Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace

by David Adams Richards

  “I had a baby, Mom – but I lost it,” Cindi said.

  “Yes,” her mother said, lighting a cigarette and dropping the lighter back into her purse. “Well, I’ve heard that – haven’t I.” And when she raised her eyes to stare at Cindi, Cindi looked about the table as if searching for a kindly face, and then sat with her head down. Now and then she moved one of her fingers along the tabletop. When she looked up, her mother was just turning to look towards her again, and her head dropped as if she had a weight on it and her eyes closed, with her bottom lip turned out.

  Ruby wanted a larger group but Cindi did not want to go anywhere. She was tired of meeting people and just wanted to stay by herself.

  Ruby bought her ice cream, talked of taking her to the shrine at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre because Cindi wanted to go there, but the morning they got ready to go, Cindi said she didn’t feel like it.

  Dorval then bought Cindi a puppy.

  It had brown ears and a white tail.

  Every once in a while Cindi would put her hand out and the puppy would lick it.

  But then one morning she said that they should take the puppy back.

  So they packed the puppy, and its flea collar, leash and rubber bone, in the box it came in and took it back to the pet shop in the mall. All it did was wag its tail against the box when it saw Cindi, and try to nuzzle her dress with its nose. Sometimes when they walked through a mall, Cindi would drop back twenty or thirty paces, and stare down at the floor. Ruby would have to go back to get her. And Cindi, wearing a pantsuit the colour of a lima bean, would, in the illogical stubborn way slow people have to protect themselves, start to argue with her.

  “No, you don’t have to come back.”

  “No – I’m all right.”

  “No – I don’t have a problem, Ruby – you are making a scene.”

  Ruby would have to make sure Cindi took her phenobarbital – but she herself kept forgetting to give it to her, and then would wake her up in the middle of the night to take it.

  Ruby did not understand why, but there were always terrible arguments after they went to bed.

  “Well, I don’t like you today, Cindi.”

  “No – you never liked me, Ruby. You always said things about me.”

  “No – I never did – you are all mixed up and gone bonkers again. I never disliked you, but I do today, young lady.”

  “You called me retarded – so howdya like that?”

  “My God, woman, I never did in my life.”

  “And told Dr. Savard I was slow – like I didn’t graduate or something like that.”

  “I never said a thing. Who told you that –”

  “I could tell by his questions.”

  Ruby would say nothing.

  “No one could think I could tell by their questions. …”

  (Pause.)

  “No one could think I could tell – I could tell by their questions. …”

  (Pause.)

  “And I didn’t like Dr. Savard either.”

  “Well that’s not up to me, is it?”

  “You thought I’d like him.”

  “I didn’t say that–”

  (Pause.)

  “Ha.”

  “No, I didn’t – it was always up to you, so don’t point the finger of blame.”

  (Long pause.)

  “And I’m not in love with Dorval Gene and you think I am.”

  “I never said you were,” Ruby would say.

  “You told Dorval Gene I was –”

  “I never said anything so ridiculous –”

  “Ask Dorval – he thought I was – he bought me a pin for my blouse.”

  “Well la-tee-da to that.”

  (Pause.)

  “That’s what you think.”

  “Cindi, go to sleep it’s late, dear.”

  “And you think everyone’s not as smart as you.”

  “There’s lots of people a lot smarter than me,” Ruby would say in the late-at-night resigned tone brilliant people have about the limitations of their own brilliance.

  “Ha.”

  Ruby would be lying in her sleeping bag on the far side of the living room, Cindi in her blanket and cushion on the other side. The shadow of the wharf light would just reach them through the long window. The maple would wave in the dark. There would be a long pause.

  “You only like Dr. Savard because he reminded you of Missle Ryan.”

  Ruby wouldn’t say anything. She would open her eyes and look at the wall.

  “And I’m going to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre – I’m going by myself.”

  She paused. “Some time soon.”

  Ivan had taken the day to scout where the coyotes were behind the fields. Then, having decided where he would place his traps, he walked through the woods – this was just at dark – and came out on a dirt road. The air smelled of heavy leaves and sandpiles on the side of the road. Limp telephone lines hung in the dusk on lime-coated poles, and the air seemed to tick and fill with pleasant sounds.

  He had to walk back to the car, found it when it was pitch black, and went back to the wharf. The evening then turned cold and a rain started falling. The waves beat against the boat and the old tires scraped the side of the wharf. There was a smell of wood and tar in the rain, and the bay was fogged in. Ivan went into his cuddy and saw his father sitting on the cot.

  “Cindi lost her baby,” Antony said looking at him.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Antony said, blowing his nose. “It beats me.”

  “Well, what happened – where is she?”

  “Oh, she’s at the apartment there – big-feelinged Ruby won’t let me see her.”

  There was a pause, and Antony looked up at him.

  “Some people say you beat her so bad she lost her child.”

  “Who said?”

  “Oh, all that Jesus crew. They were here an hour ago to get you – Frank and Jeannie Russell – with her cousins – the Levoys.”

  Ivan sat on the old bait box. He was wearing a jean jacket that his arms looked very tight in, a big buckle on his belt, and work boots that were still covered with blades of grass and one small daisy from walking in the woods.

  Antony neglected to tell Ivan that he had come onto the wharf with everyone else – saying the same things everyone else did, and feeling that he, too, could generate the same amount of self-important disdain as everyone else. In fact, Antony, in spite of his good intention, had pretended to Frank Russell that he had just heard of this mix-up and wanted to get to the bottom of it. He kept touching Jeannie’s little shoulder and shaking his head. The small dog Ivan had adopted had tried to keep them off the boat by running along the gunnels and barking, driving its paw into a nail. Cindi’s cousins, the Levoys, were furious because they had just heard that Ivan had beaten Cindi – they had just come home for the summer, and this fact alone made them feel justified.

  Ivan knew he was in a terrible position. He couldn’t rely on anyone at the moment – and his perception had always served him well. He knew very well that, no matter his own part, he had become a scapegoat in some larger affair that he had no control over, until it ran its course. Frank or Jeannie Russell or his father had no control over it either. And he looked at his little dog – with the brown ears, sitting on its mat, licking its cut paw – proudly believing that his barking and running along the gunnels had kept the men away, when the men had gone away simply because they believed they could find him somewhere else.

  In the cuddy light, in the damp, with his hair wet and hanging across his forehead, Ivan looked like Cindi. Instead of feeling ashamed – as Antony was expecting (and somehow hoping) – Ivan looked tremendously proud and defiant.

  “She lost her child,” he said, after a long time. “Well, then she’ll have another one with someone someday.”

  Ivan tried to think back to the night of the community centre dance. It was true he had gone there with his buck knife on – but that was because he had been in the w
oods for most of the day. And he hadn’t used it anyway. But now there were those who said he went there with the clear intention of using it. Some would say it because they had heard others say it, others would repeat it.

  “One person you’ve got to admire though,” Antony said, looking at him and huffing and puffing as if he was out of breath, “is that Dr. Savard. You know he was brought up in a tar-paper shack – and now tonight I saw him going along in his Porsche –”

  “I’ve seen it,” Ivan said.

  Antony shook his head, as if to show by physical movement the admiration his words couldn’t.

  “Of course he pulled over when he saw me, the big wave and ‘How are you, Antony.’ I used to take Gloria down to him – not like Clay Everette. I was over there last month and Gloria was on the porch lying on the couch, so I went out to the office and saw Clay. I told him, ‘You get that little girl to a doctor before she dies,’ and Clay looked at me and hung his head. I threw my arms up in the air and said, ‘I’m some sick of the whole lot of ya. You’ve got a spoiled rotten girl in Ruby – who the first year at university had affairs with this married professor – a half a dozen affairs with this married guy – and then because she gets her snit up, you build her a house or something like that. But I don’t want her around my Margaret,’ I said to them. Clay said, ‘Ya, and when was she ever with Margaret?’ And I just said, ‘That jeesless Dorval Gene and her are going around with all the young pussy on the road – and Margaret is too young to be with the likes of them – and if I see her with them any more, I’ll come right over here.’

  “After that Clay says to me, ‘Look, do you want yer old job back,’ and I give him a look. ‘No,’ I said, ‘you keep yer job, and every job like it.’

  ‘“But we want you back,’ Clay said. ‘Yer the only man who can handle a grader.’”

  The truth was, Antony was a magnificent tractor and grader operator.

  “Yes,” Antony said. “Asked me in front of Lloyd to come back and take over – and I went over to Lloyd and touched him on the shoulder – he was hanging his head too. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘the job’s yours as long as you want it, because I won’t come back to work here.’

  ‘“But how will you live?’ Lloyd said, and I said, ‘I’ll live because I don’t bow to no one and stay true to myself.’ And with that I turned and walked back to my truck with Gloria watching out the window at me. Then she comes to the door and runs down in her housecoat. ‘Tony,’ she says, ‘Tony,’ and, hanging on to my arm, she tries to drag me back for a big reconciliation with Clay. ‘Ya’ve gotta talk to big Clay,’ she says. ‘He’s offerin you a job –’

  ‘“Don’t take it,’ Valerie yells out to me – she was sitting in the truck. ‘Don’t take it, Daddy – please don’t take it.’ And with that Gloria looks at Valerie and starts to cry.” Antony finished up, and he, too, had tears in his eyes.

  Just as a story had been fashioned that the woman they took to Moncton had almost died because Dr. Hennessey was her doctor, so, too, did certain people believe that Ivan had beaten Cindi and she had lost her child. And though Antony spread this rumour all over the river, whenever Ivan was in at the house to see Margaret, Antony would convince himself he had only Ivan’s interest at heart.

  By the third week of July, Cindi was no longer at the apartment with Ruby. She had come back home and wouldn’t go outside. Dr. Hennessey went over one day to see her.

  She looked terrible. Her face was bumpy – just as Ruby said.

  He asked her how she was, and then, without being asked, he gave her a quick check over, satisfied himself that she was still on her medication, berated her for not eating.

  “Well, you don’t look too bad, but,” he said quickly, “you’ve had at least one seizure since I’ve seen you – and probably two –”

  “I had three,” Cindi said. “I’m near up to five a month now – that was how bad I was in high school.”

  “Three, yes, well three – and what’s this Ivan business about – why don’t you see him?”

  “He won’t come to visit me,” Cindi said.

  “Well – I’m sure he isn’t the best husband in the world, the little bastard, but I don’t believe he tried to knife you either. And when you look back on it, it was very exciting for some people – very gratifying to pretend he had that in mind.”

  “I don’t know,” Cindi said. “I was there and he did walk in with his knife.”

  “Well, think what you want,” the doctor said irritably, and then he realized he had frightened her – and that she had spent half of her life frightened of people and he felt angry with himself because of this. “But I don’t think he wanted to knife you – and if I had to trust someone – well, he would be a person I would trust – MORE THAN A LOT OF THEM!” he finished up, screeching.

  The red building was hot, and the curtains hung limp above the sink. When the doctor came in, Cindi was sitting near the bedroom door, as if hiding behind a cardboard box. She told him the only one to visit her since she’d come back was Margaret. Margaret came to visit her in the daytime.

  “Oh yes, and what about that Ruby?” Dr. Hennessey said. “Not that she’s any of my business – it’s just that you were as thick as porcupine quills in a dog’s arse a week ago – something happen?” he asked innocently, with his face looking suddenly almost like a little boy’s, and, in spite of himself, beaming in delight.

  “Ruby’s mad at me,” Cindi said, rubbing one thumb against the other and looking at her feet. Then she looked at him. “I bug her,” she said, drawing a deep breath and exhaling, as if the fact that she “bugged her” was insurmountable, and not to be questioned.

  “And what about that Adele – where the hell is she anyways? She was a friend of yers, wasn’t she?” Dr. Hennessey said loudly.

  The whole idea that Cindi needed someone to stay with her was paramount not only to the doctor but to Cindi herself – who had become so depressed that she hadn’t washed in a week, and yet kept putting on new makeup every day, so that the doctor thought she looked like a cake.

  “Ha,” the doctor said, “maybe we should get Dr. Savard to come here and sit with you –”

  Then, realizing he’d overstepped his bounds, he became silent for a moment.

  “Everything is happening on this river today,” he said.

  With that he shook his head, and, digging into his pocket, took out eighty dollars and laid it on the telephone table beside her.

  Cindi was too nervous of him to say anything about this – although in every gesture and movement he showed that he wished to be loving and kind.

  “There’s lots of ways people hide bigotry from themselves,” the doctor mumbled. “Today’s way is progressive concern.”

  Four days later Adele moved down with Cindi on Hennessey’s request. The first thing was to get a fan for the apartment, and she took Cindi up to the mall and bought one.

  “Now we’ll have some cool air at night,” she said.

  Cindi looked at her and smiled.

  “Now, dear,” Adele said, “the first thing you got to do is take a bath –”

  “I don’t want to,” Cindi said.

  “I don’t care if you want to – you’re going to,” Adele said. “You fuckin stink – and you have more powder than face.”

  Her only concern was getting Cindi to take some action and make her do something.

  “And burn them fuckin clothes” Adele said. “You’ve been sleeping in them for a week or more, it looks like – and what’s this all over the floor here? I don’t know – this place is a Christless mess, Cin – you know bettern that.”

  Cindi was as depressed as she was at times before she had a seizure, something which she almost never recognized in herself but which Adele recognized instantly.

  12

  Antony had acquired thirty-seven velvet portraits of Elvis Presley and had them hanging at the house – he was commissioned to sell them for Gordon Russell.

  He was back once more with
Gordon. Gordon’s dusty red Cadillac was often in the yard, and Antony would stop whatever he was doing to entertain him. And they would go into the backyard and suck clams and drink beer. Gordon made light of Antony, called him “the frog,” and Antony took this as a sign he was once again in that inner circle of people and events where he so wished to be.

  By this time Nevin thought of only one thing – of extracting himself from Antony – who had been bullying him for a month.

  And yet each time he thought of getting away, new complications arose – new facts were introduced into the complicated arrangements he and Antony had, all of which changed day by day, with Antony’s incessant calculations. And each day Nevin was forced to pretend that everything was going along just the way they wished it – and, in fact, nothing was happening that he himself did not foresee.

  He did not foresee that he would have to wade up to his arse in water, while Antony waited on the shore, hidden in the bushes when they went to poach salmon.

  Nor did he foresee that he would have to wait hours on Antony in places like St. Antoine or Petit Rocher, while Antony would strut about paying no attention to him, chewing on Chiclets.

  And each time Nevin went to quit – each time he decided that it was enough – each time one thing drew him back. Something which complicated everything else. Antony made him feel he was ungrateful, that he, Antony, was only trying to make them both money.

  “I’ve one son now who doesn’t do anything – lives in a cuddy, kicks the snot out of women, and has no future. I have to support eight people all by myself – and my partner and his wife also.”

  By day Nevin had the look of certain people of his generation who miscalculated what was significant in the events of their youth – and though still driven by those events, and still assured of their significance, nothing worked so well for them as it did those few years when they were protected by the parents they were so committed to being different from.