“I think they’re darn good,” Lola said, bristling at the implied criticism. “I’ve learned lots in those classes.”
“Flower arranging, cake decorating.” Diane’s voice was filled with scorn.
“You tell us what we ought to have, then,” Phyllis said, too vehemently. “You’ve been on the committee. You know nobody will come to academic classes.”
Diane searches for the words that will explain to them what it is that makes her ache so, with a yearning that feels as though it will never be stopped. She wants to tell them something, she wants to use words they will recognize, identify what each of them knows secretly, but will never acknowledge out loud. But all she can think of is Rhea telling her: sometimes I would cry for days at a time. I looked after the children, I cooked the meals, weeded and hoed the garden, carried water to it, made cheese and canned beef, washed the clothes and hung them on the line to dry. And all the while—all that spring or all that fall—tears ran out of my eyes and down my cheeks, dripped off my chin into the dishwater or washwater, or onto the cabbage leaves I was hoeing, or the clean clothes I was ironing. I never willed them to start. I couldn’t make them stop. One morning I’d wake and they’d be seeping out of me, and they would seep for days.
Unexpectedly Ruth said, “I know what she means.” Her voice was too loud in the sunbright, crowded room. “You go on day after day, year after year. The kids grow up. You find yourself thinking, there must be something more. There must be.” She stared from woman to woman. “Do you know what I mean?” Nobody answered her.
Selena thought, ah well, she’d be the one to say that. Buck drinking too much all the time, mean with her when he’s drunk, they say.
“Well,” Phyllis said, her brightness a new note in air heavy with unspoken words. “I don’t know what the college can do about that.”
“Lord, when I first came here,” Margaret intervened, “when I was young as you,” she indicated Phyllis with her chin, “we’d have given anything just to get together once in a while.” She shook her head, reflecting. “It was so lonesome. You can’t imagine how lonesome it was. How do you think Rhea got the way she is?” She lifted her head at this, her eyes suddenly fierce, then laughed, a little embarrassed. “Just to get together every once in a while for a class still seems like a miracle to me.”
The conversation went on around them, but Selena had stopped listening. She would have to talk with Diane, see if she could find some way to help. Soon Lola was rising, packing the cracked vinyl diaper bag Selena remembered giving her at her baby shower when Lana was born. Phyllis was gathering her baby’s things and Joanne was rising clumsily from her chair.
“Heavens,” Selena said, looking at her watch. “I’ve still got to get Phoebe. She’ll be having a fit.”
“Where is she?” Diane asked, lifting Cathy onto her hip.
“Playing softball in Chinook. The bus is only coming as far as Mallard, so I said I’d drive in and pick her up. Here, I’ll carry Cathy out to the car.”
They went out together in the midst of the crowd of women, all calling good-byes, reminding one another of this and that, exclaiming about the heat and the dust and one more time about the grasshoppers. Selena settled Cathy into her car seat, kissed her, then stood back so that Tammy could climb in beside her little sister. Diane got in behind the wheel and turned the key.
“Diane?” Selena asked, leaning in the window.
“What?” Diane asked, turning her head toward Selena too quickly, frowning, then hurriedly turning back again, as if she were embarrassed by her own bad temper.
“Come over tomorrow morning. Kent’s going to Swift Current for baler parts. We can talk.”
Diane stared ahead out the windshield, a faint flush rising in her thin cheeks. Selena thought she would burst out in anger again, or not answer at all, or cry, but after a moment, Diane said simply, “Okay.” She shifted into gear and began to inch the car away. Hastily Selena withdrew her hand.
The yard was filling up with dust as one by one the vehicles drove away. A grasshopper landed on Selena’s shoulder, then leaped away before she could brush at it. The crops will be burning up, she thought, peering through the haze at the long, pale fields, and it’s only June. She got into her truck and drove through the dust out of the yard, turned right at the end of the approach, and headed toward Chinook, twenty-five miles to the north.
Phoebe was leaning by herself against the brick wall of the high school when Selena pulled up. The schoolyard was deserted, but it seemed for a moment that Phoebe, lost in thought, had not noticed her mother’s arrival. Selena leaned over, a little puzzled since Phoebe had never been given to periods of deep thought, and opened the door on the passenger side. Phoebe jumped then, smiled at Selena, then as quickly wiped the smile away.
“It took you long enough,” she said.
“I got held up,” Selena apologized, then annoyed, said, “You’re lucky I came at all. You could have taken the bus as far as Mallard.” Phoebe didn’t answer. As Selena turned the truck out of town, she set her schoolbooks down on the seat between them.
“How was the meeting?” she asked humbly, as if to make up for her rudeness.
“Oh, you know,” Selena said, although Phoebe had never been to one of the meetings, not since she was a preschooler. “Pretty boring, but we’re starting to plan for Louise’s twenty-fifth. They want you to play the piano. Okay?” Phoebe shrugged.
“Sure.” She sighed and sat back, looking out the passenger’s window. “Can we shorten my dress tonight?” Selena nodded without speaking. “Grad’s next week,” Phoebe pointed out in a sulky tone, as if Selena had refused.
“Tonight’s lots of time,” Selena said in a soothing voice, then remembering how Phoebe hated her to use that tone, she said quickly, “When do the boys pick up their suits?”
“They’re not wearing rented suits,” Phoebe said, her surprise changing to annoyance. “It isn’t a wedding.”
Has Brian got his yet?” Selena asked, willing herself to keep her voice friendly.
“He got it last weekend,” Phoebe said. “I told you. It’s a pale sort of blue-grey tweed. It looks really nice on him.”
“Oh, that should really look nice with your dress,” Selena said.
“I gave him and his mother a little piece of cloth from my dress so they could make sure they’d go together. There’s a deeper blue fleck in the tweed that’s exactly the same colour as my dress.”
“Queenie’s good about things like that.”
“It’s no big deal,” Phoebe said, offended now. “It didn’t hurt her, and anyway, Brian said he wanted to.”
This last couple of months talking with Phoebe was like going for a stroll in a minefield. Phoebe read mistrust, or accusation, or laughter at her expense, into every remark. Selena tried to remember if she had been like that at seventeen. But her own mother was dead by then, and she had been a mother herself, trying to raise her little sister.
“What about corsages?” she asked, just to keep Phoebe talking to her.
“Oh, Mom, I told you,” Phoebe wailed. “It’s either pink or yellow carnations. I decided to have yellow.” It was all Selena could do not to snap at Phoebe now. She reminded herself, it’s a hard time in her life, it’s scary—graduation from high school, the end of her childhood. Thinking about it, she felt overwhelmed by all the things Phoebe was facing, including what would happen to her relationship with her boyfriend once she left for university in the fall. They had turned onto the blacktop road now where there was not dust, and she rolled down her window to let in the fresh air.
“The windshield’s sure a mess,” Phoebe remarked. She forgot her little flareups as fast as they happened. Selena relaxed. She had been thinking for some time that she should have a talk with Phoebe about grad night. She had told Kent she would, had made him promise he would say nothing if she would talk to Phoebe.
“Phoebe,” she said, then stopped, frowning.
“What?” Phoebe asked,
not looking at her mother, as if she had, that quickly, sensed that the conversation would turn serious. Selena had slowed down without realizing it, and the air rushing through the cab turned softer. A meadowlark sitting on a fencepost called to them as they passed, and the notes had a melancholy tone that Selena had never noticed before. She turned her head to look at her daughter. Phoebe sat quietly, her hands clasped between her thighs, looking ahead, out the grasshopper-smeared window.”
“I was thinking,” Selena said, slowly.
“About what?” Phoebe asked, her tone wary.
“About grad night,” Selena said. “You’ll be out all night …”
“Sure,” Phoebe said, confident now that if there was to be an argument about this, she would win easily. “That’s the way it is. It was that way when you graduated, wasn’t it?” Selena didn’t say anything. “You mean, will there be drinking? Sure, some. You can’t stop that, not even with that Safe Grad stuff.” She turned her head away with what might have been stubbornness or even triumph, but the gesture seemed to Selena to hold a touch of fear. So it worries her, too, she thought. They were driving past dry fields covered with mats of short, dusty crops that were just beginning to turn green. “Lorna May’s pregnant,” Phoebe said suddenly.
For an instant Selena couldn’t respond. What is she telling me? she wondered, and then thought, Mary and Bill’s oldest, the pretty one with the dark red hair.
“Oh, no,” she said, a soft sound, filled involuntarily with dismay.
“She’ll probably have an abortion,” Phoebe said, as if it was nothing. “She’s only seventeen and she was planning to go into nursing in the fall.”
“Who’s the father?” Selena asked, a little timidly. Phoebe shrugged.
“Paul, I suppose. He’s been her boyfriend since grade ten.”
“How’s she taking it?” Phoebe shrugged again, refusing to look at her mother.
“She doesn’t act any different.” She paused. “Nobody’s supposed to know.” They both laughed a little at this.
“But you’d think in this day and age …” Selena began.
“What?” Belligerence again.
“Nothing. It’s just that—it doesn’t have to happen anymore, and still it does …” But never to you, Phoebe, oh God, never to you, Selena prayed. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Most of the girls sleep with their boyfriends,” Phoebe said. She tossed this out casually, in a dreamy voice, as if she were talking to herself. Selena turned her head quickly again to look at her daughter. Why had Phoebe said this of all things to her? And why now? She was overwhelmed with things she wanted to say, but uppermost was: Do you? but as quickly as she wondered this, she knew the answer. No, not yet. There was still something in her manner…. Selena could see the childishness in the plump curve of her cheeks, and in the way she still slept at night, deeply, innocently, like a five-year-old. Even though she had developed the full figure of a woman, even though she had bled now every month for almost five years, Phoebe was still a child.
“I could … get you the pill, if you want it,” she said. She was surprised at herself for saying this, she hadn’t planned to. Her face felt hot, and she wondered, what am I offering her? The thought frightened her.
“I don’t like talking about this,” Phoebe said into the silence, growing angrier as she spoke, and somehow this relieved Selena. “I hate talking about this. If I want the stupid pill, I can get it myself. And anyway …”
Any anyway what? Selena wondered. But she didn’t dare ask, she could feel Phoebe withdrawing, rapidly and inexplicably retreating from her. And Diane, too, she thought sadly, I can’t find Diane anymore either. Surely it will all pass, she thought, it’s just a bad time right now, and glanced at Phoebe again. But Phoebe sat motionless, staring into space. When I was seventeen, she reminded herself, I was sleeping with Kent. Yes, she answered herself, and look where it got you. But this surprised her, too, because where it had gotten her was a home of her own and a family of her own, and that, surely, was all she had ever wanted.
JUNE
It seemed to her that this was not her husband, not the man she had known as a child and a youth, the one who sat across from her at the table three times every day, every inch of whose body she knew as well as her own, but only heat and weight, thrusting her into that infinite blackness she had come to know so well, the place where she floated bodiless, which had no landmarks, only sometimes a pinpoint of light, or a flash, red or blue. It was a darkness, but with depth and resonance, and it was beautiful. It filled her with boundless joy to be going there, to be there. It was so alien a place, so beautiful, so complete, that she forgot it was her husband who took her there, Kent, a man who had no idea where she had gone. She supposed that to him she was warm, familiar flesh against his body, something he can touch and hold. She imagined though, that in this act he, too, forgot her, Selena, his wife, but only in his moment of climax, while she had long since left him, his caresses sending her to that black and vibrant other place from which she came back always reluctantly, always surprised to have found it again.
“Jesus Christ, Selena,” Kent said, into her hair. He repositioned one arm and leg and lifted himself to one side while she slid out from under him.
“What?” she murmured, thinking of rearranging her pillow, finding her nightgown, but still too spent to move. Above his shadowed profile the night sky, washed silver with moonlight, glowed and in the trees a pair of owls were questioning the moon. The Indians say owls are the souls of dead people. Beside her she could hear Kent swallow, draw his breath in deeply, sniff. He put one arm up and rested his forearm on his forehead, throwing his face into impenetrable shadow.
“The goddamn moon’s too bright,” he said. “You better pull the curtain.” She got up, naked, and standing in the white light of the moon, pulled the curtains so that the room fell into a homey darkness. She found her nightgown where she had dropped it on the floor by the bed, pulled it on, and got back in beside him.
When she was settled, she said, “What were you going to say?” He put his arm down and turned his head away from her, then back again. She could see none of this, knew it all by sound and memory in the darkness.
“I don’t know what the hell it is,” he said. She waited. “You scare me,” he said finally. For a second she was alarmed, her heart speeding up, fluttering against the thin cloth of her nightgown. “You never used to be this way,” he said.
“What way?” she asked, although she was smiling to herself now in the safety of the darkened room. Again he was silent for a moment.
“You get right away from me,” he said. This time when she laughed ever so gently, he turned his head toward her angrily. “It don’t seem right,” he said rapidly, fiercely. She felt herself retreating from his anger, searching for a way to respond that would give him nothing to use against her later.
“Oh, come on, Kent,” she replied, choosing to make light of what he had said. “Remember when we first started sleeping together? Even up until after Jason was born? Would you want it to be like that again?” She could feel him remembering, the silence filled with their shared memories: her tears, her shame and her fear; his hurt, his frustration, and finally, his tense, silent anger. He snorted.
“No way,” he said. They lay beside each other, not touching, closer now than they had been in sex, and then the said, half to himself, “I wonder if all the women get this way.”
Selena thought of Lola and Phyllis, young mothers as she had been once herself, of Enid, really still a child, of Diane, and Margaret who was old. And then of Phoebe.
“No,” Kent said. “They couldn’t all be like you are, or the boys wouldn’t do so much complaining.” He laughed, growing sleepy. But Selena thought of the time she had complained to the doctor that she was tired all the time, Jason was a year old then, and he had asked her if she had a regular sex life. You’d be surprised how many of the men around here are dead from the neck down, he said, and laughed
. Seeing her embarrassment, he added quickly, the older ones, I mean.
She closed her eyes, wondering again who they could be, still only able to half-believe what the doctor had said. Kent heaved himself onto his side, his back to her, and began to breathe deeply. When she was sure he was asleep, she crept out of bed, opened the curtains a crack so that a little moonlight shone in the room, then got back into bed.
I’m going to try to get back in time to check the cattle late this afternoon, at least before dark,” Kent said. “You drive out and see where they are. Save us a couple of hours riding looking for them.” Selena, who was making sandwiches for the kids’ lunch kits and had her back to him, didn’t answer. “Where’s Phoebe?” he asked Jason, who had just come into the kitchen and sat down at the table beside him.
“I dunno,” Jason said, reaching for a piece of toast. “Studying.”
“She’ll miss the bus,” Kent said. “I suppose I could drop her off on my way to Swift Current.” He sounded indifferent, but Selena turned to Jason.
“Did you wake up Mark?”
“He’s coming,” Jason said, his mouth full.
“He got any exams today?” Kent asked.
“History,” Selena replied. “I drilled him last night when you were out in the shop. He knows it. He should do okay.”
Kent pushed back his chair, went out into the hall and called up the stairs, “Mark, Phoebe, hurry up. Get down here. You’ll miss the bus!” In a moment Selena heard them thumping down the stairs, Mark, two steps at a time, and Phoebe’s light, even step behind him.
“My last exam today,” she announced in a voice so breathless and high-pitched that Selena turned to look at her. She was wearing her usual tight jeans, even Kent had given up arguing with her about them, but today she had put on a new white blouse which brought out the freshness of her complexion and made her blue eyes look even bluer. Her father’s expression changed slightly when he looked at her.
“Last one,” he repeated, and shook his head disbelievingly. “Till next year, anyway.” He glanced at Selena proudly, smiling.
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