Before the iceman climbed back up into the wagon, he’d chip off a sliver of ice for me. Then I’d stand on the gate and watch the pair head away down the road, the water trickling from the back of the wagon and bouncing in the dry, red dust.
Mr. McIntyre gave me the keys for the new lock on the back door that I would secure whenever I left the house. I leaned back against the door, smiling, as I heard him drive away.
I took the the picnic basket into the front room and opened it on Alex’s writing table. Ernie crawled underneath to his customary spot, settling himself with a long sigh. I was hungrier than I thought and was grateful for the plate of lukewarm tuna casserole and the heel of home-baked bread.
After I had finished my meal, I sat back in the chair, dropped my hand to where the dog lay and idly stroked his fur. The writing table under the window was one of my favourite places. The dusty quart milk bottle that Alex used to keep filled with wildflowers from the roadside still sat where it always had. Tomorrow I’d gather a fresh bouquet. And sometime soon, if I wanted to be able to see the road when I sat here, I’d have to root out the clippers from the back kitchen.
There were three hardboiled eggs still in the bag with the thermos of milk. I decided to keep them for my breakfast. Before it was totally dark, Ernie and I went upstairs, and for the first time in nine months, I collapsed onto my own bed.
Four
The crowing of the McIntyres’ rooster woke me the next morning. I leapt out of bed, eager to begin Day One of Life on My Own. Ernie roused himself and shook vigorously, sending a flurry of hair onto the floor at my feet.
My plan for the day included a trip to Pinkney Corners to buy groceries, to see Margaret, and to try contacting someone at the pickling factory. If I could plant some cucumber seed, the money I earned would pay for my telephone. Aunt Irene could not really afford to pay for any extras.
I hadn’t seen Margaret Pacey since leaving last September, although for a while the letters between us had flowed back and forth frequently. I think she was the one who stopped writing, but now that I was back, I hoped she would be as eager to resume our friendship as I was.
Before I started school at the age of six, the only young people I knew were the characters in Alex’s novels. The school my mother walked me to that first day was the same little schoolhouse she had attended herself. The teacher, Miss Dempster, taught all eight grades in one room. Judy Dempster wore pleated skirts with sweater sets and pearls and kept her blonde hair in a smooth, pageboy style. I adored her. I couldn’t wait for it to be my turn to be monitor so that I could do whatever she asked of me—fill the ink wells, bang the chalk dust from the blackboard brushes against the brick wall outside or visit the supply cupboard for the stacks of foolscap.
We girls took our skipping ropes to school as soon as the snow cleared and played feverish games of Seven-up with our India rubber balls. When it was the season for allies, we carried our treasured collections in little cloth bags we had sewn ourselves.
But best of all was meeting Margaret, who sat behind me in first grade and became my very best friend. Margaret wore her chestnut hair in braids, tied with ribbons that matched her knee-high socks. She always looked immaculate. Everything she owned fit her perfectly. There were no fallen hems, no darned elbows or heels, no holes in the soles of her shoes. The year we entered high school, Margaret’s braids were replaced by the latest style in short hair—the pixie cut, with little feathers of hair framing her face and neck. Her mother, Fern, had adopted the same style.
Margaret Pacey’s family intrigued me, particularly her three older brothers. Her father was the town druggist, and her mother was a committeewoman. That meant she went to a lot of meetings.
“Sometimes,” Margaret informed me, “Mother is so busy she doesn’t even have time to take off her hat when she gets home for dinner, before she goes out again to the next meeting.” I’d never seen anyone eat with her hat on. And dinner in our house was called supper.
The first time I visited the Pacey household was for Margaret’s birthday party. It was a boisterous, happy place, and I tried afterwards to spend every moment I could there. My own house was so quiet you could practically hear the dust gathering.
My favourite among Margaret’s brothers was the youngest, Michael. A pink-cheeked cherub of a boy, he was just two years older than his sister. The other, older brothers I admired from afar, but Michael was usually around the house, underfoot when we were, scrounging brown sugar sandwiches from the pantry, sharing the coloured comics from the Saturday paper as we lay together on our stomachs on the floor of the living room. Michael’s favourite pastime was gluing plastic models together. He had hundreds of them, including several aircraft that hung from the ceiling of his bedroom by lengths of fishing line.
By the time I left for my year in the city, Michael had graduated from high school. I had a purloined picture of him in his new suit on graduation day—a tall, lean young man by then, blonde hair slicked back on the sides and a lock that rose up in front before falling over one eye. During the lonely months away from Pinkney Corners, my friendship with Michael Pacey had been transformed into a chest-aching crush.
The Paceys lived in the best part of town, in a three-storey red-brick house, with a wraparound porch called a verandah complete with two cushioned swings, and there were hardwood floors inside. Our floors at home were linoleum. In places, they were worn through to the black underneath, especially in front of the kitchen sink and under Alex’s writing table.
When television first came to Pinkney Corners, most people only got to see it through the window of the local appliance store. The Paceys bought a set for their own living room.
At that first party, there was real money in Margaret’s birthday cake, tucked between the layers. That spoiled me for the buttons and curtain rings Alex used to wrap as surprises in my own cakes.
Margaret’s father showed movies for the guests. Six little girls sat in front of a bed sheet hung against the wall in the parlour to watch Laurel and Hardy try to move a piano out of an upstairs apartment. The movie must have been hilarious because everyone laughed, but I focused on Margaret’s father behind the projector. As the light flickered over his face, he smiled indulgently at the fools in the film and played with the tidy beard on his strong chin. I decided then that if I could choose a father, he would be just like Margaret’s.
For breakfast that first morning at home, I ate two of the hardboiled eggs and one of the sandwiches I’d brought from the city. Ernie, by the smell of him, had found a dead fish to roll in, and I put him back outside with the other sandwich while I readied myself to go to town.
After securing the new lock on the back door I set off, sending Ernie back home when we got as far as the corner. Mr. Chips, the dog we had before Ernie, used to follow us right into town and lie down on the sidewalk outside the shops to wait. But the streets in Pinkney Corners were busier now.
A sprinkler was circulating a shower of water on the Paceys’ front lawn. Since my last visit they had installed green and white striped awnings on the upstairs windows. Fern Pacey, Margaret’s mother, was watering the geraniums in the boxes that hung from the porch railings. She watched me come up the walk. “Well, there you are, Libby!” she cried. “I was wondering what day you’d show up. Come right on up here and let me get a look at you.”
“Is Margaret home?” I managed to ask before Mrs. Pacey released me from an unexpected embrace. You never knew what sort of a greeting you’d get from Margaret’s mother.
Mrs. Pacey made a little face and stepped back, retrieving the watering can from the glass-topped table. “Unfortunately, no. She found herself a real job this summer, at an inn in Muskoka. Three girls from the school got hired. She was so proud of herself, no more working for peanuts at Savaway. But she did get your letter, dear, the day she was leaving. She knew you were returning, so I’m sure she’ll be writing to you.”
“You mean she’s gone for the whole summer?”
“I’m afraid so. And did she tell you she’s going to Business College in Belleville in the fall?” She hadn’t, and it hurt a little to think that Margaret had made important decisions without me.
Patting the seat beside her on the swing, Fern Pacey insisted she wanted to hear all about what I’d been doing in the city, but she kept glancing at her watch while I talked. “And your aunt, dear,” she asked politely. “How’s she keeping?”
I had always had the impression that Mrs. Pacey disapproved of Irene. “Irene’s fine,” I said. “She works very hard. I had a hard time persuading her to let me come home. She’s got so many people checking on me that I feel like I’m a side-show, or something.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Mrs. Pacey wrinkled her delicate nose. “I have to tell you, dear, that I was a little nonplussed when I heard your aunt was letting you come back here by yourself. But it is only temporary, isn’t it? Irene was always so unconventional.”
I didn’t stay for lemonade. Much as I loved Margaret, I always thought there was something forced about her mother, with her sudden, over-exuberant affection. I was always on the lookout for the veiled criticism that could follow.
It was in Grade Two that Margaret stood up in class and announced that her mother had won the 1948 Pinkney Corners Citizen of the Year award. “That’s wonderful, dear,” Miss Dempster had smiled, fingering her pearls. “You have every right to feel proud of her.”
“My aunt’s a famous ballerina,” I informed Margaret at recess the same day.
My friend frowned. “What’s her name, then?”
“Irene Eaton.”
“How come I’ve never heard of her, if she’s so famous?”
“Oh, she dances in the city, with the Ballet Company. In Toronto. Gives lessons too.”
“I think it would be wonderful to have someone that famous in the family,” Margaret admitted. “You’re very lucky, Libby.”
I felt vindicated, and I lent Margaret my best cat’s eye for the rest of the afternoon.
In spite of Irene’s so-called fame, it was my mother’s writing talent that most impressed my best friend. When we were ten, Margaret discovered that my mother and Alexandra Quincy-Newton were the same person. We were collecting the mail from our box out by the road, a novelty for Margaret, whose mail arrived at the drugstore and was brought home by her father. “Let me do it,” Margaret begged, inserting her arm into the back of the rusted metal box. “Who’s this for?” she asked as she read the name on one of the envelopes.
“For Alex,” I said, looking over her shoulder. “That’s her pseudonym.”
“Alex’s what?” Margaret demanded.
“Her nom-de-plume. Her pen name. It’s part of her contract. She has to call herself something other than her real name when she writes the novels. Those adventure stories she writes for girls?”
“Alexandra Quincy-Newton is your mother? Your mother writes those Laura Hill books?” Margaret shrieked. “I adore those books! Does Miss Dempster know?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Probably not.” Why would anyone connect my mother to someone named Alexandra Quincy-Newton?
“Wow,” breathed Margaret. “You said she was a writer, and my mother said she just worked for the newspaper. But books, even!”
I remember how Alex would complain that the adventure series kept her from any “real writing”. She said she had a bigger project in mind. But the series provided a cheque she could count on every time she completed one of them; and by that time, the outline for the next would have arrived in the mail.
I shrugged off Margaret’s excitement. Alex was, after all, just my mother
“Admit it,” I told myself as I left the Pacey home on that first day back in Pinkney Corners, promising Margaret’s mother “not to be a stranger”. “Weren’t you really hoping to see Michael while you were there?” Forget that I had planned to unburden my soul to my oldest and dearest friend, it was the thought of seeing Michael that had made my pulse race a little more quickly.
In the centre of town, Admiral’s Grocery had hamburger on sale, three pounds for a dollar. But it was to Dooley’s Delicatessen next door that I headed. Michael Pacey had been working there on weekends the last time I had seen him.
I couldn’t afford to shop there, but they couldn’t stop me from looking. I picked up a wire basket from the stack inside the door and wandered up and down its two aisles, examining little boxes of fancy crackers, foil-wrapped cheese and chocolates. The man busy shaving ham at the meat-slicer was not Michael, and when another customer came in asking for half a pound of liver sausage, I left without buying a thing.
Ernie, my truest friend, was glad to see me when I arrived home with my shopping bags. From the enthusiastic gnawing he gave the soup bone I’d gotten free from the butcher, I knew he agreed I’d shopped wisely. Seeing some fresh food in the fridge and some tins in the cupboard gave me a similar feeling of satisfaction.
That afternoon Ernie and I walked up to the McIntyres’ to buy some milk. I had another reason for wanting to see them, a favour to ask. “If my Aunt Irene decides to phone, please don’t tell her about the break-in,” I suggested. “Do you mind? It would just worry her. I’ve been to see Mrs. Pacey, my friend’s mother, to let her know that I’ve arrived. You can tell Irene that much. I’ll write her tomorrow anyway, but she said she might phone you to check on me.”
“Just as long as you aren’t feeling lonely down there,” Mrs. McIntyre agreed. “I want you to remember we’re always here. And you can put that money back in your pocket. A quart of milk and a few eggs aren’t going to break us.”
To make them happy, I agreed to stay for supper. It was pleasant to sit around the cluttered table after the meal, helping to empty the teapot, telling the farm couple about my plans. “I was thinking, maybe I could grow cucumbers like we used to. Alex and I made pretty good money the years we did that. It isn’t too late, is it? To put seed in?”
“Pickling company doesn’t buy from the small growers anymore,” said Henry McIntyre, tilting his chair back so that it rested against the wall behind him. “They haven’t given any local contracts now for a couple of years.”
His wife was wrapping waxed paper over the few biscuits remaining on the plate. “D’you mind the time Eddie Hackett got fresh with your mother?” she asked, looking up at me.
“Is that what happened?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Not in so many words,” I admitted. “I remember her telling me after whatever happened, never to let anyone take advantage of me just because I was a girl and, supposedly, weaker than they were.”
“Oh, she was hopping mad,” remembered Mrs. McIntyre, sliding the biscuits into the breadbox. “And the next time Alex put the sacks out for Eddie to collect, he just drove right on past.”
Henry McIntyre eased his suspenders down over his shoulders. “When I saw the sacks sitting there the next day, I took them up myself. Said I’d do it for her whenever she needed them delivered.”
“But your mother wouldn’t hear of that.” Mrs. McIntrye’s tone was gleeful. “Eddie had been hired by the company to do the picking up, and she’d just let the company know that he’d missed hers. Came up here to use our phone, she did. That’s how come I heard the conversation. And then she told us what had happened. I guess that Eddie Hackett decided he’d collect on the favour he figured he was doing her. She told him she didn’t owe him anything, except possibly a thank-you.”
“She was a courageous woman, your mother,” said Henry McIntyre, shaking his head.
“And did Mr. Hackett pick up our cucumbers after that?” I asked.
“You bet he did!” Henry McIntyre vowed. “Hackett was a bully, and bullies are often cowards. Your mother beat him, just by standing up to him.”
“That was the way Alex was,” said Mrs. McIntyre. “But we don’t have to tell you that, do we?”
I began carrying dishes over to the sink. “One thing that my mother always made clea
r to me was that I was important and worthy of respect. And that was the way I was to treat everyone. Obviously, that wasn’t the way Eddie Hackett treated her.”
“Well, a woman on her own has to keep her wits about her.” Henry McIntyre brought his chair down onto its four legs and reached for a toothpick from the holder on the table.
His wife seized the plates from my hands. “Company does not do dishes in my house,” she declared.
I sat down again. “I guess then, as soon as I’m a little more settled, I’ll walk into town and look for a job. It’s the sensible thing to do.” And sensible, after all, was what grownups would want me to be.
“The bus doesn’t go by here now till about eleven in the morning,” said Mrs. McIntyre. She tipped the teapot to drain the last of it into her husband’s cup. “Not much good to you, if you want an early start.”
In the past, if Alex didn’t feel like walking, and if she could afford the fare, we would take the bus to town. I remember waiting impatiently for its arrival at the corner, singing as many choruses of “Jump Jim Crow” (with actions) as it took to make the bus appear in the distance—a fat blue beetle lumbering towards us.
I saw Mrs. McIntyre catch her husband’s eye, saw his small nod. “I think Henry has something to show you, Elizabeth.”
Henry McIntyre heaved himself away from the table and asked me to hang on a second. He went outside, the screen door slapping behind him. A minute or two later we heard his whistle, and Mrs. McIntyre and I stepped out onto the back porch.
Henry, pleased as punch, was pushing a bicycle, my bicycle, towards us. “Were you looking for this?” he inquired with a sly smile.
Finding My Own Way Page 4