“About everything,” he’d admitted.
“Maybe it’s their way of showing love?” She’d peered at him, kind blue eyes hopeful. He had just shrugged. “Well, don’t worry. You get this work done by Monday, and we’ll keep this between us.” And there hadn’t been another word about it. That’s how she was. Knew how to forgive. Forgive and forget.
Only you couldn’t forget a baby. And he was going to have to marry Naomi against his parents’ wishes. He’d done wrong, and now there was no clear right. The sheer weight of his situation seemed to pull his shoes into the tile floor, a force far greater than gravity holding him fast.
• • •
When he shuffled into the mudroom after chores, his mom sat at the kitchen table, bent over the genealogy charts she bought after the bees, her last project, had abandoned her. The hives stood rotting in the north pasture, a little ghost town beside some scraggly pines. She had forbidden tearing them down: “The bees might come back.” Her order was pointless anyway, he thought. No one tidied up on their farm.
She was singing as she worked. “‘Jesus bids us shine like a pure, clear light, like a lit-tle can-dle burning in the night—’” Because they had no computer, Beatrice’s only resources for the charts were an old family Bible and a couple of books she’d ordered through the mail—total rip-offs, in his opinion. But they kept her from her other pastime, which was tending the roadside grave of her beloved cat Tabitha. He felt both sadness and jealousy when she took canned catfood and catnip out to the monument. Would she do as much for him if he were dead? He washed his hands in the mudroom sink. She kept singing. “‘In this world of dark-ness, we-e mu-ust shine. You in your small cor-ner, and I in mine.’”
Her eyes hardened when he entered the kitchen. “Don’t say anything to set your dad off tonight.” Did she think he tried to irritate them on purpose? “I’m going to ask him about your great-grandpa.” She fingered the blank spot on the family tree.
“Okay. But you’ll be the one to make him mad.”
• • •
Beatrice got up to check the potatoes. Eustace should be more interested in her project. She was doing it for him. Taking pride in the family. They were as good as anyone. And so many years had passed since the war. They should be able to move on. Forget the past.
“Are you sure that’s not loaded?” He was cleaning the gun in the kitchen again, all knees and elbows as he bent his gangly frame over the task. “I told you to do that outside.”
“Of course it’s not loaded! You don’t think I learned my lesson?”
“Why can’t you go out on the porch?”
“It’s raining.”
She glanced out the window, surprised, then twisted back quickly. The .22 was pointed toward the floor, but she made a wide arc around him as she sidled back to the table. She pointed to the genealogy chart. “I put Tante Margot’s maiden name as VanderZee, but I’m pretty sure the records on her are false. If you ever investigate.” She tapped the word “adopted” that she had penned in after Margot’s name.
“Okay.” Eustace kept his eyes on the gun barrel, wiping it carefully.
“My grandparents never officially adopted her,” she continued doggedly. “Her own parents hadn’t registered her, so when they were shipped to Westerbork, they gave her to my grandparents.”
“What’s Westerbork again?”
“A concentration camp. Where they sent the Dutch Jews.”
“What happened to Auntie Margot’s real parents?”
“I don’t know. I guess they never came back.”
“So your grandparents raised her as their own kid?”
Beatrice was heartened by his interest. If only she knew more. “Yes.”
“Raised her as a Christian?”
“Of course.”
“Wouldn’t her real parents have wanted her raised as a Jew?”
Her pleasure changed to irritation. He was so difficult. Judgmental. “Well, I think her parents would have been glad she stayed alive. And maybe God had other plans for her. Saved her body and soul.” The phrase pleased her. “Body and soul.”
• • •
When Eustace’s father strode in, the smell of the pig barn on him despite his scrubbing in the mudroom, Beatrice heaped a large portion of roast on his plate. “I made hutspot to go with it,” she said. She served him a lump of the steaming mashed carrots, onions, and potatoes.
Willem made a grunting sound that could have been approval. He bowed his head and asked a blessing on the food. When he’d finished his first helping, Beatrice ventured, “I’m making progress on the family records, but there are a few blanks.”
Eustace kept his head down. Conversations during meals usually ended badly, and this one was going to explode. He scooped food into his mouth, planning his exit.
“Your grandfather on your father’s side. I don’t even know his name.” Her words came breathy and quick.
Willem shoved his plate toward her. “I’ll have some more meat.”
After a few minutes of silence, Beatrice said, “I made apple pie for dessert.” She sounded like a child showing off a drawing, Eustace thought. “Would you like ice cream with it, Willem?” She served all three of them generous helpings. They ate in silence until Beatrice tried again. “So, do you at least know his name?”
“Can’t we eat in peace?” Willem’s gnomelike face, the big nose, the deep grooves, turned to flint.
“Well you don’t have to yell at me. After the nice dinner I made you.”
Willem scowled, but he put his fork down and leaned back. He ran his hand over the bald top of his head, as if he were smoothing back an unruly mop of hair. “The collaborators were tried after the Liberation. I don’t know what happened to him after that. My grandmother moved to Canada. She told us he turned against his own people, and to never mention his name. Happy now?” Willem picked up his fork and put the last bite of pie in his mouth. Still chewing, he added, “My grandmother raised the five kids alone. Cleaned houses for people in Red Deer to earn money. Kept her own house clean too.” He looked around with displeasure.
“No one lifts a finger to help me,” said Beatrice. She glowered at Eustace, eyes turning nasty. “You have Eustace, but what help do I get?”
“He’s not much help,” said Willem.
“I have to go.” Eustace rose and disappeared out the side door.
• • •
He stalked to the edge of the yard and stared into the bush. He wondered what kind of man his great-grandfather had been. When Miss Zylstra made them read The Diary of Anne Frank in English class last year, she had said that not all the Dutch had been like Miep and Mr. Kraler. Many, many Dutch Jews had died in concentration camps, some of them because their Dutch neighbours sold their names to the authorities in exchange for food or electricity. Rodney VanEng raised his hand and told a story he’d heard from his grandfather. Some men in the Resistance sent a message to a Nazi collaborator to meet them late one night, then they strung a wire across the road he would take. When he sped toward them on his motorbike, the wire sliced his head off. “Do you think that’s true, Miss Zylstra?” Clara had asked. “I don’t like to think about it,” Miss Zylstra answered. “But yes. That’s how they dealt with traitors.”
Eustace hunched under a weeping birch as the rain pelted down. He thought about hatred. Murderous hatred. His own great-grandfather must have been despised by his neighbours and even his own family members. His wife abandoned him and moved to Canada. Maybe he had deserved hatred. Maybe he was the one responsible for sending his Auntie Margot’s parents to their death. Eustace wondered how people went on afterwards, after acting on their passions during the war—whether they were traitors or the murderers of traitors—how did they live with themselves, live with others?
The rain finally slowed to a drizzle, and he was cold. He could make his way to the Dodge Dart and shelter there for a while. Or dry out in the barn. But there was no place to go. Eventually he would have to go back in
side.
• • •
“That girl phoned for you,” Beatrice said. “Wants you to call her back.”
He took the phone to his room and dialled, and Naomi answered, crying. “I think I’m having a miscarriage.”
Hallelujah, thank you, God.
“How do you know?”
“I’m bleeding, you idiot.”
“Are you okay?”
“No. I think I’m supposed to go the hospital, but I don’t want to tell my parents.”
“Can’t you just say something’s gone wrong with your period?”
“No, you fucking moron. They’d still find out.”
“Do you want me to take you?” He heard the reluctance in his voice and braced himself.
She hung up.
• • •
He stayed awake all night watching the moon over the cedars outside his window. At dawn he heard the crows start their raucous cries. At eight-thirty, the earliest he thought it would be polite, he called. Naomi’s mother answered. “She went to her friend Audrey’s house overnight last night, Eustace. She should be at school, though.” He doubted that. He tried to remember Audrey’s last name to look up her number. She lived in town. Maybe she’d taken Naomi to the hospital. He hoped Naomi was okay.
For the next three days, he staked out her locker at school until the opening bell rang. Finally, on Friday, he saw her and scurried over. Before he could say a word, she held up a hand as if stopping traffic. “I’m fine.” She did look fine, if maybe a little puffy around the eyes. “But you and I are through. Audrey says I deserve better than you, and she’s right.” Her voice was thick. Emotional. She turned and burrowed in her locker.
“I’m sorry.” He took his hand and moved it toward her thin shoulder. His hand looked big and clumsy to him, and her shoulder, even covered in the wool of her sweater, seemed fragile as a blown-glass ornament.
“Go away. I mean it.” Her words were muffled, but they sounded final.
• • •
Beatrice scooped meatball soup into three bowls. She wished she could get that song out of her head. “In this world of dark-ness, we-e mu-ust shine.” She tried to remember a hymn from the morning’s church service to replace it with. “I didn’t like the sermon today,” she announced. Willem was dousing his soup with Maggi sauce and Eustace just stared into his bowl. Something was up with him again. Well, there was nothing she could do about it. “I didn’t like it at all,” she repeated. Still neither looked up. “I don’t know where Reverend Dykstra gets his notions. Sounded like he was saying we could work out our own salvation. ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling!’ Sometimes he sounds Catholic or something.”
Eustace looked up. “Do you even know any Catholics, Mom?”
He was lippy these past couple of weeks, Beatrice thought. His voice flat, like he didn’t care whether he goaded them. “No, but I know what they believe. Some of it’s not even Christian.”
“Like what?” Eustace buttered a piece of bread.
“Like that. People doing things to help get them saved. We don’t believe in that. It’s all from God. It’s all God’s work.” She glanced over at Willem, trying to signal her need for support.
“So we shouldn’t do good things?”
“That’s not what I . . . Forget it.” She added another ladle of soup to her bowl.
“You leave your mother alone,” said Willem. “She’s a good woman. She knows her catechism.”
• • •
Eustace lay on his bed wishing he had listened to the sermon. It had been about making amends, he knew that much.
His friend Tony was Catholic. Once, the two of them had looked at the Victoria’s Secret catalogue on the computer at Tony’s house. A long time ago now. They’d ogled the bra and underpants pages until Tony was red-faced and giggly like a girl. Flushed with excitement, or maybe guilt, Tony joked that he’d have to go to Confession that week. Do penance.
Eustace fiddled with his little MP3 player and inserted his ear buds. He would like to do penance. He’d do anything. Shovel manure. Clear rocks. Straighten fences, as best he could. Whatever would make things right.
He kept telling himself things were okay. It was sad that he’d lost Naomi, but good about the baby.
He hit Shuffle on his hip-hop playlist and pressed the ear buds farther into his ears.
He’d lost Naomi. He’d lost the baby. He’d lost the righteous path.
He would live with these losses, even if he left Poplar Grove someday. They had lodged in his belly, where they would keep gnawing at him. And then there were the shortages, the lacks that tore at him too. Love, forgiveness, atonement.
He turned up the volume on his player and lay still, not thinking, just listening. The rhythmic drumbeat was a hand on his shoulder telling him to endure. Live your life.
• • •
On Monday morning he dragged himself to science class, edging around Matthew and Rodney’s shoving match as he entered the room. Not far enough. Matthew gave Rodney a sharp push so that he careened into Eustace. “Sorry,” Eustace said. He collapsed into the desk he’d collided with.
Mr. Peet looked excited. “Listen to this,” he said once most students were settled. He took his glasses off and leaned toward the class. “Today’s Fabulous Fact. Scientists have a new theory about the source of the G-ring around Saturn! The second-last ring.” He held up an astronomy textbook with a small photo of the planet. From where Eustace sat, he could see Saturn but not the rings around it. “They think they’ve found a tiny moon in the ring—a moonlet.” Audrey laughed. Mr. Peet raised his voice. “As the moonlet circles Saturn, it collides with other matter, meteoroids and such. Slowly, the moonlet is disintegrating from the collisions, and the ring is its trail of dust. Isn’t that fascinating?”
Eustace, sketching a tiny moon on his binder, thought it was the saddest thing he’d ever heard.
How Lovely Are the Feet of Them
AFTER THE MEMBERS of her book club left the house, Eliza cleared the teacups and plumped her velvet cushions. In her head she composed an email to Samantha, her friend in Australia. Would she mention the mishap at school? Her neck muscles tightened as she recalled her third-period class. It was all Stan Ellis’s fault. Eliza disliked labelling people, but everyone could see Stan Ellis was a fanatic, a military fanatic, the worst kind.
This year he was more worked up than ever because he’d read about some teacher in Ontario who enlisted his students to dig First World War–style trenches on his property. Stan had spent the summer dressed up as an American Civil War soldier, participating in battles in some former confederate state. And now he was bringing this military fervour into his classroom. He probably looked good in a uniform, Eliza thought, with his trim body, the straight nose, and wide mouth. Still, anyone who loved war that much shouldn’t be teaching the teenagers of Poplar Grove.
When she spoke to Ronald Hill, the social studies department head, Ronald had been—to say the least—patronizing. Eliza blamed her height for this. She was a shorter, plus-sized woman. That was how she referred to herself.
In October she had complained to her book club. It was their annual film night, during which they watched a DVD instead of discussing a book. Il Postino. Eliza laughed and laughed as she watched the postman’s encounters with Pablo Neruda. “Hey, Eliza,” said Helena while the credits rolled, “maybe you can fight Stan’s war-mongering with poetry!”
When Eliza had voiced her concerns to the principal in November, she’d been gently ushered out of his office. “Thank you, Eliza. I’ll look into it.” She’d been so upset that she’d worn a Peace on Earth button instead of a poppy for Remembrance Day. In church that week, when the minister announced the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers,” she’d refused to sing.
“You could try a poetry unit,” Helena had said again at the December book club meeting.
“Anti-war poems or love poems?” Bea had wondered, and a short discussion ensued. Valerie, a new
comer to the group, had said in her soft and hesitant voice, “I think you should fight violence with love.”
“Love is the strongest force,” Helena agreed.
But Eliza had insisted, “Nothing will change Stan Ellis.”
Helena set her teacup down to put a hand on Eliza’s arm. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
• • •
Eliza believed teaching poetry to teenagers should resemble cheerleading more than literary criticism. She chose Elizabeth Barrett Browning as the first author in the unit and rehearsed the poems in her living room. She strove to know the words well enough that she could almost recite them, thus keeping her arms free for interpretive gestures. Her voice trilled and skipped, emphasizing the words the students would relate to the most. “How do I LOVE thee? Let me COUNT the ways!”
This morning, she had positioned herself in front of her desk, placing the poetry anthology on Matthew Post’s front-row desk. “Elizabeth,” Eliza began, “had a beautiful romance. She married Robert Browning, also a poet. Her most famous poems are her love sonnets.” Eliza sometimes felt teary when she spoke about romantic love, perhaps because it had not yet happened for her. She steeled herself. “Today’s poem is her famous sonnet, ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ Some of you may have heard it,” she said, beaming in Clara’s direction—Clara read a lot—“and if you haven’t, well, you’re in for a treat.”
She began reciting, aware of the interest on many of the students’ faces. Yes, she thought, love will always win out. Addressing the students in the back row, she threw her arms wide. Her blouse stretched tight as a drum across her breasts as she took a deep breath. “I LOVE thee to the height and breadth and depth / My SOUL can reach, when FEELING—” A series of muted pops interrupted her. The tension across her chest released with the speed and force of a pricked balloon. Something—a button—flew sideways and hit Antonio on the cheek. She heard a gasp. A giggle. Her eyes flickered downward. She stood exposed in her catalogue-order lilac corset. She yanked the blouse together. “I’m sorry!” she mumbled and fled the room.
Catch Me When I Fall Page 4