by Mary Razzell
She flung the dish towel toward its nail, missed, but didn’t notice. She picked up her sweater from the kitchen couch and ran, with worried little steps, to catch up with my father, who was already out the back door.
I grabbed the dish towel and hung it where it belonged, then hurried after them.
* * *
We all worked hard on the house. My father did the wiring, and when it came to insulating, we all helped. We used blackout paper given to us by Mr. Percy, who had ordered too much of it at the beginning of the war. Nels and Mr. Bergstrom were paid and regretfully let go. The money had run out, and although my father was enthusiastic about the quality of their work, he didn’t offer any money to keep them on the job.
Before Nels left, he made a closet for my bedroom. It was built on the narrowest wall, and he ran it across the whole width so that it didn’t stick out.
One late afternoon Nels and I went swimming at the beach after work. He was a strong swimmer and stayed in long after I had tired. I dropped onto the hot sand, my skin tingling from the ocean. Now that it was mid-August, with its longer, colder nights, the water had a nip to it. I lay in the last of the afternoon sun, drowsy, completely content.
It made me shudder when Nels dribbled water from his hand onto my legs.
“You look too comfortable,” he said. He sat down, his back against a log, and kept flicking me with water until finally I sat up beside him.
The sun was dropping behind Gower Point. I shivered.
“Summer’s almost over. School’s in two weeks.”
Nels wrapped a towel around my shoulder.
“I guess so. I never liked school myself. Quit in grade eight. Wasn’t learning anything, anyway.”
As we sat side by side, I could feel the length of his legs along mine. He began to gouge out the sand with his heels.
I pulled the towel tighter around me.
“I love school! And if I don’t finish high school, I won’t have a chance at a decent job. I’ll end up working in a store or something.”
He looked at me through wet eyelashes.
“What’s the matter with that?”
“Well, nothing. It’s... I want something more. I’d really like to go on to university. But at least I want to finish high school.”
“It’s never seemed that important to me.” He slipped down to lie on his back, a towel rolled under his head for a pillow. “I’ve never been sorry I quit.”
“Don’t you miss learning about things? Reading?” Now I was making heel marks in the sand.
“Never. If I want to read, I read.”
“What do you like to read?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Westerns, mostly. Comic books, I guess.”
I turned to look at him, thinking he must be joking. He pulled me down beside him.
“You’re too serious, Sheila.”
His body was warm beside me, and I had to close my eyes against wanting him. He must have felt something, too, because his body tensed, and he turned over on his stomach, away from me.
That evening around nine, Nels’ truck stopped outside our house. I heard only the short beep of a horn.
It was Tom who called to me, “Hey, Sheila, your boyfriend’s waiting for you.” My father looked up from his newspaper. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but I didn’t wait to hear what it was.
I ran outside. Nels was smiling, pleased about something.
“I’ve got a surprise for you. Come on, get in.”
We were at the new house in a matter of minutes. Taking me by the hand, he led me to the back of the house to my bedroom. There, under the window, was a desk. Not elaborate, but with a wide writing surface and shelves at one side for books and papers. It was made of fir and had been sanded, ready for the can of varnish that sat unopened on its surface.
“Well, how do you like it?” he asked, running his hands over its smoothness. “I came back after supper and made it for you. After what you said at the beach—about school.”
“Oh, Nels! I love it! It’s beautiful! I can’t believe it—that you made it for me!”
“You really like it?”
I put my arms around him then. His long back felt hard under my hands.
“I love the desk, Nels. And...I love you.”
His hands went to my hips. Pulling me into him so that I could feel his warmth, he held me.
“I love you, too, Sheila.”
* * *
On Saturday of the Labour Day weekend we moved into our new house, even though it wasn’t finished inside. Black roofing paper had been spread over the floor until we could afford to put down a finished one. The inside walls were left with the two-by-fours showing.
“Handy for shelves,” my mother said.
It had been my last day of work at the Lawsons’. George and his father were out fishing, so it was Mrs. Lawson who paid me. She gave me a five-dollar bonus, “for satisfactory work.”
“I’ve enjoyed working for you,” I said, and was surprised when I realized I meant it.
* * *
Sunday, September 2, 1945. Another day for the history books. It was VJ Day. The war with Japan was over. Since the middle of August we had heard that Japan had surrendered, but this was official.
My father turned up the volume on the radio as we sat eating our breakfast. The United States battleship Missouri was anchored in Tokyo Bay with General MacArthur on board, ready to meet with the Japanese.
As the radio gave out the news about VJ Day, I thought about meeting Helga on VE Day, and how upset she’d been when she heard the boat whistles and thought they meant her son and husband had been found.
“Mom, I’ll do the dishes when I get back,” I said, getting up from the table. “I’ve got to tell Mrs. Ness. About it being VJ Day.”
There was a thin spiral of blue smoke coming from Helga’s chimney. Otherwise there was no sign of life. As I knocked at the front door, I realized I’d never been inside her house, and some of my old fears came back, about her being crazy.
It seemed a long time before the door opened, and she held it so that it partially shielded her body.
“It’s me, Mrs. Ness, Sheila Brary.”
Her eyes were sharp, stared at me for what seemed minutes, then lost some of their fierceness. The door opened and she motioned me in.
Following her down the short hallway to the kitchen, I became conscious of the smell of apples, although it was a month too early for them. Did she store apples in her basement?
It came to me that Helga always smelled of apples.
The kitchen at the back of the house seemed bare and clean, maybe because it was uncluttered, unlike our kitchen which was always busy in some way. Either there was bread rising or butter being churned, a radio on, people talking, something bubbling on the stove or baking in the oven. Smells, movements, sounds.
Here in Helga’s kitchen it was quiet.
We sat at her kitchen table. It was covered with a much-laundered cloth, vivid with embroidered flowers, and with a wide edging of crocheted lace. I ran the tip of my finger around the outline of a blue cornflower, then a sunflower with a dark-brown center.
Helga’s eyes never left my face.
“You like some coffee?”
Without waiting for an answer, she brought over the speckled blue enamel coffee pot. There were clean mugs upside down on the middle of the table. I turned two of them over.
While we sipped at our coffee, I looked around. Dish towels, bright with cross-stitch, hung from a rod near the stove. By the back door was an oval hooked rug. Samplers hung on the wall. “Bless This House,” “Home Is Where the Heart Is.”
A breeze flapped the curtains over the sink. They, too, had bunches of flowers embroidered in bright colors.
“This morning we heard on the radio that Japan has surrendered,” I said. “The war’s over. People will be celebrating again, like last time. Do you remember? VE Day?”
“Ya-ah. I remember.” Her eyes clouded with misery. I
couldn’t help myself. I went over and gave her a hug. Her bony shoulders were like birds’ wings under my hands.
10
IT WAS a beautiful September, an Indian summer month of mellow days and brilliant nights, when every star hung polished. The sea was a flat enamel blue, and the maple leaves showed yellow against a backdrop of hazy blue mountains.
As soon as we got off the school bus each afternoon, the boys and I dropped our books on the kitchen couch, changed into bathing suits and raced to the beach. Every day I thought, This will be the last swim of the year. By the middle of September I was numb with cold when I came out of the icy water, but the sun was hot and the air dry.
My father was based at Jericho Beach in Vancouver, waiting for his discharge from the air force. At first he came home every weekend. Then he announced, “I’ll try to make it every other weekend. There are a few things I have to attend to in the city.”
“A few things indeed,” my mother told me, banging the pots. “A few women would be more like it. But the check coming in every month is the important thing. I’ve given up expecting your father to change.”
My brothers missed Dad and told him so.
“You said you’d teach me to drive,” Tom complained. “Besides,” and he looked around to be sure my mother was out of hearing range, “I don’t like Mom telling me what to do all the time.”
“Who’s running this house?” my mother demanded of the three of them at breakfast one morning. They had been slow getting in the wood and water, had dawdled over breakfast, and when she told them that the school bus would arrive at any minute, Tom, for no good reason that I could understand, refused to wear his old navy blue pants. My mother was furious when he came out wearing his new brown corduroy pair, but she had to let him. Either that or he would miss the bus.
“Times like this,” she said savagely, “I wish your father were here to keep you boys in line.”
To my surprise, I was relieved Dad wasn’t home very much. He didn’t like me going with Nels.
“You’re much too young for that. Look at you running out to meet him! Like some common...he doesn’t even have the decency to come to the door. What does he think of you? Eh? Answer me that! He must think you’re not worth two cents!”
“That’s not right! He feels...shy.”
“Shy? I’ll just bet he’s shy! Till he gets you in that truck!” My father’s eyes were all bloodshot, his face red. He had been drinking beer all afternoon. “But you like it, don’t you?” He thrust his face close, and I could see the corner of one eyelid twitching.
“Dad! That’s just...disgusting!”
It was the only time I’d ever talked back to him. He caught me by the wrist, then let my arm drop. His voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear.
“You ever speak to me like that again, and I’ll beat you so that you’ll never have children. You understand?”
I couldn’t believe he had said the words. Didn’t believe he could even think them. But I stared at the wall and said, “Yes.” The kitchen clock ticked away like a bomb. “I’m sorry.”
* * *
I was glad to be back at school. I had gained new status being Nels’ girlfriend. The other girls went out of their way to talk to me, and the halls were filled with our chatter. Bookkeeping was being offered for the first time, and there was a rumor that our school might get three typewriters for a typing course after Christmas. I signed up again for the basketball team.
Dr. Howard and his wife Mollie came to the school to test our eyesight and check our teeth.
“Well, Sheila,” Doc said, poking at my tonsils with the flat surface of a tongue depressor, “are those brothers of yours still riding horses?” I mumbled around the tongue depressor. “You’re going to have to see a dentist soon. There are a few cavities starting.” Doc swiveled around in his chair and noted it on my health card. “Ever think of taking a part-time job?” he asked, continuing to write.
“Well, I—”
“Mollie here and I would like to have a young girl come in Saturdays. Answer the telephone, give us a hand with dressings, that sort of thing. Would you like that?
The chair creaked. He turned back and waited for me to answer.
Would I like that? He took one look at my face and said, “Then it’s settled. When would you like to start?”
* * *
There was no dentist on the peninsula, which meant going into Vancouver and staying overnight. My mother did not approve.
“Why do you have to get your teeth fixed, anyway?” she asked. “I lost all mine when I was thirteen because I had to drink an iron tonic. They said it was because I was so sickly. But it took all the enamel off my teeth, and they had to pull them all out. Why should it be any different for you?”
“But, Mom! That was Ireland, a long time ago. That doesn’t happen anymore.”
“I don’t know where you get your ideas from,” my mother said, her voice angry. “You seem to think you deserve more than I did. I have no money to fix your teeth. You’re too vain as it is, curling your hair, always looking in the mirror. Just like your father. Bad enough to have one of you in the household!”
But I had my own money to pay the dentist, and I was determined to go.
Nels didn’t like the idea of me going to Vancouver and staying overnight at a hotel.
“Listen, Nels. I’ve got to go to the dentist. And there’s no other way to do it.” We had been to the Harvest Dance and had parked on the wharf at Gibson’s to look at the harvest moon. I moved closer to him and touched his hand. “I’ll be back on the Friday night boat. We can still go to the dance on Saturday night.”
“I don’t like it!” He sat well over on his side of the seat and put his arms up so that his elbows were resting on the steering wheel.
I moved back to my own side.
“What don’t you like about it? I don’t understand.”
“Sixteen-year-old girls don’t stay at hotels alone. Any guy finds out, you’re in trouble.”
He stared ahead at the wharf, ignoring the orange moon that had climbed high over the mountains on the mainland.
“Nels, you don’t need to worry about me. After all, my father is going to get me the hotel room. Are you going to meet me when I come back? On the Friday night boat?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go to the show myself. Or take another girl.”
“Oh, Nels!” I could see by the set of his jaw that he wasn’t joking.
He turned the ignition key.
“I don’t want to be made a sucker of, Sheila. Just don’t forget that.”
* * *
My mother still hadn’t resigned herself to the fact that I was going to have my teeth taken care of. “You’d be better off to have all those teeth out, as I suggested. You’ll be running back and forth to the dentist all the time. There will be no end to it.”
“Do you want me to do any shopping in the city for you?” I asked, hoping to soften her mood.
“No...I suppose your father will be too busy to see you.”
“He’s getting the hotel room for me. He said we’d have supper together Thursday night.”
She put her mending down and closed her eyes for a minute. Then she picked up another sock.
“Sheila, now you’re not going to like this.” She looked sharply at me. “But you need to know these things.” She fitted the sock over the bottom of the glass she used for darning. “Don’t let your father stay in your hotel room.”
I stared at her, wondering what she was talking about.
“I mean it,” she said, jabbing the needle at me. “There’s nothing—nothing—I’d put past him.” She began to place small precise stitches along the edge of the hole in Jim’s sock. “You needn’t look at me that way! You think that never happens?”
Speechless, I reached for my science assignment. The workings of the internal combustion engine were easier to understand than what went on in our house.
Between Nels with his jealousy and
my mother with her ugly warnings, I felt a sense of relief when at last I caught the boat into Vancouver the following Thursday. As soon as we’d left Gibson’s and rounded Gower Point to the outside passage, I began to feel better. I was invited by the quartermaster for a mug-up in the mess room, and I was glad to go. There was a rich mixture of odors—fuel oil from the engine room, paint, rope, tar, sun, sweat.
“Are you doing anything tonight, Sheila?”
It was Jack, one of the deckhands. Somehow Jack and I were alone at the table. The rest of the crew must have drifted out. Jack was eighteen, had blond hair done in a ducktail and a smooth tanned chest showing at the V of his open shirt.
“Why?”
“I thought you might like to eat in Chinatown. Maybe go bowling.”
“I don’t know. My dad’s supposed to meet the boat, and I don’t know what he’s planned.”
“Should be finished here on the boat about six,” Jack said, pouring canned milk into his coffee. “I could meet you under the clock at Birk’s at six-thirty.” Even I knew where the clock at Birk’s was. “If you’re not there by seven, I’ll know you can’t make it. Okay?” He pulled at my hair and flashed a smile on his way out.
My father was waiting for me when the Lady Cecilia tied up at the Union pier at five-thirty that afternoon. He looked younger than he had the last time I’d seen him, and he had on a new jacket I’d never seen before. His shoes were polished, and he smelled of after-shave lotion. But he was preoccupied and in a hurry, as if he wanted to take care of me as quickly as possible and be on his way.
We took a taxi—an unheard-of extravagance—to the King George Hotel on Granville Street. He introduced me to Murray, the desk clerk, as his “little girl.”
I saw Murray give me a quick once-over. The thought even came to me that Murray didn’t believe my father. That made me stop and make a point of talking to him about my brothers and school and why I was in Vancouver.
Finally my father interrupted, “Sorry, honey, I’ve got to run. You’ll be all right, won’t you? Got enough money?” He was keyed up, jingling the loose change in his pocket.
“Sure, Dad.”