Snow Apples (4 page)

“You aren't moving far, are you?” I asked anxiously.

“To the Fraser Valley...” Her voice trailed off. It was too far for two fifteen-year-olds, and we both knew it. “We can write each other,” she offered as comfort.

“It won't be the same,” I managed to say, although my throat had tightened up, and I could feel the tears behind my eyes.

“No,” she agreed, looking as though she wanted to cry, too.

We finished burying the cans in silence and walked back slowly to the house.

“I won't stay today. I'll only be in the way,” I said. “When are you going?”

“This afternoon's boat.”

“You can't,” I said and couldn't stop the tears. Sonia put her arms around me, and we bawled together like two calves.

I saw the Kolosky family off on the afternoon boat. Sonia and I waved goodbye until the boat had rounded the point and all that was left was black smoke trailing from the funnels. The boat whistled then for its next call, Gibson's Landing, and its plaintive sound echoed and re-echoed from the mountains and in my head.

*  *  *

Mr. Percy called for my mother just as we had finished supper. My mother was ready—hat squarely on her head and purse in hand. She left me a list of instructions, and I could tell by the set of her mouth that she expected them all to be done.

“Oh, just a minute, Mrs. Brary,” said Mr. Percy as he turned back to his truck. “I brought your mail over. Thought you'd want it. Letter for you, too, Sheila.”

It was a letter from Bob McLean. There was his name and address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope.

Before my mother could ask me who the letter was from, Mr. Percy handed her a pale blue airmail envelope.

“It's from your son, Paul. Go ahead, read it. We've got all the time in the world.” He followed her into the kitchen.

My mother opened the letter carefully with a clean knife and read parts of it aloud:

...glad the war is over, in Europe at least... unsure of future plans, have been thinking seriously of going to university, under the government's grant to veterans...saw Dad in Halifax last week. He looked fine, but has no plans yet on what he is going to do after discharge...I have two weeks leave coming so should be home soon, probably around the middle of June.

Love to all,

Paul

Mr. Percy beamed at my mother. The lines in her face had smoothed out, and with a deep sigh she carefully placed Paul's letter in her purse.

“This is good news,” she said. Even her voice was brighter. “Tom,” she called to my brother who was doing his homework in the boys' bedroom, “why don't you come with us?” Turning to Mr. Percy, she asked, “Is that all right with you? If Jim's conscious, pray God, it'll do him the world of good to see Tom. He just worships his brother.”

And so the three of them drove away, my mother's velvet hat glowing blue between Mr. Percy and Tom.

I read Bob McLean's letter:
Dear Sheila,
Can hardly wait to see you again. Please let me know if it's all right with your parents if I come down this weekend.
Love,
Bob
P.S. You have beautiful eyes.

How could I explain to him that even Sonia had never visited our house? My mother discouraged visitors.

“It's better to keep ourselves to ourselves,” she said. I picked up the stove lid lifter and dropped Bob's letter into the glowing remainders of the supper fire.

No letter from Dad. It had been more than a month since we'd heard from him. His last letter was stuck behind the kitchen clock, and I reached up to the small shelf where it was.

It was written from Halifax. I reread the words slowly, thinking maybe I could write him. Did I dare tell him about quitting school? What if my mother found out? If I were very careful about the way I wrote it...

I could mail it the next day. I had some stamps of my own. Quickly working through my mother's list of chores, I made the porridge for breakfast and put water on to heat for bedtime washes. Then I washed and dried the supper dishes and put them away on the curtained shelves.

As soon as everything was done, I sat down at the
kitchen table and wrote to my dad. I tried to be as brief as possible: ...Mom wants me to quit school...Jim and Mike were thrown from horses, and Dr. Howard let me help him. I think I would like to be a nurse, but that means finishing high school first...”

Finally it was written. I blew out the coal-oil lamp and, placing the envelope under my pillow, went to bed on the cot in the living room.

One advantage of sleeping in the living room was that I didn't miss out on anything. I heard the latest news from the radio in the kitchen. I knew when someone came in late or got up early.

The only times I didn't like it were when my mother and father quarreled. Then their voices rose and fell, and I couldn't block them out.

They had quarreled as far back as I could remember. Sometimes it was about money, other times about women my mother knew he was seeing. And always, the next morning, my mother would be angry. But she was afraid to show that anger to my father because he wouldn't have stood for it. And she didn't take it out on my brothers because they were boys.

Which left me.

As I'd grown older, I'd seen that she struck out at me because she couldn't strike out at anyone else.

W
HEN
J
IM
came home from Dr. Howard's, he looked pale and tired. He went directly from Mr. Percy's car to bed.

That evening I said I'd read to him if he wanted.

“Nothing mushy.”

“How about
The Wind in the Willows
? You like the illustrations.”

While we were looking at Moley and Rat in their blue-and-white boat, Jim looked up and asked, “Did you really save my life, Sheila?”

“Who said?”

“Dr. Howard. I heard him tell Mom.”

“You did? What else did he say? Word for word!”

“I don't know! How do you expect me to remember?”

“Well, try!”

He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I can't remember.” He screwed up his eyes, concentrating. “Something like, That daughter of yours is outstanding—or special—something like that. He said Mom must be proud of you.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah, and how you stopped the bleeding and all that.”

I whirled around and around the room, then stopped and hugged and kissed him.

“Mom!” he yelled. “Get Sheila outa here! She's kissin' me!”

I sailed out of his room. My mother looked up from the butter she had taken from the churn. Her hands were patting and molding the lumps into a mound. “Are you teasing him? Don't you have anything better to do?” I took my sweater from the nail at the back door. “What are you up to now?”

“Oh, nothing.” I waved my hand airily and danced out the back door. Then I ran as fast as I could down to the beach.

The diving float had been anchored out for the summer, and I hopped onto its connecting float and raced to the end. I quickly peeled off my shoes and socks and sat dangling my feet in the phosphorescent water, kicking shining swaths of silver bubbles in the green-black sea.

The sky was still light, but the land had darkened into black shapes. Here, on the water below the sky, was where the world was now.

Leaning back on my arms, I looked up to count the stars. Only one.

“I wish, I wish...I want to go back to school.”

*  *  *

Saturday morning I set the washtubs out on the bench in the sunshine. My mother came out with a full kettle of hot water to add to one of the tubs. She stood swinging the kettle in a nervous way as she watched me soap one of the boys' shirt collars. I wondered if she was going to ask me to make a thicker starch for the curtains, which lay in the bluing water.

“Sheila.” Her voice had a tremor. “I'm going to buy some land.”

I wasn't surprised. It was one of her dreams, and she'd often talked about it. Ever since I could remember, I had heard stories about the farm in Ireland—how it had been in the family for generations and how she knew every stone, every bush. When we lost our house in Edmonton during the Depression, because we couldn't pay the taxes, she'd cried as if there had been a death in the family.

“I have it all figured out,” she said, taking from her apron pocket the used envelope she had written her calculations on. “I've got some money saved, Sheila. Helga Ness says she'll let me have the ten acres on this side of the creek for eight hundred dollars, two hundred down. It's a good buy.”

She was excited, but I was too full of my own problems to listen.

“If you can buy the land, why can't I go to school, too?”

“Because you don't need to. You can get a job at Gibson's working at the bakery or something, and your pay check will help out at home.”

“Why me? You don't expect Paul or Tom to do that. Why should I have to?” I turned back to the scrub board and began scrubbing with a vengeance.

“Because you're a girl.”

What kind of an answer was that? I'd been hearing it all my life. You can't do it; you're just a girl. You can't have it; you're just a girl. It wasn't fair!

“If Dad were here—”

“But he's not, is he?” Flushed with anger, my mother stood rigid. Her shoulders were stiff and her back straight as a broom. I had gone too far. “And there's no telling when he will be. I gave up counting on your father long ago.”

I knew it was useless to say any more. If Sonia were still around, at least there would be someone to talk to.

I tipped the wash water onto the vegetable garden and carefully wiped out the tubs before hanging them on the woodshed wall. I decided to go up to Sonia's old house.

She wouldn't be there, of course, but I wanted to sit on the Koloskys' steps again, to be by myself until I could think things out and calm down.

The gate was fastened tight. As soon as I put my hand on it, a dog started to bark. He was chained to the veranda, and he pulled and strained as if he wanted to break loose and come after me.

From the front door came two small children, followed by their thin, peevish-sounding mother. They all stared at me. Then a sullen, dark man appeared along the side of the house. He spoke sharply to the dog and came down the path toward me, the woman's eyes following him all the way.

“Do you want something?” His voice was surprisingly rich, with a lazy overtone. I found myself swaying slightly with its rhythm.

“Uh...no,” I said, feeling fascinated and repelled at the same time. “I used to...Sonia was...you have any girls my age?”

At that his eyes became as sleepy as his voice, and he looked me over slowly and thoroughly. I felt too aware of myself. Somehow ashamed.

“No, none like you,” he said. “Just little ones. Five and six.”

“Robert!” came his wife's voice. It had the whine of a buzz saw. He smiled at me as though she were a joke between us, and I turned away in embarrassment.

I was glad to get away. This family was a mud puddle compared to the Koloskys. I stayed away after that.

*  *  *

The night my brother Paul was due home, the house was shining clean. We had his favorite foods ready for a late supper. His bed had been made up with sheets taken right from the clothesline, smelling of sun and sea. On the kitchen table, yellow-centered daisies sat snug in the old sugar bowl. Yellow linen napkins lay folded at each place.
The woodbox overflowed. There was enough kindling split to last the weekend, and the water pails stood full.

We were ready.

I went alone to meet the boat.

“What nonsense,” my mother said. “Why should we go to meet the boat? We're here at home where we belong, and where he expects us to be. A little less show, Sheila, and a little more of what counts.”

“But what counts, Mom?”

“What counts is being practical, not making a big show of things.”

“To meet the boat?”

“Sheila, it could be late. It often is. There are more useful things you could be doing than hanging around the wharf. You and your father, you never give a second thought...”

The boat was late, but this only added to the festive air. Summer tourists had already started to invade the peninsula, and all along the beach was a string of cottage windows, glowing softly orange with coal-oil lamps. A smell of wood smoke hung in the air. I could hear the summer girls' silky laughs in the soft night and the young men's returning laughs, richer, deeper.

A long whistle sounded down the inlet, and the
Lady Cecilia
rounded the point. She looked like a ship out of a dream, soft lights flooding the waters around her, and I could hear muted music and scraps of conversation from the passengers.

She docked at the wharf in a sudden swirling of black waters into white. I caught the thrown headline and pulled its loop over the bollard. Then Mr. Percy took the spring and stern lines and made them fast. The gangplank came rumbling over the side of the ship, and the passengers swarmed down it—loggers in their caulk-boots, pulp-mill workers, summer visitors, fishermen.