A Beauty (37 page)

He was sitting reading a book at the table in the window. Once in a while he scratched the side of his nose with his forefinger, and once in a while he appeared to look over at the old wood stove that gleamed across the kitchen, all shiny black iron and highly polished, curlicued chrome. Regularly, he turned a page. He was him, that’s what she thought, he was him in some way she’d forgotten or perhaps had never understood. So much older, but still he was the him that was her father. He didn’t know he was being watched. She was standing off to the side, but within his field of vision, and he would see her if he looked. Coming home from school, as a girl, she had done this. He’d be bent over some work and she’d sneak up on him, wherever he was, outside or in, to see the expression on his face when he looked up.

She backed away from the window. Now that I know, she thought, I could turn around and leave. She did turn; she thought about leaving. She looked at her rented car and pictured it driving away, got it as far as the road, and then the field in front of the house drew her attention. Every pebble and blade of grass, every stalk in the stubble was lit as if on fire by the western sun. She had seen a prairie fire as a child. She’d watched it from the Gustafsons’ yard, where her father had left her while he went to help fight against it. The flames had raced over the neighbouring land, sounding like the wind. The men had worked for hours, digging trenches to confine it. Then all they could do was let it burn itself out. She’d had to stay past dark and even then she wouldn’t go into the house, so Mrs. Gustafson had come outside and stood beside her, eating a slab of bread and butter.
The fire had almost died by then, but it still reeked; smoke and ashy flakes still drifted over them, and dozens of cow pies still smouldered in the blackened pastures. Like candles in the night, Mrs. Gustafson said, or like some of the stars had fallen. After a minute she tore off half of the bread and handed it over and Elena ate it.

He hadn’t heard the whispers she’d overheard.
At least he didn’t hang himself in his own barn
. Somebody had done that, some other farmer who hadn’t been able to make a go of it, who couldn’t watch his animals starve, his kids take charity.
They’ll find him in a gully one of these days, with his gun beside him
. That was another. He hadn’t seen the pictures those whispers summoned. She leaned her back against the ridged clapboard and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, it was to survey the glowing fields beyond the farmyard. Her father’s land had been harvested, so he must have had enough rain and sun this year to make up for the poor soil. Or maybe he’d amended it over time, growing pulse and things like that, as she knew he’d been advised to do. The garden was at the other side of the house, by the dugout. She supposed it would be doing well, if he’d kept it up. There would be vegetables to cook on that shiny stove.

The linoleum shone, too, she observed, when she walked in. He looked up from his book.

His long, deeply furrowed face expressed nothing. Maybe a mild surprise, at someone he didn’t expect walking into his house. His eyes, enlarged behind the reading glasses, looked cloudy. He removed the glasses, but she still wasn’t certain he could see well enough to recognize her, although he looked right at her and she was only a few feet away. She thought he must be getting deaf, or he would have heard her car pull up, the door open.

“Isä,” she said. She sat down across from him. He put his glasses down on the table and gripped his book with both hands.
The book trembled with his old man’s palsy. He stared at her, either unseeing or stunned, she couldn’t tell. He’d always been good at hiding his feelings.

“It’s Elena,” she said.

He nodded. He closed his book and looked over at the stove, the way he might have looked to a friend to help him. She looked at the stove, too. It had sat there for as long as she could remember.

She turned back to him and said, “You look well.”

He shook his head. She could see the side of his face, his mouth working. She thought he might cry and he would not want to cry, so she said, teasingly, “And the kitchen is very clean.”

After a few moments, he said, “I have a housekeeper, these days.” He faltered, but almost managed to speak in his old droll way, looking up at her just at the last moment. He was grateful to her, she could see it in his eyes, the glimmer of relief. The pattern he’d set long ago would hold, he could rely on that. It would keep him safe, the way it always had, slightly mocking everything to do with himself.

“Times have changed,” she said, and when he looked uncertain, she explained, “A housekeeper, no less.”

“Yeah.” He sounded shy, as if it was an admission. Maybe he thought she was criticizing. There had been no hired help when she lived here.

“That clock is new,” she said. It was a round disk embedded in a red plastic rooster.

“Aggie bought it.”

“Aggie Lindquist?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s your housekeeper?”

“Yeah. Comes afternoons. Brings supper, cleans.”

“She certainly does clean,” Elena said.

He almost smiled. “What would people say if it wasn’t spotless?”

A fly came to life and started attacking the ceiling light fixture, buzzing and bumping against it. The flyswatter hung by the screen door on a nail that had been pounded into that wall forty years before. It was a new swatter, though, of perforated red plastic. Elena was beginning to get an idea of Aggie’s taste. And Aggie was slyer than she was sometimes given credit for, she decided; there was more than a bit of the rooster about her father, still. What would people say, indeed, if Aggie spent a few hours here, and the house didn’t get cleaned? She took the swatter and waved it around a foot below the fly while her father watched her – how? As if she’d never left? As if he might not ever see her again? There was no telling. The fly retreated and crawled across the high ceiling, just far enough away to be unbothered by her. She followed it to the living room, which looked exactly as it had the day she left, sparsely furnished and uncomfortably overlaid with shadows. But sunlight splashed down the stairwell from the hall window above and in spite of Aggie’s efforts, dust motes floated up and down in the lit space.

“Is it all right if I stay a few days?” she asked when she came back. He pointed at the squat refrigerator. It was new. Well, electricity was new, the sink and running water were new; the farm hardly looked prosperous, but the times had surely changed. The fly sat by the capital F at the beginning of Frigidaire. So he could see quite well out of those rheumy old eyes. She slapped the swatter hard and the thing dropped like a raisin to the floor.

Driving east from the town of Trevna on her way to Maria’s for supper, Aggie Lindquist started musing about death and how
unbelievable it was to think that the sun would go on shining and lighting the harvest dust above the fields when she was no longer here to love the way it looked. She had lost one of her old bachelors recently, and in the past two years both her parents had died, but it was Matti Huhtala who had led her mind down this path. The things he said to her. Most of the men wouldn’t talk about dying, but he, who spoke so little, had recently told her he was beginning to grieve for all he was going to lose. He hadn’t said it quite like that though. He’d said,
A table lasts longer than the man who made it
. Watching the clock, he’d said,
It gets less before it’s gone
. She was thinking how it would be, to feel like that. So she drove along, loving the occasional black-eyed Susans – they were easy to love – and then about twenty grackles flew over the road, dropping their shadows across the hood of her truck, and then she saw the car in Matti’s driveway and slammed on the brakes. She backed up for a better look. If she’d been a different person, if she’d been Maria, for instance, she’d have turned in even though she’d cleaned for Matti earlier and had already left him his supper. If he’d been a different person, too.

It would be a salesman, she decided, insurance likely, since your ordinary Watson guy couldn’t afford a new car. She drove on more soberly, glancing in her rear-view mirror from time to time and seeing nothing but an unphilosophical sun in her eyes. As soon as she gave up doing that, from way down the road she spotted the convertible parked in the Gustafson farmyard. She had lots of time, before her truck rattled and bumped to a standstill in front of Maria’s house, to wonder who could be visiting. She pulled up right beside the car. It was longer than her truck. When she got out she wished her hands weren’t full; she would have liked to touch its gleaming blue paint and the chrome along its headrests and the ribbed leather seats. If she could have been sure no one
would see her, she would have loved to open the wide door and slide inside, settle her back against the seat and run her fingers over the knobs and buttons on the dashboard.

Maria shouted to come in. She sounded a bit breathless and was wiping her face against her sleeve. Aggie set the stack of empty casserole dishes and Tupperware down on the table and looked around the kitchen.

“We’re eating in the dining room tonight,” Maria said. “We have a guest.” The word had wings attached. Up it flew to the ceiling while Maria led the way to the dining room. “This is Bill Longmore. And Bill, this is Aggie. You may remember dancing with her long ago.”

“Aggie,” he said, rising from his chair to shake her hand and look into her eyes. “I believe I do remember dancing with you.”

“Pshaw!” she said, louder than she intended, and heat rose in a line she could feel from her chest all the way to her forehead. She plunked herself onto the chair he drew out for her, and then she knew who he was. She opened her mouth to say so, but Maria interrupted. “He’s here looking for Elena Huhtala!” she said. Then she turned to Bill. “Tell her.”

“I believe she’s on her way home,” he said. “She might be there already.”

“There’s a car in the driveway!” Aggie said.

“A rental, right?”

“I don’t know. A new car.”

“A two-tone brown Ford.”

“Yes, I’m almost sure it was.”

“That’s what she’s driving.”

A pause followed that announcement while the three of them beamed at one another as if they’d orchestrated this miracle themselves. Then Maria suddenly said, “Eat, eat.” She was so emphatic,
she made Bill laugh. Aggie shook her head and laughed too. Maria could always relax you and put you in a good mood. Obligingly, they passed her dishes around the table. They tucked into the mashed potatoes in her blue bowl, the buttery garden green beans and carrots in the yellow one, and the cast-iron pot of Swedish meatballs, still simmering over the copper warmer. They ate and then ate more to please her, and talked very merrily all the while without too many expressions of wonder on Aggie’s part or too many questions or explanations on Bill’s. Maria did most of the talking, especially when it came to relating Matti Huhtala’s sad story. “In this very house he said, ‘I will find her,’ ” she told them. She rose to clear the plates and Aggie helped her and then they ate her famous Saskatoon pie (warm from the oven) with her fresh farm cream.

“How was it you ended up here, anyway, Bill, the night of that dance in Trevna?” Aggie asked while they were having their coffee.

He looked startled by the question, and stared across the room a few seconds before he answered. “My father gave me a new roadster as a gift for college graduation,” he said. “My mother was going
through a bad time, she had cancer and was in a clinic, and my father took off for a little break – or so he called it. Took his secretary with him. I wasn’t supposed to know that, but he wasn’t all that careful to hide it.” He smiled at her. He must have noticed she’d flinched at that word
cancer
, a word most people didn’t say out loud. He had one of the most appealing smiles she’d ever seen; it was as if he was asking something of her that he knew she wanted to give. Her approval, that’s what he was asking for, or even her prior pardon for whatever he might do or say. She felt indulgent and privileged at the same time because of it.

“So there I was in the house alone,” he went on, “with this big convertible sitting in the driveway. I cruised around the city for a few days, but my friends were mostly off on holidays or working through the summer. One night I drove out into the country, to a dancehall, had a good time. Went back home and packed a suitcase and set out. I thought I’d do a tour, you know, hit some more halls, spend my vacation that way. Hey, it was fun for a while,” he added, seeing them listening to every word. “I was young then.” He even looked young when he said it, Aggie thought.

It was Bill’s intention to spend the night in Trevna and then to drive back and visit the Huhtala place in the morning. At the end of the evening, when they were standing at the door about to leave, Maria said to him, “Ask Elena if she’ll come and see me.”

Aggie said, “I’m not sure I want to meet Elena again.” She’d spoken without thinking and laughed self-consciously when they turned to her for an explanation. “She’s almost bound to disappoint me.” Maybe she’d meant it for a warning. She didn’t think so, but sometimes her mind went ahead of her, and she did like Bill an awful lot. He took it as a warning; she saw that. He turned serious, with something like second thoughts in his nice blue eyes.