Kit's Law (39 page)

But I never. Making my way down the rickety train steps with my bag in my hand, I sucked in my breath and held it, recoiling from the sharp, fousty smell of the city, and remembering what Nan had said once about people dying from the plagues. “It’s in the cities that germs gets bred,” she had said. “All them people living on top of each other—sure, no sooner is the breath out of your mouth, than it’s into the gob of another, without gettin’ a chance to circulate and clean itself of whatever germs it’s carryin’.”

“Taxi, Miss?”

I started at the gravelly voice sounding from behind me, and give a slight nod to the scrawny, red-cheeked man who tipped his hat as I turned to face him. Giving him the piece of paper with the name and address of Milly’s boarding house on it, I mutely followed and climbed into the back seat of his car, just as Doctor Hodgins had instructed me to do.

Clutching my bag, I stared mesmerized out the window at the hundreds of houses and the squalor that we drove by, and more people than all of a hundred outports brought together as one. As frightened as I was at the thought of seeing Sid again, his was a comforting face to think on in this whirling clutter of roads, cars and buildings. Once, we came in view of the harbour and I shrank back from the sight of the fishing boats and ships, minding Doctor Hodgins’s warnings about drunken Portuguese sailors.

After it felt like we were going in circles for an hour and my stomach was getting queasy from my head being giddy, we pulled up in front of a peeling, two-storey house with “Milly’s” painted over its front door. Paying the taxi man, I took my bag and walked slowly inside.

Everything was just as Doctor Hodgins had described it to be—a small room with a white-railed, steep stairwell leading up one side, and a cluttered counter in its centre, piled high with papers and dirtied mugs, beyond which sat a grizzly-haired old woman, knitting the back to a sweater.

“A room?” she said, not taking her eyes off her knitting.

“Yes. Please.”

“Where you from?”

“Haire’s Hollow.”

Her mouth dropped, and coming to her feet, she peered harder through her specs.

“You’re here, already? Sure, I just got Johnny’s message!”

“W-Who?”

“Johnny!” She gave a hard laugh. “That’d be Doctor Hodgins to you, I suppose. Hah! What with two baywops for parents, he’ll always be Johnny around here.”

I fixed a smile on my face and nodded politely. She sobered and peered at me more closely.

“Heh, do you know what a baywop is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s you! One who was born and bred in the bay!” She gave a hard, rattled laugh and I nodded, politer still. Sobering again, she shuffled out around the counter and started up the stairs.

“Heh, come on then,” she said, rubbing the small of her back. “You can carry your bag, I suppose? I’d help you but I got a bad hip. Good old Johnny gives me pain pills every time he comes. How’s he doing?”

“He’s fine. You’ve … known him long?” I asked, becoming a little less tongue-tied with the effort of lugging my bag up over the stairs.

“We started school together. Smart as anything, Johnny was. Course, I only made it through to grade six, had to go to work,” she puffed, coming to a stop at the top of the landing to catch her breath. “But Johnny kept on with it. Brother, you couldn’t stick him on a sum. Heh, poor Elsie. She was a good soul, though pinched as it was.”

“Pinched?” I rested my bag on the edge of the step, looking up at her.

“Yeah, pinched. She come from the Gut. That’s over by the harbour. Her mother liked the drink,” Milly snickered, “like everyone else in the Gut. And sickly! Well, she was always sickly. I said back then Johnny married her to guarantee he’d always have a patient.” Another hard, rattling laugh and Milly hobbled down the hall. I followed, wondering if it wasn’t for something that Doctor Hodgins had me stay with Milly. For certain he knew she was the one to talk.

“You looks like her,” Milly went on, opening up a door and stepping inside a small room. She held the door wider and I stepped past her, laying my bag on the narrow bed, and taking a peek through the paint-stained window onto the street below.

“I’ll get you some water,” Milly said, taking the wash pan off the stand. She glanced at me in the mirror on the wall before her. “What brings you here, a young girl like you, all by yourself?”

“I’m—here to meet my husband.”

“Husband!” She looked around, squinting me up and down, shaking her head. “Lord, you don’t look old enough to be married.”

I grinned nervously.

“I’m not so young.”

“Heh, there’s something about you that speaks of time. Though, if Johnny sent you to me, it’s because he’s wanting me to keep an eye on you. When’s your husband coming?”

“I’m—goin’ to meet him. Doctor Hodgins said you could help me find my way around?”

“Hah, like I figured, gathering the lost sheep. Where’s your husband staying?”

“The university.”

“What’s he learning?”

“Uh, to be a teacher.”

“A teacher? That’s nice.” She shuffled to the door. “I’ll get your water.”

An hour later I was freshly washed and neatly dressed, and sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling slightly irritated as I listened to the roar of cars and trucks shuttling by, blowing their horns and squealing tires from every which way. How could a body stand such noise? I lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes. Perhaps if I was to sleep a little, I might feel more like myself. As it was, I was a bundle of nerves, and half-sick from the fousty-smelling air.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to pretend that the roar of the cars was the roar of the surf pounding upon the shore, and the blowing horns were seagulls, circling the sky and calling out. But it felt like there were springs on the back of my eyelids and the second I stopped squeezing them shut, they popped wide open again.

After a while I gave up trying to sleep and sat up on the edge of the bed. It was about an hour before four. I had planned to see Sid later in the evening, when he had finished his schooling for the day. It felt easier somehow, to meet with him in the evening. Evening time was when sweethearts walked, when each other’s faces would soon be covered in darkness. I wanted it to be dark when I met with him. Dark, but not too late, not so late as he’d be off with his other girl before I got there. And I was wanting it dark, dark as pitch, so’s he couldn’t see how nervous I was—especially if we were to do something. Not that I was scared of making love with Sid. Just that I knew I’d be so damn shy of doing it that my face burned like fire every single time my mind went to it. That’s why I wanted it to be dark soon after I met up with him, so’s he couldn’t see my face burning like fire when he touched me. If he touched me.

The thought that he wouldn’t touch me wasn’t one I dwelled on for long. The fact that I had come all this way to find him, and alone, would surely convince him of my loving him, and how nothing would ever make it stop. Surely, he would see how futile it was to be away from me, that it was just as well to be living as husband and wife than to be living in a dream, thinking on it every day.

It was about a half-hour before five, and I couldn’t contain myself no longer. Throwing on a sweater, I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself. Loret had cut my hair a few days ago, and it hung straight and wispy fine to just below the collar of my blouse, and it was darker. Its yellow dulled by the winter’s sun. I leaned closer to the mirror and smiled, then grimaced, not liking how it rounded the curve of my cheeks when I smiled. Pulling back a safer distance from the mirror, I tucked my hair behind my ears. I leaned closer to the mirror. My eyes were grey, clear grey, like the down on a goose, Loret once said, and just as soft. I bit my lips to make them red, as Loret showed me the day of the wedding, and pulled back from the mirror, practising a smile, a small smile that Loret said was sure to hook the heart of the most hardened man. I smiled. Sid wasn’t a hardened man. He was sweet and soft. And kind.

“Oohh!” I threw myself impatiently on the bed, then come back up and walked determinedly to the door. I was going, light or dark. I’d find some other way of hiding my face. Besides, we wouldn’t be doing anything in the daylight. Perhaps we would just walk and talk, like we always done, and by the time night come, I wouldn’t care.

If he comes with you, a small voice kept nagging. And let’s not forget the other girl …

Yanking open the door, I ran down over the steps to where Milly was still sitting behind the cluttered counter, knitting.

“Can you show me how to get to the university?” I asked.

“Your husband knows you’re coming?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, opening the door and stepping outside. There were roads and cars going everywhere. How did a body find his way back home? Milly came to the door behind me, holding onto the small of her back.

“See that smokestack? That’s the hospital. Walk past that, and up over the hill, and then look down, and you’ll see it, three buildings in the middle of a field. That’s the campus.”

“Thank you.”

“Got plans, do you?”

“No,” I said quickly, my face flaming.

She rattled out a laugh and punched me lightly on the arm.

“It’s your supper I was thinking on.”

Blushing furiously, I started walking.

“Not scared, are you?” she sung out. “It’s just five minutes from here.”

“No, I’m not scared.” I paused, my step faltering mid-air. “Is it that close?”

“That close.”

My knees went weak. Sid was just over the hill. Five minutes from where I was standing. I swallowed hard and tried to get my breathing regular. Suppose he wouldn’t come back with me? Why ever would he? Nothing had changed! Nothing …

“What’s wrong?” Milly asked as I’d stopped walking altogether.

I turned back and ducked past her inside the boarding house.

“Do you have any clips?” I asked breathlessly.

“Clips?”

“Hair clips.”

She blinked.

“In me hair, I do.”

“C-can I have two?”

“Two?”

“Just two.”

“I suppose.” Reaching up, she ruffled through her nest of grizzled hair and, pulling out two clips, passed them to me.

“Thank you,” I said, and ran back up over the stairs, leaving her staring after me, a quizzical look marring her face. Closing the room door, I quickly wetted down the two straight strands of hair on each side of my head and, twirling my fingers through them, clipped them against the side of my face. Turning my head from side to side, I checked to make sure they were the same size. They were. Satisfied, I sat back down on the bed, and careful not to muss up the two curls, laid my head back on the pillow. I lay there for an hour, waiting for the curls to dry, pretending the cars were waves and their horns were seagulls. I must’ve dozed because, suddenly, I was lying on my back at Crooked Feeder, soaking my feet in the water, and watching Sid a little further up the shore, drifting shale across the sea. He turned to look at me, and my stomach quickened to see his teeth, as white as the lace edging the waves, and his eyes the colour of ten skies.

I woke with a start as a set of tires squealed outside, and angry voices competed with blowing horns. Pulling the clips out of my curls, I jumped off the bed and stood before the mirror, smiling to see two yellow coils bounce alongside of my face. Taking up my hairbrush, I gently combed them out, and smiled again to see them float softly, just like they had done on my wedding day. Loret would be proud. Opening the door, I walked down the stairs and, smiling grandly at Milly, laid her clips on the counter and walked out the door.

“You remembers how I told you to get there?” she called out, shuffling out on the doorstep behind me.

“I do,” I said, crossing the street.

“I can come with you, if you wants.”

“No, I can do it.”

“Mind you don’t get lost.”

I waved without turning.

“Just keep looking for the smokestack,” she hollered. “That’ll always set you right.”

I nodded and kept on walking.

“Watch out for the God-damned sailors,” she hollered again. “You got your purse?”

I held my bag off from my side, and took the corner. For sure there must be more than one youngster lost all the time, I thought, what with all them roads. Passing the smokestack, I came out on a bit of a hill and looked down upon a large green field with three big buildings sitting in the middle of it. Ignoring the churning in my stomach, I picked up my step and tried to breathe more easily. The air was damp, but the sun was starting to shine and the second I started walking across the field, I heard songbirds singing, no different than those in the gully, and right away I felt a little comforted. It must make for a common ground amongst people from different places when they can hear the same birds singing, I was thinking, for who hasn’t lain an extra minute upon a pillow early in the morning, smiling at just such a thing?

Taking the envelope with Sid’s address on it out of my pocket, I checked and seen the name “Reyer’s Residence.” To the left of the centre building, and smaller than the other two, was a red-brick building with the words “Reyer’s Residence.” Soon enough I was walking up the steps, half expecting Sid to have seen me coming for him by now, through one of the many windows, and come bolting out the door any second. He didn’t, and I kept walking. Up the last two steps and in through the large wooden door, feeling smaller than Little Kitty as I stood beneath the high ceiling in the vastness of that tiled room.

A young, dark-haired man, not much older than Sid, skipped through the door behind me.

“Please, I’m looking for Sid Ropson,” I said, as he slowed his step and stood before me.

“Yep, you’ve got him,” he said cheerily. “Only, he’s not here right now.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

Saucy brown eyes looked me over good.

“I suppose I could. Do you think he’d want me to do that?”

“I-I’m from Haire’s Hollow.”

“Oh! Well, that does it then.” He grinned, then seeing as how I wasn’t grinning back, he cleared his throat and managed to look more serious. “He’s at the orphanage.”