by Lori Weber
“Are you okay?” I ask. I have an urge to smooth back his bangs, out of his eyes.
“He’s fine, he’s tough. Right, little brother?” Davy says, still hovering around Jim, as though he might need to catch him.
“I’m fine, especially now,” he says to me. I guess he’s not angry that I didn’t visit him. He takes another slow step toward me, and I want to throw my arms around him, but his entire family is watching us. It’s like we’re in a freeze-frame.
“Let’s all go in,” Jim’s mom says finally. “I could murder a cup of tea.”
In the hallway, everyone stops to admire the banner. Just as I suspected, Jim’s cheeks flush when he reads the word “hero.” But he looks touched, his mouth curling into a smile.
“Joannie’s idea,” I say.
Jim flashes his little sister a thumbs-up sign that makes her beam. Jim’s mom helps him lower himself onto a high-backed hard chair. I look away while she’s doing it, because I have the feeling he wouldn’t want me watching.
I sit on the far end of the sofa, beside Joannie. Jim and I keep looking at each other. I’m almost bursting with things I want to tell him and ask him, but can’t. It’s like I’ve also got a thick bandage wrapped around my chest, holding me in.
“Well, Jim’s home—I’m going to get those seal sausages on. I took them out of the freezer this morning, just in case, before you all left,” Nanny says.
“Candy, love, go help Nanny with the dinner.”
“Mom, why me? Why can’t Joannie?”
“Because I asked you. Now go.”
“I’ll come, too,” says Davy. “I want to watch those sausages sizzle.” That makes Candy change her mind real fast. I get the feeling she’d follow Davy anywhere.
“Now, Joannie, me and you’ll go get that dining room fit for humans. I don’t suppose it’s been used in years. Nanny, where’s your dust rag to?”
Joannie wriggles with protest. “Jim said he’d show me all his rocks when he got home, Mom.”
“Yes, my love, and I’m sure he will, but not right this minute, so you come with me.”
“You’ll show them to me later, right, Jim?”
“Don’t worry, Joannie. I won’t forget,” says Jim. Then his mom pulls Joannie up, and they disappear down the front hall.
Suddenly, Jim and I are alone, but we’re miles across the room from one another.
“Do I have to throw you a lifesaver and rope you in, Cheryl?” Jim asks, smiling.
“Nah, I think I can manage.”
I move into the chair vacated by his mom. We’re close enough now to touch. Jim reaches for my hand. I don’t pull it back this time, like I did that day out in Quidi Vidi, under the black cloud. I wonder if Jim remembers much about that, or about what happened at Cape Spear.
“Jim, the concussion,” I say. “Did it wipe out your memory?”
“No way. My memory is perfect. All of it.” He doesn’t have to say it, but I know he’s thinking about the same thing I am. If we were truly alone, like we were in that bunker, we might try again. But the clinking of dishes and banging of pots reminds us that we’re not. Beside, I’m not sure Jim could lean forward to reach me. And then there’s his bruise. It looks so sore.
“It was really amazing, Jim. What you did out there.”
“Ah … well, I just did it, you know, kind of without thinking. It was weird.”
“It was so brave. Imagine! You saved someone’s life, someone who’ll grow up and have kids and grand-kids and tell them about you.”
“Ah, knock it off. If it hadn’t been me, someone else would’ve.”
“I don’t think so, Jim.” And then, without thinking, I’m leaning toward him. I want to kiss him again, to be that close to him. The bruise covers part of his lips. I wonder if kissing would hurt. I guess there’s only one way to find out.
“It’s ready,” Joannie bursts, practically jumping out of the dining room.
Jim and I sigh. This will have to be enough for now, Jim holding the hand that he traced, bringing those lines to life, as though they were just waiting to be unearthed.
•
THE AROMA OF SIZZLING meat and frying onions fills the house.
Nanny calls everyone into the kitchen to help carry stuff down to the dining room. Only Jim is exempt. I whisk a steaming bowl of boiled potatoes past him, and he winks. Davy helps Jim down the hall, where we sit around an old-fashioned dining room table and eat. I never would have thought Nanny could put together such a meal, with her shaking hands. The seal sausage is dark red and juicy. I am a bit nervous about eating it. I try not to think of those white, fluffy, poster seals. I tell myself it’s no different than eating chickens or cows. After all, they aren’t exactly raised in humane ways—I saw that on some of the farms in Saskatchewan. And it would be incredibly rude to turn my nose up at the seal here and now, so I bite in. A sharp taste hits the roof of my mouth and the seal grease practically slides down my throat. But it’s pretty good. Nanny tells us that as long as we have seals, we’ll never die for want of iron.
Jim and Davy eat their sausages the same way, taking small bites that they savour slowly, as if they have too much respect for the meat to desecrate it with their chewing. They “ooh” and “aah” through the whole experience.
“Oh, Nanny,” Davy says. “You sure know the way to a man’s heart. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a craving for your seal sausage back in Alberta. Here’s a confession: the guys started calling me ‘Fluffy,’ I talked about seals so much one night.”
“Well, Davy, you knows where to get some, anytime,” Nanny replies. The entire family turns to look at their mother, figuring she’s going to make some crack about Alberta.
“I’ll not say a word, my dears. I don’t want to spoil this meal, for Jim’s sake. He’s not left home, not really.”
“If I could fly you out to Alberta and set you up in your own little café you could make a killing whipping up home-cooked meals like this. I’m not the only one missing them,” Davy continues.
“Davy said I could get a job out there real easy, Ma,” Candy says. “I’m not going to school anyway, not really, so why shouldn’t I go with him?”
“I told you, miss, you’ll do the correspondence course and finish up. I didn’t buy that computer and get all hooked up to that Web for nothing.”
“But it’s useless, and it’s taking me forever.” I figure Candy must be in the same grade as me. I wonder why she didn’t come to St. John’s with Jim in the first place, but I guess she would have been pretty young to leave home at the time, only fourteen.
“You tell her, Jim.”
“Mom’s right, Candy. What are you gonna do without high school?”
“You could come in to St. John’s and go for nursing, or teaching,” Candy’s mom tells her.
Candy scowls. I have to admit that the thought of Candy doing either of those jobs is scary. I picture flying bedpans and blackboard erasers.
“I work with plenty of kids who dropped out,” Davy says. “They’re making good money, let me tell you. More than they’d be making even if they’d finished school.”
“For heaven’s sake, stop encouraging her,” Jim’s mom says. “You’re setting her off, Davy. Those are guys you’re talking about anyway. What about girls? What kind of work do they do out in the oil trade with no education? I think we can all guess.”
That shuts Davy up, and suddenly everyone is staring hard at their plates, which are smeared in black grease.
“I want to do what Jim does,” Joannie blurts out a minute later, to break the silence. “Exactly what Jim does, finding rocks and stuff. He’s even gonna help me find gold.”
“Yeah, pirate’s gold,” Davy says with a smirk.
“Fool’s gold,” Candy laughs.
I look at Jim. For a quick second, his whole face darkens, but then he just shakes his head. It’s like he’s heard all this before.
“Laugh all you want, big brother,” he says. “Not e
veryone wants to work in the oilfields. I know what I want. And maybe I’ll find real gold one day. Then we’ll see who’s laughing, because gold is worth more than oil.”
I look over at Nanny. She was in the kitchen for an hour cooking up all this food, standing on her feet, chopping the onions with her shaking hands. And now she has to listen to all this talk about oil—not her favourite topic.
“Nanny, that was the best meal I’ve ever had,” I say.
“Thank you, Cheryl, my love.”
Jim taps my foot with his own under the table. The phone rings at the exact same second, as though Jim’s foot has set it off.
“I’ll get it,” says Davy. He’s gone for a while. We can hear him talking and occasionally laughing out in the hallway, but we can’t make out what he’s saying. Finally he calls out, “It’s for you, Jimmy.” Unfortunately, it’s not a cordless. Davy helps his brother up, then Jim takes slow, but fluid steps on his own to the phone.
“Who knows he’s home already?” asks his mom.
“Maybe it’s the lieutenant queen, calling about his medal,” says Joannie, making Candy shake her head.
“Or more reporters,” says Nanny.
Davy doesn’t correct either of them. He makes a steeple of his index fingers and rests his chin in them, clamping his mouth.
We listen to Jim do the same kind of talking and laughing. A few minutes later he returns, his face flushed with a wide smile. “It’s for you now, Ma. It’s Sam.”
“Davy, you rascal, you never said.” Jim’s mother jumps up and runs for the phone. I wonder if Sam is her husband, but Jim would hardly call him Sam. He’d say “Dad,” I think.
“Sam’s my oldest brother,” Jim tells me.
Candy calls out to her mom that she wants to talk to him, too, probably to ask him to convince their mother to let her go to Alberta.
“Me, too,” yells Joannie. “Don’t forget me, like you always do.”
“Lord love a duck,” says Nanny. “That’s just about it. Just about the whole family.” She looks happy and sad all at once. “Cheryl, be a love and go put some water on, will you?”
When I pass Jim’s mom, she has the phone chord wound tightly around her hand and is trying to talk Sam into coming home. It’s like she’s negotiating a contract, taking Sam down from a week to a few days. “Surely the oil will wait two days,” she says. “It’s been there this long.”
By the time I return from the kitchen, where I filled the kettle and rinsed out the big teapot, Candy is on the phone, with Joannie hopping up and down behind her.
“He’s gonna try, but it didn’t sound likely,” Jim’s mom is saying, back in the dining room. “It would be my dream to see youse all together again before we go home, all five of you. It’s not too much to ask, is it, that I can see all my children together every few years?”
“Mom, don’t start. You’ll just get upset,” says Davy. “Besides, where would Sam sleep? He’s such a moose. Nanny would have to put him out in the yard in a tent.”
“Remember the time you all took a tent up to Mary’s Hill, you three boys? You wanted to be up early to see the whales. Then you got that crazy idea to hike down with flashlights, see the water at midnight. Little Jimmy was only two or three. You had him up, walking in the dark. He was terrified, especially when you told him all that stuff about the stick men with their powers from the devil. You had him carrying around a short stick of black wood, thinking it would give him magic powers and whatnot, like Superman. He looked out for stick men everywhere we went for about a year after that.”
“Too bad he didn’t have his stick last week, eh, Ma? He could’ve calmed the ocean.” Davy and his mom crack up. Jim is shaking his head.
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“Ah, we’re embarrassing little Jimmy,” Davy says. “Especially in front of his girlfriend.”
Jim and I look at each other. We haven’t exactly used that word yet, or its male equivalent, but I guess it’s kind of true.
“You always did take things too serious, Jimmy,” says Davy. “But we shouldn’t of teased you so much.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” says Jim. “I survived.”
Candy and Joannie return. “Sam said the same as Davy, Mom, that I should go out there. He could get me a job in a minute.”
“I give up,” Jim’s mom says, putting her head in her hands. “I want everyone together, and you all just keep wanting to up and leave. I don’t know, I just don’t know.”
“If we’d all stayed on Fox Island, none of this would’ve happened,” Nanny says.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Candy snaps. Her mom sends her a biting look, which shuts her up immediately.
“Go get the tea, Candy,” she says. “Take Joannie to help.”
“If I have anymore tea I’ll drown,” says Davy. “I’ll help clear up, though.” Davy and his sisters carry the plates and bowls out to the kitchen. Around the table there is a heavy silence. Jim’s mom and aunt seem to be miles away, back in a different place and time. Jim and I shrug across the table.
Suddenly the doorbell rings, startling Jim’s mom so much her head snaps up.
“Now what?” she says. “If your brother was calling from a cellphone around the corner, I’ll …”
Davy flies to the door, probably thinking the same thing, and Jim’s face is full of hope. But two seconds later, it’s my father’s voice we hear. “Sorry to bother you,” he says. “We were wondering if Cheryl is here.”
“She’s in there,” says Davy. “Glued to our Jimmy. Go on in.”
My parents appear at the dining room door, smiling around, trying to tone down their excitement. Here’s their chance to hang out with the locals and pick their brains. I want to crawl under the table.
“Come in, sit down. I’m Lucy, Jim’s mom. We were just about to have some tea. Join us now?”
“Oh, thanks, we didn’t mean to intrude. We just got home from Cape St. Mary’s, and the house was empty. We worried a bit, you know, because of last time,” says my mom. “I’m Ellen, by the way, and this is Kevin.”
“Say no more. God gave us kids to help the white hairs along. That’s what my mom always said, and it’s so true. You have only the one—I’ve got five times the grey,” Jim’s mom says, pointing to her head.
My parents sit where Joannie and Candy were, my dad right next to Jim.
“It smells great in here,” he says. “What did you have?”
“Seal sausage,” says Nanny.
“Really? I’m anxious to try some myself sometime,” he responds. My father always makes a point of eating the local food. It’s like he thinks it’ll soak into his blood and make him one with the land and people he’s studying.
“Sorry. There’s not a bit left,” says Davy. “Not with me around.”
“Oh, I wasn’t fishing,” says my dad, his voice trailing off, as though he’s just realized his poor choice of metaphor. “So, Jim? How are you doing? Feeling better?”
“Sore, but okay, I guess,” says Jim.
“You’re young, you’ll heal quickly. Right? The resilience of youth,” my dad says grandly, as though it’s some well-known saying, looking around to see who’ll agree with him.
Candy comes back in with the loaded tea tray, followed by Joannie, who is carrying the cups.
“Got to be resilient where I work,” Davy jumps in. “You name it, it happens. Falling, cutting, stabbing, burning.”
“Thanks so much, Davy, my son. I’ll feel better now when you goes back to work. And about Sam, too. I’ll tell you. Sure, I’ll be snow-white by Christmas.”
I watch my mom send Jim’s mom a sympathetic smile, with a slight shake of her head, as though she can relate. But that’s crazy. What do I ever do that compares to drilling for oil?
“I suppose it was all easier for you before the fishery closed?” my dad says. My heart thumps, and my throat goes dry. If he starts interrogating Jim’s family, I’ll die.
�
��Oh, yeah, lots easier,” says Davy, pouring the tea. “Then all she had to worry about was us capsizing in storms or falling overboard.”
“I’m not saying that fishing is without peril. I’m sure it was dangerous work, but at least you knew what it was. It was tradition. Am I right, Lucy?”
Oh, God, I feel an index entry coming on: “Lucy, fishing mother.” Or “Lucy, loss.”
“Jim tells me you knit. I quilt. I don’t know if he told you?” my mom jumps in. I’m hoping they’ll go off on that tangent, talking colour and patterns.
“I only knit so much now because I have to, since the fishery closed up. I used to knit for the family. Now, I knit for strangers.”
I can feel my father sucking that sentence out of the air and stamping it on his brain.
“Do you mind if I quote you on that Lucy?” he says. The dining room ceiling falls about six feet, until it’s almost on top of my head.
“Quote her? Are you a journalist or something?” Davy asks.
“No. I’m an anthropologist, as in anthropos, the Greek word for human being. I’m working on a book. You must know about it, Jim? Didn’t Cher tell you?”
“She mentioned a book, but she didn’t say much about it.” I’m still fighting off the ceiling.
“What’s it about? Knitting?” asks Lucy. Candy and Joannie laugh.
“No. It’s mostly about dying cultures,” says my father. That’s when the ceiling comes down all the way, burying me in plaster dust and debris.
Jim’s body snaps to attention across from me, and his face pinches.
“Dying?” he asks. “Who’s dying here?” He turns to face me. “You said he was here to study fishing culture. You didn’t say anything about dying.”
I don’t respond. I just stare at my plate, holding in my breath.
“Well, as in the way of life, fishing life. That’s dying, isn’t it?” my father responds, even though Jim is still looking straight at me.
“Maybe, but the people aren’t dying. You make it sound like we’re all washed up, like the capelin.”