What They Wanted (6 page)

“And when I’m here she never knows what to do with me.”

“You’re always arguing with her, that’s why—the both of you, always arguing. Why don’t you come home more often? She don’t like you staying away. True,” he added as I drove in silence, “she’s always talking about you. And Dad—jeezes, Dad—he looks bad, don’t he—gawd, he looks bad …” His words trailed off.

I steered us onto the grey, darkening highway, rubbing my brow tiredly, seeing our father’s face, all worn and ashen on his pillow. Aside from the yellow line shooting rhythmically beneath the car, that was how the whole world appeared to me this evening—the hills, the trees, all limp and grey against a pewter sky.

Till I neared home. Till I turned off the highway and finally onto the rutted side road leading to our house on the wharf. Then the rocks themselves burst into colour, the trees and sky and all else around me dissolving into a thousand pictures of Father: walking wearily from his stage after a day’s fishing back in Cooney Arm, sitting at Gran’s supper table, falling back on the daybed after he’d eaten, cuddling me on his great, heaving chest, his snores rattling my bones, hugging me tight against his itchy, worsted sweater, hugging me tight against his wet, scaly oilskins, trundling about his stage, shouting for me to come help lay out the fish, laughing at Mother’s complaints that he had me smelling like himself, a pickled capelin.

I didn’t care about his smell. I loved sniffing pickled capelin. I loved it that Mother, Chris, Kyle—all of them—squirmed against his itchy, worsted hugs and his scaly wet oilskins; that nobody else liked going into his stage as I did, helping him lay out his fish in the puncheons; that only I worked the flakes alongside him, laying out his fish to cure in the sun; that only I accompanied him in boat sometimes, crouching anxiously in the stern as he leaned easily over the gunnels hauling his nets, grunting and cussing if the catch was poor, whistling and singing if the fish were thick and he was piling them at my feet.

More pictures came before me—pictures of me sitting at Mother’s table, being home-schooled along with Chris, and Dad winking at me across the room; Dad looking innocently away should Mom, all prim, proper, and teacher-like, turn her attention towards him; Dad sitting beside me at the table, learning from Mother how to read and write and laughing at his clumsiness with a pencil; Dad walking me home after lessons—staying for a while during those cold, bitter nights, running the heated flat-iron over my bedsheets before tucking me in—as Gran always did—and heating dinner plates in the oven, wrapping them in towels and placing them beneath my cold feet before bundling the blankets around me. It felt like he was mine then, when he sat on the side of my bed, his head so close to mine as I said my prayers that I could smell his sour, pickled breath and feel the scattered strands of his hair, all soapy and vinegarish, tickling my face and making me squirm through the amens.

Abruptly the pictures changed. We were no longer in Cooney Arm. The soft darkness of Gran’s firelit corners was blasted by garish electrical lights that lit Mother’s house on the wharf, leaving me—along with Gran, Father, the boys, and sometimes even Mother—blinking like nocturnal creatures, flitting about the house like bats searching for a rayless niche in which to roost. How disoriented I’d felt those first months in Mother’s crowded household, with all the attention constantly heaped upon me by Mother, the boys. Times I’d run, looking for Father and finding him equally disoriented, hunched over the wharf, looking back to Cooney Arm, gutted by the loss of his stage, his flakes. Home from a day’s work in the woods, he’d sit carefully amongst Mother’s new, brightly patterned cushions on the sofa and watch, confused by my resistance to Chris and Kyle’s overzealous attention to my every move, confused by my defiance with Mother over some small thing, confused by my new math and the queer gawddamned way of mixing letters and numbers.

My most favoured imprint was the day of my first birthday living in Mother’s house. Father had bought a watch from the store in Hampden and hung it on the outside knob of my room door because he was too shy to give it to me and wanted to make a joke out of it. It hung there all day—nobody else saw it, and I refused to see it, fearful of its not being mine and that he’d see the want in my eyes. Gran finally spotted it, and brought it to the supper table and gave it to me, chiding him for his foolishness. I felt too shy beneath his gaze to properly hook it around my wrist. And so Mother, looking a mite shy herself in her new dress that she was wearing just for my birthday, leaned close, helping me hook the watch strap, she too chiding Father for his foolishness—all of us hiding our shyness behind his foolishness.

So why had Mother looked shy, I pondered now, but then pushed the thought away as I drove past Father’s woodshed and pulled up to the wharf. Turning off the headlights, I sat for a minute, staring at the house, at the smoke pouring from the chimney, the windows yet unlit in the growing dusk. A wooden cubbyhole was built to the side of the house, Father’s chainsaw, his bucksaw, his handsaw laid inside, along with a box full of jiggers and bits of fishing gear. Other stuff, his barrels, puncheons, nets, was stored in the woodshed or rotting into the ground in Cooney Arm.

Wrapped in canvas at the end of the wharf lay an anchor, an old motor, some boat parts. Poor Father. He hadn’t the heart to build another stage here on the wharf. Why bother when fishing had become more of a fun thing than a mainstay? And now everything he owned was all scattered about—like Father himself, his soul wandering the emptied fishing grounds of Cooney Arm, his heart fighting for resurgence in some hospital room in the city.

TWO

“W
HERE’S THE NEW TRUCK
?”
I asked Chris.

“You passed it, back by the woodshed. Tucked a bit behind.” He got out of the car and headed towards the boat tied to the wharf. I climbed out behind him, a stout breeze gusting my hair across my face.

“I don’t want you going,” I called out, then cursed as his step didn’t falter.

The house door flung open and Gran appeared, clutching the front of her woolly green sweater and clinging to the doorjamb like a withering old vine.

I ran to her, wrapping my arms tight about her shrinking, knobby shoulders, scolding her for being out in the cold.

“Much odds, this old bag of bones,” said Gran, her voice quavering. “Did you see him?”

I nodded, kissing her soft, powdery cheek. “Yes. Yes, I seen him.” We held each other tighter in the face of this new thing. Taking my hand, Gran led me inside, her grip not as strong as I remembered, her voice more brittle, shaky as she asked about Mother.

“She’s fine, worrying more about you than herself.”

“Ahh, she worries for nothing. Sit. Tell me about your father, I makes tea.”

I sat in Gran’s rocker, speaking assuredly of Father’s recovery. Fire snapped inside the stove, and I relished its heat. I relished, too, Gran’s wiry frame, her hair all white now and caught at her nape, her darkish brows lending strength to her fading green eyes as she moved about the kitchen in her odd, faltering manner—from bending over in her garden, plucking weeds at every turn, we always teased her.

“She got a fright, my Dolly, your mother got a bad fright,” said Gran, “seeing him crumple across his boat like that. She was watering her plants when she seen him through the window. Did she tell you?”

“No. Did you? Did you see him, too?”

“I was in the room. She never called out at first—didn’t want to frighten me. Poor thing. Wonder she didn’t drown, running over the pan ice like that.” Gran’s mouth quivered— whether from emotion or age I couldn’t rightly say—as she continued telling the horrible story of Mother dragging Father off the boat and onto his back on the ice, screaming out for Chris to run, run, for the doctor. He was conscious by the time the doctor got there, his eyes moving, his breathing short and quick, but he was making no sound, no movement. Pain, he told Mother after he woke up in the hospital, he was locked so hard into pain he thought it was crushing his chest, and he could do nothing but breathe—seen an angel, he said, but then the angel cursed and he saw it was his Addie instead.

Gran smiled and sat a cup of tea and plate of scones before me, kissing the top of my head. “Lord bless them both. Sugar your tea, I gets some milk.”

The door opened and Chris came in, his nose watering from the cold, and Kyle behind him. No matter his seventeen years, Kyle looked a boy with his stout, pudgy frame—still carrying his baby fat, we always teased him. His face was rounded, not comely like Chris’s, yet his cheeky grin had always been an instant draw. He looked at me now and I half thought he’d come lumbering over as when he’d been a youngster, pulling his ears or plugging his nostrils with his fingers to garner a laugh. Instead he offered me the saddest of smiles, crossing the room to sit stiffly on the arm of Mother’s rocker.

Mom won’t like that, loosening the arms of her rocker, I wanted to say, to tease him, to lighten his worry. Instead I dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into the cup of tea Gran laid before me and took it to him.

“Suppose you still got your sweet tooth,” I said, and ruffled his hair. He smiled a tiny, frightened smile. Keeping his eyes from mine, he took the cup, nervously jiggling his foot. “Hey.” I touched his shoulder. “Dad’s gonna be fine. Truly.”

“Come on, Kyle, my love, come have tea with Gran.” Gran scraped back a chair beside where Chris was sitting at the table, brooding out the window. I went to the kitchen cupboard, plunged my hand into the cookie canister, thankful it was filled with our favourite ginger snaps, and took a fistful to Kyle. “Here, stuff your face with that,” I said, shoving them at him. I laughed along with him at his clumsy effort to catch them from spilling onto the floor.

“What’re you brooding out the window for?” I chided Chris, sitting back down in the rocker. “Or is it your face you’re looking at—is that what he’s doing, Gran—admiring himself?”

Chris shot me a dubious look and turned back to the window, wondering out loud about whether it was wind or rain overtaking the evening.

“Wind, you silly thing,” said Gran. “Sky’s too thick for rain. Haul back your chair. Stop fretting, as your sister says. You’ll be having bad dreams agin tonight. Kyle, turn on the lights—or light Gran’s lamp instead. Feels warmer with the lamp lit, don’t you think, my Dolly? Where you going—not fit to be out,” she said as Chris scrooped back his chair, heading for the door. She grumbled as he said something about the boat. “Be sick with the flu before the week’s out, watch and see if you’re not,” she called out as the door closed behind him. “Kyle, you lighting the lamp for Gran?”

Kyle struck a match to the wick. His face was pale despite the buttery glaze of light flaring through the chimney. Raising the wick, he placed the lamp on the table and sat beside Gran.

“What were you doing, you and Chris,” I asked, “when Dad took sick—what were ye both doing?”

He shrugged, his face glum.

“Oh, come on—you were doing something.”

“Nothing. We were doing nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“Drawing. Chris was drawing. On pieces of birch rind.” He shrugged again, his eyes, big and blue like Mother’s, flickering around the room. “Dad!”he said accusingly. “He was supposed to call out when he was ready. We didn’t know he was leaving.”

“No, he didn’t call out,” said Gran. “I would’ve heard him if he had.”

“Chris was ready—all dressed to go,” said Kyle. “Never heard him call is all.”

“Because he never, I tell you,” said Gran. “I would’ve heard him if he had. Blaming himself now, is that what Chris is doing?”She looked crossly at the door. “Go after him, Kyle— tell him to come in from the cold, and make sure he ties on his father’s boat—I don’t like that wind this evening.” She peered across the table through the window. The night beyond was charred black by heavy cloud, the wind hitting stiff against the pane. “Loosen up the pack, keeps blowing like this.”

My stomach tensed at Gran’s words. Last thing Chris needed in the morning was loose pack ice with its trenches and leads and slush holes that could swallow a man more quickly than a swamp hole. I looked at Kyle. He was chewing the side of his thumbnail, foot jiggling, as he stared out the window.

He knew. He knew what Chris was doing. “Hey.” I kicked his foot and forced a smile. “Pour Gran more tea. I’ll go get Chris.”

I let myself outside, the wind, dampish and with a touch of warmth, swaddling my face. A southerly. It had turned. I looked over the wharf onto the ice, greyish beneath the thick night sky, and to where Chris was standing, a dark shape against the darker, larger shape of the boat. I knelt beside a grump on the wharf and watched as he rifled through the bundles of clothing and gear he’d stored in the boat earlier that day. The ice was heaving fretfully beneath him and crunching against the wharf. Keeping hold of the gunnels for balance, he lifted a length of rope that was ringed through the bow and tossed the looped end up onto the wharf where I sat.

I fingered the cold, soggy thing resignedly. There was no arguing. The set look on his face, the determined manner in which he moved about the gear, the gun, the shells already stowed in the cuddy—it did away with any protests I might’ve made. And aside from Mother and Father and Gran—and perhaps Kyle, too—there wasn’t a soul in the whole of White Bay that wouldn’t have him doing this very thing at such a time. Helping his father. In fact, they’d be more surprised— perhaps accusing—if he didn’t.