by Mary Razzell
Before my mother could ask me who the letter was from, Mr. Percy handed her a pale blue airmail envelope.
“It’s from your son, Paul. Go ahead, read it. We’ve got all the time in the world.” He followed her into the kitchen.
My mother opened the letter carefully with a clean knife and read parts of it aloud:
...glad the war is over, in Europe at least... unsure of future plans, have been thinking seriously of going to university, under the government’s grant to veterans...saw Dad in Halifax last week. He looked fine, but has no plans yet on what he is going to do after discharge...I have two weeks leave coming so should be home soon, probably around the middle of June.
Love to all,
Paul
Mr. Percy beamed at my mother. The lines in her face had smoothed out, and with a deep sigh she carefully placed Paul’s letter in her purse.
“This is good news,” she said. Even her voice was brighter. “Tom,” she called to my brother who was doing his homework in the boys’ bedroom, “why don’t you come with us?” Turning to Mr. Percy, she asked, “Is that all right with you? If Jim’s conscious, pray God, it’ll do him the world of good to see Tom. He just worships his brother.”
And so the three of them drove away, my mother’s velvet hat glowing blue between Mr. Percy and Tom.
I read Bob McLean’s letter:
Dear Sheila,
Can hardly wait to see you again. Please let me know if it’s all right with your parents if I come down this weekend.
Love,
Bob
P.S. You have beautiful eyes.
How could I explain to him that even Sonia had never visited our house? My mother discouraged visitors.
“It’s better to keep ourselves to ourselves,” she said. I picked up the stove lid lifter and dropped Bob’s letter into the glowing remainders of the supper fire.
No letter from Dad. It had been more than a month since we’d heard from him. His last letter was stuck behind the kitchen clock, and I reached up to the small shelf where it was.
It was written from Halifax. I reread the words slowly, thinking maybe I could write him. Did I dare tell him about quitting school? What if my mother found out? If I were very careful about the way I wrote it...
I could mail it the next day. I had some stamps of my own. Quickly working through my mother’s list of chores, I made the porridge for breakfast and put water on to heat for bedtime washes. Then I washed and dried the supper dishes and put them away on the curtained shelves.
As soon as everything was done, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote to my dad. I tried to be as brief as possible: ...Mom wants me to quit school...Jim and Mike were thrown from horses, and Dr. Howard let me help him. I think I would like to be a nurse, but that means finishing high school first...”
Finally it was written. I blew out the coal-oil lamp and, placing the envelope under my pillow, went to bed on the cot in the living room.
One advantage of sleeping in the living room was that I didn’t miss out on anything. I heard the latest news from the radio in the kitchen. I knew when someone came in late or got up early.
The only times I didn’t like it were when my mother and father quarreled. Then their voices rose and fell, and I couldn’t block them out.
They had quarreled as far back as I could remember. Sometimes it was about money, other times about women my mother knew he was seeing. And always, the next morning, my mother would be angry. But she was afraid to show that anger to my father because he wouldn’t have stood for it. And she didn’t take it out on my brothers because they were boys.
Which left me.
As I’d grown older, I’d seen that she struck out at me because she couldn’t strike out at anyone else.
5
WHEN JIM came home from Dr. Howard’s, he looked pale and tired. He went directly from Mr. Percy’s car to bed.
That evening I said I’d read to him if he wanted.
“Nothing mushy.”
“How about The Wind in the Willows? You like the illustrations.”
While we were looking at Moley and Rat in their blue-and-white boat, Jim looked up and asked, “Did you really save my life, Sheila?”
“Who said?”
“Dr. Howard. I heard him tell Mom.”
“You did? What else did he say? Word for word!”
“I don’t know! How do you expect me to remember?”
“Well, try!”
He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t remember.” He screwed up his eyes, concentrating. “Something like, That daughter of yours is outstanding—or special—something like that. He said Mom must be proud of you.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah, and how you stopped the bleeding and all that.”
I whirled around and around the room, then stopped and hugged and kissed him.
“Mom!” he yelled. “Get Sheila outa here! She’s kissin’ me!”
I sailed out of his room. My mother looked up from the butter she had taken from the churn. Her hands were patting and molding the lumps into a mound. “Are you teasing him? Don’t you have anything better to do?” I took my sweater from the nail at the back door. “What are you up to now?”
“Oh, nothing.” I waved my hand airily and danced out the back door. Then I ran as fast as I could down to the beach.
The diving float had been anchored out for the summer, and I hopped onto its connecting float and raced to the end. I quickly peeled off my shoes and socks and sat dangling my feet in the phosphorescent water, kicking shining swaths of silver bubbles in the green-black sea.
The sky was still light, but the land had darkened into black shapes. Here, on the water below the sky, was where the world was now.
Leaning back on my arms, I looked up to count the stars. Only one.
“I wish, I wish...I want to go back to school.”
* * *
Saturday morning I set the washtubs out on the bench in the sunshine. My mother came out with a full kettle of hot water to add to one of the tubs. She stood swinging the kettle in a nervous way as she watched me soap one of the boys’ shirt collars. I wondered if she was going to ask me to make a thicker starch for the curtains, which lay in the bluing water.
“Sheila.” Her voice had a tremor. “I’m going to buy some land.”
I wasn’t surprised. It was one of her dreams, and she’d often talked about it. Ever since I could remember, I had heard stories about the farm in Ireland—how it had been in the family for generations and how she knew every stone, every bush. When we lost our house in Edmonton during the Depression, because we couldn’t pay the taxes, she’d cried as if there had been a death in the family.
“I have it all figured out,” she said, taking from her apron pocket the used envelope she had written her calculations on. “I’ve got some money saved, Sheila. Helga Ness says she’ll let me have the ten acres on this side of the creek for eight hundred dollars, two hundred down. It’s a good buy.”
She was excited, but I was too full of my own problems to listen.
“If you can buy the land, why can’t I go to school, too?”
“Because you don’t need to. You can get a job at Gibson’s working at the bakery or something, and your pay check will help out at home.”
“Why me? You don’t expect Paul or Tom to do that. Why should I have to?” I turned back to the scrub board and began scrubbing with a vengeance.
“Because you’re a girl.”
What kind of an answer was that? I’d been hearing it all my life. You can’t do it; you’re just a girl. You can’t have it; you’re just a girl. It wasn’t fair!
“If Dad were here—”
“But he’s not, is he?” Flushed with anger, my mother stood rigid. Her shoulders were stiff and her back straight as a broom. I had gone too far. “And there’s no telling when he will be. I gave up counting on your father long ago.”
I knew it was useless to say any more. If Sonia were still around, at least th
ere would be someone to talk to.
I tipped the wash water onto the vegetable garden and carefully wiped out the tubs before hanging them on the woodshed wall. I decided to go up to Sonia’s old house.
She wouldn’t be there, of course, but I wanted to sit on the Koloskys’ steps again, to be by myself until I could think things out and calm down.
The gate was fastened tight. As soon as I put my hand on it, a dog started to bark. He was chained to the veranda, and he pulled and strained as if he wanted to break loose and come after me.
From the front door came two small children, followed by their thin, peevish-sounding mother. They all stared at me. Then a sullen, dark man appeared along the side of the house. He spoke sharply to the dog and came down the path toward me, the woman’s eyes following him all the way.
“Do you want something?” His voice was surprisingly rich, with a lazy overtone. I found myself swaying slightly with its rhythm.
“Uh...no,” I said, feeling fascinated and repelled at the same time. “I used to...Sonia was...you have any girls my age?”
At that his eyes became as sleepy as his voice, and he looked me over slowly and thoroughly. I felt too aware of myself. Somehow ashamed.
“No, none like you,” he said. “Just little ones. Five and six.”
“Robert!” came his wife’s voice. It had the whine of a buzz saw. He smiled at me as though she were a joke between us, and I turned away in embarrassment.
I was glad to get away. This family was a mud puddle compared to the Koloskys. I stayed away after that.
* * *
The night my brother Paul was due home, the house was shining clean. We had his favorite foods ready for a late supper. His bed had been made up with sheets taken right from the clothesline, smelling of sun and sea. On the kitchen table, yellow-centered daisies sat snug in the old sugar bowl. Yellow linen napkins lay folded at each place. The woodbox overflowed. There was enough kindling split to last the weekend, and the water pails stood full.
We were ready.
I went alone to meet the boat.
“What nonsense,” my mother said. “Why should we go to meet the boat? We’re here at home where we belong, and where he expects us to be. A little less show, Sheila, and a little more of what counts.”
“But what counts, Mom?”
“What counts is being practical, not making a big show of things.”
“To meet the boat?”
“Sheila, it could be late. It often is. There are more useful things you could be doing than hanging around the wharf. You and your father, you never give a second thought...”
The boat was late, but this only added to the festive air. Summer tourists had already started to invade the peninsula, and all along the beach was a string of cottage windows, glowing softly orange with coal-oil lamps. A smell of wood smoke hung in the air. I could hear the summer girls’ silky laughs in the soft night and the young men’s returning laughs, richer, deeper.
A long whistle sounded down the inlet, and the Lady Cecilia rounded the point. She looked like a ship out of a dream, soft lights flooding the waters around her, and I could hear muted music and scraps of conversation from the passengers.
She docked at the wharf in a sudden swirling of black waters into white. I caught the thrown headline and pulled its loop over the bollard. Then Mr. Percy took the spring and stern lines and made them fast. The gangplank came rumbling over the side of the ship, and the passengers swarmed down it—loggers in their caulk-boots, pulp-mill workers, summer visitors, fishermen.
I strained to see Paul.
There he was! Twenty-one, tall in his pilot’s uniform— my handsome brother. Jumping up and down, I called to him, “Paul! Paul! Here!”
As soon as he was down the gangplank, he swung me up and around in a circle.
I wanted to show him off to everyone.
“Hey, Mr. Percy! Paul’s home!”
As we went up the wharf, people stopped and clapped Paul on the shoulder, admired his wings insignia, and told him, “Mighty glad the war is over!” We turned off the wharf onto the beach trail, and home.
I saw Helga before he did. She was like a gray wraith flitting through the trees. It looked as if she was on one of her walks. She always seemed to just walk and walk...
As Paul and I walked home, I told him about Helga, and before long I found myself telling him about Mom wanting me to quit school. His mouth tightened, and I had a sudden rush of hope that perhaps he could persuade her to change her mind.
We could see our house now, and light shining through the trees, and Paul began to whistle when we turned into our yard. The door opened and everyone came out on the porch. We all talked at once, it seemed. No one finished a sentence before someone else started a new one. We talked while we served supper, through the meal, and while we cleaned up.
Paul brought out presents for all of us from his duffle bag. Mine was a locket bracelet made of soft yellow gold.
It was after midnight before my mother noticed the time. “Sheila, Tom, Jim, Mike. Off to bed,” she ordered as she poured another cup of tea for Paul and herself.
Their voices came seeping into the living room as I was going to sleep, my mother’s rushing along with plans to buy the land and build a house.
Then I heard Paul’s deeper one questioning, “Sheila... quitting school?”
I got out of bed quickly and went over to the living-room door to listen. Their voices came clearly down the hall.
My mother sounded annoyed.
“Helga refuses to sell the land unless Sheila can go to school. Why should she make it her business... Well, all I can say is she’s not quite right in the head. But it is a beautiful piece of property. There’s even some first-growth fir. And to have the creek! I’ll never get another chance like this. Sheila’s not to know about Helga’s part in this—”
“Does Sheila know she’s going back to school next year?”
“No, and I’m in no hurry to tell her. That girl is getting harder to manage all the time. You’ve no idea how difficult she can be. I swear she’s more trouble than all you boys put together. Just like her father. She’s the same through and through. Selfish...”
I had heard all that before, and I stepped silently back over the cold floor and to bed.
I could stay at school! Oh, Helga!
6
DAD MUST HAVE written the day he got my letter. It was just a short note, really, about the weather, what he was doing, indefinite plans for the future—and a P.S. “Don’t worry about school, honey. Something’s bound to turn up.”
My mother didn’t say anything to me about school, either. Paul started to tell me in a roundabout way, but I told him I had overheard everything.
“Okay, then,” he said. “You can stop worrying about that.”
About a week after Paul’s homecoming, my mother went into Vancouver to see a lawyer about transferring the Ness land title to her name. I went down to the boat to see her off, and after the Lady Pam had pulled out, I was surprised when Robert came over to talk to me.
I hadn’t been back to the Kolosky house since that first day I’d met Robert and his family, and I had only said hello if I had to.
He asked me to baby-sit that night. He said he and his wife were going to the Legion dance at Gibson’s, and could I come at about eight?
I had never baby-sat before, and since my mother had gone to Vancouver, I couldn’t check it out with her. But I needed the money for a dress for the end-of-the-year school dance, so I said yes.
That night it rained and blew. The wind was fierce and building all the time. I was chilled and soaked by the time I got to the house on the Upper Road.
There was only the light on in the kitchen at the back. If I hadn’t known the place so well I would have had trouble finding my way. The dog was tied up to the veranda rail, and he barked and snapped at me when I approached.
The back door opened. It was Robert.
“Come on in.” Taking my
jacket, he hung it behind the oil stove. “Sit down at the table and I’ll get you some coffee. Get you warmed up.”
The table was set with two cups and two plates and a cake in its baking pan. There was no sign of anyone else.
“Go ahead, have some cake. I baked it especially for you.” And he poured coffee for both of us.
The light from the coal-oil lamp pooled around the table, leaving the area beyond in darkness. I was no longer sure where the door was. There was a heaviness in the air, maybe from the smell of diesel oil on Robert’s clothing or from the heat of the stove.
“Where’s your wife?” I asked him.
“Oh, she isn’t quite ready yet,” he answered easily, and I felt the perspiration break out on my back.
“Could you show me where the kids are, so I can check on them? When you’re gone.” I started to get up from the table. I had to keep my legs stiff to stop their trembling.
“Well, now, just a minute. They aren’t here at the moment. The wife and kiddies are visiting the McDougals up the road. They’ll be back soon. Relax. Sit down. Tell me about school.”
He passed the cake to me. I saw that he had only the last two fingers on that hand. He saw me staring.
“It was an accident at Port Mellon,” he said, watching my eyes.
I took a piece of cake and began to eat it slowly. Outside I could hear the fury of the wind as it slammed itself toward the open sea.
“I always wanted a chance to talk to you,” he said. “It’s good we have this chance alone.”
The cake stuck at the back of my throat, and I got up to get a drink of water at the sink. I ran the tap and reached for my jacket.
Instantly he was at my side, his hand with the missing fingers on my arm. “Where are you going? I told you they would be back soon.”
“I know.” I located the kitchen door in my mind. “I think I’ll go up to the McDougals. Remind them of the time. Maybe they—”
The vacuousness left his face, and he became heavy-lidded, full-lipped. His voice was very soft and wrapped itself around me.
“They’re not there,” he said. “They went into the city on the same boat as your mother. Stay and talk to me. We’ve never had a chance to talk, you and I. There are things I want to tell you.”