Black Apple (32 page)

She should go to confession.
Non
, she didn’t want to. She always found the process embarrassing. Despite decades of earnest attempts, she had never been able to forget that on the other side of the screen was a priest, one she knew, and now it was undoubtedly Father William. Over the years, she had considered him young, inexperienced, and flawed, though currently, the man was almost a friend. Not like Father Patrick, though.
Mon Dieu
, she couldn’t put the two names in the same sentence. Father Patrick was her true confessor, her confidant, her love.

Dead.

How his letters had felt in her hand as she plucked them from the mail—packets of ink and ideas—substantive, challenging, yet always confirming. Even in old age, a thrill had run through her breast as she opened them, often late at night while the sisters slept. Patrick’s humour—clever, sharp, and sometimes derisive, often delightfully mischievous—unfailingly caused her to laugh out loud in the hushed school. His love too; she had felt it in the texture of the paper—old and strong as a tree, as complexly grained.

In the past, when busy or ill, he had gone as many as two weeks without corresponding. When running his mission in the Badlands to the east, it had occasionally been as long as a month. She had worried only on occasion, and only slightly. If anything happened to Patrick, she would know deep within her soul. Should he be in danger or pass on, the very configuration of the world would alter, and she would most definitely feel it.

So she had thought.

Rose Marie’s note informing her so bluntly of Patrick’s death had hit like a sledgehammer, and she still hadn’t recovered. Would she ever? She looked out the window at the sun, yellow as urine seeping into the white sheet of winter. She glanced at her hands, her once handsome nails, bitten. She couldn’t remember doing it.

Despite knowing she had things to accomplish, she couldn’t focus. At the very least, she should write to Rose Marie, but damn it, she couldn’t summon the motivation. She wasn’t sure she was even capable of scribbling more than a sentence or two.

Hélas
, her last letter had been to Father Patrick, asking him to inform Rose Marie of her father’s death, she suddenly realized. And what had happened to that letter? If the housekeeper had simply returned it in the mail, she should have received it by now. Perhaps the housekeeper had read it herself and then told Rose Marie the news. Or perhaps it was sitting on a dusty shelf, unopened. Had she been too familiar with Patrick in the letter, should the interim priest read it? She was unsure. Then again, it was quite possible that Rose Marie had read the letter and was heartbroken. Or furious. She couldn’t deny that she had felt some guilt over the years for allowing Mr. Whitewater only limited access to his daughter.

She reached across her desk to have a look through the pile of newspapers Father Alphonses had brought her: both regional and national papers at least a week old, but sent to him by the bishop because of their coverage of the new Indian Act. Father Alphonses had driven them out to St. Mark’s for her to read. “I appreciate this,” she had muttered, knowing that normally she would have.

She ached from neck to wrist and had to position each newspaper in front of her on the desk in order to read it. From what she could gather, this new Indian Act conceded that residential schools had been unsuccessful in their attempts to assimilate the Indian race.
Oui
, she had known; they’d all known, but exposed in black and white for all to see, the word
failure
chilled her to the bone.

She scribbled a note, cancelling her meeting with Sister Cilla. She had hoped to solidify her strategy for the future of St. Mark’s, encouraging Priscilla to rededicate herself for the greater cause.
You are the one on whom my hopes for the future of St. Mark’s rest
, she had planned to remind her.

She’d meet with Sister Cilla tomorrow, or possibly the day after. When she had the strength for it.

She rose from her desk. Two in the afternoon and she was already weary, unable to spend another minute stuck to her office chair. She shook three aspirins into her mouth and, grasping one of her canes, headed towards the long and difficult staircase. On the way, she stuffed her note in Sister Cilla’s mailbox.

With every step, she heard the creak of death. So much death over the years. Not surprisingly, she was learning of the passing of colleagues often these days, strong young women with whom she had attended the Mother House and sisters she had met during her years on the prairies. Then her oldest brother, Martin, gone just this past month with a heart attack. Her second-eldest brother, Stéphane, fourteen years before, and all those tubercular Indians she had worked with in hospitals.
Vieilli,
the young feverish students! So many of them. So young. Her father had died haying when she was thirty, and five years later, dear Maman had gone in her sleep. It was as if all the deaths she had ever known culminated in Patrick’s passing, as if she were experiencing every last one of them again. Patrick,
cher
Patrick,
God bless your beautiful self.

Each step caused her skirts to rub together. Widow’s weeds. Of course, they were the same black and white as always, the cumbersome signification of her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Perhaps too much obedience, she was beginning to think. Obedience led to compliance, which over the years had hardened to indifference—and indifference, she suspected, was the demise of the soul.

At this precise moment she felt completely indifferent to St. Mark’s and its operation, the sisters, the students, and her own role. Her heart was nothing more than a dry husk.
Une veuve
. Yet she could tell no one of the depth of her grief. She took to her bed, something she had never done in all her years of serving at St. Mark’s, no matter how weakened by cold, flu, or rheumatism.

  *  *  *  

Three days later, she rose from bed in the afternoon, walked to her narrow window, peered out, and from the second storey, observed that pig farmer Olaf approach Sisters Bernadette and Cilla on the front grounds, a large package—no doubt of pork kidneys or liver, wrapped like some sort of sacred offering—in his hands. From her second-storey window, she heard Sister Bernadette’s giggle as she took the package. Even with her rheumy eyes, she was able to spot the flush in Sister Cilla’s cheek.

For a full week, she could not muster the resources necessary to descend the stairs to her office. Except for treks to the bathroom or to her window to look out at the waning autumn sun, she remained in bed, dozing through day and night and praying for the soul of Father Patrick, her dear husband.
Mon Dieu.

Sister Bernadette delivered a bowl of watery chicken soup and a note from Father William, but reading first of Patrick’s death, and then about the new Indian Act, had damaged her eyes. Now they burned and watered whenever she tried to look at anything for longer than a few seconds.

“I’m surely going blind,” she complained to Sister Bernadette, who was about to open her mouth. “Take the note back to Father William, and whatever it is you have to say, I don’t care.”

“It’s about Sister—”

“Shush! I don’t want to hear it.”

She got out of bed on Sunday to listen to Father William’s sermon, but watching him gesticulate in the pulpit started her eyes watering again, and she returned to her room. Sister Simon brought her dinner, which she tried valiantly to eat.

  *  *  *  

During the first week of October, she finally got up, dressed, and made her way down the hall to the priests’ suite.
Onward, Christian soldiers.
With her cane, she knocked firmly on Father William’s door.

“Why, Mother Grace,” he greeted her, scratching his beard. “You must be feeling better. I’m, of course, very glad to see—”

“I’ve come for that portable radio that was confiscated from the senior girl. I’m not sure how it ended up in your suite.”

“Um, actually, I want you to look at what I think you’ll find an inspiring article for the
Catholic News
. I’d be interested in what you—”

“I’ve come for the radio.”

“Of course. I’ll get it. No, I can’t expect you to—um, I’ll carry it to your office.”

“I need it now, William.”

“Of course, Mother Grace. Right away.”

  *  *  *  

Late that night, when the students were fast asleep in the third-floor dormitory, the sisters in their rooms, and Father William and Brother Abe in their suite, Mother Grace entered her office and with one creaking arm swept the newspapers from the top of her desk. Leaning forward, she switched on the radio and sat down.
Vieilli
, the “Hog Report” at this hour? She turned the dial, and music filled the absence.

You are my sunshine.

T
OWARDS THE END
of her second month in Black Apple, Rose Marie was constantly worried. She didn’t know if Mother Grace had sent Father Seamus or Mrs. Mooney a cheque for her room and board. Or if she was going to. She didn’t want to ask either of them, afraid she’d be lectured, or maybe even turned out of the old Mooney place. What would she do then?

As she was clearing the dining room table after supper one night, she turned to see Frank behind her, blocking her exit to the kitchen. His reckless grin knocked her heart out of its rhythm, but then his expression turned sombre.

“I was wondering,” he began, and, thankfully, he dropped his eyes to his coal-stained hands. “Would you like to come for a walk with me?” He had never asked her so formally, so seriously before.

She could smell him—not a strong scent—but a mingling of fresh earth, coal, and autumn. Shaking her head, she took a step backward, right into the dining room table. She tried to appear unperturbed; peering around at the gravy-spotted tablecloth she had flung over a chair, but when she looked back at Frank, her composure crumbled. An “undesirable,” Mother Grace would label him—“unworthy,” and, yes, she could see that he was. He never went to church, and he always seemed to be trying to lead her astray. She needed to get away from him, to flee to the kitchen and join the women before she did something she regretted. But with the table at her back, Frank in front, she was stuck.

“Well?”

She looked into his dark, handsome face.
Go away
, she told him inside her head. Then, also inside her head, she was running out the door, and he was chasing her, catching her hand in his.

His eyes danced, and her heart joined in. She put two fingers against her lips to push back the
yes
that wanted to pop out. “No, Frank,” she whispered instead.

“I don’t know why you’re scared of me,” he said, shaking his head. “Shouldn’t be, but you are. Not yet, then, but soon you’ll come with me.” He started to turn away, but then stopped, willing her to look back at him.

She would not. She turned to grab the tablecloth to throw in the wash.

He moved closer. Dry hurt. A spark of mischief.

“I could show you some sights, little lady,” he said, his tone altered, his breath hot against her temple. He was going to tease her; she could tell by the gunfire of his laugh. “Maybe we could go for a dip in the river together. Would you like that?” He inched closer, enjoying her embarrassment as she pressed up against the table. She had refused him, and now he was playing with her—a bobcat with a rabbit.

“Maybe you got a bathing suit you could put on, one with a little skirt?”

As he chuckled, Cyril came up behind him and cleared his throat. Frank turned and slapped the big man on the biceps. “Hi there. Best damn miner coal ever seen, Cyril,” he said, looking back to her. “Except for me.”

With Cyril close by, Frank was more animated, his voice playing the air like a fiddle. “Cyril is big and slow. He’s a white guy—I’m an Indian, right? Like you, Rose Marie.”

She looked up at both men, wondering how to get by them to the kitchen. She shifted from foot to foot, and there was an awkward silence before Frank continued, his voice bitter.

“Cyril’s a regular miner, but I’m a bucker, a goddamned bucker.”

Cyril stepped towards her, hitting Mrs. Mooney’s tea trolley with his shin and making the cups and saucers clatter. “A bucker’s a guy they call in when the coal gets jammed in the chute,” he explained in the smooth radio-announcer voice he used on the porch when she was upset about Father Seamus. “The bucker has to kick the coal down and get out of the way before it lands on top of him. Frank’s the best bucker there ever was.”

“Yeah,” Frank scoffed. “So good that they keep me doing the most dangerous job in the mine year after year. They used to get the young guys, you know, sixteen, eighteen, then move them out after a few months or as soon as they got injured. Hell, they like me so much, they just keep me at it, kicking at coal, slamming up against the wall or diving into the next room as soon as it comes hurtling down. They liked Eugene too, till he took the hint and left. Kind of gives us Indians a thrill, dodging death like that.” He stared at her so hard she had to look away.

Her face burned, but she hadn’t done anything wrong. She wasn’t betraying anyone, not Frank, whom she hardly knew and who was trouble with a capital
T
. Not the sisters either. They were the ones who had sent her here. Not even Mama and Papa, who were dead. If anyone had betrayed anyone else, they had betrayed
her
by letting Father Alphonses and the Indian agent take her from the life she should have had at home with them in the bush, an Indian life. But that wasn’t right either.

She was trapped between the dining room table and these two men, trapped in this house, this town, trapped into returning to St. Mark’s in less than five weeks. She drew a deep breath. She had to deny Frank . . . yes, his
presumption
.

Her voice wavering, she managed to say, “I can’t go for a walk with you. I’m supposed to become a nun, and nuns don’t go for walks alone with men. Especially at night.”