Sylvanus Now

by Donna Morrissey

  The thing in her stomach rolled, frightening her as much as it sickened her, and she hunched closer to the circle of women, forcing herself to listen to their shared stories of troubles past—Melita, Elsie, the missus from farther along the arm, her mother, Florry, and two others from the fish plant. Even Gert had made the trip this evening, subduing her tones to that solemn quiet a group of women can take on when sharing reverence, even when all were talking at once. Some of them had just met, yet she saw the ease with which they leaned from one into another, the alphabet they played out with their hands, touching, patting, folding, impressing their collective sorrows and comforts upon each other till it was the one heart beating for them all, thus easing the burden of the one most bereaved. For someone looking on, watching as they poured themselves into Melita as she brought forth her story of miscarriage during her first year of marriage, it’d be a hard guess as to whose moment of sorrow the occasion was hosting. And despite their sympathetic glances at Adelaide, their pats and touches and caresses, it was how Adelaide felt, sitting there with this group of women—like someone looking on; the dead at their own wake; present, but too cold to feel their mourners’ touch.

  With little hope, then, she rose on the same unspoken cue they all rose to an hour or so later, and stood like an expectant child, searching into the softening of their eyes, their faces, as they turned their goodbyes onto her, waiting for this thing, the collective heartbeat, to enter her and share the lump of sickness in her stomach, the tightening in her chest. But peace isn’t for the taking, and so far had she dwelled outside the lives of these neighbours, their goodwill had less effect upon her heart than a tepid kiss upon a wintery cheek.

  “Why? Why can’t I feel anything of what they says?” she cried out once to Eva after Melita and the missus from down around the arm had just left, leaving behind nothing of the warmth they’d brought. “Feels like they’re talking to somebody else, even when they’re looking at me.”

  “Some things only the heart can hear,” said Eva, busying herself at the sink.

  She scoffed. “Even when the heart’s the part that’s hurting? My, Eva, you says the strangest things.” And like a youngster, she grew impatient with all them visiting and offering her things she couldn’t reach, and she turned a haughty ear upon their talk, wishing them gone so’s she could curl into her rocking chair instead and moodily watch the waters rioting in the neck. Point of fact, she always felt worse after they left, the tightening in her chest deepening, the cursed sickness rolling in her stomach. Impatiently then, almost angrily, she opened her door to Suze one afternoon about three weeks after the burial.

  It’d been almost two years since they had stood at the font, christening Suze’s baby, yet she was still waddling in her baby fat, Adelaide noted a mite disdainfully. She checked herself for her nastiness, but she was still mad about Suze showing up at her birthing and seeing that— that thing that had been such an intimate part of herself. She’d no right, no right to have been there, seeing that. And perhaps that’s why everybody was all the time coming, visiting, she muttered silently; Suze had them all worked up, yarning about it.

  She bent closer to the warmth of the stove as Suze, kicking off her snowshoes by the door, bustled inside, the kitchen shrinking around her oafish frame as she skimmed out of her hooded parka and mitts.

  “Brrrrr,” she blustered, an explosion of shivers emitting pockets of cold into the room as she stood, rubbing her hands for warmth. Snapping up the room with glistening grey eyes, she took a seat at the table, smoothing back bristly black hair that immediately sprang forward, encircling cheeks bursting with red as she quickly divulged her story of snagging a ride across the ice with Dicky Bennet and his horse, bringing over the mailbag. “You knows I’m frightened to death on ice,” she said loudly, “but ’twas the only chance I had to get over for a while, so I left Stewie with Mom, even though he’s not weaned yet, and I dare say he’s bawling his head off by now, for he’s been crouped up all week. And you can’t feed him enough! No sir, he eats everything you throws at him, and still bawls for the tit—and he almost two years old now. I told Dicky Bennet, poor Mother will be tearing her hair out by the time I gets back.” Suze paused as Adelaide sat before her. It was the first time she’d sat alone with Adelaide since the birth, and now that the moment had settled itself, she glanced around uncomfortably, almost shyly.

  Adelaide, irritated beyond will, stated perfunctorily, “You shouldn’t have left him, then.”

  “Oh, well,” and Suze gave an exaggerated shrug. “He shouldn’t be on the tit anyway, the mouthful of teeth he got. Can’t get the little bugger off—bawls like the devil, he does. Anyway,” and she took on a sympathetic air, “it’s not the baby I come here to talk about.”

  “How’s Benji?” cut in Adelaide, pushing back the pending moment of condolence.

  Suze went silent.

  “Is something wrong with him?” asked Adelaide.

  “Oh, same old stuff—his asthma; but I never come here to talk about that.”

  “As well to talk about your problems as mine,” said Adelaide shortly. “Tell you the truth, I’m done with people feeling sorry for me. Was he up agin last night? Oh, for gawd’s sake, what’s wrong?” she demanded as Suze’s eyes filled.

  Struggling to overcome her emotion, Suze inhaled deeply, half whispering, “They had to take him away yesterday morning. He’s—he’s fine, though.”

  “Took him away, where?”

  “The hospital in Springdale. He—he was half dead, he was—” and the overwrought girl burst into tears. “I found him in the snowbank,” she whispered convulsively. “He’d had an attack and gone to sleep. H-he always goes to sleep with asthma, makes him sleepy, it does. And then the snow drifted over him. I thought—I thought he was dead when I found him, God help me, I thought he was dead—” and now conscious of her words, she gulped back her sobs, wiping the tears off her face. “I should be grateful,” she whimpered, looking through tremulous eyes at Adelaide, “after everything you been through, but I keeps thinking about the way he looked when I first seen him—all white—and now he’s took away to the hospital, and me not with him.”

  “How come you didn’t go, then?” cried Adelaide. “For sure there’s enough around to care for Stewie—and like you said, he’s not a baby if he’s almost two.”

  Suze nodded, sniffling into a handkerchief she’d pulled out of a pocket. “I should’ve, I suppose. But Stewie’s sick, too. I couldn’t leave Mother with him sick like that—and like I said, bawling for the tit—and she’s not well, either, Mother’s not. My Lord, seems like everything always happens at once. But it’s not nothing that won’t set itself right.” She shook her head, noisily blowing her nose. “Anyway, what’s I doing, sitting here bawling over my own problems when it’s yours I come to sit with. I suppose,” she said, wiping at the tears that refused to ebb, “it’s sitting here, feeling what you’re going through that makes me softer, harder to hold back. My, Addie, I don’t know how you’re holding up. Gawd, I just never thought nothing like this would happen to you.”

  Adelaide shifted uncomfortably. “Why wouldn’t it happen to me?”

  “I don’t know. You’re always so proper, the way you does stuff. I just never expected you to have trouble, I suppose.”

  “Proper!” Adelaide gave a ghastly laugh. “Lord, I never done nothing proper in my life. What makes you say that?”

  Suze shrugged, wiping her face. “You always seems proper to me, the way you keeps to yourself, and never talking about nobody, and not showing things—how you feels.”

  “Well, I don’t know if that’s what you calls proper. Perhaps I don’t think of anybody long enough to talk about them. Proper is what you’re doing—coming over to visit somebody you think needs the company. I never done that in my life—go visit somebody needing company.” This last she spoke more lowly, as though to herself.

  Reaching across the table, Suze patted her hand. “What’s you doing now, then,
” she asked, “if you’re not listening to me go on and on, with everything you’re going through these days? Addie,” she leaned closer, her eyes doubtful of what she was about to say, her hand closing more firmly over Adelaide’s, “Addie, I knows it takes a long time to get over something like this, but you should’ve looked. It wouldn’t feel like such an awful thing if you’d seen—”

  “I’ll not talk about that,” cried Adelaide, snatching back her hand. “And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t no more, either—to nobody!”

  “I haven’t—I wouldn’t,” protested Suze, her face flaming, “but I got to tell you something—”

  She drew back as Adelaide stood up so fast she near knocked the chair over behind her. “Nothing! I’ll hear nothing about it, do you hear?” And looking hard at the stove, she marched toward it, asking in a highly agitated tone, “You want some tea?”

  Suze shook her head, her cheeks flaming.

  “You might as well, I already got the water heated.” In quick snappy movements she took down the tea things, noisily clinking the cups in their saucers as she lodged them on the table, hating the fresh bout of tears on Suze’s face, hating knowing that she had caused them. “I can cut some bread,” she offered, a mite contrite.

  “No—I—” Suze cleared her throat. “Dicky give strict orders, ten, fifteen minutes, no more,” she said quietly. “And it’s been that now, for sure. Last thing he wants is getting caught in the windstorm coming on. So I’d better go.”

  “You’ll hear him when he’s ready. Here, have some tea.” She poured the hot liquid into Suze’s cup and sat back down, floundering for want of something to say. Rather the old buoyant Suze and her steady stream of chatter keeping everything light and mindless than this silence now squelching them. “And Benji’s getting on fine now?” she asked.

  Suze nodded, gulping back a mouthful of hot tea.

  “Did somebody go with him?”

  “Maisie went.”

  “That’s good, then. Benji likes her, don’t he?”

  Suze nodded. “My, yes. Loves her, he does—bawls after her, so I knows he’s fine. Anyway, I think that’s Dicky Bennet I hears now. I’d better go. Addie.” She leaned forward. “I didn’t mean to say anything just now.”

  “That’s fine. I’m a bit testy, I suppose.”

  “Dare say you are. Perhaps you should bar your door and keep us all out. For sure we knows you likes keeping to yourself, you do.”

  Adelaide nodded, relieved at the old bounce creeping back in Suze’s tone. “Let me wrap you up some cake to take home,” she offered. “I’ll never eat all of what they brings me.”

  “No! No, I’m big enough now,” said Suze with a quick laugh as she rose to leave. “Oh, I almost forgot,” and she crossed the kitchen, fumbling amongst the folds of her parka, bringing forth a loosely wrapped paper package. “I got you something. Yes, take it,” she urged as Adelaide pulled back. “It’s because it suited you so well that I got it—won’t look no good on nobody else.” She let fall the paper wrapping and held out a shawl, a satiny shawl of the deepest blue interwoven with silvered threads that, within the shaft of sunlight striking through the window and shimmering over it, jolted Adelaide back to the figure of God at the church altar, whose blue-coloured robe she had once vainly likened to her own eyes.

  “What? Where’d you get that?” she gasped, astonished for a second into thinking that it was such a robe.

  “The old Jew peddler, Liney Bullis. He just come down from Hampden yesterday, right after they took Benji. Chance I seen the shawl through the door—I couldn’t go look at his stuff, I can’t do nothing that feels like fun, not with you over here going through all this. Anyway,” she added, her discomfort dissolved, her tone tendering, “Mother let him in, though. Can’t turn him away, he’d think you had something against him, you turned him away—soft-hearted as anything, Uncle Liney is. So, chance I glanced out and seen it—the shawl—and my gawd, Addie, it’s the same colour of your eyes. You knows you got that different colour blue in your eyes.”

  A chill crept into Adelaide. Slowly her fingers touched upon the cold blue of the shawl. She pulled away her hand, staring into the warmth-filled eyes of this woman who had abandoned her child not yet weaned and braved the wind and ice to see her; a woman whom she had repeatedly cast lower than Old Maid Ethel’s pigs, whose soul she had shunned because it couldn’t read a prayer book, whose comfort she had just now scorned, and who, despite all, was still standing before her, expectant grey eyes bubbling fat tears onto her cheeks as she stood, smiling, waiting for Adelaide to take her gift.

  Tiring, Suze tossed the gift onto Adelaide’s lap. Nay, it was not Suze tossing the garment onto her lap, but the God she, Adelaide, had built out of her vanity as a child, Who, she believed, existed only on the cleanly swept altar of her weekly visits, and Who looked only upon her carefully written scrolls, and blessing her shiny blue eyes, exactly the blue of his garment. Clearly, despite the child having grown, she was still shrouding Him with her inflated notions. And now He had torn her adornment from His shoulders and flung it onto her lap.

  “My, what’s wrong with you,” tutted Suze as Adelaide drew back from the shawl.

  “It’s—it’s for you, not me,” cried Adelaide. “You take it!”

  Suze tutted again. “Look some good on my dumpy shoulders now, that would. And like I said, it’ll look right nice with your eyes.”

  “No. No, yours are nicer. Please—I—it must’ve cost you a fortune.”

  “Money!” scoffed Suze. “What’s the use of that? It couldn’t keep Benji from getting sick or save you from what you went through. I should be shamed to bring it over, but Lord, you looks so white, Addie. If it brings a little bit of colour to your face, it’s worth it. And now I’d better get going, Dicky’s probably out there waiting for me—he said no longer than twenty minutes, and for sure it’s been that now. No, don’t get up,” she said with a no-nonsense shake of her head, thick hands clamping Adelaide’s shoulder as she was about to rise. “Stay off your feet as much as you can, that’s what you can do. I knows me way out.”

  “But,” and her voice dropped to a low whisper, “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Oh, pooh,” said Suze, climbing back into her snow-pants. “We don’t know half the time what we’re giving others. Might be a strange thing to say, but when I was missing Benji too much last evening, I thought about you and what you’re going through and it made me feel better. Might be the devil working through me, but there’s a comfort knowing others are suffering worse than you right now. Makes you think about them rather than yourself. I hears others say the same thing, so it must be the way of it if others are feeling it too. And I expects if anything happens to Benji tonight—pray sweet Jesus that it don’t—I expect you’d feel better because of my misery. It’s a hard thing to say—somebody else’s misery bringing comfort to another—but like I said, I’m not calling it, just naming it, is all because I hears others say the same thing. Strange how God works, isn’t it, maid?”

  A hard stirring was taking place inside Adelaide. “Suze,” and she followed her guest to the door. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Clenching the shawl, Adelaide crept to the window after Suze had let herself out. She stood watching her snowshoeing through snow so soft it sent clouds of flurries around her feet as she lunged forward, step after step, toward the frozen waters of the arm, Dicky Bennet, and his horse, black as tar against the white. A tear cut her eye, enflaming further the garment in her hands. Raising it before her, she bowed, trembling into its folds.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE ABYSS

  SHORTLY AFTER SUZE’S VISIT, Adelaide started working toward a commonality with her neighbours. Crossing the brook almost daily, she took tea with Melita and Elsie, baked cakes for the old midwife, who was seemingly always down with a flu, and helped scrub the school floors and desks every Saturday. On those Sundays the weather was good, she made the trip to Ragged Rock, rocking Benji
and chatting with Suze (always wearing the shawl, although after that one first time, Suze, as though sparing Adelaide the painful thank-yous, never noted it again), and visiting with her mother. She even attended a card game at the church, once whilst she was there, nodding to her father’s uproar with a bunch of other fishermen about the Russians showing up in St. John’s with a factory freezer built from the plans they “stole from under the Limeys’ stinking noses.”

  “And now here’s our own government spending thousands, waltzing them straight across the country, wining and dining them,” whined her father, fidgeting with his cards as her mother trumped his ace. “Ve’re not here to vish Canadian vaters,” he mimicked in a bad Russian accent, “ve’re just here to vatch.” And Adelaide grinned and nodded along with everybody else, and nodded all the harder as Gert’s husband, Ro, latched on to her father’s talk, and with his eyes snarling onto hers over the kitty, exclaimed all the louder, “You hear the likes of that? ‘Vee got lozs ov vish, b’yes; jez zopping by to visit, is all.’ You ever hear the likes of that—our government listening to the bleeding Russians and believing them? They’ll be back, you watch and see if them damn Russians won’t be back, hey, Leam, b’ye?”