Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (9 page)

Ivan answered her in French that he would get the soup and moved carefully around her, not because of her, but because he didn’t want to upset Antony, who was licking his sapphire ring in order to put it back on.

It was after supper. A breeze had come up, and the trees across the road and along the dirt lane to Vera’s were waving, while the sky was filled with gold. On the chair in her room, by the window, Margaret sat painting her toenails while her brother Ivan, his shirt tied in a knot against his belly, and his belly as taut as a young welterweight, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, watched her.

He spoke to her in
franglais
– that mixture of French and English – that the French along the roadway spoke to one another. Margaret wanted to be a veterinarian. She loved goats and ducks. In fact, she drew pictures of ducks and put them all over her room, and she had ducks on two of her T-shirts.

“I just wonder,” Margaret said pensively, and trying to sound very grown-up suddenly, but sounding more like a thirteen-year-old than the nineteen-year-old, “will Cindi come down to visit me?”

“For sure she will,” Ivan said. When he spoke he tried to sound as if everything had come to a conclusion that he himself had favoured.

Margaret looked at him out of the corner of her eye, while adjusting the Kleenex between her toes.

“I don’t know why she would leave you anyways,” Margaret said.

“Well, I have nothing to say about it.”

“Dad told Nannie you batted her about and kicked her – in the guts.”

“Ya, well Dad should take care of Dad,” Ivan said. Then he butted his cigarette after two drags.

After she adjusted the Kleenex between her toes, Margaret walked on her heels to the door and closed it.

“Everyone knows where she is anyways,” Margaret said.

“Where?” Ivan said. “Where in fuck is she?”

Then, as always, when she tried to sound as grownup as she looked, she managed to be childlike.

“Everyone knows – it’s where Ruby goes.” Although, at that moment, she didn’t seem to be quite sure of herself.

“Ruby goes where?”

“Well, that apartment down river.”

Yet before she could speak any more, say another word, Ivan had left the room.

Ivan decided he couldn’t go there. And that’s where Antony had the advantage over him. Not that Antony was waiting for an advantage – he, like all of us, never knew one moment what was going to happen the next – but he happened to be in his room and overheard most of the conversation. He could hear it as clearly as if he were in Margaret’s room itself. He waited until Ivan left, then he stood up and walked along the hallway heavily. The window at the end of the hallway was spotted and showed the back field. There was some yellow weed in the sun. Far away the bay was spotless, and he remembered swimming when he was a boy, and how they would all run through the stubbled hay field to get the cows to lick the salt off their skin, and then lay down against the hay bale and watch the blue sky above them while they ate licorice from the store. When he was fifteen he went to work for his uncle.

He walked into Margaret’s room. She had her small fan going and was drying her toes as she leaned back against a chair. She had taken Ivan’s cigarette out of the ashtray and had it lit – and though it had a hole in it where some tobacco seeped through, she was puffing dramatically on it, completely oblivious to her father’s presence.

“Now you went and told him everything,” Antony said, as if he’d known Cindi’s whereabouts all along.

Margaret sat up so quickly she almost caught one of her toes in the fan, and flipped the cigarette under her sweater.

“I don’t care,” she said. “He should know where Cindi is.”

“Yes, so he can put her through the same misery your mother put me through,” Antony said, “and beat her up again. He’s a dangerous man – that lad.”

“He will not,” Margaret said. “And Cindi is spose to come down and visit me too.”

“Well, she won’t come down and visit ya because she doesn’t like ya – she never liked you, matter-of-fact.”

Margaret became solemn and stone-faced.

“I’m sending you to a boarding school and a convent and let the nuns take care of you – and don’t think they won’t whip you into shape,” he said, coming to stand over her.

Margaret said nothing. She remained very stone-faced, while smoke seeped through the neck and short sleeves of her white sweater.

“I have a lot to do tonight,” Antony said. “I can’t go way down river and look out for her.”

His forehead and the hair on his head was damp. He was sure of only one thing – that it was his responsibility (and he could later relate this responsibility to Gloria).

“Well,” she said to him in French, “you always take everyone else’s side but your own family’s.”

He was stunned that she would say this to him, and yet as soon as she said it he felt that this was the one remark he had been anticipating from her for a long time.

And he looked the way Ivan had often seen him look – genuinely sad and confused. He made a shadow against the blowing curtain.

“I don’t know what kind of toe polish yer using,” he said, “but it smells like burnt shirts or something – I
can’t get a handle on it. And another thing,” he said loudly, as he always spoke loudly when he was nervous, “I don’t know when girls grow up – how long it takes to make all their parts the right appearance, but,” he said, stammering, “be careful of yer shorts.”

She said nothing but looked mortified, and he, too, looked embarrassed.

“And,” he concluded, as if to negate what he had just said, “I’m taking one of yer ducks over to Val’s room – she should have a duck too. I never understood why you should have all the ducks.”

And with that he picked up a large ceramic duck that Vera had made Margaret and went out of the room. Margaret stood and began to slap herself frantically, as if to put herself out.

Two hours later, almost dead drunk, Antony was at the apartment, sitting in a big chair.

There was no food in the apartment as yet. Cindi had found some soda crackers and she drank water, with her big potted plant sitting on the waxed floor near the rolled-up rug. She had gotten twenty-five bags of tea.

There was no television in the apartment either. So Cindi sat in the chair in the corner, her eyes squinted shut and her feet tapping. Since she was a
TV
addict, this was driving her crazy. The telephone hadn’t been installed. The apartment had the look and feel of emptiness – which was saturated with a June heat wave. But people did come and go, day and night – like they do under certain conditions in dormitories or residences, or late-night places of business.

Antony, in fact, had arrived just like this. Bop, and he was there – with his friend Ernie. Ernie was staring at Cindi in the most peculiar way any man had ever stared at her. He looked at her as if he had never seen
her before. He had worn his best pair of jeans. And whenever she looked at him he would nod urgently. He shook her hand three times, until, when he looked her way, she hid her hand behind her back.

“Momma don’t even know where I am,” he said. He looked at Ruby and smiled. He seemed to consider this a very bad place to be. It seemed that he wanted to tell them that he knew he shouldn’t be here, but soon, overcome with drink and sleep, he curled up in a corner and slept, infrequently letting out a cry and kicking his feet and punching.

Cindi felt frightened of this behaviour. But the most important thing for Cindi, as her mother – who looked and had the work done to look like an older Gina Lollobrigida – had taught her, was manners. And manners Cindi had. Because she clung to them as a device to save herself from all the wise people that she came into contact with. She was always polite and nice, and tried to be attractive. She never swore in her life. Her mother had told her that if she swore her mouth would fill up with dirt – and even when others said a dirty word, she would clamp her mouth shut. This is why Cindi had always fallen for older men – like Gordon Russell. Gordon never swore in front of her. He was married and he had left her in a motel on the Island three years ago, in fact, stranded her (like other men had), but he had never sworn at her or in her presence.

He was not that old either – only forty at the time they “loved” each other. She had been nineteen.

“It’s just because he has a wife, huh,” she said to Ruby.

“That’s probably it,” Ruby said.

“Oh, wow,” Cindi said, and she smiled.

Cindi had had a child by Gordon, which he had told her wasn’t his – and he looked so hurt that he broke up with her. He was hurt that it wasn’t his child, and Cindi, as always when people looked at her, had lowered her eyes.

“I think it is – if you don’t know,” she said. And she said this in a peevish little singsong voice.

“It’s not my child – I can’t have children,” Gordon had said.

“You – can’t?”

“No, dear – that’s the one thing I have learned – unfortunately. It breaks my heart.”

“I thought you had children,” Cindi said, in the same singsong voice.

“My wife can have children,” Gordon said. He sat on the side of the bed, in the smell of the soiled clothes and sneakers, with suntan lotion over his skin. He sat with his head down, at the Seaview Motel, and Cindi sat with her eyes half-closed and her fingers clasped together.

“My wife has the children,” he said. “I mean – we adopted them – my wife loves children – my wife’s a good-hearted woman. I don’t want you thinking you’re better than she is,” he said, suddenly shaking his fist at her. He was shaking all over. He looked like he was going to cry.

Cindi said nothing. Lots of men had shaken their fists at her. But then he left her there. He started to cry about his wife and then he got mad at her.

Cindi went home, and for seven months she sat in the clapboard house near the trailer park with her mother. She had had two children now. Her sister kept one – she lived with an
RCMP
officer in Buctouche. Her mother kept the second child.

Ruby walked from the door to the window, looked out the window and then walked back to the door. Cindi watched her walking. Then, with nothing else to do, she whistled into the top of a pop bottle and tapped her feet. In fact, she was enjoying herself doing this. But she looked up to notice Ruby glaring at her. Then bravely she gave the bottle one final toot, and slowly lowered it and cleared her throat.

Antony was in a “blackout.” He started saying he was bringing a lawsuit against his father because he owned one-eighth of the Chevrolet engine in his father’s boat.

“He never takes that into consideration when he’s out gaffing onto lobster traps,” Antony said suddenly. “But he takes Vally and Nannie out for a big dinner at the mall.” Then he looked at Cindi blankly, as if wondering why she was here on such a beautiful night.

Every now and again Antony would look over towards Ernie, who was asleep, and give him a kick. “No – he never does,” he continued speaking. “He should be building me a house, Ruby – like yer father is building for you – but I never got a house – Gloria can tell you – I never got one house outta that cocksucker. Well anyways, I’m through with being Mr. Niceguy – fixing his driveway that time and paying his taxes.”

Then he sighed and looked about.

Antony had come here in a hurry after drinking a bottle or two of Hermit. Now here he was. Why, it was hard to say. Perhaps he wanted to warn them about Ivan coming, but, at any rate, Antony was caught up with this. Antony, when drinking, often got on a train of thought and couldn’t get off it, or he found something going on and he had to be involved in it. It didn’t
matter what it was – bingo at the centre three summers ago – Antony had to try and run it. And when they were making MacDonald Farm a historical property, Antony had to be there as well – as a matter of fact, he was there every day, right from the moment they were beginning to clear out all the old bricks and rubble until they kicked him off the property for trying to sell a stuffed beaver to the tourists.

He was hoping he would be able to show everyone how much he was doing – but even this was too definite. It was more that he was here instead of staying at home. He had taken Margaret’s duck and put it in Val’s room. He was still thinking of the fill that he had to get for Dr. Hennessey. He was back and forth instead of staying put.

Something happens, and you think you are the one making it happen – that if you decide to go somewhere, you are reasonable enough to understand why, and so on. But the people in this room were a perfect example that this was not the way things happened to anyone. Ruby would not have been involved except it was the way she spent all her summers. For Ruby, all her summers contained the same things. Excitement and bravado, and usually at someone else’s expense.

Last year it was one of her father’s workers. He had cancer, and Ruby, who had never lacked good-heartedness, spent the whole summer taking him back and forth to Halifax for treatment. She organized a party for him and did what she could, always slightly conscious that she, beautiful and vital and alive, had taken over the centre from his own family, who at the end resented her.

Secretly Ruby had not felt close to Cindi in the last few years. They had drifted apart. In fact, until this
happened, she felt Cindi was a bother, and hardly visited. Now that she had become Cindi’s guardian she was also responsible for her, and found all the dislike she had had for Cindi every time they got at close quarters together.

For a long while Antony had them worried that Ivan would come. At every sound Antony would turn his head. “What the hell is that – listen.”

“Jesus, Antony, ya got us all nervous as a cat,” Ruby said.

“Cindi, you can come out of the bathroom – he’s not here.”

And Cindi would come out of the bathroom and sit near the window.

“Dangerous lad,” Antony said, “dangerous lad, that!”

That night there was one of those impromptu parties that happen so often in the summer. People, knowing Ruby had rented an apartment, dropped in. Lionel was there. And Oniseme walked in and sat down for a moment. Then Gordon Russell came in. They brought beer and wine and rum.

Often Ruby would disappear for whole minutes at a time, leaving Cindi alone with six or seven men. Cindi would look out and see her in the phone booth down the street. She was telephoning her boyfriend in town. Only Cindi knew this other aspect of Ruby’s summer. Like a bird forced to fly in the dark, Ruby zigzagged.

The party opened up, and things were said. And like parties on the river, everything could foul up at any second.

“I’m scared Eugene is so involved in this here racket,” Antony said suddenly. “I mean, I know how he is just visiting here – it gives him a bad impression of us, and sorta a bad impression of my family.” He wanted this statement to have a very good impression on them.

He looked over at Cindi for a second, and then looked towards Gordon, who nodded. Gordon already had put his arm around Cindi. Cindi, who always loved people to hug her, felt that because they used to go together he could take this liberty. It added piquancy. And so Cindi started to cry.

“I know,” Cindi said, “I know – I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She kept saying that, for ten minutes. Her shorts were very loose, and the men, some of them trying not to, could not help staring up her legs – for everything was visible there.

“That’s what I told Eugene today,” Antony said in a heavy voice. “‘I don’t want to know where she is,’ I said, I don’t want to know a thing about it – because Ivan’s certain to find out.’ I had enough trouble with that young fucker already,” Antony said, tears coming to his eyes as they often did when he drank.

Cindi suddenly lit a cigarette, and looked scared, and Gordon gave her another hug.

“But I told him, ‘Gordon, you wait until Cindi finds another man – a man who knows the value of a woman, and everything about a woman.’”

“I’m sorry,” Cindi said, in that peevish singsong voice she had when she was accused of something, or when people told her she was lying.

“And then Margaret went and said to me tonight, ‘Dad, ya always loved yer own,’” Antony said, conscious that people were listening to him because he
was talking about Ivan, and conscious and irritable that he was attacking his own again, in front of people, just like Margaret said he would, and couldn’t seem to stop.

“Loved yer own?” Oniseme said.

“Loved yer own – that’s what she said, loved yer own. ‘Why now do you turn against Ivan,’ and I just said to Margaret, ‘Listen here – just a minute’” – he said this very loud, so everyone looked at him – “I loved my own till it hurt. I sacrificed my marriage, and went to the hospital, but Cindi is my own also – and Ivan is my own too – but do I hurt a hair’s breath on yer heads or do I fly off the handle?’

“‘No Daddy,’ she said to me, crying ya know – crying like that all, crying ‘no Daddy, I just want to know.’ And so I said, ‘Well – how can I love Ivan the less if I love Cindi the more?’”

“I don’t know,” some people said.

“I sure don’t know either, eh,” Antony said. Then he asked if there was any tea in the house, and looked towards the cupboards.

“I bought some tea,” Cindi said. “I’ll make you some.”

She stood and went to the cupboard. Since her pregnancy her feet had started to swell, but Gordon didn’t know why. He simply looked at them and said:

“What’s wrong with yer feet?”

Cindi turned, with a dreamy expression, and looked down at them.

“Feet bigger than Harold Matchett, if you ask me,” Gordon said. Then he laughed that coarse, unpleasant laugh, which was loud and always tried to bring attention to himself, something that Antony could never like.

And Cindi laughed too.

Ruby came back in and sat down near Oniseme. Two other men came in with her. A huge grey moth with a succulent body and lots of powder batted itself haplessly against a light. The place was filled with smoke, the smell of smoked oysters and beer.