After the Fire (17 page)

Karen let her head for the big road and drive nearly into Victoria and back, the speed and ease gradually giving her back her confidence and pleasure.

“Maybe I should be a long-distance trucker,” Red said. “It wouldn’t be such a bad life for a kid.”

“Most kids get carsick.”

“How do you know things like that?” Red demanded.

“I went away to camp. Because I was an only child, my parents thought I needed extra practice getting along with kids my own age.”

“Did you get along with them?”

“Well enough, I guess,” Karen said. “But I never liked kids much. They were always being sick or mean.”

“Not just kids,” Red said. “People.”

“Let’s go back to Sidney now,” Karen suggested. “I need to find a birthday present for my mother.”

“Is it your mother or your father …” Red began a question she was obviously reluctant to finish.

“My father,” Karen said. “You can tell by my last name, Tasuki.”

“I can’t,” Red confessed. “I never know how Mrs. Forbes figures out who’s Jewish or Hungarian or whatever by their last names. I don’t have a last name. My mother called herself Smith. She said maybe I should be Heinz for fifty-seven varieties. She told people I was a little bit of everything bad: kike, wop, nigger, squaw.”

“My father tells me I’m one hundred and fifty percent Canadian.”

“Do they live in Vancouver?”

“No, my dad’s in the East. My mother doesn’t seem to live anywhere for very long.”

They had taken the Sidney turn, and Karen was quiet now to let Red concentrate. When they got to the town center, Karen didn’t insist that Red park on the street.

Red gratefully pulled into a parking lot. “I’ve had about enough of that for one day,” she admitted.

“Do you want to wait in the car?”

“Maybe I will.”

Karen was glad to be alone for a chore that baffled and would have embarrassed her had Red been with her. She had no idea of her mother’s tastes. When she tried to think of colors her mother wore, Karen had no distinct memory. It would be easier to pick out something for Hen or Miss James or even the silly Milly Forbes. The few times she’d gone shopping with her mother, they’d looked for things for Karen which always hung in Karen’s closet unworn. The presents her mother sent to her were tokens—bits of junk jewelry from around the world to go with a Christmas or birthday check drawn on an American bank account. Peggy had occasionally rummaged in Karen’s drawer and found something that amused her; otherwise the gifts languished unused. Karen didn’t wear jewelry. She supposed her gifts to her mother suffered a similar fate, knowledge which made her search the more futile. She went back to the car with a handbag, hoping her mother would like it only because Karen didn’t.

Red was sound asleep. She looked even younger than her eighteen years, her soft mouth slightly parted, fine dark hair fallen over one eye. Karen wanted to reach out and brush the hair back off her face. It occurred to her for the first time that she would like to kiss that mouth. Stupid.

“Wake up,” Karen said firmly, “and move over. I’m driving home.”

“The doctor says there’s nothing the matter with you,” Red said to Henrietta, who looked up at her from her bed.

“It isn’t Thursday, is it?” Henrietta asked.

“People get up every day of the week,” Red said, “even on a day when nobody is supposed to be cleaning the house.”

“I was going to get up … later,” Henrietta lied. “You mustn’t bully me.”

“A month is long enough,” Red said.

A month? Had it really been a month? This limbo felt both like yesterday and the whole of her life. The difficulty wasn’t that her bones ached so much; it was their weight she couldn’t bear to haul around from room to room. Red and Karen had kept telling her she was losing weight but they didn’t understand that her teeth were too heavy, her tongue was too large for her mouth, and she had to think to make herself swallow.

“Here’s tea and juice,” Red said. “Have that, and then I’ll help you dress.”

“I’ll be just fine,” Henrietta tried to assure her as she struggled to sit upright. “You just go along.”

“Mrs. Hawkins,” Red said, “I’m going to come here every morning and get you out of bed until you’re back in the habit.”

Henrietta hadn’t the strength to protest that it was nobody’s business whether she stayed in bed or not. She sat and sulked over her tray until Red came back into the room.

“Drink it,” Red ordered, handing her the juice.

Henrietta accepted the glass reluctantly and took a small sip while Red watched her.

“It’s fresh,” Henrietta said, surprised by the sweetness and texture.

“The juice in the fridge is a week old. No wonder you don’t want to drink it. How long is it since you went to the store?”

“Milly brought me some things the other day,” Henrietta said.

“Ten days ago, and you told her not to call or come back till you called her. You haven’t.”

“She tires me, Red.”

The mere thought of Milly made the juice glass in Henrietta’s hand too heavy to hold.

“You could shop for yourself.”

“You and Karen are always bringing me things. I don’t seem to need all that much.”

“When you get up, we’ll go for a drive.”

“I’m just not up to driving.”

“I’ll do the driving,” Red said.

“You don’t know how to drive,” Henrietta said, relieved to remember the limit of Red’s power.

“Yes, I do. Karen taught me, and I have my license.”

“When did all this happen?” Henrietta asked, hating the little flash of fear that could invade her lethargy now and then.

“Over the past while. We’re going to call on Miss James. She’s better, but she still can’t go out, and she’s bored.”

“I can’t do that,” Henrietta protested. “I don’t have the voice for Miss James.”

“She’s expecting you,” Red said.

“I’m not to be expected!” Henrietta replied crossly.

“Just let her talk,” Red suggested, and grinned.

“What’s so amusing?”

“I’m just glad to see you haven’t forgotten how to be mad,” Red said.

What Henrietta couldn’t explain was that any emotion was a threat to her. Only by being still, by cultivating apathy, had she gradually been able to sink below the horror of Hart’s death. If she let herself rise up again, it might be there waiting for her. Yet the burden her own body was becoming to her was not her will. It was beginning to suffer in a way she hadn’t anticipated or intended. She needed Red’s help to dress. And she needed Red’s arm to lean on if she was going to try to walk to the car.

“I really can’t do it,” Henrietta said in some consternation as she sank into the passenger seat of her car. “I’m as weak as a kitten.”

Blackie, held away by Red’s order until Henrietta had sat down, now crowded into her knees.

“Blackie!” Red said firmly.

The dog cried but backed off, her tail wagging frantically.

“Shall I tie her up?” Red asked, “or can we take her along?”

“Take her,” Henrietta said.

By the time Red had settled Blackie into the back seat, Henrietta had managed to swing her legs into the car. She closed her eyes and felt the sweet breath of the young dog at her ear.

“Blackie, sit!”

The dog sank back onto the floor behind their seats. Henrietta wondered vaguely at the confidence with which Red started the car and backed out of the garage. Earlier she might have felt a pang at someone else’s taking on Red’s education, but it was nothing but a relief to her now that Red had given herself over to another teacher. The movement of the car lulled her.

“Open your eyes!” Red ordered.

They were so heavy Henrietta wasn’t sure she could. The reward, a view of her own fern- and fir-lined drive, was another small jolt of fear. The old fern fronds had not been cut back, and already the pale brown fists of new growth had begun to push their way through. She didn’t want to risk even the ferns’ need of her.

“I’ll help you cut those back if you like,” Red offered. “There’s quite a bit around the place that needs doing.”

Henrietta didn’t answer. They were now out on the island road. Even here where she had no responsibilities, the living world seemed to clamor for her attention, from the pale greens of new growth on the evergreens to the blossoming berries. And there in a clearing by the side of the road were two does pausing to look before they bounded off into the bush.

As Red turned into Miss James’ drive, Henrietta felt her bones settle. She was at the bottom of the sea.

“I truly can’t,” she managed to say.

“I know,” Red said. “I’m just going to go in and tell her we’ll come another day when you’re stronger.”

Henrietta didn’t want strength, but she wanted to be free to choose against it. She was weighted here by her bones, really unable.

“Stay,” Red said to Blackie.

The dog cried a little at Henrietta’s ear before she settled back, resigned to her wait. And again Henrietta closed her eyes against the sight of Miss James’ wild little garden, beyond which the maples had leafed out to block her view of the sea. But she did remember that one day this would be Red’s cottage, and she opened her eyes again because a child would one day play among these moss-covered rocks and scatterings of flowers.

K
AREN’S FATHER HAD PHONED
from Vancouver and was arriving on the evening boat. She had swapped shifts with another ferry worker so that she could wait on the dock like any ordinary islander expecting company.

The dock was not as crowded as it would be in high summer, but the weather in late spring was already tempting visitors not tied to school schedules. The first vehicles off the ferry were campers inevitably driven by grey-haired or balding men whose wives sat beside them with laps full of knitting. Then came cars of young couples with one or two toddlers strapped into regulation car seats behind them. Very few people arrived alone unless they were islanders coming back from a day in town. And none of those wore a suit and tie and sat behind the wheel of an expensive rented car.

Karen swung into the seat beside her father quickly not to hold up the traffic. He glanced sideways at her, a look she returned only when his eyes had shifted back to the line of traffic. His extreme good looks always came as a shock to her. He had sent her a black-and-white photograph of himself, taken when he’d become president of his university, and in it his eyes were opened unnaturally wide, and his normally mobile mouth was clamped shut, macho Canadian through and through, no inscrutable Jap here. In person his skin was golden, his eyes dark honey and half-hidden, his mouth vulnerable to his moods.

“You look better,” he said without glancing over at her again.

“I am,” she answered.

The cottage did not please him but for the same reason Karen was beginning to grow impatient with it; there was neither room nor reason to make it her own.

“I have to move out for the month of August when the owners use it,” she explained, “but that makes the rent very reasonable.”

“Won’t you have had enough of this life by then?” he asked.

“Of this cottage, maybe. I like the island.”

“What exactly is it that you’re doing?”

Karen didn’t want to confess her jobs as a sin. She didn’t want the little confidence they had given her wiped out by the purse of her father’s lips.

“I’m learning to live alone and take care of myself. I never have before.”

“Does it suit you?”

She wanted to take a step back from him, away from his height of which he was so proud.

“It’s beginning to,” she said.

“You’re a grown woman,” he said, sighing as he sat down on the couch made suddenly more shabby as the setting for his expensive suit.

Karen did look carefully at him then because he was staring out at the view which was restless with water birds. She could not possibly be the cause of the strained sorrow in his face.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

“Your mother’s dead,” he said, still focused on the sea. “I’ve just come back from … I brought back a few of her things. I thought you might like … want …”

“When?”

“A week ago. She was always such a frail little thing.”

“Of what?”

“Boredom? Terror? Exhaustion?”

“Those aren’t things you die of,” Karen said.

“Your mother killed herself.”

All Karen heard in herself was
Might I?

“I just sent her a handbag, for her birthday.”

“I know,” he said. “It was there. She hadn’t opened it.”

“I didn’t mean anything to her,” Karen said bleakly.

“Nobody did,” her father said without comfort.

“Why not?”

“Maybe she just didn’t have the energy.”

They sat in awkward silence, Karen waiting to feel something out of which she might find something to say.

“We weren’t divorced,” her father said finally in a deliberate way. “She didn’t want a divorce.”

“Did you?”

“I haven’t been celibate.”

Why had he made it sound like a confession? Surely he didn’t think she was unaware of his young women. He hadn’t ever brought them home while Karen still lived there, but he made no secret of them.

“I’ve never thought she … was your fault.”

“Did she?” he asked, offering another of his sideways glances.

“Oh, I don’t know. We never talked about it. We never talked about anything.”

“I married her because she reminded me of my mother,” he said, and then he laughed.

Karen heard no bitterness in it, just a sense of the absurd. How could her tiny, blue-eyed mother remind him of his own? Karen had never met his mother. Both his parents had died in the camp. She assumed her mother’s parents were either permanently estranged from their daughter or dead.

Her father stood again and turned to her, giving her the first direct look of his visit. He had never kissed her except with his eyes.

“I’ve eaten. Have you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Shall we take a look at this pub of yours?”

Karen had, ever since her mother had left them, been both afraid for and proud of her father. Losing his wife, he seemed to have lost his ticket to the social world he was determined to feel comfortable in, and Karen was no help, both too young and not white enough. But tonight she could offer him the friendliness of her world.