“I looks like the hag.” She slipped the compact inside her purse and shut her eyes, clasping her hands in her lap. “My,” she began, and as though too fatigued to speak, lapsed into silence, laying back her head.
“What? What’re you thinking?”
She blew out a deep breath. “Gawd knows what I’m thinking. Thinking about everything. What about Gran, how’s she holding up through all this? She looked so tiny in this place, thought she was going to vanish.”
“Just fine, I told you. She sent you some bread, worried you’re not eating enough. You want me to get tea?”
“No, not yet. I can’t drink tea this early. Bless her, she’s worrying herself to death, I knows she is.”
“She said you’re not to think about her. It’s good the boys are there, though.”
“Bless them, too,” she murmured. “Such good boys. We were blessed there.”
“Oh? Was I the curse?”The words kind of slipped out and I smiled to take away their abruptness.
Surprisingly, Mother smiled too. “Lord knows you tried to be,” she said, fighting back another yawn. “Like your father, stubborn as cowhide.”
“That right, now. Gran says I’m like you.”
“God help you. Like neither of us,” she said quietly. “Like neither of us. Your grandmother, that’s who you’re like; steady like your grandmother—guess I’ve got lots to be thankful for.” She held out a pale, slender hand, and I took it like a gawky youngster unexpectedly handed a delicate piece of china and not knowing where to put it.
“You always worry, Mom,” I said, my voice but a whisper.
Her hand slipped like a cool breeze from my grasp. “Always them nights I sits worrying, my girl. Nights I sit by the window and pray, like I’m holding up the world—my own world, at least,” she added dryly. “Gran always says she’s praying for them who can’t. I envy her that. All about myself I’ve been.”
I blinked at this bit of divulgence. “I’ve never thought that about you.”
“It was back before you could think. It was always your father—back in Cooney Arm—who kept things together. Even with the fishing all but gone, he held things. Never knew my comforts.” She rose, pacing the small room, wringing her hands, pausing before a small framed portrait of the darkly bearded Jesus. “Everything changed after we left the arm. Mostly me holding things together—even when he’s working straight through winters and summers and keeping the house warm, feels like it’s me holding it. Is there retribution in that?” she asked the framed portrait, her tone turning persuasive. “Make up for all them years I spent worrying about me?
“Well”—she turned back to me, more silent now than Christ before my mother’s bartering—“we’ll soon see how good I do.”
“But he got used to everything,” I said. “Working in the woods, and he kinda enjoys living on the wharf—like living in a boathouse, he often says. You can’t say he let himself go.”
“Ohh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything anymore. He’s not able to work in the woods again, that I knows. How’s he going to deal with that? And money—not like we can live on Gran’s spuds. We’ll have to give the truck back, unless he sells his boat—kill him to sell his boat.” She started pacing anew, wringing her hands.
Shaken by her words, I stepped impulsively before her. “I’ve got money saved. I’ll take over the truck payments.”
Her face took on a scandalized look. “My lord, no. We’re not that poor we’d take your money. Good god, your father would have a fit.”
“Why? No different than Chris helping.”
“All the difference in the world, you way out in Alberta, scrimping and paying your way through university.”
“Mom, I’ve graduated.”
“You’ll be going back to university, I knows that about you, Sylvie. And besides, your father wouldn’t stand for it—he’d jump overboard before taking your money. Now go sit with him.” She gathered her purse and sweater and some change sitting beneath the lamp on a coffee table. “All this way for just a few days—you couldn’t get more time?”
“I’ll stay if you want.”
“No. No, you go and work. That’s the most you can do, take care of yourself. You’ll come back for Christmas though, won’t you? For sure you’ll be home for Christmas, your father’s foolish over Christmas. My, such a long ways to travel for just a few days—”
“The boss wants my job for his niece,” I cut in. “He’ll boot me first chance, but I don’t care about that, I’ll stay longer if you want.”
“Thought there were jobs galore in Alberta.”
“There are. But this one makes big dollars—seriously,” I said to her dubious look, “it’s a bar in town, and the tips are huge. I make as much as a roughneck—which is why I can send money home—”
“Don’t start that again—and for the love of god, say nothing to your father—he’d die on the spot.” She gave me a quick hug. “And I’m well aware you graduated, didn’t have to remind me of that.” She pressed her cheek against mine, then kissed it. “Now, go sit with your father while I finds a washroom.”
As I watched her slight frame scurry away I lifted my hand to my cheek, feeling an absurd notion to cry. Emptied from thought, I wandered through corridors, finding, finally, the heavy glass doors of the intensive care unit. I pulled back the curtains surrounding Father’s bed and stood for a moment looking down upon his ashen face, the darkened hollows of his eyes.
“Looking lots better,” I said reassuringly, stroking his hand.
He nodded, his smile wan, and I leaned my face next to his, longing for that great, heaving chest and loud healthy snores.
“Your mother?” he whispered.
“She’s getting washed. She’ll be here in a minute.” I felt him relax, his breathing easier, more natural than yesterday. “Such a short time, already seeing a difference,” I said lowly, wondering if perhaps the doctor was wrong and he’d soon be his old, strong self. “Everybody’s well—Chris, Kyle, Gran. All wishing you home soon. And you’ll be fine too, soon enough—snaring rabbits and snowshoeing over the downs. You’ll like that, won’t you, back in the woods again—fist fighting with the hornets?” I smiled, touching a small, dotlike scar on the side of his neck with my fingertips.
He grimaced and I drew back, examining a few more faint, darkish dots on his throat. He’d stepped on a hornet’s nest once—the size of a football, he said later—that had been concealed amongst the deadwood, and had gotten swarmed by hundreds of them, buzzing around his head, searing his face, his neck, his hands as he tore through the brambles, beating and clawing at himself. He tripped, hit his head on a rock and near stunned himself, then went mad, he said, as one of the dirty little bastards burrowed inside his ear. He drove it in deeper with his finger, trying to hook it back out, and with a black cloud of angry, stinging wasps buzzing about his head he tore through the woods, screaming like a banshee. When finally he broke through the trees and came out onto the road his throat was raw, his face and neck a red, swollen mass, his fingers puffed out like sausages.
“Remember well that day,” I said, fingering his lobe.
He pulled another face.
“The molasses,” I said, pulling forth the memory of Mother forcing his head sideways on the table and holding it still whilst Gran poured thick blackstrap molasses into his ear. I remembered too, without saying now, the table shaking with his fear as he gripped it, feeling the molasses creep coldly into his ear. And then Mother turned his head to the other side, near fainting when the molasses started trickling back out of his ear, bringing with it the black, shiny hornet with its sticky, black legs.
“Ooh, jeezes, what a horrible thing that was—good then, there’ll be no more woods.” Immediately I cursed my tongue as his smile faded. “For a while anyway,” I quickly added. “Till you gets better again.”
He tugged at my hand, his breathing growing agitated. “The doctors,” he said as I stepped back, hearing Mother’s voice outside
the curtain. “Tell me, Dolly. The doctors. What’re they saying?”
I was spared a reply by Mother slipping in through the curtain, smelling fresh as soap, her hair pulled back with combs. “He’s worried about not getting back in the woods again,” I said.
“No more you’re not.” She looked him up and down. “Laying you out in boat like a babe in a cradle when I gets you home, and mooring you off the kitchen window. Let the water rock you for a bit—you likes that, don’t you, being rocked?”
“The doctors,” said Father, wrestling for her eyes.
“The doctors,” she snorted. “The doctors got no say in how you’re going to be treated. Did you have breakfast? How come they haven’t fixed your hair—Sylvie, find me a comb, he looks a bigger fright than me. And when you goes home, tell Chris to burn his paddles, and his saws, too. See if that don’t trim your tail,” she said, fussing with his sheets as she kept on scolding him about his worrying, his overworking, his driving her to the brink.
She would’ve been banished by the nurses had they heard her speaking so to one so sick. But I saw how he was unable to keep from grinning as she continued threatening him with a floating bed moored at the kitchen window. I saw, too, how he kept turning to her hands fussing with his blankets, his pillow, recognizing in them a strength, a decisiveness that tolerated no fussing in return, a decisiveness he was gratefully accepting of—most times—I thought, watching a faint shine grow in his eyes. But god help them both when the showdown came over his paddles.
SUZE, BEN’S MOTHER and Mom’s old friend from when they were girls drying fish on the flakes down Ragged Rock, came later that evening for a visit. She was a big woman, her springy dark curls and quick smile so like Ben’s it tripped my heart. A squall of wind, Mother called her, as she blew in through the quiet of the waiting room, her flushed cheeks like those of an overly excited youngster, her big grey eyes snapping as she dragged me and Mom to the cafeteria for a late supper. Afterwards she accompanied us back to the room, determined to spend the night with us. She stuffed herself into one of the armchairs and pushed down the back, sprawling her legs across the coffee table in front of her.
“I balls my coat into a pillow and won’t feel a thing,” she assured us, settling into the chair like a duck into its feathers.
Tilting back her armchair, Mother too settled in, directing me to the sofa. “I didn’t sleep there the past two nights,” she argued against my protests, “so why would I tonight? I couldn’t breathe if I had to lie down in a place like this—and the chair’s comfortable, and I’m up and down all night long anyway checking on your father. Besides, the size of this chair,” she said, nestling into the yawning mouth of the wingback. “Now, tell me, Suze, did you check on Gran on your way down?”
“Ye-es, spinning like the top, she is. My, the go she got. And there’s my own mother then, crooped up on the couch like an accordion; couldn’t sit herself up if the cushions caught fire. And Benji called—worried as anything about Sylvanus he is. That Benji—got me worried sick, he do—way out there in Alberta, working them rigs. I curses them rigs and his going off like that.”
“My, Suze, Ben left home for university, not the rigs,” said Mother.
“Still, he never comes home—would’ve tied him to the door if I knew he’d just go off like that—whatever he found so grand in St. John’s. Could hardly get home for Christmas after he left—still wonders how he hardly ever comes home.”
“Not much here for him, I suppose,” said Mother.
“Holidays, Addie—he can come home for holidays—got to beg him every time. And now that he’s way out there—do you see him much, Sylvie?”
“Ben’s good.” I was shaking out the flannel sheet Mother had tossed me, fitting it around myself as she and Suze were doing. After plumping up a small lumpy cushion, I laid back, stifling a yawn.
“And that Trapp fellow?”said Suze. “You see him? Brr, gives me the shivers he do—that’s who lured Benji off, I knows that to my bones. Curses the day Benji started bringing that fellow around. Weird bunch, they are, hey Addie. You don’t like them either, do you? No, maid, didn’t think so. Don’t know anybody who does—do you, Sylvie? You like that Trapp—whatever his name is—I only ever heard him called Trapp.”
“Don’t see him much.” I squirmed deeper into the sofa so’s to deter Suze’s attention. Through half-closed eyes I watched as she and Mother fussed with their sheets and cushions. I watched Mother dim the lamp, and the shadows softening their faces as they leaned towards each other, lowering their voices as one does during late-night conversations. The weight of the past sleepless nights settled around me like a thick blanket. With a growing contentment I listened to Mother’s voice, and Suze’s, discussing Father’s condition, his strongmindedness, his ability to turn around a river if he so desired, and how perhaps he’d be on his feet in no time, going against the odds like his brother Jake, who’d had two heart attacks by now and was supposed to be dead three years ago and was still lugging wood and traipsing through the woods with a gun.
“Yes, he’ll be fine, I’m starting to think it,” Mother was soon saying, her tone strengthening, gathering conviction with each hopeful word. And with Suze pushing her onward she was soon past worrying and was chiding him now, as though it were he sitting before her and not Suze, for his foolishness the past few years, working himself to death, not listening, not resting.
“And sure, putting his house on the wharf like that,” said Suze. “Lord, before his eyes opened in the mornings he was already out in boat—never took a break at all. First sight of a bird and he was motoring towards it with his gun. Oh my, I laughs now, thinking about that—him putting the house on the wharf, knowing how much you hates the water.”
“If he couldn’t sit on it during the day, he was bloody well going to sleep on it at night,” said Mother.
“And worries nothing about getting washed out to sea in a storm. And him telling me then, he was only thinking of you. Yes, yes he did, that’s what he told me—he was only thinking of you, that you’d never have to climb a ladder agin to wash a window, the sea would wash them for you—silly fool. He forgets how you always liked it outdoors—always in the garden you were. My, you were one for the outdoors, I can see you now, sneaking off up the woods, wanting to be alone on the cliffs. Never sees you outdoors anymore, not since you left Cooney Arm.”
“Used to love that meadow in Cooney Arm,” said Mother. “And the falls. Never did get used to living on a wharf.” She tossed her head as though the notion was still unthinkable. “Sylvanus—he always talked of building a new house up by the river. But,” she shrugged, “I don’t know. It’s like we went into hibernation after we moved to Hampden. Never did wake up to the place. Think I always blamed it for our having to move there—silly as that sounds.”
“Well, it must agree with you then, for you haven’t been sick a day since you left the arm. My lord, when I thinks of all that sickness you used to have.”
“Cursed,” said Mother with a tight laugh.
“Silly thing.”
“Who wouldn’t think it, losing three babies like that.” She lowered her voice, her tone taking on an anxious timbre. “I thinks back on those days—Ohh! All those nights I worried, waiting for little Sylvie to be taken. Always thought I was going to be punished again, that she’d be taken. Was always waiting for more punishment. Truly, I never felt like a mother till Chris was born and took to my breast.”
My lashes fluttered open during those last words. I’d been partly listening, as I always listened to my mother and Gran talking—gathering bits of their past like a jeweller gathering gems, hoarding them in my pocket so’s to refit and solder them later into that one great stone. And this piece stuck like a shard in my palm. Was there never a time when I’d been first in my mother’s thoughts? That even during those first days—first moments—of life, I was viewed as some kind of check mark, some pending sign, some outcropping from an ongoing struggle between her and God? Small
wonder her breasts wouldn’t milk—not out of fear for the poor suckling babe, but out of fear for herself.
“And then all that sickness leaving you after Chris was born,” said Suze. “Strange how that happened, hey? And you never had nothing with Kyle either. Yes, my maid, good—good it never come back, especially after all that happened, having to move and everything. And now with Sylvanus sick like this …” Suze’s voice trailed off.
“I was thinking earlier how it feels like me holding things together now,” said Mother. “Thank god for Chris. Least I got him to fall back on, keep things going about the house.” Her face brightened at the mentioning of Chris like the moon drawing light from the sun.
“Yes, thank god for Chris, he’s a man now,” said Suze, “and I hope he stays around for you, not like Ben—no help to his father at all, Ben’s not—his first pair of boots and he was racing out the door. Like I said, I would’ve tied him on if I knew he was hardly ever coming home again. All I does is worry.”
“Chris asked for two suitcases for Christmas last year,” said Mother with a quiet laugh, “for him and Kyle, teasing me they’d both be leaving soon as Kyle graduates. I told him he’d be buying his own suitcase then, and he’d better hide it from me, else it’ll be used to pack wood in, not his clothes.”
I made a disgruntled sound and Mother looked at me with sudden unease, both of us remembering my sixteenth birthday and her surprise gift of a suitcase—three of them, dark red, each fitting snugly into the other. “What, you can’t wait till I finishes high school?” I’d said jokingly but with a tinge of sharpness in my tone. For no matter that I’d grown into my teenage years and made peace—sort of—with living in Mother’s house; we’d never made peace with each other and had bickered and chaffed each other till the day I packed those three matching suitcases and eagerly left home for university in St. John’s three months before enrolment started. For months afterwards Father had been ill tempered towards Mother, believing I’d seen those suitcases as an invitation to leave home and not, as she claimed, as merely support for my university dreams.
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