Text © 1987 Margaret Buffie
Cover photography © 2007 JupiterImages Corporation
20th anniversary edition © 2007
ISBN 978-1-894786-69-0 (ePub)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Kids Can Press Ltd. or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.com or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Kids Can Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative; the Ontario Arts Council; the Canada Council for the Arts; and the Government of Canada, through the CBF, for our publishing activity.
Published in Canada by
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Published in the U.S. by
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Edited by Charis Wahl
Cover design by Marie Bartholomew
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Buffie, Margaret
Who is Frances Rain? / written by Margaret Buffie. — 20th anniversary ed.
ISBN: 978-1-55453-229-2 (bound) ISBN: 978-1-55453-209-4 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS8553.U453W46 2007 jC813’.54 C2006-906306-0
To Jim and Christine —
For the past, the present and the future
Prologue
FUNNY, it’s only been a few months since I met the people on Rain Island. School’s started again, and sometimes those ordinary noises, like the rustle of books and papers, the shuffling of feet and the drone of voices, fade out and I drift back to Rain Island. Back to the little cabin under the pines.
Only when the bell rings to change classes do I collect my wits and slide back into the Real World. And just for a second or two, I wonder if I didn’t imagine everything that happened this summer. All I have to do, though, is look at the flat gold ring on my middle finger and I know I’m not dreaming. Not then. And not now.
To be fair, I’d better warn you. If you don’t believe in ghosts, and if you doubt that you could ever be convinced that they exist, it might be best to stop reading right about here. I wouldn’t blame you. Before this summer, I’d have put down a story like this, muttering about flaky people who believe in some never-never land.
On the other hand, if you’re a little more open-minded and want to stick with me for a while, I’m pretty sure I can give you something to think about. Ghost-wise, at least.
Chapter One
EVERY first of July since I can remember, my brother Evan, my sister Erica and I travel north by bus. We spend summer vacation with Gran at her cabin on Rain Lake, near Fish Narrows. It’s north of Lake Winnipeg, where there’s a huge wilderness of forest, muskeg and lakes with names like Chisel, Pakwa, Tramping and Weskuko.
Here and there around these lakes are small towns like Fish Narrows, towns that positively reek with the history of gold stakes, sourdough adventures and lonely traplines — and the ghosts that drift through those empty mines and forgotten trappers’ cabins.
This year, we didn’t go in the dusty old Northline bus with the rattling windows and squeaky seats. No, this year we had to go by car, and Mother’s new husband Toothy Tim was behind the wheel. Not exactly where I’d have put him, believe me.
Mother and Toothy were going to be with us for most of the summer. I had no idea what had made them decide to come. Mother hadn’t been to Rain Lake in years. All I was sure of was that my yearly escape to the scrawny bosom of my old Gran had suddenly had a rusty wrench thrown into it.
The first few hours on the road, I had my nose stuck in a local history book. Gran had given me a few the summer before, about the past of the north, and I’d really liked them. After I’d got home, I’d actually found myself going to the city library and taking out as many as I could find on the area. Maybe someday I’ll write a history book. My best grades have always been in history and English comp. I don’t talk about my other subjects.
Lots of people travelled up north in the early nineteen hundreds, and even later, in the hopes of getting rich prospecting for gold and silver. Some scraped out a living, trapping during the winter or working for a local mine company, and prospecting during the summer months.
Most of them finally quit the north, fed up and broke, Gran said. Those that stayed, whether rich or poor, stayed because the northland had soaked into their blood and bones when they weren’t looking. I think I’ll end up being one of those.
Sometimes thinking about the past makes you forget things in the present that aren’t so great. The present, I’d discovered lately, generally stunk. Reading the book made me forget newly married mothers and hairy stepfathers.
Toothy managed to hit his ten millionth pothole and I bounced back to the here and now, cramped in the middle seat of the station wagon. Beside me, in a sticky deep sleep, lay my little sister, Erica. She’d just demolished two packages of chocolate rosebuds. The air smelled of chocolate, egg sandwiches and that hot car smell that always makes me sick to my stomach. Another six hours to go and I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I sucked hard on a large Scotch mint and opened my window a little wider.
“Elizabeth! Shut that damn bloody window! It’s like sitting in the eye of a bloody hurricane back here. Smells like a rotting fisherman’s grave.”
I threw a malignant look over my shoulder. Evan, my older brother, was stretched out along the back seat, one arm propped up on a tower of fishing boxes. He returned my look with his best sneer.
Sometimes, when I take a step-back look at Evan, I see him as others must: thin, small, almost frail-looking, with thick sandy hair, a long narrow face and pointed nose.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing feminine about Evan. No, Evan is the ultimate sexist teenage male. Ms. Weaver, my English teacher last year, called a lot of boys that, and Evan definitely fits the bill. Front and back.
He was right about the smell, though. Our cocker, Bram, who at that moment was lying on my sneakered feet, was the source of the rotting grave. Somewhere on our trip, probably during our picnic near Grand Rapids, Bram had rolled in something pretty ripe. We’d washed most of it off, using Mother’s shampoo, but the stink of putrefied fish guts, mingled with expensive perfume, had suddenly wafted up and around the hot car. I gave one hard pull on the mint before opening my mouth to give Evan a piece of my mind. Mother beat me to it.
“Evan. How many times must I tell you to stop using that inexcusable language?” She was using her long-suffering voice. “One should be able to show annoyance, and to make a request of your sister, without resorting to foul language.”
“Yeah, Barf Breath,” I muttered over my shoulder. Louder I said, “I have to have the window down, Mother. I feel sick. Why can’t he take the dog for a while?”
“Because he’s your dog,” Evan said. “And I’m not spending one more moment with that mangy, flea-bitten, stinking, bad-tempered pound bait. See, Mother? Not an inexcusable word in the bunch.” He chuckled, pleased with himself.
“You two have been at each other since before we left
Winnipeg. We have just had a heavenly half hour of silence and I am trying to get some work done up here. I must have peace and quiet.”
That’s how my mother talks when she’s ticked off. A kind of bored monotone, mainly through her nose. You can almost see the black pencil marks under some words. Her favourite request is always for peace and quiet.
Heaven only knows why she bothered to have one kid, let alone three. I’d always suspected that the reason all our names started with an “E” was because deep down she wanted to blend us into one kid. Preferably Evan.
The sickening thing about Evan is that he does everything right. He’s an A student (he’s skipped a few grades along the way and is already in university) and he even had his own concerto performed at the school of music this year. A hard act to follow.
Evan didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. We used to get along pretty well. We’d had to, with parents who spent half their lives in a courtroom and the other half at their offices. Maybe he stopped liking me when I shot past him in height. The poor guy’s only five six to my five ten. It certainly wasn’t because of my raving beauty. Who could be jealous of a stick-legged crane with a mop of mousy brown hair? No, it wasn’t that. I think Evan stopped caring about anybody after Dad left for good.
Chapter Two
DAD had done his “now you see him, now you don’t” trick about two years ago. He’d told us that we weren’t to blame — that he needed time to be alone for a while. That struck me as funny coming from someone who was hardly home anyway.
Mother didn’t say much to us, except that everything was all right and not to worry. I thought she was pretty cool about the whole thing. Until the day he left.
I came home from school early because I had a sore throat. A pile of suitcases stood in the middle of the living room with Dad’s coat folded neatly over the top. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, talking to Mother in a low voice and using lots of hand gestures. Mother was sitting straight-backed on the matching chair.
She just looked over his head as if he’d already gone, her ankles tight together and her thin hands gripping the side of the chair. It reminded me of something he’d said once during an argument. He hadn’t been home for a couple of days again, and I’d heard him say, “Why can’t you loosen up a little and accept me for the way I am? Christ, Connie. You’re so bloody starchy it’s a wonder you don’t stand up to sleep.”
She’d looked at him and replied, “How do you know I don’t? You’re never around to check. How have you been sleeping lately, Carl?”
This time he was going for good. Neither of them noticed me standing in the hall. He loaded the luggage into the taxi waiting outside. The absolute silence in the house afterwards had been awful to hear.
Everything quietly fell apart after that, like a slow leak in a balloon. Mother had gone right on working throughout the days that followed, digging herself deep into court transcripts and hearing dates. I think I grew two inches and I know my grades went down the tubes. Evan stayed away from home more and more and his grades went up even farther. I guess little Erica got the worst of the deal — her first day in grade one without a mother or father to cheer her on, and a crotchety next-door neighbour as an after-school babysitter.
Now, it was Mother who came home late. After her supper, she’d close the door in the den and work. When Evan deigned to come home, all he ever did was practise his flute. I played Cinderella. It had been left to me to get dinner ready every night, to rescue Erica from the prune next door and to chase the dust bunnies up and down the hallways with the vacuum. I had been about to demand equal rights with Mozart McGill, when something happened to change things.
Exactly three months before school holidays, Mother had got married. We hadn’t even known she was going out with anyone. She seemed to spend all her time at the office or in her den — except for the one night a week when she took French lessons. That’s where she met Toothy Tim Worlsky. Some big romance. Not even a Saturday night drive-in that we knew of.
To be fair, she didn’t just up and marry the guy and bring him home like a box of doughnuts. But she came pretty close. She informed us one night by calling us into her study, lining us up in front of her like delinquent kids in a principal’s office and then dropping the bomb. We’d stood like the Three Stooges with a collectively frozen pie in the face.
“I will not accept opposition from any of you,” she’d said, looking intently at the desk top. “I will not ask you to love him. Or even like him, for that matter. I will, however, expect you to treat him like a guest in our home. If, after you know him better, you decide you like him, so much to the good. If you do not, keep it as quiet as possible. He will not pretend to be your father. You already have a father.” She hesitated. We waited. She took a deep breath and swallowed. “I will continue to be the authority in this house as far as you three are concerned. However, if he asks you to take out the garbage, or mow the lawn, or something equally domestic, you will do as you are directed. Any conflict of interest will be brought to me. Tim and I are getting married in two weeks. He has invited all of us to dinner tomorrow night so that he can meet you. We will all be there.”
Just like that. Take it or leave it. And every word underlined. Evan had stared at her as if she’d suddenly turned into an electric can opener, then, without a word, he’d turned and stalked out of the room. Erica snivelled. As usual. I stood holding her hand, staring at my mother, my brain set in neutral.
She and I’d never been particularly close. But I’d always admired her. From a distance, you might say. I used to imagine her changing my diapers, or feeding me strained carrots, or reading me Dr. Seuss, but it never really settled in full colour in my mind. Yet, she must have done all those things, at least till she’d gone back to work.
For a split second, I thought I saw something like an awful weariness and a plea for understanding, all mixed in with embarrassment, on that pale elegant face. I took a step towards her, but before I could say anything, a cold hard look slid over her eyes and she looked away. Taking Erica by the hand, I walked stiffly out of the room. She could stew in her own ice cubes.
So Mother and Tim Worlsky got married. The poor guy didn’t stand a chance with Evan and me. We made it more than obvious that we had no intention of making his stay pleasant. We could only hope it would be short.
What a letdown. Instead of reacting to our carefully aimed pokes and sneers, he simply moved in his records and books, hung his shirts and pants in Mother’s closet and started right in baking after-school cookies and tuna casseroles — that stupid look never once leaving his face.
Something about his size kept us from being outright vicious, but we worked hard at the little things, like ignoring his presence when he walked into a room, and grimacing at everything he cooked, as if it smelled of rotten eggs. Come to think of it, making his life miserable was the only thing Evan and I had agreed on in a long time.
The man was really a pain. By the time he moved in, we’d got used to eating dinner without an adult hanging around inspecting the vegetables we scraped into the garbage. Now we had him spooning horrible piles of green leafy stuff all over our plates.
Evan and I had also got used to eating in silence, threatening Erica with lima beans if she got too noisy. Now, we had this long-armed anthropoid picking his teeth and demanding to know how our day went. As if he really cared.
Evan usually circled him like a wary wolf anytime they met in the same room. For myself, I cannot tell you how much I hated the way he took over everything. When he started vacuuming up my dust balls without even asking me, I cleared out. I started hanging around my friend Doreen’s house after school. She was a good student, and because I had a bit more time to spend on homework, my grades went up a little. It had absolutely nothing whatever to do with him being around.
Now, having King Kong around trying to be camp counsellor was bad enough,
but to make matters worse, we found out he was a potter and would be working in the house every day. When he set up a studio in the basement — potting wheel, clay, plank table, kiln, the whole bit — I knew it was not going to be easy getting rid of him.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against artists. I like to draw and have a pile of grubby sketchbooks filled with stuff. Gran says that I could probably be an artist someday, if I stick to it. She wished she’d stuck to the sketching she did as a kid.
Sometimes, when Tim wasn’t home, I’d go downstairs and feel the blocks of clay, smell the earthy smell of the workroom, look at his drying pots, and I’d get more and more angry — partly because I wanted to make pots, too, and knew I’d never ask him, and partly because I could see how good he was. He sold his stuff all around town. A regular Picasso of Pots.
I couldn’t help wondering what Mother saw in him. And vice versa. She’s always liked antiques, see-through china, watercolour paintings — stuff like that. She looks like that, too. Kind of fragile and a bit stuffy. Tim is big with a full red beard, sugar-cube teeth and a deep grumbling voice. Like nails on a chalkboard.
And the man was a wimp. Once I caught him secretly wiping his eyes watching some corny old movie on television. He’d even sniffle over those “call-home-long-distance” ads on the tube. My mother never sniffled.
She liked sole in white wine sauce; he made stew and dumplings. She liked lemon soufflés; he was big on bread pudding. It must have been a crack on the head or some sort of perverted lust that threw them together. The mind boggled.
For a while after they were married, Mother came home earlier. They’d take Erica to a movie or go out for dinner. Mother looked almost happy. She even laughed out loud a few times.
But then Dad called one night. I don’t know what he wanted, but Tim and Mother had a shouting match in their room afterwards. I couldn’t believe my ears. My mother had never yelled, not even when Dad told her he was leaving.
Who Is Frances Rain? Page 1