Snow Apples (16 page)

“And I've not regretted it, although, to tell you the truth, Mr. Williams never quite accepted it. But I don't know how much longer I can manage. He works, you know—Wally does. He's a dishwasher at the Jolly Jumbo, afternoon shift. Same as you.”

Later I paid the seven dollars' rent in advance.

“I supply one clean sheet, pillow case, towel and face cloth per week,” said Mrs. Williams. “You're welcome to use the laundry tubs and ironing board.” And she showed me around the house and basement.

It didn't take me long to unpack and hang my clothes in the wardrobe. I closed its doors with a sense of satisfaction and looked around me. For seven dollars this room was more than I could have hoped for. There were even books in a built-in bookcase on one side of the fireplace. I looked through them.

One fell open to a pressed rose between its pages and a note that read,
You know I haven't changed. It's you who has grown distant. P
.

Mrs. Williams? To Mr. Williams?

I kicked off my loafers and lay down on the faded rose chenille bedspread. Pulling my dress tightly across my hips, I looked down and wondered if there wasn't a slight swelling there.

Which brought me back down to earth in a hurry. Come on, Sheila, be practical. You've got a job at the neighborhood drive-in restaurant, thirty-one dollars a week. You start today. Room paid for one week. Total cash on hand, twenty dollars. And you're pregnant. You've got to do something about it. And fast. Don't think of it as a baby. It's not a baby yet. A baby's when it's born. Wally was a baby once. Never mind that. A new job. A chance at a new life.

What I wanted, I realized then, more than anything else in the world, was to talk to someone.

Mrs. Williams? No. Because of Wally, she'd never understand how I felt.

There was no one, and I felt desperate.

My father. Weren't we supposed to be alike? The last address I had for him was the King George Hotel. Somehow it seemed too much to hope for, that he would still be there. But he might have left a forwarding address.

N
OW
THAT
I had decided to try to find my father, I became impatient. I wished I'd waited a few days before getting a job so that I would have had that time to look for him.

The Jolly Jumbo was busy, hot, cheerful and noisy. I didn't have time to think about myself. I was too busy learning how to fry chips to keep up with the steady stream of orders that were shouted in through the small pass window between the grill area and the fry kitchen.

Three older women worked in the fry kitchen. They'd been there for years, they said, and their names were Bertha, Nellie and Doreen. They looked after me like three mother hens. After the supper rush was over and we were caught up on our orders, they told me to go for my own supper.

I took my plate of stew, which was the employees' dinner, outside to the lane behind the drive-in and sat on an overturned milk can. It was cooler out there, with an evening breeze that smelled of newly cut lawns.

I lifted the hair off the back of my neck. I decided to get it cut. I'd only let it grow long for Nels.

It was a relief to be out of the heat and smell of cooking oil. I started to think about my father again. I knew he'd help me—some way—if only I could find him,

“Mind if I join you?” It was Don, a university student who worked on the grill. He was the one who called in the orders from the car hops to the fry kitchen.

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled another milk can over to where I sat and began to chat. All the time he was talking to me, I wondered if he would be so friendly if he knew what a jam I was in. Then my mind began to work away again at the problem of finding my father.

“Okay?” It was Don's voice, and I'd obviously missed something.

“I'm sorry...”

“Okay if I walk you home?” he repeated. “After work?”

“Oh, sure...if you want to.”

The rest of the night went quickly. Nellie showed me how to fry fish, and after she was convinced that I could do it, she sat down with her feet resting on top of the shortening pail while she had a cup of tea. And Bertha told me all about her daughter who had had innumerable miscarriages and was now walking around with a pessary inside of her.

Sometimes I thought the whole world must be pregnant. It seemed that people talked about nothing else. Or was it because my pregnancy showed, and they thought I would be interested?

Just before we went off shift, Don made me a special deluxe hamburger—mushrooms, lettuce and tomato—and a vanilla milkshake. Then he waited for me while I changed in the women's locker room.

When we got to the corner to cross the street over to Mrs. Williams' house, he took my hand and didn't let go, even when we got to her gate.

“You're kind of quiet, Sheila. Are you tired?”

“A little.” But it was more than that. My head was busy with one thought. I had to find my father. Quickly.

“See you tomorrow afternoon at work,” Don said, and he pulled me gently toward him. He kissed me lightly, briefly—a butterfly kiss.

Later I stood in the shadows of the porch and watched him go down the street. He walked briskly, as if he knew exactly where he was going and why.

I wanted desperately to feel the same way.

*  *  *

I woke to the sound of Wally singing in a high, clear voice from the room across the hall. Sunlight bounced through the bay window and across the green carpet to where I lay in a delicious half-sleep. A faint smell of cooking oil rose from my hair.

Less than an hour later, I got off the streetcar in front of the King George Hotel. It looked the same as when I'd stayed there to see the dentist. That seemed so long ago.

Murray was still at the registration desk. I would swear he was wearing the same suit and tie. The suit was rusty brown, and the tie was broad and yellow, displaying a bare-breasted hula girl in a fluorescent green skirt.

“You probably don't remember me, Murray, but I'm Frank Brary's daughter.”

I waited expectantly for him to say something, but he just went on looking at me. I dropped my eyes to the tie. The girl's stomach was too rounded. Was she pregnant, too?

I tried again. “My name's Sheila. Is my father staying here?” Murray shoved the register across the desk to me and, pulling out a small penknife attached to his key chain, started to clean his nails.

Only a few pages of the register were filled, but I couldn't find my father's name among the signatures.

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

Murray didn't bother to look up, just went on cleaning his nails.

The telephone rang, and he answered it. Two men came to the desk, leaving their keys to be pigeonholed. Murray made up a bill for someone checking out. He gave change for the pay phone. And all the while, he ignored me.

I got more and more angry. I didn't deserve this kind of treatment. Who did he think he was, anyway? Who did he think I was, to act this way toward me?

“Listen!” I said, leaning across the desk. “I don't know what's bothering you, but I want to know where my father is. And I'm not moving from here until you tell me.”

I glared at the hula girl. I would have liked nothing better than to grab that tie and hang on until Murray told me what I wanted to know.

Then Murray, in a mild voice and without changing his expression—as if there had never been any lack of cooperation on his part—told me.

“He's staying at the hotel in Campbell River.” And added, still in a conversational tone, “He's married again, you know.”

“He couldn't be,” I answered without hesitating. “He's still married to my mother.”

Murray looked at me as if I wasn't too bright. I realized then that Murray would never bother to lie. Lying would be too much trouble.

At the bottom of my purse I found a dime and went across the lobby to use the pay phone. Twelve noon by the clock behind Murray's desk. Would my father be at the hotel? Out eating? At work?

My perspiring hands made the receiver slippery. Reversing the charges, I listened to the telephone operator make the connection to Vancouver Island and then Campbell River.

“And what is your name, please?”

My name wouldn't come out. I didn't want to tell her. What if she listened in to conversations? I didn't want anyone to know why I was phoning.

“What is your name?” she repeated impatiently.

“Sheila Brary.” The receiver fell from my hand. I wiped one hand and then the other on my skirt.

There was a series of long rings, then I heard the hotel clerk speak.

“Yes, Frank Brary is registered here, but he isn't in at the moment. Is there any message?”

Any message. All the words seemed to be sounding down a long tunnel.

“Operator,” my voice came from far away, “could you find out when Mr. Brary is expected back?”

The hotel clerk answered, “He's working out of town. All the men come in from camp late Saturday night.”

“Operator,” I broke in again, “could you leave a message for Mr. Brary that his daughter will phone him Sunday morning at ten o'clock?”

Breathless with relief, I leaned against the wall.

Everything would be all right now, I told myself after I hung up. Just five more days till Sunday. I could hang on for five more days.

What is your name, please?
The phrase rang in my head.
What is your name, please? Your name?

*  *  *

The week moved at two different paces: slow in the mornings and early afternoons when I wrote my mother or did my laundry, and fast once I got to work. There the hours seemed like minutes in comparison.

I don't know how I got up enough nerve to ask Marie, the cook, for three days off in a row—one day for one week and two days for the next. And, please, Marie, I said silently when she came to the fry kitchen with the time book tucked under one immense arm, as close after Sunday as possible. I'm counting on seeing my father.

“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” Marie said as she wrote my name under those days.

I couldn't believe it.

The nearest pay phone was in the Jolly Jumbo parking lot, just outside the dining room. By 9:45 Sunday morning I was there with four dollars in two neat piles of quarters and dimes beside me.

After five minutes I found I couldn't wait any longer, and I placed the call. I heard it ring through two operators, the hotel switchboard and, finally, my father's voice. It was as clear and distinct as if he were standing beside me.

A sudden welling-up of tears wet my face, filled my nose and then dripped into my mouth and ran down my neck.

“Is that you, Sheila, honey?”

I couldn't answer. I was drowning.

“Sheila, are you there?”

“Oh, Dad.”

“What is it, honey? Are you all right?”

“Dad, I—” But I couldn't seem to stop crying with the relief of not being alone in this anymore.

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“Yes, Daddy.” I couldn't remember the last time I'd called him that.

“Family trouble? That sort of trouble?” I nodded, as if he could see me.

“Okay, now, Sheila, let's take it slowly. Just start at the beginning. Where are you phoning from?”

“Vancouver. I'm working in town now.”

“How far along are you?”

“About two and a half months.”

“You don't want to marry the fellow?”

“No.” Not that way. Only if he wanted to.

“And you don't want to have the baby?”

“No.”

“If I come to Vancouver, could you meet me at, say, the King George on Granville? About noon? There's a plane out of Campbell River in the morning.”

“Yes, all right. The King George on Granville at noon.”

“Helen will want to come. And I want you to meet her, anyway.”

“Helen?”

“My wife.”

“Oh...sure.”

“Snooks, don't you worry about anything. Promise me that. Everything's going to be all right, you'll see. I'll meet you then, tomorrow, twelve noon at the hotel. Goodbye, sweetheart.”

And, as if moving in slow motion, I replaced the receiver, then leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the booth.

My father was going to help me. I felt as though the whole world had suddenly lightened and turned bright again.

Outside the booth, car hops hustled about, their starched white pants and shirts brilliant in the sun, coin changers jingling around their waists. Ralph leaned in the window of a jewel blue Buick with California license plates, spreading out a map in front of the driver. A large brown and black tabby cat wound itself around Ralph's legs until he absentmindedly lifted one foot and shook it loose, never missing a word as he continued to instruct the American tourist.

I decided to treat myself to breakfast in the dining room. It would take more money than I really wanted to spend, but for the first time in the past couple of months, I was hungry.