Maria could always relax you and put you in a good mood. Obligingly, they passed her dishes around the table. They tucked into the mashed potatoes in her blue bowl, the buttery garden green beans and carrots in the yellow one, and the cast-iron pot of Swedish meatballs, still simmering over the copper warmer. They ate and then ate more to please her, and talked very merrily all the while without too many expressions of wonder on Aggie’s part or too many questions or explanations on Bill’s. Maria did most of the talking, especially when it came to relating Matti Huhtala’s sad story. “In this very house he said, ‘I will find her,’ ” she told them. She rose to clear the plates and Aggie helped her and then they ate her famous Saskatoon pie (warm from the oven) with her fresh farm cream.

  “How was it you ended up here, anyway, Bill, the night of that dance in Trevna?” Aggie asked while they were having their coffee.

  He looked startled by the question, and stared across the room a few seconds before he answered. “My father gave me a new roadster as a gift for college graduation,” he said. “My mother was going through a bad time, she had cancer and was in a clinic, and my father took off for a little break – or so he called it. Took his secretary with him. I wasn’t supposed to know that, but he wasn’t all that careful to hide it.” He smiled at her. He must have noticed she’d flinched at that word cancer, a word most people didn’t say out loud. He had one of the most appealing smiles she’d ever seen; it was as if he was asking something of her that he knew she wanted to give. Her approval, that’s what he was asking for, or even her prior pardon for whatever he might do or say. She felt indulgent and privileged at the same time because of it.

  “So there I was in the house alone,” he went on, “with this big convertible sitting in the driveway. I cruised around the city for a few days, but my friends were mostly off on holidays or working through the summer. One night I drove out into the country, to a dancehall, had a good time. Went back home and packed a suitcase and set out. I thought I’d do a tour, you know, hit some more halls, spend my vacation that way. Hey, it was fun for a while,” he added, seeing them listening to every word. “I was young then.” He even looked young when he said it, Aggie thought.

  It was Bill’s intention to spend the night in Trevna and then to drive back and visit the Huhtala place in the morning. At the end of the evening, when they were standing at the door about to leave, Maria said to him, “Ask Elena if she’ll come and see me.”

  Aggie said, “I’m not sure I want to meet Elena again.” She’d spoken without thinking and laughed self-consciously when they turned to her for an explanation. “She’s almost bound to disappoint me.” Maybe she’d meant it for a warning. She didn’t think so, but sometimes her mind went ahead of her, and she did like Bill an awful lot. He took it as a warning; she saw that. He turned serious, with something like second thoughts in his nice blue eyes.

  Maria saw it too and before he left she tried to override it. “I always think of her sitting on that swing they had in their yard since she was a kid,” she said. “She was sitting there the night we picked her up and took her to the dance at Liberty Hall – where she met up with you, Bill.”

  She smiled at him, her sharing smile. She wanted him to think what a happy accident it was that they’d picked Elena up, that she’d gone to the dance, that Bill had showed up the same evening. How lucky it all was. But Aggie thought a whole lot that wasn’t so pleasant could also happen because of the simple sequence of time. “That swing’s gone now,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Maria said. “Thelma Svenson asked Mr. Huhtala to take it down so her youngsters wouldn’t bike over there to play.” She touched Bill on the elbow. “But you don’t care about that.”

  They were all amazed by the time, by the darkness that filled the sky when Bill opened the door. As he backed down the driveway in his impressive car, Maria said to Aggie, “I remember driving into Trevna with Elena that night in the wagon, and turning around to talk to her – she was sitting in the back with the children. I thought I’d never seen the like of her big, empty eyes.”

  “We used to think it was glamorous, that sadness,” Aggie said.

  They both lifted their arms and waved to Bill before he turned onto the road and drove off.

  While the last of the light pulled away from the yard and fields, Elena and her father sat in the dark house over their coffee. She’d suggested they move from the kitchen to the living room, where they could catch the cross-breeze from the two open doors, and he’d hobbled behind her. It took an effort for him to move from one chair to another, but he did it, he made the effort. They could barely see one another across the room.

  They’d sat in the dark this way in the old days, each of them deep in private space. Not wanting to waste the coal oil by lighting the lamp, not having the coal oil to waste. It had been a comfortable, companionable quiet when she was a girl, but as she grew older, he’d become increasingly withdrawn. That last summer, they’d hardly spoken. It was true she’d wanted to go, she’d longed to get away from here, but she’d never said so. She wouldn’t leave him when he was depressed. Now, looking back, she couldn’t see how things had got to such a state, when surely she could have hitchhiked somewhere, found some kind of job, come home to visit once in a while. She didn’t understand herself, let alone him. Somehow they’d got locked into a situation that only repeated itself.

  When she’d gone upstairs earlier, she’d seen that he’d left her room unchanged. Three hand-me-down dresses still hung in the closet, along with Thelma Svenson’s dusty, shapeless coat. Sh
e could ask him what he’d been doing those weeks after he left, while she waited every day for him to return, but she knew what he’d been doing. He’d been pretending to be dead. She’d searched their land and past it, those days, her legs scratched, her face and arms sunburnt, creeping into every copse and coulee in case she would find him there at her feet – and she hadn’t found him. She’d woken up afraid, those mornings, like a kid waking up in a strange house, not knowing where she was. Hour after hour she’d sat out in the yard, unmoving on the swing, and all that time he was pretending to be dead.

  She had thought she would tell him about Finland, about the woman and her daughter in the hotel, and about the church and the cemetery and the woods by the lake. But she didn’t want to tell him now. He keeps himself to himself, doesn’t he? That’s what the neighbours said, and he always had; he’d kept his troubles and his sorrows to himself. And she had been expected to do the same.

  “You knew I meant you to go,” he said finally, his gruff voice travelling across the darkness as if he’d been listening to her mind. After a while, he said, “I am sorry the money wasn’t much.” His voice shook. “But it kept you till you were on your feet, I hope.” He paused but she didn’t speak. “It was so you could get out of here, make a life for yourself.”

  She was glad she couldn’t see him. Making excuses. Or worse, remaking history. Is that what she had travelled all this way to hear? There had been no money. Where would money have come from, in those days?

  “I didn’t worry about you, Elena. You were always resourceful; I knew you’d do well.”

  It was a lie; he had worried about her and she knew it. He only said it to end the conversation, to make it possible to get up from his chair and go to bed. She stood up and went to the centre of the room and pulled the cord that hung there, turned the light on so she could see his face. She had meant to tell him what she thought, but she found she couldn’t.

  A car was passing on the road to Trevna. It was all she could see besides their reflections, the entire room’s reflection, beyond the black window. Another living room seemed to exist there, out in the farmyard, in only a slightly spectral state. She couldn’t see the road, only the headlights, but she watched them cut into the night beyond the reflection, and then she watched the red tail lights until they disappeared and all that was left was the two of them in the room that existed in the two places.

  “You’re right, Isä,” she said before she went up to bed. “I was resourceful.”

  From the kitchen window they could see the driveway, and as they sat at the table with their morning coffee, and heard the car approach – or Elena heard it and her father knew she had – they both lifted from their chairs the inch necessary to peer all the way down to the road. Neither of them recognized the vehicle as a Lincoln Continental. They saw that it was long and low and summer-sky blue outside and in, that it had expensive chrome detailing and four doors. The top was down and the driver wore a suit and a Frank Sinatra fedora that marked him as an older man in these modern times.

  The convertible pulled up beside the rented car. “It’s Bill,” Elena said. “I believe it is. He had a gold convertible, last time.”

  “He’s the one?”

  “Oh, the one.”

  He was sitting in the car, looking at the house. He’d tilted his hat back, and yes, that’s who it was. She felt completely resigned, not even surprised, since it was only justice that he should appear. Now he was getting out of the car. He wouldn’t be able to see inside until he came to the door. She drew the blind down all the way to the sill. Her father glanced at her, but didn’t ask her why. He looked tired to the marrow of his bones, this morning. His flesh seemed to have sunken and you could see his skull, the eye sockets more noticeable than his pale eyes.

  Bill was knocking at the door. Only the screened door was closed; the other was propped open with a big stone, one they’d chosen for its dark mica flakes that sparkled in sunlight. She could remember the day they’d found it. “You go,” she said. “Please. I don’t want to talk to him.”

  He got to his feet and made his slow way to the door.

  It had been a typical start to a late August day, with the slight chill of autumn retreating as the sun gained strength. Nothing is like the feel of the sun when the air is cool; if he thought about his surroundings at all, it was about that delicate warmth. The farmyard was like every other farmyard, or maybe poorer than most. He hadn’t really seen it as he’d pulled up to park beside the rental. He hadn’t registered much more than the make of the car and the dingy white paint that was peeling on the siding of the house. He had an image in his mind of her coming to the door, appearing behind the screen, a hazy figure, but solid. Solid as houses, people used to say, he didn’t know why, given their inclination to rot and fall down. And why was he thinking like that?

  The old man came to the door, her father. He opened it halfway and stood in the gap, a tall old man, not much stooped in spite of his age – and the years had surely aged him since they’d last spoken. He filled the gap. You couldn’t see past him. The light coming through the screen cast freckles all down him; even his faded old-farmer shirt and suspendered pants were dotted, and the effect was to soften him. But he stood his ground. “She won’t see you,” he said.

  “She saw me drive up? She recognized me, then. She knows who I am.”

  The old man nodded, a curt nod that gave nothing away but acknowledgement.

  Bill nodded, too. He’d seen her the night before. As he’d passed the farm on his way to Trevna, he’d slowed to look at the house and a light had come on in a window and he’d seen her standing in the middle of a room. Seeing her, he’d wanted to stop, not to go in and talk to her, not then, but just to keep looking at her. But he’d driven on; it wouldn’t have been right to stop. He’d gone on into Trevna, thinking about her, because who knew how she was getting along with the old man. It was hard enough for anyone to come home. And now she didn’t want to see him. She’d pulled the blind down when he got out of the car. She’s afraid, he thought with a sudden instinct that he was right. He stepped forward and leaned his hand against the door frame. The old fellow maintained a calm detachment, as he had that day in the hotel lobby. It was a kind of nobility. “Tell her she has to see me,” he said. “Please. That’s all, just see me.”

  For the first time something showed on the bitterly weathered face and in the clouded grey eyes, something that looked like an emotion. But it was only a flicker, and it was gone so fast you couldn’t tell what it was he’d been thinking.

  “Would you tell her that?” Bill said. “Okay? I’m not leaving.”

  The old man wavered, then. “Wait here,” he said. He closed the door.

  Elena had heard the exchange at the door and neither of them spoke of it when her father returned. He sat down again at the table and stared at the stove. Well, she had nothing to say. So they would sit in silence, waiting. This was how they were together, always waiting, and for what?

  He reached across the table and put his hand on hers, a surprise. The hand trembled and the shiny skin looked too thin and tired to hold bones together much longer. But she wasn’t going to weaken just because he was an old man. Or because he’d tried to explain. Saying he’d left her money. No doubt it was convenient to remember it that way. But what difference did it make? He’d let her think he was going to kill himself and then he’d let her think he was dead. Why should she put up with his hand on hers, as if all was forgiven?

  He was shaking his head now, so he was thinking something or other, trying to drum up something to say, likely, more justification for what he’d done. His eyelids flared red, tears brimmed. She wasn’t going to save him this time. Why couldn’t he speak? Here they were, after all these years, and he could not simply say he was sorry.

  She turned to look out the window, forgetting she’d pulled down the blind, and ended up staring at the white rectangle that blocked her view. Bill was still sitting out there, she thought; he mu
st be or she would have heard the car leave. She remembered her father had followed their trail across the province that summer. Ruth had told her he’d done that. A feeling of plodding, hopeless and dreadful, came over her as she thought about him walking miles, hardly eating, hitching rides when he could. She saw him standing at the side of the highway with his thumb out, a tall man, resolutely alone, the wind battering him, cars and trucks passing him by. She thought about him going all the way to the city and then backtracking to Gilroy and talking to people there, speaking to Ruth and her mother in case they might be able to tell him where she’d gone. Knowing who she’d gone with.

  She leaned back against the hard ribs of her chair and saw Ruth’s face again, as it had looked when they’d talked about their fathers. At least your father came looking for you. A childish thing to say, really, the kind of thing the girl, Ruthie, would have said. She could see her on the main street of Gilroy, she could see her clearly, without even trying, as if that little town would always exist and Ruthie would always be there. She was holding her glasses – they had fallen off – and she was staring from the middle of the street, with one intent eye. The other eye, meanwhile, gazed off in its own direction until she put the glasses on and came forward with her scraped hand out.

  “Ruthie,” she said out loud. She sat very still, trying to sort out her thinking.

  “Ruthie,” her father said, a tenderness in his voice. He was speaking of a child. “She writes to me once in a while. Since that summer.”

  “Oh,” she said. “All that time. All those years.” She spoke automatically, not really paying attention to him because she was thinking and because the girl was still in front of her, walking towards her with her hand held out. She was seeing that saucy face and those impudent eyes behind the thick lenses. She was seeing expectation in those eyes. All the kid wanted was a little sympathy. But she was so certain she’d get it, that was the thing. She was so sure that was the way the world worked. It was natural to want to deny her, and it wouldn’t have hurt her a bit. But then something else, something more, had presented itself, something she’d found irresistible, a love affair that struck her now as a disturbing, unintentional kind of revenge. She hadn’t thought it out at the time, she hadn’t let herself think about it at all, certainly not the way she was thinking about it now. Why hurt a child the way you’ve been hurt? It made no sense, but she did it.