Crow Lake

by Mary Lawson

  It was so untypical of Daniel that I knew right then, for certain, that he had seen the invitation. And with that knowledge came two revelations. Firstly, that my failure to invite him mattered very much to him—even more than I had feared it would. He thought it said something about my commitment to our relationship. It didn’t, but he thought it did, and it was what he thought that counted. Secondly, that we had arrived at one of those turning points in a relationship where if you take the wrong course you drift apart like boats in a fog. I hadn’t really believed it would come to this. I guess I had been hoping, in spite of what he’d said earlier, that we could carry on as we were.

  He turned into the potholed entrance to the parking lot behind my apartment block, parked in a space near the door, and switched off the engine. We sat for a minute in silence while I came to terms with the fact that now that the moment of choice had arrived, I had no choice at all. Sometime in the previous year, without my being aware of it, Daniel had become fundamental to my life.

  I said, “You know the conference in Montreal in April?”

  “The pollution one?”

  “I won’t be able to go. Something’s come up. It’s my nephew’s eighteenth birthday that weekend and there’s a big family bash I have to go to. I just found out about it yesterday.”

  “Oh,” Daniel said. “Right. Well, you can get transcripts of the papers, if there’s anything interesting.”

  Cold was seeping in through the seams of the car, thin insidious streams of freezing air. Daniel switched on the engine and boosted the heat. It roared for a moment and then he turned it down.

  I said, “They told me to bring someone if I want to. I thought of asking you but then I thought, it’ll be nothing but reminiscing all weekend. You’d probably be bored out of your mind.”

  Daniel was looking out of the window, which was rapidly steaming up. He said, “I’d be fascinated.”

  “Would you really?” Knowing full well that he really would.

  He turned and looked at me, both hands still on the steering wheel. He was trying to look casual, but relief was written all over his face. “Yes,” he said, “really. I’d love to come.”

  “Good.”

  I didn’t know what I was feeling—relief, despair, confusion, the whole shooting match. I’d have liked to be able to tell him the truth—to unburden myself by explaining why I hadn’t wanted him to come. But how do you explain what you don’t understand?

  chapter

  FOURTEEN

  In a year of bad times, I think that winter must have been one of the worst for Matt. Not the worst—that came later—but one of them. To me he often seemed much older than Luke; he saw problems more clearly and was more realistic about the chances of solving them. In many ways he was easygoing, but it wasn’t in his nature to set trouble to one side in the hope that it would go away. If a problem arose, Matt worked at it until it was solved. It was one of his strengths academically, but the problems we faced that winter were not within his power to solve. And always in the background there would have been guilt about the fact that Luke was giving up his chance while he, Matt, was carrying on with his studies. The fact that he would soon be escaping from our problems must have made all of them seem worse.

  Luke losing his job, for instance; I know that worried Matt a lot more than it did Luke. Not that Luke wasn’t concerned, but ever since the day he’d decided to stay at home and look after us, he seemed to have an unshakeable faith that everything would work out all right. No doubt the more religious in the community would have approved—remember the lilies of the field—but I think that calm certainty of his drove Matt mad, and was a major cause of the increasing friction between them.

  “It’ll be okay,” I heard Luke say, one night toward the end of November.

  It was late. I’d been asleep for several hours and had wakened, needing the toilet, so I’d padded down the hall in my bare feet and then stood listening to their voices, my toes curling up from the cold linoleum of the bathroom floor. Small hard grains of snow were hissing against the bathroom window; if you pressed your face against the glass it looked as if the night had a million holes in it.

  “Something will turn up,” Luke said.

  “Like what?” said Matt.

  “I dunno. But it’ll work out.”

  “How do you know?”

  Silence from Luke—probably a shrug.

  “Come on, Luke. How do you know? How do you know everything’s going to work out? What makes you so sure?”

  “It just will.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Matt said. “Jesus Christ!”

  I had never heard him use those words in that way before.

  Christmas was approaching—that family time, that worst of all times for the newly bereaved, that unrivalled time for magnifying tensions.

  “What are we going to do about presents for the Mitchells’ kids?” Matt said.

  We were in the kitchen. Matt was cleaning spark plugs in readiness for another vain attempt to start the car. It was a hard winter, one of the coldest on record, and the car had been an early casualty. In the unlikely event of a job with the right hours turning up in town, Luke would need a car to get there.

  Luke was scraping carrots for supper. Long ribbony shreds of carrot peel were piled on the counter. Some hung limply over the edge and Bo was playing with half a dozen that had made it to the floor.

  Luke looked blankly at Matt. “What?”

  “The Mitchells’ kids,” Matt said. “There are two of them. The Mitchells are sure to give Kate and Bo something—maybe us too—so we’ll have to give their kids some-thing.”

  Reverend Mitchell and his wife had invited us to spend Christmas Day with them. None of us wanted to go but there was no way out of it. The Tadworths had invited us for Boxing Day and we didn’t want to go there either. I can imagine the church mothers anxiously working out who should have us, unable to bear the idea of our being on our own and unable to see that we would have preferred it.

  Luke put the carrot down and turned around to look at Matt properly. “Will they expect presents?”

  “No, they won’t expect presents. But we still have to give them something.”

  Luke turned slowly back to the carrots. He’d managed to knock off quite a few more peelings which Bo was draping elegantly over her head.

  “How old are their kids?” he said finally. “And what sex?”

  “How can you not know that?” Matt said. “You’ve known them all your life.”

  “I don’t notice everybody’s kids.”

  “They’re girls. They’re about … ten.” He looked at me. “Do you know how old they are, Kate?”

  “There are three of them,” I said anxiously.

  “There are?”

  “How could you not know that?” Luke said. “You’ve known them all your life.”

  “Are there three, Kate? I only thought there were two.”

  “The baby’s pretty small.”

  “Oh, well, a baby,” Matt said.

  “Oh, right,” Luke said. “A baby doesn’t count.”

  “Martha’s ten and Janie’s seven,” I said quickly.

  Another pile of carrot peelings dribbled to the floor. Bo made a gobbling noise and scooped them up lavishly.

  Matt said, “For God’s sake don’t work so close to the edge! They’re all going on the floor!”

  “I’ll pick them up later,” Luke said.

  “If you didn’t peel them so close to the edge, you wouldn’t need to pick them up later.”

  Luke looked at him over his shoulder. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes it matters! It matters because you won’t pick them up later, you’ll forget, and walk all over them, and traipse them through the house where they’ll join the rest of the crud! That’s why this house is such a pigsty!”

  Luke put down the carrot and the scraper and turned around. After a minute he said, “If it bothers you so much, you could try cleaning it up yourself for a cha
nge.”

  “That’s rich,” Matt said quietly. He was leaning forward, his arms on his knees. “That is really rich. I spend my whole damned life cleaning up after you. My whole damned life. And if you think—” He stopped. He looked at Bo and me, and then he got up and left the room.

  Sunday December 27th

  Dear Aunt Annie,

  Thank you very much for the sweater. I really like it. Bo likes hers to and Matt and Luke like theres. There going to write to you themselves. Bo knew hers was a lamb and she liked it and I like the duck on mine. Thank you for the books, there really nice and the socks are nice to. And the hats. On Christmas we went to Rev. Mitchell and I sat beside Janie and there was a big turky but I couldn’t eat very much. Yesterday we went to the Tadworths and they had turky to. Mrs. Mitchell gave me a brush and come set and a book and she gave Bo a doll and Janie gave me a pen. Mrs. Tadworth gave me a doll. Matt gave me a book about insects and Luke gave me a book about frogs. Mrs. Stanovich gave me and Bo dresses that match, and they fit. Mrs. Tadworth gave us a whole ham with clovs on it its really good and Mrs. Stanovich gave us a Christmas Cake and so did Mrs. Pye and Dr. Christopherson and Mrs. Christopherson came out to see us and brot us some little wee oranges that are really nice… .

  It went on in that vein for about half a page. They were good people. You won’t find better.

  By the end of January the snow was piled up against the house in smooth curving drifts. In the night the house groaned with cold. There had been several storms before the lake froze over, and the waves, with arctic winds driving them on, had broken up the sheets of ice that had formed along the shore and tossed them up on their edges. For a week they stood like glistening shards of glass, jagged as shark’s teeth. Then the wind picked up again, and the temperature dropped, and waves smashed against the shards and threw up spray which froze before it hit the ground. It fell with a rattle and piled up in pebbled heaps among the shards, finally covering them completely in hills of polished glass. And then the lake froze over, and at night the only sound was the moaning of the wind.

  Matt and Luke dug a trench through the snow from the front door to the driveway and then all the way up the driveway to the road, and took it in turns to shovel it out each morning. There was no need to shovel out the whole driveway because the car still wouldn’t start. In places the walls of the trench were so high I couldn’t see over them. Bo thought it was wonderful, but she didn’t see much of it because Luke was afraid to let her out for long in case she froze.

  I’d set off for school in the morning so bundled up I could hardly move; panties and an undershirt followed by long johns, followed by trousers under my skirt and a flannel blouse under my sweater, followed by leggings and a parka and a scarf pulled up over my nose and a hat pulled down to my eyes and two pairs of mittens and three pairs of socks and winter boots which had belonged to Matt after they’d belonged to Luke. I was worried that if I fell over I wouldn’t be able to get up again. I’d just lie where I’d fallen until I froze straight through to my bones.

  Sometimes in the morning when I got to the road I found Matt still waiting there for the school bus, stamping about and clapping his mittened hands together to keep warm. The bus might have broken down or got stuck in a drift or be grinding its way along a back road behind a snowplough—there was no way of knowing which. On those days Matt normally waited until I appeared and then walked along the road with me, hoping to meet the bus on the way.

  “Is that you?” he’d say when I came up, bending down to peer at the gap between my scarf and my hat.

  “Yes.” Muffled by the scarf.

  “It could be anybody.”

  “It’s me.”

  Already the scarf was wet on the inside from my breath. It smelled of wet wool and frost and air that would sear your lungs if you gave it half a chance.

  “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it. Would you like some company?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go then. Are you keeping your fingers moving?”

  I’d wiggle my mittened fingers at him and he’d nod in approval and we’d set off, the snow creaking under our feet.

  He still joked with me, still teased, but I could hear the effort in his voice. No part-time job had miraculously appeared in the village and it was too cold to attempt any of the tasks at the Pyes’ farm, so neither he nor Luke had worked for two months.

  Sunday February IIth

  Dear Aunt Annie,

  How are you? I hope you are well. Bo is sick she has meezles. Dr. Christopherson says she will be fine but she’s really spotty and really really crabby. Peeple at school have meezles too but I’ve already had it. We did about Henry Hudson and the Northwest Passage. His men were really mean. We did about frakshons to. If you have two 1/2 apples you have one hole apple and if you have four 1/2 apples you have two apples and if you have three you have one and ?. Rosie Pye started crying at school.

  Love, Kate

  We weren’t the only ones having a hard winter. Old Miss Vernon nearly died that February from a cold which developed into pneumonia. Mrs. Stanovich’s eldest son’s house burned down and he and his wife had to move back in with his parents. Jim Sumack got frostbite while he was out ice fishing and only just escaped having to have his toes amputated. Dr. Christopherson got stuck in snowdrifts on five separate occasions, on the last of which one of his patients had to deliver her own twins because her husband slipped on the ice outside the front door when he was running to fetch a neighbour for help, and broke his leg.

  And then there were the Pyes. Something was worrying Matt about the Pyes. I don’t know for sure that it was the same thing that caused Rosie’s distress at school, but the odds are that it was.

  “Somebody should do something,” Matt said.

  It was evening. I was supposed to be getting ready for bed but I couldn’t find my pyjamas, and I’d come to ask Luke where they were. I paused behind the door to the dining room to listen to them, to reassure myself that they weren’t arguing.

  “Like what?” Luke said.

  “Tell someone. Tell Reverend Mitchell or someone.”

  “Tell him what, though? Like what do we actually know?”

  “We know it’s getting worse.”

  “Do we?”

  “I saw Marie yesterday. On the way home from school. I saw her walking so I got off the bus.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she say something?”

  “Not exactly. Something’s wrong, though.”

  A pause. Luke said, “It’s partly his own fault.”

  “Laurie’s?”

  “Yeah. He answers back.”

  “Well wouldn’t you?”

  “Not if I got hit for it. He should get smart and shut up.”

  Another pause. Matt said flatly, “You think he hits him, then.”

  A hesitation. “Maybe.”

  “I think so too. Not little taps either—he walks funny sometimes. That’s why I think we should do something.”

  “Like what?” Luke said.

  “We could tell Reverend Mitchell.”

  “What good would that do? What could he do?”

  “He might talk to Old Man Pye or something,” Matt said. “I don’t know, but he might be able to think of something.”

  “That might make it worse.”

  “If he knew people knew about it, he might stop.”

  “But what if he thought Mrs. Pye or Marie had said something?” Luke said. “He might start on them.”

  “Are you saying we shouldn’t do anything? Just sit here? Knowing about it but not doing anything?”

  “We don’t actually know anything.”

  A series of thumps on the table—Matt angrily closing one textbook and taking out another. “That’s your philosophy of life, Luke. When in doubt, do nothing.”

  They should have told Reverend Mitchell. But that’s hindsight speaking. In their defence I can only say that they were preoccupied w
ith their own problems, which must have felt pretty serious at the time; Bo’s measles and my tremulous state and no work for three months, and the tension between them growing, like thunder you can feel before you can hear it, growing and swelling and gathering itself up day by day.

  chapter

  FIFTEEN

  March. The snow still in deep drifts, still white and smooth. To look at, the same as February. When you walked on it, though, you could feel the difference. There was a thin crust which broke under your weight and beneath it the snow sagged. Fresh falls lay like dust for a day or two and then developed a crust of their own. Underneath, the old snow lay heavily, like the flesh of a fat old woman.

  I think it was sometime around March that Luke started trying to potty-train Bo. It was quite a dramatic episode in our lives, Bo being Bo, and the memory of it is still with me. I remember sitting at the kitchen table doing homework with Matt, and Bo stomping in, wearing about six layers on her top half but naked from the waist down, carrying her potty—empty—in both hands. She was looking grim. Luke was just behind her and he was looking grim too. He was saying something about did she want to wear diapers for the rest of her life, and how could she stand it, being soaking wet and stinking like a cesspit all the time, and Bo was ignoring him. She took the potty over to the garbage pail in the corner of the kitchen and crammed it in and then stomped out again.

  I remember Luke sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up, putting his arms on the knees and his head on his arms, and saying, “I am so tired of her shit.” And I remember Bo, who had stopped in the doorway, turning and looking back at him. She looked uncertain for a minute, and then she came back and patted his head and said, “Don’t cry, Luke.” She didn’t retrieve her potty though. She sympathized with him, but not that much.

  And I remember Matt saying, “Luke? That’s her first complete sentence. ‘Don’t cry Luke.’” And they both laughed.

  Maybe I’ve got the timing wrong though. Maybe it wasn’t March, because I don’t think they were doing much laughing at that time. I think we’d reached the stage by then where, like all roads leading to Rome, every conversation, every incident, ended in an argument—and usually the same argument.