Liberty Street (23 page)

The presents are carried, one by one, to Frances and Joe, who are seated on the well-worn wagon-wheel couch—by now Joe's tie is hanging from one of his jacket pockets—and Frances's mother writes down who gave what as Frances peels away silver-and-white wrapping paper until household objects are revealed: a dinner set from her parents, a pop-up toaster from one of the neighbours, sheets from another, a crystal cream-and-sugar set, a wool Hudson's Bay blanket. Myrna's given her something called a sand candle that she found in a craft store in Yellowhead. Frances loves it. The last gift she opens is an ominous black Bible from Martha, which she accidentally drops on the floor, almost causing Martha to keel off Basie's chair.

After the gifts have been opened, Frances thinks it's done, over, time for everyone to go, but her mother serves coffee and cake again, as though she's trying to keep people there.

“When are they going to leave?” Frances whispers to her, and her mother says, “Don't be rude.” As though she's still a child.

Eventually the guests do begin to leave. One of the neighbours offers to drive Martha to Deer Valley so the bride and groom don't have to. Joe and Frances's father load the gifts and boxes, as well as Frances's new suitcase, into the back of the
even newer truck. Frances keeps the sand candle with her, to carry on her lap so it doesn't get chipped. When they're ready to go, Frances's mother says, sadly, “I haven't seen the place. I don't even know what you're moving to.”

“Now, Mother,” says Frances's father, but Frances can hear the sadness in his voice, and she's annoyed with both of them for making her feel bad on her wedding day.

“Let's go,” she says to Joe, getting into the truck. When she slams her door, she catches the skirt of her dress and the rubber jamb leaves a big black mark. Her mother looks at the mark, and Frances knows what she's thinking—that Frances won't have a clue how to get it out—and she's right. She closes the door again and looks away from her mother, wanting to tell Joe to hurry up, take her away, but also wanting to jump out of the truck and hug her mother and assure her that all will be fine, you can learn how to get marks out of a dress, anyone can learn that.

“Ready to go, then?” Joe asks, and she nods yes.

The highway north of Elliot is a road used by logging trucks. When Frances and Joe are halfway to his turnoff, they come across a load of logs spilled over the highway and down into the ditch, blocking traffic in both directions. The police are nowhere to be seen, and a couple of local farmers are doing their best with tractors and chains to clear a path. Several of the stranded people have got out of their vehicles so they can better see what's going on. The day is getting cooler and Frances zips up her jacket as she steps out of the truck. Joe, still wearing his suit, walks up ahead to see if there's anything he can do to help, while Frances waits with a couple who have so many kids she wonders how they all fit into their truck. One little girl notices the mark caused by
the door closing on Frances's dress, and Frances says, “This is my wedding dress. I just got married.”

“Are you a bride, then?” the girl asks.

“I guess I am,” Frances says.

“A new bride!” the mother says. “How wonderful.” People within hearing distance congratulate her, although when Joe comes (
so he's the groom
?), they fall silent.

Eventually, there's a path through the log spill and the trucker who lost his load guides a single lane of traffic through it. When they're on their way again, Joe says it's lucky that no one was hurt when the first few logs spun off at sixty miles an hour and bounced along the pavement. Most of the load had cascaded off the truck after the driver managed to pull over.

It's early evening when they finally arrive in Joe's yard, where the dog is waiting for them. Joe carries Frances's boxes into the house while Frances carries her suitcase to the bedroom. Should she unpack? She doesn't know. They pass by each other awkwardly as they make trips to the bedroom with Frances's things, until finally Joe steps in front of her and blocks her path, and Frances thinks,
So this is it.
They're standing in the living room, the picture window without drapes, and there are no curtains to pull closed, but then,
It doesn't matter, does it? We're alone out here.
As her dress drops to the floor, her bra, her stockings, she stands, self-conscious, wanting to cover herself, but also simply dying of curiosity to know what will happen next. Joe picks her up and carries her to the bedroom, completely naked, her clothes strewn on the living room floor, and then she's on the bed and Joe's hands are all over her, and she thinks,
This is what people do. This is what girls do, Myrna and the others.

Afterward, Joe pulls his pants on and leaves without
saying where he's going, and Frances lies alone on the bed, under the sheet now to escape the roughness of the blanket, thinking,
I, Frances Moon—Frances Fletcher, that is—am no longer a virgin.
The thought is exciting, but at the same time there's a feeling of disappointment that is working hard to ruin things. The fun part—those moments in the living room in front of the bare window—had lasted such a short time. She waits for Joe to come back, but he doesn't.

She hears a vehicle in the yard and her first thought is that her parents have come to check on her. But of course it's not her parents—they wouldn't come to call on her wedding night. Who, then? She pictures her dress on the living room floor. Even her bra is there. She quickly jumps up, covers herself with the blanket, and retrieves her clothes. She has nothing else to put on, as she hasn't unpacked her suitcase yet. As she zips up the dress she feels something warm and sticky run down the insides of her thighs.

She looks out the bedroom window and sees a couple getting out of a car. Who would drop in unannounced on the evening of Joe's wedding? Unless they don't know. She checks to make sure no one is in the house and then slips into the washroom to try to clean herself up. There's no hot water. She washes in the basin with cold water, then pours the water down the bathtub drain. She tries to fix her hair with Joe's comb, which is sitting on the edge of the washstand. Her hairbrush is still packed in one of the boxes.

She hears the kitchen door, and a woman's loud laughter. When Frances joins the visitors in the kitchen, she sees a bottle on the counter and Joe already getting glasses out of the kitchen cupboard. There's a gift on the kitchen table, wrapped in wedding paper. Joe introduces the couple to her
as Saul and Ginny. Frances is baffled. Who are these people? Joe hadn't mentioned any friends when she asked him if he wanted to invite anyone to the wedding.

“Here she is,” Ginny says. “Come on over here and tell us why Joe's been keeping you such a secret.” She pours Frances a glass of whatever is in the bottle and holds it out.

Frances shakes her head and manages to say, “I don't drink.”

“You don't drink? Well, it's time to start, girl. This is Saul's homemade. You won't find any better.”

Frances says, “I don't like it.” Even though she doesn't know whether she likes it or not.

“Leave her alone, Ginny,” Saul says. “Not every woman drinks the way you do.”

“Woman,” Ginny says. “That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? And I wonder why we didn't get an invitation to the wedding. Sorry. None of my business. Just curious.”

“It was a family wedding,” Frances says quickly, overlooking the insult about her age. She wonders why Joe doesn't step in, but he doesn't appear to be listening. Frances says, “We wanted to keep it small.”

Ginny drains the alcohol in her glass and says, “Oh, who cares. It's party time. Frances Fletcher, nice to meet you.”

There it is again. Frances Fletcher. That's her. She looks across the room at the man who is
her husband
and sees him through her mother's eyes, sees the whole thing through her mother's eyes, the fact that she has moved into this house with the man she will share a bed with forever—
forever
! What if she doesn't want to sleep in that bed forever?

Frances hears another car in the yard, and then the dog barking. Joe finally looks at her, sheepish, and says, “Ginny
and Saul arranged a little get-together, invited a few friends and neighbours over to meet you.”

More people are coming over
?

Ginny says, “Don't worry. Clay and Nancy are bringing food,” and when Clay and Nancy come into the house, they have crackers and chips and a dip made from Philadelphia cream cheese and onion soup mix. Another wedding gift is placed on the table. Frances doesn't recognize any of these people from town. More strangers arrive—all of them much older than she is, none of whom she recognizes—and she concludes that town for them must be one of the towns on the line going north. They've all brought bottles of liquor with them, or cases of beer, and wedding presents.

Frances tries to help Nancy lay the food on the kitchen table, but in the end Nancy does it herself because she knows where things are in the kitchen and Frances doesn't. Frances hopes no one will drink too much. Several times Ginny tries to get her to take a drink, and finally Joe tells Ginny to leave Frances alone, and Ginny sulks until someone cracks wise about the age difference between the bride and groom, when she throws back her head and laughs like a mallard duck.

By now there are fifteen or so people in the kitchen. The more they drink, the louder they get. They laugh and talk at the same time, and they're crude. Saul teases Ginny about the new bike she's bought herself. He says she likes to ride a bike because it feels good on her little thing—
What little thing
? Frances wonders—and then Ginny says to him, “Maybe you should try it; maybe it would feel good on
your
little thing,” and everybody laughs, and Clay even tries to pour a beer over Saul's head, but Saul pushes his hand away and for a minute Frances is afraid he's going to hit Clay. Their behaviour is like
nothing she has ever seen. She's thankful when Joe moves to stand beside her, and although he seems to be drinking just as much as the others, he's quiet, the same as always. If he behaved like the others, she doesn't know what she would do. Run, she thinks. Run into the bush and hide.

She doesn't like the way Saul and Ginny keep looking at her, studying her.

Eventually, Frances excuses herself and goes to the bedroom, telling Joe she's going to change out of her dress. She gets as far as searching one of the boxes for her jeans, but when she can't find them, she lies down on the bed. She doesn't want to go back out to the party. She thinks she will stay here until they all leave, and hopes no one will miss her and come looking for her.

Twenty minutes later, Joe does come looking for her because Ginny thinks it's time to open gifts. Frances reluctantly returns to the kitchen with Joe, and she opens the presents. She doesn't bother writing down who brought what, the way her mother told her she should. She simply opens the gifts and lines them up on the kitchen table: another toaster, a set of three china robins in various sizes, a chip-and-dip tray, a ceramic cookie jar in the shape and costume of a Mountie (this one gets lots of laughs). When she's opened the last one, Saul says, “One more, buddy, just for you,” and he takes a small gift wrapped in wedding paper from his jacket pocket and tosses it to Joe. He opens it: a green plaid cap.

“Oh, cripes,” one of the women says. “Here we go. That goddamned cap again.”

Frances thinks the cap looks used, and even if it were new, what kind of wedding present is that?

“Don't look so confused,” Ginny says to Frances. “Just a
reminder that marriage isn't going to stop your hubby from having his fun with the boys. He's still in the club.”

“Damn straight,” Saul says, and the men all raise their drinks and everyone laughs, even the women, Ginny's duck laugh loudest of them all. Then Joe tosses the cap through the doorway to the living room and it's forgotten.

Frances looks at the gifts and cards on the table next to a big bowl of ripple chips and she doesn't know what to do, what's expected of her, so she picks up the wrapping paper that was lying on the kitchen floor and throws it in the wood stove. At least she knows how to lift the iron plate so she can shove the paper in. She doesn't light it, though, because she doesn't know how to work the flue. She endures the party for another ten minutes and then can't stand it any longer, so she slips from the kitchen, planning to hide once again, hoping no one will follow her.

As she steps into the living room, the toe of her shoe catches the green cap, which is lying on the linoleum floor. She stops to pick it up, and as she does she sees two initials written in black marker on the inside band. They're blurred with age and wear, but she can still read them:
SC
. She doesn't think anything of the cap or the initials. Her only thought is that an old used cap is the stupidest thing ever to give someone as a wedding present, even as a joke. She sits on the couch with the old cap in her hand and mindlessly twirls it on an index finger the way she's seen her father do—the way she saw Silas Chance do with another green cap all those years ago. A voice in the kitchen says something uproariously funny and everyone laughs. Outside, the dog barks.

SC. Silas Chance. She stops twirling the cap and stares
at it, the green-and-black plaid, the blurry old initials on the worn band. It couldn't be. It couldn't be Silas's cap. But all the same, she drops it on the floor at her feet.

“Hey, Frances, where'd you go?” Ginny calls from the kitchen. “You're missing all the fun.”

Frances gets up and runs for the bedroom and closes the door. It couldn't be. It's Saul's cap.
S
for Saul. Who knows what the story behind the cap is? Who cares?