Liberty Street (21 page)

“Thanks for nothing.”

“I'd better go,” Frances says. Then she apologizes to Mrs. Samples for the Coke all over the furniture.

“Why are you apologizing?” Myrna says. “It's not your fault.” She sits down again, carefully, and then she starts to cry because her stitches hurt.

“Myrna, honey,” her mother says.

“Sorry,” Frances says, “but I'd really better go. I've got my mom's car and she might need it.”

Myrna grabs a tissue in a way that says the box on the table is there for crying and not for ordinary runny noses, and says, “Really? Joe Fletcher? The guy who works at Borsa's? I always thought you'd be the one to get away from here.”

Frances is surprised to learn that Myrna thinks anything at all about her.

“No,” she says. “I don't want to go anywhere. Not really.”

“You're out of your mind, then.”

Frances doesn't want to hear that, not from Myrna Samples, not after her mother has finally stopped harping about university. “So anyway,” she says, “good luck with the baby and all that. I'll see you around.”

She practically runs out the door, and then she does run down the sidewalk, taking a roundabout way to where she'd left her mother's car in case Daphne is hiding somewhere, waiting to ambush her.

After she gets home, she spends the rest of the afternoon lying on a lounge chair by the house, suntanning with baby oil and iodine, trying to pretend it's still summer, picturing Daphne with Coke dripping from her hair, pleased that Myrna stood up for her (sort of), and thinking about Myrna's
stitches, certain that she herself will never be tempted to have children.

She thinks about what Daphne said—
hands under your sweater.

It's an unusually hot day for the end of September. Sweat beads up on her bare skin.

J
OE HAS A
sister named Martha in a town called Deer Valley, and he wants Frances to go there with him for Sunday supper. When Frances tells her mother where she's going, Alice gets a worried look on her face and says that when a man wants to introduce you to his family, he's planning something. “Marriage, Frances. For God's sake, put an end to this. You can't be hoping for a marriage proposal.”

Marriage? Her mother is losing her mind. The word “married” seriously applied to her, Frances Moon, before any other girl in her graduation class, before even Myrna Samples, when she'd had only one date in her entire high school career? Her mother is certifiable, and she tells her so.

She and Joe arrive at a small, dark house on the edge of Deer Valley. The lack of privilege revealed by the house's interior is disconcerting. Frances has never been in a house like it. It has only two rooms: a combination living room and kitchen with a wood stove, and a second room with a curtain rather than a door, which Frances assumes is the bedroom. The house appears to have sunk into the ground since its construction, and the doorways are so low that Joe has to duck. Martha is wearing a dark navy dress and black stockings and oxford shoes. She looks like a nun, or maybe a Hutterite. She's older than Frances's mother and is very much a spinster lady, and also, it turns out, a religious holy
roller with a deep suspicion of young people. It's immediately obvious the reach of her suspicion extends to Frances.

Joe and Frances sit on the small couch while Martha puts the food on the table. Every piece of furniture in the room is topped with at least one crocheted doily; you can't sit without knocking one out of its place, and Frances finds herself straightening the doilies behind her obsessively until Martha calls them to the table. Martha behaves as though they're late, as though the food has been waiting for hours, as though it must be Frances's fault that they're late (when, as far as Frances knows, they are precisely on time).

At the dinner table, Martha picks up Frances's left hand and Joe's right, and launches into a prayer. After that, the word “Lord” finds its way into almost every sentence that comes out of Martha's mouth, as though she's channelling him into the conversation. Martha makes pronouncements such as, “I do not approve of the young people in this new generation. They have grown away from the Lord and behave scandalously.” Frances is actually afraid of her, thinks she might be a witch. In an effort to impress Martha, she says, hearing the nerves in her voice, “I don't go around with the kids in town much.” Then it turns into an interview, with Martha asking the questions (presumably on behalf of the Lord) and Frances sitting primly with her hands folded in her lap, trying not to hyperventilate with fear.

“If you don't run with the other teenagers, what do you do?”

“Oh, I help out at home” (pretty much a lie), “and I read a lot” (the truth).

“You read?”

“Yes. I read all the time.”

“And what do you read?”

“Novels, mostly. My mother bought me a set of classics.
Jane Eyre
, like that. I go to the library a lot.”

“Novels are nothing but lies and romance. What do you think is the point of these romances you read?” (She hadn't said romances.)

“No point, I suppose. Entertainment.” Then, trying to show off her brains, “Maybe an exploration of, you know, the human condition.”

“There is no point in reading made-up stories. Lies, that is. The only book of which I approve is the Good Book.”

“Well, that too.” (Frances isn't even sure there is a Bible in her house.)

“And which book of the Bible is your favourite?”

She tries to remember which book contains the story of the birth of Jesus, thinking that's bound to be an acceptable one. She can't, and ends up saying Genesis.

Martha says, “I am particularly fond of Revelation. It describes events to which I am looking forward, when all the sinners on this earth will get what's coming to them. I suspect that includes you.”

Then Martha indicates that the interview is over and turns to her carrots and potatoes and roast beef, and Joe gets Frances out of there not long after their plates are clean, before Frances is forced to offer to help Martha with the dishes.

When they're on the way home, Joe says, “Don't mind her. You did fine.”

Frances has the thought that she'd spoken more words in response to Martha's questions than Joe had ever heard her say. She's mulling this over, thinking about the conversation and Martha's zeal for the end of the world, when Joe does in fact ask her to marry him, although his proposal is not
phrased as a question. They're driving down the highway and he says, “I wonder if you might want to get married. To me, that is.”

Stunned. Dumbfounded.

Her mother was right? She must not have heard correctly. She doesn't immediately say anything because she so believes this must be the case. He's never even kissed her. They've never really even
talked
about anything. It's one thing to walk around with a little voice in your head saying,
Frances Moon has a boyfriend who looks a bit like Clint Eastwood
, but marriage? That is something else altogether. And does he look anything like Clint Eastwood? She sneaks a glance. Not really.

On the other hand . . . there's an unfamiliar path ahead of her here, at this moment, and curiosity leads her to wonder where it will go next. What will he say next? How will he explain himself? What does a man do who has just asked a girl to marry him, and especially when that girl is her?

Here's what he does. Instead of driving Frances straight home, he pulls off the grid road and bumps the truck through an open pasture and up a little hill that overlooks a creek bed. The windows are down and the air is rich with the smell of fall and the sound of crickets. It's still and warm. Body temperature. The radio is on the country station, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Joe is sitting on his side of the bench seat, Frances on hers, until he slides over next to her, and she can feel that body temperature up against her thigh. Joe puts his arm around her and pulls her toward him.

“I know you're young,” he says, “but I'll treat you right.” Then he kisses her. It's the first time she's ever been kissed. And he
really
kisses her, like in the movies, not just a peck
on the lips. She can hardly breathe, the intensity of a warm body so close, a man's body. The curiosity path stretches out, inviting her to choose, choose, and she can feel the heat of him in her mouth.

He stops, even though she doesn't want him to.

“What do you say?” he says.

“I'd better think about it,” she says. (Was that her voice? It didn't sound like her. Also, it was a stupid thing to say—“I'd better think about it.” He might think it meant no.) “It's just . . . well, you know, we haven't known each other that long.”

“Take your time,” he says. Then he pulls her head to his shoulder. “No rush, eh.” A few minutes later, when he slides back over behind the wheel and starts the truck, Frances is sorry. She wants to stay here, likes the way the truck cab has filled up with anticipation.

He says, “Your mother will be wondering where you've got to.”

Her mother. Why did he have to bring her into this? Well, at least Frances can report that the marriage proposal had come before any hanky-panky.

When they pull into the yard and the truck stops, she doesn't get out right away. She waits, thinking that Joe will kiss her again, wanting him to, but he doesn't, and so she opens the door.

“Tomorrow I'll drive you out to my place,” he says. “You'll want to see it.”

Frances nods and says, “Okay, then.” (
Stupid, stupid.
“Okay, then”—did she really say that?)

Her parents are still up when she gets inside. Her mother sees something in Frances's face—
damn her
—but Frances can't bring herself to tell them about the proposal.

“His sister is off her rocker, if you ask me” is all she says.

Her father is looking at her too—well, not really looking, since he's blind, but still, he's studying her. She can't read his expression.

She goes to bed but can't sleep. She closes her eyes and pretends that Joe is in the bed with her, tries to imagine what that would be like—her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. His kiss. His tongue in her mouth.
She, Frances Moon, has had a man's tongue in her mouth
!

By morning, she's decided to say yes.

She tells her parents about the proposal at breakfast. Her mother looks sick, about as close to deathly ill as a healthy person can look.

Frances says, “We're going out to his farm this afternoon.”

Her mother grabs the dishes off the breakfast table and throws them in the sink so carelessly it's a wonder they don't all break.

“He says it's picturesque where his house is.”

Crash. A dish breaks in the sink. Maybe more than one.

Alice says, “God help us.”

Frances thinks about what she should wear to her wedding.

W
HERE
F
RANCES
'
S PARENTS
live, the land is almost all cleared for farming, but north of town there are only pockets of cultivated land mixed with acres of bush.

“Bought the place from an old trapper,” Joe says. “Used to be a log house here. I lived in it for a while, me and the mice. Then I knocked it down and put this up instead.” He's referring to the square-looking bungalow that sits in a clearing ringed with poplars, their leaves beginning to turn bright yellow.

They get out of the truck and Frances follows Joe to the house. A collie-type dog appears from somewhere and tries to jump on her.

Joe kicks it away and says, “Get, you.”

“It's okay,” Frances says. “I like dogs. What's his name?”

“I just call him Dog,” Joe says.

She calls the dog back, holding out her hand. He comes to her and she scratches him behind his ears. He wags his tail so hard it seems as though he's going to fall over. He's so excited he piddles on her shoe and she wipes it in the grass before Joe sees and chases the dog away again.

The house smells of woodsmoke. The door opens into the kitchen and Frances looks around and tries to imagine herself cooking and cleaning here. She tries to picture herself
scrubbing the kitchen floor, tries to absorb domestic responsibility into the shadowy but gradually sharpening image of herself as a married woman.

The furniture in both the kitchen and the living room is sparse and old—not surprising, Frances thinks, for a bachelor. She'll get some matching blankets and make covers for the couch and the armchair. There's a TV on a wooden stand that looks homemade. At least there's a TV, and it's newer than the one her parents have.

She pokes around and discovers a small washroom, with a washstand and basin and a stainless steel tub. The tub has a drain and one tap for cold water, but there's no hot water and no toilet.

“Biffy's out back,” Joe says. “You have to heat water on the stove. Maybe I should put in proper plumbing. Didn't really matter when it was just me here.”

When it was just me.
He's talking as though she's already said yes.

She looks in the bedrooms. There are two of them. The smaller one is being used to store an old motorcycle, which is in parts all over the floor.

“I'm trying to get that thing running,” he says of the motorcycle. “So far, no luck.”

A motorcycle! Frances thinks. Will she really get to ride on the back of a motorcycle?

The other bedroom is bigger. It has a double bed and two old dressers. There's a plaid wool blanket on the bed. Joe sees her looking at it and turns away, as though he's ashamed by the bed, the fact that he's shown it to Frances.

He says, “I'll make us a pot of coffee.” Frances doesn't much like coffee, but she doesn't say so. She steps from the
bedroom back into the living room. The view of the trees from the window reminds her of a calendar picture. She'd be like Heidi living out here, she thinks, or maybe Laura Ingalls. Laura Ingalls with a motorcycle.

“Joe,” she says. It just slips out, intimate, like skin on skin.

He hears that she's said something. “What was that?” he asks, coming to stand with her in the window. He kisses the back of her neck and then drapes his arm around her shoulder, and she feels as though she's going to faint, just drop right out from under his arm the way you could slip though a Styrofoam ring in the water. She's sure she shuddered and wonders if he felt it.

“Have you got an answer for me?” he asks.

She nods.

“Is that a yes, then?”

“Yes.” Her voice speaking, but it's as though it has a mind of its own, not her mind.

“We'll talk to your folks when I drive you home,” Joe says.

He removes his arm from around her shoulder and then turns in such a way that his hand brushes down the front of her sweater, against her breasts. She steps back, thinking it was an awkward accident, like hands touching in a popcorn box, but then . . .
of course, he had done it on purpose
! She's just told him that she's going to be his wife. He
wants
to touch her,
hands under sweaters.
The thought makes her knees shake. She's not afraid, though. Why should she be? She has something that a man wants, a real man, not an awkward boy scrubbed and polished by his mother. Who would have believed it just a few months ago, when she walked up to the stage in the school gym to collect her twenty-five-dollar
award? Frances's future: marriage, looking forward to being felt up. She wants to laugh.

They take their mugs of coffee out to the yard. Joe shows her the spot he thinks would be good for a garden, points beyond the meadow to where his farmland is, tells her how many acres he seeds and how many acres of hay he leases to a neighbour with cattle. He has a trapline that he works in the winter. Sometimes he works in the bush. And at the dealership in the summer, of course, but she already knows that.

“Can't earn enough money farming this land,” he says. “It's not like your father's land, not like south of town.”

Frances doesn't care about seeded acres and farmland. She asks, because it's on her mind, “How come you've never been married?” She doesn't actually know that this is the case.

Joe says, “I was just waiting for you to be old enough.”

“You weren't,” Frances says. “That's a lie.” Here's something else new, a side of Joe she has not seen before: he's teasing her. She feels a confidence growing between them. From now on, people will see them both the way they had seen them in the past, but this thing that's growing will be apparent just to them. Again, she wants to laugh. She's in a secret world no one had told her about.

They spend a couple of hours walking around the yard, up the trail through the bush, and by late afternoon, when Joe drives her home again, she's certain she's in love. How did it happen so quickly? she wonders. When Joe asked her to marry him yesterday, she wasn't sure. Now, when she thinks of him kissing her, she can hardly stand the thrill of it. She wonders about the term “engagement.” Is she officially engaged or do you have to make some kind of
announcement? She has no ring. Does that mean anything? She remembers Myrna Samples's diamond. Obviously, that ring had not meant anything—not even a promise, since the wedding was off a month later. She doesn't want a ring, she decides, doesn't need one. Then she thinks, What is engagement anyway? Why don't they just get married? Right away. They both know what they want.

After Joe drives her home, he stays for supper, at Frances's insistence. When they're all seated at the table, he says, “Frances has agreed to marry me.”

Frances's parents look at Joe, then at Frances.

“I said yes,” Frances says, to break the silence.

She looks at her father. No expression gives away what he's thinking at this moment. He hasn't said a word about Joe Fletcher since he agreed with Alice that Joe was too old, had simply turned silent, turned a blind eye (or two), and let Alice deal with Frances.

When she looks at her mother, Frances can clearly see what she thinks. Alice says nothing more than “Please pass the salt,” and for a minute Frances wonders if she might throw some over her shoulder to prevent any more bad luck. Why isn't anyone happy for her? Why isn't her mother jumping up to hug her, ask her when, find out what colour bouquet she wants to carry?

Finally, after what seems like an eternity of silence, Joe says, “I'll take good care of her.” Frances wishes he would say a bit more, be a little more convincing.

“See that you do,” Frances's father says. Then he sighs and gets up from the table, and Frances thinks he'll go the bedroom and close the door, but he goes to the root cellar and comes up with a bottle of his homemade chokecherry
wine. It's the first time Frances has ever been allowed a glass of wine. Her mother pushes her glass away when Basie puts it on the table in front of her, and she actually says, “I hardly think this is cause for celebration.”

Frances wants to kill her.
Kill
her, really, for not understanding that this is what she wants. She'd like to scream it: “This is what I
want
, Mother. Be happy for me. It's my life!” She's worried that Joe will leave in the face of all this rudeness from his future in-laws, but there he is, lifting his water glass of chokecherry wine, and now her father is asking him about a tractor part or—no, tires, that's it, and they pass the serving dishes and eat, and then Frances's mother is clearing the dishes from the table, stirring up a hurricane in the soapy water in the sink. Frances picks up a tea towel to dry, but her mother says, “Never mind. Go and sit with your
fiancé.
” The way she spits out the word “fiancé,” she might as well be talking about cow manure.

When Joe leaves an hour later, Frances walks out to the truck with him. Her head is light from the wine and she trips over her own feet and has to grab his arm. Before he gets in the truck, he puts his arms around her and then his hands find her breasts, and this time Frances is sure it's no accident. She begins to push him away, afraid that her parents will see because she and Joe are standing almost right under the yard light, but she feels that flush again, that tingle, and curiosity gets the better of her, and she lets him slip his hands up under her sweater, lets him fumble with her brassiere. She moves her arms to give him more room and . . .
oh my God, this is why girls let their boyfriends do things.
Why had no one told her this? She feels his hardness against her and she's curious about that too.

“Let's go somewhere in the truck,” she says.

But he backs away from her and says, “The wedding. You and your mother decide.”

After he leaves the yard, she struggles to hook her bra, sure her parents will know what she's been up to—that is, getting
felt up.
She straightens her hair and takes a few deep breaths. When she goes back inside, she finds that her father has gone to bed.

Her mother, though, is waiting for her in the living room. She has the brochure from the university on her lap, the one with information for first-year students. Frances had assumed it was long gone, turned to ash in the burning barrel along with the ripped-up letter.

“What should I do with this?” her mother asks.

“I'm not sure why you still have it,” Frances says. Then she adds, “I won't be needing it, obviously.”

“I was hoping,” her mother says.

“Please stop,” Frances says. “I have a future. I would think you'd be glad.”

“Joe Fletcher? I should be glad that Joe Fletcher is your future? I despair that you've chosen marriage to a man like him. For God's sake, Frances, he's not even a proper farmer. He's some kind of jack of all trades.”

Frances bites her tongue, and then says, in place of what she wants to say, “How long does it take to arrange a wedding?”

Her mother leaves the room.

Two weeks later, when Frances's new blue velvet dress from the catalogue is hanging in the closet, Alice tries once more, one final attempt. “You're going to regret this choice, Frances,” she says.

“You mean the blue dress? No, I won't. White is old-fashioned. And I look good in blue. You always say that.”

“That's not what I meant. You can't just come running home. It won't be that simple.”

“You mean you're kicking me out?” She's trying to lighten her mother up. Keep her from
ruining her happiness.

“It's not funny. This is not something you can just change your mind about. You sign the papers and it's legal. You're married.”

“Tell me something I don't know,” Frances says.

Her mother looks as if she is about to tell her something she doesn't know, but she hesitates.

“What?” Frances presses.

“Since I can't seem to do anything about this, I have a piece of advice,” her mother says. “I hope you and Joe will use . . . precautions, at least for a while.”

“Well, that's a good piece of advice,” Frances says. “I was wondering.”

“There's a pill now. Do you know about the pill? I think we should go to the doctor and get you a prescription.”

She thinks about Myrna Samples and the stitches and the crying baby, and agrees with her mother that she should get a prescription.

It's the first thing they've agreed on since Joe Fletcher came calling.

Maybe long before that.

A
WEEKNIGHT
. W
EDNESDAY
. Late. Joe drives into the yard unexpectedly, and it's kind of exciting, the way he drops in as though he can't live without seeing her, stands at the door waiting. Frances's father is already in bed. Her mother puts
on her most disapproving look as Frances grabs her favourite grey kangaroo sweatshirt to wear against the cool night air. Frances and her mother have been arguing all day about the wedding, which is just a few weeks off. Her mother pulls her into the living room.

“I think I smelled liquor on his breath,” she whispers.

“You did not,” Frances says.

“If he's been drinking, do not leave this yard with him.”

“Like I would,” she says, deciding right then that she's going somewhere with Joe, no matter what state he's in.

“My mother thinks you've been drinking,” she says when they're in the truck.

He doesn't deny it. “We don't have to go far,” he says.

Go far for what? Frances slides over to sit close to him as they leave the yard.

Just a few miles from the farm, Joe pulls off the road onto an approach. It's not a romantic spot. There's a falling-down old farmhouse in front of them, and a line of dark trees that hides the sky and the stars. He turns the truck off but doesn't say anything. He's distracted. His arm is around her, but it feels like a dead weight, not a comfort. She begins to worry that he's changed his mind, or that he wants to wait. She can smell the alcohol on his breath. She's afraid of drinking, has never really been around drunk people, and is beginning to wish Joe hadn't come for her.