What They Wanted (5 page)

He abruptly took my arm and led me back out through those heavy doors. I followed, sniffling quietly as he led us through a series of corridors. Mother was sitting in the front pew of a small chapel. She looked shrunken, her shoulders tiny like a girl’s. She was bent before a crucifix, her face the pallor of Father’s.

Chris spoke her name. She rose, rushing towards him as she always did, as though he were a font from which she must drink. Unlike me, who she’d held aloof from birth. Small wonder. Three dead babies and me the fourth one born, small wonder she held me aloof. And then that “dark spell,” as Gran called it, the weeks and weeks of darkness that Mother succumbed to after my birth, so dark a spell that it bruised her skin in places and blocked her nipples from milking, I once heard her old friend Suze say.

But I hadn’t fared bad. Gran brought me across the brook to her own house and fed me goat’s milk from a bottle, and such great comfort I was to that dear woman that when Mother started getting well, Gran pleaded to keep me. Which served them both, as Mother was soon pregnant again, and suffered morning sickness straight through to the last day of her pregnancy.

Given that their houses were a stone’s throw apart, and that Gran and Mother were tighter than blood, Mother was as much a daily fixture in my life as Gran was. And I grew happy and warm, never knowing but that Mother was happy and warm too. Till I saw her coddling Chris that first time. The way she smiled into his eyes as he suckled her breast. Such a change, such an incredible change came upon her, a glow that touched her eyes, her skin, dissipating a form of darkness from her face that I hadn’t before noted.

Naturally I can’t recall these things. But some part of me did. It watched now as Mother clung to Chris in the small chapel, caressing his cheek. It remembered how she used to smooch him with kisses when he was a baby, how she used to squat beside him on the shoreline, watching and smiling as he scooped up wriggly-tails from amongst the rocks, but then one day when I scooped up a worm and brought it home she brushed it from my hand, squished it on the stoop, and then scrubbed my hands, gently but firmly, with a bar of soap, chiding me about dirt.

Mother put Chris aside, reaching for me. “You’ve seen him?” she asked, putting her arms around my neck. I nodded, and clung to that familiar scent of lavender, all warmed and fused into my mother’s skin. “You’ll not let him see that,” she said as I started to cry. She pulled back, the sharp blue of her eyes piercing through the tears in my own. “He thinks he’s getting better, and that’s what we’ll let him think—he’s getting better …” She faltered, turning towards the altar.

“Isn’t he, then—isn’t he getting better?” I choked.

Mother looked at me, then at Chris who was paling visibly. “Yes, oh, my yes, he’s getting better, of course he’s getting better,” she cried, both hands reaching for Chris. “But—oh,” she said, her voice dropping with a sudden realization, “you don’t know, you never talked to Gran, or, or Kyle.’Course you didn’t, how could you,” she added with a silly laugh, “when they only just left—”

Chris broke in. “Don’t know what? What is it?”

“He’ll not work again. Your father will not work again.” She spoke with such conviction it was as though she herself were commanding his fate.

“The doctors—?” I asked. “Is that what the doctors are saying?”

“Yes. No. They don’t rightly know yet, but he’ll never be the same, they said he can never work in the woods again.”

“There’s other things, he’ll work at other things,” I said, infusing my tone with hope.

“Sure, other things,” said Mother. “What other things, Sylvie? There’s the woods and fishing on the trawlers. Your father won’t do that, he’ll never fish offshore on them trawlers.” She looked around emptily. “Might as well have killed him, he can’t work the woods. No, no, don’t take it like that,” she pleaded as Chris sank onto a chair, hanging his head. She sat beside him, her tiny, pale hands cupped around his like a clamshell. “He’s alive, thank god he’s alive. Be grateful for that. And we’ll keep him alive, keep him home, resting. There now,” she soothed, drawing Chris’s head to her shoulder, “there now.”

I sat next to her, speaking in the same soothing tones as Chris leaned forward, hanging his head again. “He’s strong, Father is. Chris, he’ll get past this. He’ll find his strength again, and he’ll find other things to do.”

“Sure. Sure,” Mother repeated, her tone becoming lifeless. “He’ll get past this. Live another twenty years if he don’t go dragging about chainsaws.” She rose, wrapping her arms around herself and crossing the room in short, quick steps. “How are we going to do that,” she demanded of the air around her, “how are we going to keep him from the woods? He gave up fishing, it’ll kill him to give up the woods, too. Damn old fishing— that’s what done it to him—working the woods all day long, then coming home to them damn old nets. And if he wasn’t dragging about nets and chainsaws he was traipsing through the bogs, dragging a gun. Never stopped, he never. Never stopped for a minute in the day—whatever he thought he was made of. Even the blessed Maker took his one day of rest. And dragging that old boat over that ice by himself. No wonder he’s near dead, dragging that boat across the ice by himself.”

“We can’t say that,” I cut in, noting the pained look on Chris’s face. “Others fish and log and live long, healthy lives.”

“Others,” snorted Mother. “We’re not talking about others, Sylvie, we’re talking about your father—and how he slaved at two jobs for twenty years. Others didn’t do that—two jobs for twenty years.”

“He was never working when he was fishing,” I argued. “Would’ve killed him in a worse way if he couldn’t fish.”

“Well, it has now, hasn’t it—it’s killed him in all ways.”

“He’s not dead—cripes, you talk as if he’s dead. He’ll find his way through this. He’ll start doing things differently, is all. Perhaps a bit of fishing, with his rod—or his jiggers. He always loved jigging, no strain there.”

“Providing he’s sitting in an armchair on the wharf, there’ll be no strain,” said Mother dryly. “That what we’re going to do—keep him in an armchair on the wharf?”

“I’ll haul his boat,” said Chris. He was still hunched over, elbows on his knees, head hanging like a weight from his shoulders. He raised his eyes to Mother’s. “I’ll haul his nets, too. The fish are making a comeback. So might Father. Maybe he can just go back to the way he used to be.”

“The way he used to be?” Mother stopped her pacing and sat between me and Chris, laying an arm around Chris’s shoulder. “Was there a time he wasn’t slaving his self to death?” she asked with a glimmer of a smile. “But you’re right. Least with fishing he’s not cursing his soul to hell like he is in the woods. God, he hates the woods. No wonder he’s near dead, always working against himself.”

Her hands fell onto her lap. So helpless they looked, lying there palms up as though waiting for something. I touched one, then folded my hand around it. “What else did the doctors say?” I asked quietly.

She rose in a huff, my hands falling away like the discarded hands of a toy doll. “What else is there to say?” she answered absently. “Chris, did he speak to you—did your father speak?”

Chris stared at my discarded hands as I held them oddly in my lap. “Sylvie,” he said softly. “He spoke to Sylvie.”

“A few days—is that all you can stay?” Mother asked me, her tone softening. “You should be with him, then. Go. Go sit with him, he don’t like being alone, not in this place. Did you see Gran? No. No, course you didn’t, I already asked. That’s another worry, Kyle driving your father’s new truck—you know your father bought a new truck, do you, Sylvie? First time he ever went to a bank—pray Kyle don’t have an accident—god forbid, not just for the truck’s sake. Are you sure you can only stay a few days?”

“I—well, if you need me. Or if Dad needs me here, I can stay—”

“Rest is all he needs,” said Mother. She wrung her hands and started pacing again. “Rest and making sure he stays in that bed once we gets him home.”

“I can come back from Alberta. Maybe I’ll move back.”

She looked at me in wonderment. “My, you don’t mind flying across the country like that? You makes it sound like a trip across town. Certainly, you were never one for sitting still. Always on your feet, running here and there.” Her blue eyes shimmered for a second, as though gazing through a veil of tears onto a beloved memory. “You’ve done so well,” she near whispered. “Making the dean’s list—my, you should’ve heard Gran—poor Gran.” Just as quickly the blue eyes darkened and she was wringing her hands and pacing again. “She’s too old for this, too old and worn out. God forbid she sees another of her boys die. She’ll be glad now that you’re here, Sylvie, she’s been watching planes, wondering if that’s the one you’re on— will you go, sit with your father—Chris, perhaps we can have tea, did you have supper?”

“I’ll sit with Dad—” Chris began, but I silenced him with a sharp look. After waving him back to his seat, I gave Mother a quick hug and left the room.

A series of wrong turns and I found my way back to the unit. Quietly I stepped behind the curtain draping Father’s bed. He was sleeping, his face grey upon his pillow, and with his eyes shuttered behind thin, crinkly lids, he looked like an old weathered house without light. I laid my hand on his heart, feeling its faint pulse beneath the rise and fall of his chest. His mouth twitched.

“Dolly,” he mouthed, without opening his eyes, and in the quiet of his love my heart broadened. I sat, folded my arms onto the cool white sheet covering him, and cushioned my head, my cheek touching the warmth of his hand. Through the oxygen tubes his breathing sounded loud and deep. I slowed my breathing to match his and must’ve fallen asleep, for I awakened to slobber on my arm and Mother talking lowly to Chris about the long flight from the prairies, how tired I must be.

“
YOU LOOK NICE
,” said Mother at the hospital doors as Chris and I were leaving. “Your face is nice.”She touched a hand to my cheek. “Must be that prairie air—nice and dry. No salt chafing your skin,” she ended with a smile.

“Perhaps you can visit sometime,” I offered. “You always talked about travel.”

“Talked lots of foolishness when I was young.” She looked at Chris, who was pushing out through the doors. “Be sure you drives, Chris—your sister’s tired. You let him drive now,” she called after me, and followed as far as the curb. “Chris, you drive now. Watch for moose—be careful.”

I stood beside the car, raising my face to the darkening evening sky. A faint drizzle dampened my brow and I closed my eyes, grateful for its coolness.

“You all right? I can drive,” said Chris.

But I motioned him towards the passenger seat and slipped behind the wheel, lowering the window. I drove slowly past the hospital doors, and Mother was still standing outside, her eyes wearing the same wariness as when I used to trot from Gran’s house to hers, clamouring for Chris to come play. “Take his hand, take his hand,” she’d call. And me, just two years older than Chris, guarding his every step as we mucked about the meadow, forever steering him away from the cliffs, from rotting jelly fish, rotting capelin, dead birds, dead anything that might hurt him, forever mindful of Mother’s eye watching after us.

“Worse thing ever happened, she got pregnant with Kyle,” I said sulkily.

I felt Chris’s look of surprise. “What’s that suppose to mean?”

“She got sick and I had to care for you, is what it means. Like she was jealous every time she seen me walking off with you. Like I was taking you from her.”

“Whoa, Sis, now how foolish is that?”

“Not foolish at all. I can still hear her singing after me every time I led you along shore,
Don’t go too far, don’t go too far
—it was Cooney Arm, for gawd’s sake! Six boarded-up houses. Where’d she think I was taking you?” I lapsed into silence, hating the sulkiness of my voice, hating even more that I’d spoken out loud and Chris was staring questioningly at me. Not at my sulkiness, though, for he understood that, and was always apologetic in the face of it, as though a part of him also remembered our mother’s breasts milking for him but not for me.

“Jealous!” he exclaimed. “Now, how’d you come up with that—jealous of who, of what?”

“Of me, you—that it wasn’t her out running about with you.”

“Cripes, Sylvie, now
that’s
foolish.”

“What would you know—you were lots younger, and always looking at your feet.”

“Nerves, Sis. She had bad nerves, she always got bad nerves.”

“Right, bad nerves. Chase down a grizzly, Mother would.”

“So she’d chase a grizzly—don’t mean she wasn’t scared of it. She was scared of something.”

“Yeah. She read too many books. The old always said too much reading drives you mental.”

“Oh, come on,” chided Chris, and I had the grace to flush at my own silliness. “In the hospital, after they wheeled Dad away, first person she said to call was you,” he said. “Always talking about you—how hard you works, graduating university with honours, how you’ll travel the world—she’s always saying that, you’ll travel the world someday. And—
and
,” he repeated for emphasis, “when you’re coming home next! She’s always wondering when you’re coming home next.”