by Anne Lazurko
Gabe was moaning when I went back to the house. He hadn’t moved, but I tied his hands to the table leg anyway, just in case. I filled a canteen with water, put some bread and cheese in a sack, picked up Casey and headed outside to tack up Nelly for the long ride into Moose Jaw to see the Mounted Police. To tell them what Gabe had done and where to find him, to finally make him pay, for everything. As I was about to leave, I went back to the house, walked over to Gabe, and pulled the pillow out from under his head.
CHAPTER 35
i i i
MOIRA
Gabe had cut deep into the muscle of my shoulder, and I needed help with the most basic of things. After taking me to Doctor Berkowski, Silas had brought me to his place and arranged for Mrs. Miller’s help. She was wonderful, dressing the wound, cooking and cleaning, caring for Shannon when Silas wasn’t home to do it. But mostly he was home, and for two weeks had nursed me in the large room at the top of the stairs.
Dr. Berkowski came for a follow-up visit, to put everyone’s mind at rest, though I knew he’d taken great care with the sutures, the positioning and length of each stitch perfect. Even with the severity of the wound, the scar would be minimal. While the muscle was still weak, I was healing well. He paused an instant as he packed his things away.
“I have to say you did an excellent job treating that hoodlum, especially in light of your own injury,” he said. “More than he deserved from the sounds of it.”
“I did what needed to be done,” I said, trying not to blush.
“Hmmm.” It seemed he wanted to say more, but instead he looked me in the eye and formally shook my hand as he left.
I remembered the smell of that early morning two weeks earlier, my loathing and fear making me a madwoman. But while standing over Gabe’s wounded body, I’d thought of my father, his patients, the lowly patients he treated without question, his firm belief in a doctor’s obligation to preserve life. All life. And I thought of the oath I’d memorized as a young girl, especially the part that said, “To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parent.” I had to treat Gabe. Not out of any sympathy, or heroism. But because I was my father’s daughter. I was a doctor.
With Berkowski’s blessing, I decided it was time to move back to the sod hut. Silas was hurt, but I was beginning to feel trapped by his good intentions. The next day Dillan came to get me, and I met him at the wagon. He held his hat in his hands, his shoulders stooped a little, a question in his eye. I hoped he was glad I was going home with him, at least for the time being. As we rode, a cool breeze swirled skiffs of snow on the ground, arched the dead grasses above it, waving like flags of truce surrendering to winter.
“It’s beautiful.” My throat clicked. “Every season.”
He looked at me suddenly. “You could have stayed with Silas, you know.”
“Would you have liked me to?” It was petty.
“Well it’s hard for him, living alone in that great big place.” He was watching for my reaction. “Must get lonely.”
“What are you suggesting I do?”
“I’m not suggesting anything.” He shook his head.
We’d arrived home and stopped in front of the house. Dillan helped me down, careful of my arm. Casey ran ahead as we trooped inside. I lay Shannon in her crib and turned to Dillan, grabbing his arm.
“What’s really going on here?” I asked.
“Jesus, Moira. I don’t know what to do. Carla.” He blushed. “I like her, you know. But Casey is very fond of you. I am too,” he quickly added. “It’s just so hard. So complicated.”
“It’s okay.” I couldn’t help but smile at his distress. “I’ve been wondering how I’ll fit into the arrangement if you and Carla get together. Obviously I won’t. Can you imagine two women around this place?” I shot Casey my best mock-horror look and tickled his neck. “But don’t worry. I’ve decided to go home. As soon as possible.” The shock in Dillan’s face made me laugh. “You go ahead and do whatever you need to do without your infernal guilty conscience haunting you.”
“To St. John’s? But your mother, Shannon.” His hands flew into the air.
“I don’t have a future here.” I bent to hug Casey, who tugged at my skirts. Tears sprang to my eyes. “You little rascal. I will miss you.”
“Miss Moira too,” he said seriously, and gave me a long look before running to see why Shannon was fussing. “She hungry,” he announced.
“Yes, I believe she is.”
Dillan brought her to me, his face clouded with questions I didn’t have the energy to answer. I sat down in the rocking chair to let her nurse, running my fingers over its carefully carved wood, imagining Dillan’s large hands gently moulding the lathes into perfect arches. He stood by the sink, helping Casey to wash his hands.
“I’ll have to leave my chair when I go,” I said as the realization hit me.
He glanced up sharply, sighed. “I suppose.”
“I want to take it. It’s so lovely. But, the train you know.” I felt pregnant again, my huge body wading through very deep water, pushing against the current. “It would be very expensive to have it shipped.”
“I suppose,” he repeated. He was quiet for a moment. “But Moira, what about all of this?” He spread his hands to encompass our small world. “What about Silas?”
I didn’t answer, instead climbed into the bed he’d put in front of the west window so that, when the weather was fine, I could push the canvas sack aside and watch the sunsets as I recovered.
i i i
In the days that followed, a lump would rise in my throat every time I looked at Casey or thought about the dying garden I’d cleaned up and readied for someone else to plant in the spring. I’d always begrudged Nelly and the pigs the time I spent feeding them. They’d only been a nuisance. Now I wished I could help with the chores, linger out in the corral and listen to the birds, smell the farm smells. And Dillan had spoken as though I might stay for Silas. I was fond of Silas; he’d been so kind. But did they all think his kindness was enough? Damn Dillan and his questions.
“Hello in the house,” Silas’s voice carried through crisp fall air, and I pushed myself up on my good arm, wincing at the pain.
“Hello.” It was a woman’s voice, small and tentative.
Dillan answered from somewhere outside. “Nice to meet you too. Moira is just inside. Here, let me help you across that.”
I could see over the window ledge to make out an improbable hat, a city hat, not one of the prairie bonnets farm women wore. Its wide brim shielded the face of its wearer, and as I watched, the woman picked her way across the yard in polished boots. She glanced up again and I gasped. Aileen. My heart began to thump, so loud I was sure they would hear it. I got up and took deep breaths to steady myself and stop the fluttering in my stomach.
“Moira,” Silas called as he entered. “I’ve brought someone.”
“Aileen.” My voice squeaked past the lump in my throat.
“Moira,” she cried, and rushed into my outstretched arms, careful to avoid my battered shoulder.
We hugged for a long time, laughing through a few happy tears, hugging again.
“But how...?”
“Dillan found the address in your things,” Silas interjected. “I thought it best your family knew you’d had an accident. Aileen has come to see how you are.”
“And are you all right then?” she asked, standing back a little as though to survey.
“Yes, yes, I’m doing fine. It’s just such a shock to see you so unexpectedly.” I gave Silas a raised eyebrow.
“I’ll go unhitch and water the horses,” he said.
“I’ll help.” Dillan had been standing aside, watching our reunion.
Aileen glanced between Silas and Dillan and then at me, confused. The two men donned their hats and left. I hugged he
r again.
“You’re so thin,” I said. Her frame was bony under layers of dress and petticoat and corset, while I could feel how strong I’d become since I’d last seen her.
She stiffened and looked at the floor. “Oh, you know me. I’ve always eaten like a bird.” She looked me up and down. “You look wonderful, so much colour in your cheeks. You must spend a lot of time outdoors.”
It might have been a slight. Only labourers acquire the sun’s colour. “Thank you. Yes I do spend a great deal of time outside. It’s so lovely here in the summer.”
Aileen glanced around the sod house, her small eyes adjusting to its dim light.
“It’s not much,” I heard myself say. “But we lived in a tent at first, as you know. I was so grateful when the neighbours came to build the house.”
She looked about skeptically, as though imagining neighbours who sported two heads and a very unclear vision as to what defined a house.
“This is much better than some places I’ve seen here on the prairie.” I wanted to bite off my tongue for making excuses. Casey saved me, running in to greet Aileen, throwing himself at her, wrapping his arms around her legs.
“Oh my.” She swayed under his assault. “He’s certainly a friendly little thing.” She reached down to pat his head.
It was a surprise to realize that, while I’d been raising Casey and learning to be a mother to both him and Shannon, my sister knew nothing about children. I scooped him up and nuzzled his neck, showing off the ease of our relationship, how he depended on me and trusted I could give him what he needed. I put him down and went to the crib, where Shannon grumbled to herself in tiny, fitful gurgles, her delicate chubby feet waving in the air in front of her. She tried to grab for them and missed, tried again.
“And this,” I picked her up and brought her into the light, “is Shannon.” I wished she’d been dressed in more than a plain white nightdress, wished Aileen could have met her dressed in the frilly pink dress and booties Mrs. Miller had given her. Her hair had filled in so its shiny blonde curls fell around her face like a halo, like the dolls we’d been given for Christmas with solemn warnings not to soil them.
“Oh,” Aileen gasped. She stayed where she was. “She’s beautiful.”
I brought the baby to her and placed her in my sister’s unpracticed arms, adjusting Aileen’s hands and Shannon’s head so Aileen could see her clearly.
“Oh Moira,” she gasped again, her eyes shining with tears. She looked from the baby to me and back again as though she didn’t quite believe I could have managed anything so perfect. “Moira,” she said again.
We looked at each other and at the baby for a long time, the silence filled with all that had happened in the time we’d spent apart. Dillan and Silas came in, stomping their boots.
“We’ll talk later,” I whispered to her.
“Come.” Casey ran to Silas, pulling Aileen along. “Come,” he insisted. Aileen glanced back and I laughed and waved her out the door. “Chickenths.”
The lisp accompanied Casey’s every word now. He pointed to the birds as they ran in a fluster away from them. As I watched, Aileen picked her way past tufts of weed, reaching down to brush dust from her boots. “Pigth.” Casey pointed to the mud they wallowed in. I watched him pull my sister around the corner of the house, his monologue keeping time with their progress.
Rushing behind the curtain of my room, I pulled on my one good dress, yellow with tiny red roses around the hem, grabbed a brush and viciously pulled it through my hair, counting the strokes as Aileen and I had done every day of our lives, wondering why it seemed important to do it now. Pulling the unruly mess back into a tight bun, I caught myself in my one tiny mirror, grimacing from the pain of lifting my arm to hold the pins. I tucked in loose tendrils and applied a little powder and lipstick. Turning, I stretched on my toes to see how the dress fell over slightly larger breasts, craned to see myself from behind, wondering if Aileen noticed my expanded hips.
“She’s only your sister,” Dillan said from the other side of the room.
I emerged from behind the curtain. “I haven’t done anything special.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know why you think you need to impress her.” He sat down on the one good upholstered chair we’d managed to buy. I cringed, hoping the back of his pants were free of the dirt and grease he usually brought in on them.
“I don’t. It’s only that...” The words wouldn’t come because I didn’t want them to be true. “She expected things of me, her little sister. I wasn’t supposed to end up in a sod shack on the bald prairie.”
Dillan’s eyes clouded.
“I mean, it’s fine. I know. But she won’t understand what we’ve done here. Not any of it – how hard we’ve worked, how nearly impossible it can be to make a garden grow, or the crops, just to keep things alive, including ourselves. She has no idea of the impossible things we’ve done.”
I turned to the window and took a deep breath. Aileen and Silas were making their way back to the house. I shouldn’t have said that. Not to Dillan. He didn’t need my sister’s judgment to point out our meagre existence. I turned back to apologize. He was grinning and shaking his head.
“For a smart woman, you can be an idiot.”
It was my turn to be hurt.
“You haven’t learned a fug from all this...” He waved his hand around the room, gestured outside, toward the crib where Shannon gurgled. “Surviving? You think you should worry about some dame with fancy shoes thinking it’s not enough?” He threw his hands in the air.
We laughed then, full belly laughs that felt good and true.
“Thank you, Dillan,” I said.
“You’re very welcome,” he said, and smiled.
Just then Aileen came back in and Dillan got up and went to do chores with Silas while we fixed supper. Aileen was awkward, searching for things that were right in front of her, unaccustomed to functioning in such a primitive domestic situation. The peas and potatoes were from my own garden. The salt pork I’d managed to preserve with Carla’s help. At supper Aileen barely touched anything on her plate, and when I glanced at it yet again, she blushed.
“It’s fine, Moira. Really it is.” The silence from the men was resounding. “I’m just tired from the trip is all.”
“Of course.” I shrugged to hide my disappointment and started to gather the plates. “Well, that must be the first time.” I pointed to Casey’s plate, hated that I was trying to make a point where none needed to be made. “Look, Dillan, he’s finished everything on his plate.”
Dillan nodded and, to my surprise, got up to help. “Silas has offered me a bed for the night.” He stood beside me at the big metal basin used for washing both clothes and dishes. He spoke quietly. “I’ll go so you two can be alone.”
“It’s really not necessary. Aileen and I will have plenty of time when I’m home.” Glancing at Silas, I could see him nod his head and smile faintly at something Aileen was saying. He was gazing out the window toward the setting sun, his posture aloof.
“I’ll come back early and do the chores,” Dillan mused.
“It’s up to you, but it’s not necessary.”
He put a few things together, picked up Casey and, before we knew it, Aileen and I were alone. Shannon muttered to herself in her crib while we cleaned up. The effort to make small talk was exhausting and disappointing. Aileen radiated a growing sense of gloom. I’d pictured a meeting with my sister filled with breathless talk, the two of us stumbling over one another, anxious to share. After so much time there should have been so much to tell. But looking around our hovel, I didn’t know where to start.
“Did you enjoy my letters then?” I asked finally. “Maybe they gave you a sense of the adventures I’ve had.”
“Mother never gave them to me.” She sounded apologetic, as though it was she wh
o’d made the choice.
“What?” I’d revealed myself in those letters, imagined Aileen at the other end of the pen, hearing my thoughts, sympathizing, listening. “She had no right to do that.”
Aileen looked away, clearly uncomfortable. I busied myself feeding Shannon, readying her for bed. With the baby finally tucked in her crib, I beckoned Aileen to sit across the table from me, determined to overcome whatever was holding us apart.
“So. Now you need to fill me in. What have you been doing with yourself?” It was the question I’d asked every time I came home from another trip with Father. The answer had always been the same.
“Well,” Aileen started, and I heard myself sigh. “Mother has been quite ill.”
My world had been turned on its head, but at home, for Aileen, nothing had changed. “Then you didn’t get to take those literature classes?”
“No.” She looked down, her face reddening. “But I’m singing in the church choir now.”
It was hardly imaginable. She had no voice, no talent for anything requiring public display. “Mother put you up to it?”
“Well, yes, they were short of voices. But I really do enjoy it.”
“Hmmm.”
She frowned. “I do.”
“I’m happy you’ve found something you like. At least it gets you out of the house.” I winked at her. “And maybe there are some nice boys who sing as well?”
Blushing, Aileen waved her hand as though this were silliness beyond compare. There was a short silence while I tried to corral all the scattered ideas and questions galloping through my head. Taking a deep breath, I finally blurted, “And what about Father then? Is he very busy?”
“Oh yes, very. Runs off every morning and isn’t back ’til dark.” Aileen’s voice crackled with sarcasm. “Saving the world you know.”
It was Mother’s voice. Anxiety collected in my throat. “No, Aileen, how is he? Really. I miss him so much. And not a word from him in all this time. From anyone.”