Marilla of Green Gables

by Sarah McCoy

  Evaluating herself in the vanity mirror, she thought she could pass as a mature sixteen and not her rightful thirteen. This gave her great satisfaction as she came back down to the kitchen. But her mother and Izzy, busy debating the next step in their recipe, hardly noticed her.

  “We’ve got to dissolve the sugar in boiling water, then add the currants,” said Izzy.

  “I seem to recall Mother mashing the berries,” said Clara.

  “Yes, but those were fresh. We’re using dried. Mother didn’t use dried, but Mamó Flora did.”

  “Ah yes, that’s right. I’m awful forgetful these days. I’ll walk upstairs to fetch something, but by the time I arrive, I’ve completely forgotten what it was!” Clara laughed and leaned her forehead to her sister’s.

  It seemed Clara was even forgetting her only daughter. Marilla cleared her throat to remind her, but it was Izzy whose attention was won.

  “Oh good, Marilla. We need you. Take your breakfast and then we’ll begin. You’ve got to learn the secret family recipe.”

  Clara brought the bowl of porridge to the table. Warm maple syrup pearled atop the oats. Marilla had to admit, if only to herself, it was delicious.

  “What secret family recipe?” she asked between spoonfuls.

  Clara cooked like she sewed—just well enough to get the job done. She’d taught Marilla every recipe she knew because invariably the fare would turn out twice as good when Marilla was at the stove. Marilla took naturally to the kitchen and couldn’t explain why she excelled while her mother floundered. “She has a gift,” Clara had told Hugh. Like the sun’s ability to put color on an apple and pull it from the linen. Some things just were.

  “The Johnsons’ Red Currant Wine, of course.” Izzy winked. “Passed down through the women of the family and a revered tradition at every new baby’s baptism. It needs to keep in the pantry for three months or longer to be tasty.”

  “We have to make it now to be ready for the baby.” Clara patted her belly.

  While Hugh had a bit of whiskey every night, her mother only partook of wine at Christmas and on special Communion days after the minister had offered up the first cup. So Marilla had assumed wine was a sacramental drink. Too costly and ecclesiastical to be made in an everyday kitchen. It could only have been prepared by Reverend Patterson and his acolytes in the Presbyterian church cellar, then locked up tight in hallowed casks to receive the heavenly blessing. She figured the bottles in their pantry had been tapped from the church barrels.

  Once again, in the wake of Izzy’s arrival, what she’d thought were the facts of her world were being proven false.

  “How old were we the first time we made red currant wine, Iz?” asked Clara.

  “I reckon a little younger than Marilla.” Izzy looked up at the ceiling while she did the math. “Eighteen hundred and seven or eight? I can’t recall. It was the year little Jonah Tremblay was born . . .”

  “The year of the junebug swarm.”

  “So what’d that make us?”

  “Twelve—no, no, eleven.”

  “That’s right, because we were two full numbers old—zero being zero, and not really a counting number—and Mother said that was grown enough given that we’d stay two counting numbers until we reached 111, which was a far ways off. It was for the Tremblays’ christening gift. God bless ’em. That was possibly the worst batch of wine in all of creation! I remember taking a sip and spitting it right into the yard. I didn’t have another until long after seventeen.”

  “I lost a thumbnail in that first mash,” Clara confessed.

  “Clara!” Izzy gasped.

  In a giddy rush, Clara continued. “It accidentally pulled off in the masher. I never told anybody! I felt too terrible to say I ruined the lot after all the work we did. So I prayed every day during the fermenting that the good Lord would make it disappear somehow. And like a miracle, when Mother strained the wine into the cask, not a speck of nail was to be found.”

  All three erupted in laughter. Not even Marilla could hold hers back.

  “I don’t know how I remembered that when I can’t recall where I put my sewing circular yesterday.” Clara wiped the happy tear from the corner of her eye.

  “If Hugh came in now, he might think us drunk on the fumes,” said Izzy.

  It was the word that slugged Marilla sober. Drunk. She’d only known it once before . . . when Matthew had come home late one evening. He’d gone to a barn dance with a group of school friends, and there’d been more than lemonade in their punch cups. The gables were only halfway built at the time. The Cuthberts shared the parlor room for sleeping, so Matthew couldn’t hide his stumbling. He’d tried to light a kitchen lamp to see his way, but the oil had turned over and caught flame.

  “Get him away—the boy’s drunk,” Hugh had hollered while beating out the flames.

  It was one of the first times in Marilla’s life that she’d felt danger, and it troubled her that it’d come at the hand of one of the people she trusted most. So she told herself that it hadn’t been her Matthew that night; it had been “the drunk.” In the end, a braided rug had to be thrown out, the floorboards were scorched in the spot, and a burn to Matthew’s leg would leave the skin rippled like pond water. A scar he showed no one. The memory made her temple twitch, and she pushed a finger to the spasm until it abated.

  “Does your head pain you?” Izzy had been watching and now stood close, frowning with concern.

  “A little.” Marilla wouldn’t lie.

  Izzy sprinkled salt in Marilla’s porridge. “You need more minerals in your diet. You’re too thin. Eat and you’ll feel better.”

  Marilla finished her bowl and true to Izzy’s word, her headache vanished. Just in time too. The sugar water was ready for the currants. The bag was too heavy for them to lift without spilling the currant-ettes onto the floor, so they each took a teacup and scooped the berries into the pot, counting off in turn.

  “One,” said Clara.

  “Two,” said Izzy.

  “Three,” said Marilla.

  She liked being part of the cadence, like casting a spell.

  “Four.”

  “Five.”

  “Six.”

  “I think we need one more for luck,” said Izzy. “Would you do the honor, Marilla?”

  Marilla scooped, leveled the cup precisely, then plunked the berries into the water. “Seven.”

  Clara stirred the pot, making a pinwheel of red. “I have a feeling this is going to be the best in years.”

  “The best ever, I’m willing to bet.” Izzy turned to Marilla. “Put the lid on and let it steep for an hour before we strain and bottle. That’s when the magic happens.”

  “Magic?”

  “Yes, water into wine! Technically, fermentation. Without it, we’d have a pleasant currant cordial, which is well and good for everyday occasions, but a baby is not an everyday occasion. Would you agree?”

  “I would.” It was the first time Marilla had agreed with her aunt since she walked in the door yesterday.

  They spent the next hour peeling potatoes and churning butter for supper. House chores went twice as fast with Izzy around. She saved the potato skins on account of a beauty tip from one of her dress shop customers—an American actress—who said she soaked the peelings in lemon juice before applying them to her face at night. The result was alabaster skin. Marilla had never been vain about her looks, but it seemed a good use of scraps that would otherwise go to waste. Clara thought it a brilliant remedy for the squiggling lines that stretched across her stomach, and Izzy promised to wallpaper her belly later.

  Izzy had also brought a book of nursery rhymes by sisters Jane and Ann Taylor.

  “Oh, Iz,” exclaimed Clara, “I haven’t seen that in ages!”

  “Shall I read ‘About the Little Girl That Beat Her Sister’?”

  The sisters bowed into each other when they laughed.

  Marilla had never heard the poem or any other from the book. Clara hadn’t read nurse
ry rhymes to her as a child, deferring to Hugh’s scriptures over whimsy.

  “How about ‘The Star’ instead?” Izzy cleared her throat. “‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky’ . . .”

  Clara gazed lovingly at Izzy and rubbed her belly, as if coaxing the baby to listen up.

  “‘Though I know not what you are. Twinkle, twinkle, little star,’” Izzy finished with a smile.

  Marilla found herself smiling too, though she hadn’t meant to. Izzy turned the page to read another, and the hour flew by. Soon they were three faces hovering over the cooled pot. Inside, the currants had plumped as fat as rubies.

  “This being her official first red currant wine, I do believe the chef de cuisine gets the first taste?” Izzy ceremoniously handed Marilla a spoon, and she accepted.

  Clara and Izzy stood on either side as she ladled the fruit into her mouth. The concoction was sweeter than any berry on the vine, with a tart kick that made her crave more.

  “It’s quite good,” said Marilla. “Quite.”

  Izzy clapped while Clara took the spoon from Marilla and taste-tested to agreement. “I must say, this has turned out nicer than with fresh currants.”

  “Maybe it isn’t the berry but the cook who’s improved the family recipe.” Izzy put a hand around Marilla’s shoulder. “All that’s left to do is wait and keep turning the bottles. The torch has been passed. The Johnsons’ Red Currant Wine is now Marilla Cuthbert’s Red Currant Wine!”

  “We’ll toast to that once this baby has come. And if it’s a girl, we’ll teach her the recipe too, in time,” said Clara.

  Marilla warmed at the idea. She had a brother, but she’d never known sisterhood. Standing between her aunt and her mother, Marilla couldn’t help smiling at them both. She tried to imagine them as girls her age. She thought they would’ve all been friends. She hadn’t any true girlfriends in Avonlea. Hadn’t ever wanted one when she had her mother, brother, and father. But seeing the kinship between Clara and Izzy made her wonder . . . might it be nice to have a sister?

  IV.

  Learning Aunt Izzy’s History

  The last of the sugar had gone into the red currant wine. The women had planned to go to the Blairs’ store that Saturday to buy more, but Clara was feeling poorly. So Izzy said she’d run the errand. True to her word, Izzy was a doer. She made a list of the chores she intended to take on around the Gables, the preparations necessary for the baby’s birth, and what she called her daily sewing practices. She was always stitching a design on her circular, knitting a skein of yarn, or tracing out the looping lacework from her pattern book.

  “One must keep one’s skills sharp!” she’d said while her knitting needles clickity-clacked during Hugh’s nightly scripture readings.

  She’d begun to instruct Marilla on dress sewing without asking if she wanted to learn.

  “The women who come to my shop are educated and moneyed but helpless to dress themselves. I won’t have our girl so incapable. Right, Clara?”

  To Marilla’s surprise, her mother had agreed.

  “You’ve got to be able to take care of yourself, Marilla.”

  Marilla knew how to darn a sock better than new and her crocheting had produced many fine shawls for the orphans in Hopetown, but she had yet to make any substantial garment. She wore mostly hand-me-downs from Clara’s church friends whose older daughters had grown out of them. The few items Clara had sewn herself were made of old bed linens and special sale fabric, mostly housedresses with jagged but solid seams. They were never meant to be worn in public. Marilla couldn’t help being excited at the prospect of making a dress like Izzy’s—so finely tailored and sensible. Izzy was going to pick up material at the Blairs’ to make the baby a play gown for summer. They’d start with that before a full woman’s dress, she said. Marilla envisioned a fabric of yellow and green like lady’s slippers, Clara’s favorite flower. The pink ones grew everywhere on the island, but only along their farm’s fence did they blossom yellow as the sun.

  “I hate to spoil the fun,” said Clara from the parlor, where she sat with her swollen feet in a bowl of Epsom salts and water. “It’s such a beautiful day too.”

  The sky was the clearest blue Marilla had seen in months. It matched the watery horizon so closely that sky and ocean seemed one seamless shade pulled down over the island. The trickle of melting icicles played like chimes. You could nearly hear spring whispering hello.

  Marilla had been looking forward to going to town, but of course Izzy could buy the items just as easily without them. So she took up her basket of yarn and started where she’d stopped on her crocheting.

  “It’s best you rest, Sister,” said Izzy. “Never you mind doing the errands. Marilla and I can manage.” She pulled her scarf from the hook and tied it round her neck.

  Marilla was equal parts elated and distressed. On the one hand, they were going! On the other, her mother wasn’t. Marilla had never been a clingy child. She enjoyed an independent excursion. What made her nervous now was the idea of being alone with Izzy. While Izzy had grown more familiar to her in the week since her arrival, her aunt still felt like a stranger.

  “Come, come,” Izzy beckoned Marilla toward the coat stand. “Make sure to wear your warm mittens. They call this the Windy Island for good reason.”

  Marilla was well versed in the island winds and in how to dress herself. This was her home, after all, not Izzy’s. She buttoned up her coat, put on her wool cap, and stepped into her fur-lined boots. It would be a long walk to Avonlea, and she had little faith in the fashion laces Izzy wore.

  Before she pressed a soft footprint into the snowy yard, Izzy came round with the crack of a whip in the air. She’d harnessed Jericho to the cutter sled and sat in the driver’s seat with reins at the ready.

  “Jump in, girl! I promised your mother we’d be back before Hugh and Matthew return from Carmody.”

  The men had gone there to discuss the prices of spring seed. Hugh wanted to plant a new potato crop this year.

  Jericho had just enough time to stomp the snow from his feet while Marilla slid in beside Izzy. She gave a flick to the reins, and off they went at a dash.

  Marilla had only been in the sleigh with Hugh or Matthew driving at a measured pace. But now Izzy let the reins go slack so Jericho could gallop faster, at his own free will. When the hood of her blue cape fell back, Izzy didn’t retrieve it. Instead, she let the wind blow her curls from their tight pins until all of her hair flew loose around her ears. Stray pieces from Marilla’s own bun pulled across her vision like seaweed in the bay, and it felt quite like they were swimming—gliding on the current. She had to hold her breath and close her eyes against the icy undertow.

  They stopped at the edge of Avonlea, where the first row house began and the snowy road turned to shoveled sidewalk.

  “Slow there, boy,” said Izzy. “I think we’ve given Jericho his daily exercise. He’s earned himself a sugar lump.” She kept him steady while his breathing calmed.

  “When we were young, your mother and I used to steal away some winter days when there was nothing to do inside but watch our fingernails grow and wait for the snow to melt. We’d hitch up the cutter and ride as fast as we could. Once, we went clear out to the Stanleys’ by Hope River. You know the place?”

  Marilla nodded. There was a bridge there that she’d driven over many times.

  “We left the horse and sleigh to climb onto the frozen banks. We decided it wasn’t the bay, but an enchanted sea, teeming with whales of possibility. To catch one, you had to throw a magic stone. If it fell through the icecap, whatever you asked for your future would be. We spent an hour throwing rocks. They lined the ice like plums on a frosted cake. Then finally, we broke through.”

  “What did you ask for your future?”

  Izzy smiled, pulled a ribbon from her pocket, and tied her wild curls back to reveal a quartz pendant around her neck. Not purple enough to be ameth
yst. The stone was so pale, it looked almost blue. She smoothed it between her fingers. “I asked the same thing with every stone—to go somewhere and do something very great. More than chopping wood in the winters, picking peas in the summers, and being maid to a husband and home. We only have one life to live, Marilla.” Her eyes grazed the length of the town. Still, she kept Jericho at a halt. “It’s selfish of a person to take what’s given without knowing if it’s even what they want. For as long as I can remember, I had an urge for more. Some called that selfishness. But I thought it only fair if I tried to fill that more-ness myself rather than expect someone else to fill it for me. Do you know what I mean?”

  Marilla did, but she couldn’t imagine anybody leaving the island forever. It was just about the most perfect place on earth. What more could a person want? True, she’d never been off it, but from all she read in the newspapers, the rest of the world was riddled with strife. War and death from Texas down to Brazil in the south. Crops dying and farmers’ families starving in Canada from east to west.

  So instead of answering, she cross-questioned: “Then your wishing came true, did it not?”

  “In some ways it did, and in some ways it didn’t.”

  “But you went away to St. Catharines?”

  St. Catharines might as well have been Timbuktu as far as Marilla was concerned. Mr. Murdock had shown it to them on a world map stretched wide across the chalkboard. It was on the border of America beside Niagara Falls. He said he’d visited the Hotel St. Catharines, which gave you a gold door key and silk pillows to sleep on. Marilla couldn’t conceive of using such luxuries. A gold key—why, when an iron one would do the job? Silk pillows that you weren’t even awake to appreciate? Foolishness. But even as she condemned them in thought, her fingers tingled: what would it be like to hold a golden key or sleep on silken pillows? She wondered if Izzy had such things. Clara said Izzy dressed all the city ladies with peacock-feathered hats and pearl buttons. Such finery . . .