chapter
SEVEN
Matt got home just before six. I was waiting for him on the steps of the veranda. He asked if Luke was home yet, and when I said no he didn’t say anything. He just walked straight down to the beach, stripped off everything but his underpants, and plunged into the lake.
I’d followed him down and I stood silently on the shore watching the ripples spreading out from where he had disappeared. When he broke through the water again, he looked like a seal, wet and sleek. His body was broken into blocks of light and dark; dark face and neck and forearms, paler back and chest, white legs.
He said, “Could you get me a bar of soap? I forgot it.” And I went up to the house and got one.
He washed savagely, scrubbing at his body with the soap, rubbing it into his hair. Then he tossed it onto the beach and plunged into the water again, making a milk-white cloud in the dark water. He swam a long way out.
You weren’t supposed to throw the soap onto the beach because it was almost impossible to get the sand out of it. You were supposed to put it on a rock. I picked it up and dipped it into the water and started trying to clean it off, but the sand just sank in deeper.
Matt swam back and waded out of the water. He said, “Don’t bother, Kate,” and took the soap from me. He gave me a brief, tight smile as we walked up to the house, but it wasn’t a real smile, just a stretch of skin.
Aunt Annie delayed supper as long as she could, hoping that Luke would appear, but in the end she served it without him. She’d cooked a leg of pork and there was a big bowl of applesauce, which I loved but found I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t seem to swallow. Spit kept gathering in my mouth and I had to squeeze it down.
Bo was having problems too. When Aunt Annie had put her supper in front of her, she’d thrown it on the floor, so now, white with exhaustion and with dark purple shadows under her eyes, she was sitting in front of an empty place, gloomily sucking her thumb.
Matt ate in a steady, businesslike way, as if he were stoking a boiler. He’d changed into clean jeans and a shirt, and his hair was combed straight back. It dripped steadily onto his collar. There were scratches on his hands and arms from the straw. They’d been black before his swim but now they were fiery red.
“More pork?” Aunt Annie said, grimly cheerful. If she was concerned about Luke she wasn’t going to show it.
“Thanks,” Matt said. He handed her his plate.
“Potatoes? Carrots? Applesauce?”
“Thanks.”
“The applesauce is from a Mrs. Lily Stanovich. Dropped by this afternoon. She was inquiring about you all. A weepy soul. Still, it was kind of her to bring the sauce—it saved me a lot of paring. I told her you were on the beach, Kate, and she was all for going down for a chat with you, but I told her you had your hands full with Bo and maybe another time. The vegetables are from Alice Pye. Now there’s a strange woman. She’ll be the wife of your employer, Matt.”
She paused in a way that required an answer, so Matt nodded.
“And what’s he like?”
“Mr. Pye?”
“Yes. What’s he like? Nice person to work for?”
Matt chewed. “He pays okay,” he said at last.
“That’s not what I’d call a fulsome description,” Aunt Annie said. “Put a little meat on it for us.”
She’d had enough drama for one day and we were going to have a proper dinner-table conversation if it killed her.
“You want me to describe Mr. Pye?”
“I do. Tell us all about him. We want to be entertained.”
Matt cut up a potato and forked a chunk in. You could see him considering adjectives and rejecting them. “I think he’s probably insane,” he said at last.
“For goodness’ sake, Matt. An honest description.”
“That’s an honest description. I think he’s probably insane. That’s my opinion.”
“Insane in what way?”
“He’s mad all the time.”
“Mad isn’t a proper word.”
“Furious. Raging mad. In a rage.”
“Have you been having words with him?”
“Not me. He doesn’t get at Luke or me—he knows we’d just walk off. It’s his kids he goes for. ‘Specially Laurie.’ You should have heard him this afternoon. Laurie’d left a gate open—you should have heard him.”
“It’s a serious thing,” said Aunt Annie disapprovingly. She didn’t care for Matt’s description of his employer. “You wouldn’t know that, not being brought up on a farm, but a lot of damage can be done if cattle get into a field. A whole crop can go down.”
“I know that, Aunt Annie! I’ve been working on that farm for years! Laurie knows it too! There were no cattle in either field. Anyway, I’m not talking about just today, I’m talking all the time. Old Man Pye’s after him every minute of the day.”
He was trying hard not to be snappy but I could hear edges in his voice. He was so mad at Luke he didn’t feel like talking at all, far less about Mr. Pye.
Aunt Annie sighed. “Well it’s too bad, but there’s no need to go calling him insane. Most fathers and sons go through a bad patch from time to time.”
“This is some bad patch,” Matt said. “This is a bad patch that’s been going on for fourteen years, getting worse—”
He stopped. He’d noticed at the same time as I did that Bo was behaving strangely. She’d pulled out her thumb and her hands were half raised and her eyes were stretched wide. She looked like a cartoon of somebody listening.
“What in heaven’s name’s she up to now?” Aunt Annie said crossly, and Bo said, “Uke!” and twisted around, and sure enough, there he was, coming down the drive.
“Right,” Matt said, putting down his knife and fork and pushing out his chair. “Now I’m going to kill him.”
“You sit where you are, Matt. We don’t need any of that.”
He didn’t seem to have heard her. He headed for the door.
“You sit down, Matthew James Morrison! Sit down in your seat and hear what he has to say!”
“I don’t care what he has to say.”
“Sit down!”
Her voice was shaking, and when I looked at her, her chin was wobbling and her eyes were strained and red. Matt looked at her too. He flushed. He said, “Sorry,” and sat down.
Luke came in. He stopped in the doorway and looked at us. “Hi,” he said.
Bo crowed and held her arms out, and he picked her up. She buried her face in his neck and kissed him passionately. He said, “Am I too late for supper?”
Aunt Annie’s chin was still wobbling. She swallowed, and said, “There’s some left. It’s cold though,” without looking at him.
Luke was looking at Matt, who was staring at him. “That’s okay,” he said absently. “I don’t mind it cold.”
He sat down and dumped Bo on his lap.
Matt said, “Where. Have. You. Been,” in the most deadly level tone.
“In town,” Luke said. “I went to see Mr. Levinson. Dad’s lawyer. I had some things to sort out. Some things I needed to know. I can eat all those potatoes, if no one else wants them.”
“And you couldn’t have told us you were going.” Matt’s voice was flat and hard and thin as a fish knife.
“I wanted to get things sorted out before I mentioned anything. Why?” He looked around. “Has there been a problem?”
Matt made a sound in his throat.
Aunt Annie said, “Never mind, Luke. Just tell us now.”
“Can I eat my supper first? I haven’t eaten all day.”
“No,” Matt said.
“What’s eating you anyway? Okay! Okay! Calm down! I’ll tell you—it’s not that complicated. Basically, I’m not going to teachers’ college. I’m staying here. The four of us are staying here. I’m looking after you guys. It’s all legal, I’m old enough and everything. We’ll have the money I would have used to go to college—not from the house, obviously, because we won’t sell it, but the rest of it. We’ll need more than that, but I can get a job. I can work nights—from when you get home from school, Matt, so’s you can look after Kate and Bo. It’d probably be in town though, so we’d need a car, so we’ll have to spend some money on that, but Mr. Levinson says he’ll keep his eyes open for an old one for us. I told him you wanted to go to university and he said we should talk to Dad’s bank about a loan, they might be sympathetic. Obviously you’d have to win a scholarship but since you’re a genius that’s no problem, right? Anyway, we don’t have to worry about that yet. The main thing is, we’re all staying here. So thank you very much for all your plans and everything, Aunt Annie, but we won’t be needing them. But thank everyone for us, okay?”
There was silence.
Bo pointed at the applesauce. “Dat,” she said, and smacked her lips. No one paid any attention.
Matt said, “You’re not going to college.”
“Right.”
“You’re staying here. You’re giving up teaching.”
“I didn’t want to be a teacher all that much. It was Mum and Dad who wanted it.”
He stood up from his chair, dumped Bo down on it, took a plate, and started to help himself to the pork. My head felt funny, as if there were bees humming inside of it. Aunt Annie was sitting very still with her hands clasped in her lap, looking at the table. Her eyes were still red.
“Dat!” Bo said, bouncing up and down on Luke’s chair and craning her neck to see into the bowl of applesauce. “Dat!”
Matt said, “No thanks.”
Luke looked at him. “What?”
“I know why you’re doing this. I don’t want it, thanks.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How would you feel?” Matt said. He was white as a sheet. “If I gave up a sure place at university so that you could try for a place—how would you feel? Your whole life, how would you feel?”
Luke said, “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for Bo and Kate. And because I want to.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re doing it because of what Kate said last night.”
“I don’t give a bear’s ass whether you believe me or not. Soon as you’re eighteen you can take your share of the money and go off to Timbuktu for all I care.”
He finished loading his plate, plucked Bo off his chair and set her on the floor, sat down, and started to eat.
“Dat!” Bo yelled. “Dat … pudding!”
Luke lifted the bowl of applesauce off the table and set it on the floor beside her.
Matt said, “Aunt Annie, tell him he can’t.”
I was staring at him incredulously. Luke was offering us salvation, and Matt was turning it down. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t understand it. In fact, it was to be years before I understood it. Years before I realized how desperately he wanted what Luke was offering, for Bo and me as well as for himself, and how sick and enraged he was because he felt he had to turn it down.
He said again, “Aunt Annie! Tell him!”
Aunt Annie had been studying the meat platter. She drew a breath and said, “Luke, I’m afraid Matt is right. It’s very generous of you,
very
generous, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do.”
Luke glanced at her but carried on eating. From under the table came the sound of Bo smacking her lips.
“I’m sorry your parents can’t hear you make the offer,” Aunt Annie said. She smiled at him. Her face was stiff and white like Matt’s. Another thing I didn’t realize for years was how hard it all must have been for Aunt Annie. She wanted so much to do what was best for us—for her brother’s sake and also, I think, because in spite of everything we’d put her through, she had become fond of us all—and the options open to her were so limited. She must have seen how perfectly Luke’s sacrifice seemed to solve everyone’s problems, and she must also have understood Matt’s agony. Most of all, she must have known that Luke could not really know what he was suggesting.
“The thing is, Luke, it wouldn’t work. I’m surprised that Mr. Levinson couldn’t see that. But of course he’s a man.”
Luke looked at her, chewing his pork. “So what?”
“He wouldn’t realize what hard work it is, bringing up a family. It’s a full-time job. You cannot do both that and earn money to support you all. And the rest of us couldn’t send enough to keep you. Not as a regular thing, to rely on.”
“Matt will help. He’ll be able to work during the holidays.”
“Even with Matt’s help, you couldn’t do it. You have no idea what’s involved, Luke. You can’t have. It’s been all I could do to cope with the girls the past few weeks, and I’ve been running a house for thirty years.”
“Yeah, but you’re not used to kids,” Luke said. “I’m used to them.”
“You are not, Luke. Living with them is not the same as being responsible for them. Caring for them. Looking after every single need they have, for years and years and years. It’s never-ending hard work. Heavens, Bo on her own is a full-time job.”
“Yeah, but she likes me,” Luke said. He flushed. “I didn’t mean she doesn’t like you. I mean she’s easier with me. I know I can do it. I know it wouldn’t be easy, but neighbours would help and everything. We’d work it out. I know I can do it.”
Aunt Annie straightened a bit in her chair. She looked full at Luke. Suddenly I saw our father in her— he’d had just that expression when he’d decided that an argument had gone far enough and it was time to bring it to an end. When she spoke she sounded like him too.
“Luke, you cannot know. For a while you would cope all right, but it would get harder. The neighbours wouldn’t help forever. Matt would be gone, you’d be on your own with two small children. You’d find that you’d given up your own life—”
“It’s my life,” Luke said. “I can do what I want with it, and this is what I want.”
He sounded dogged, defiant, determined, but he put down his fork and ran both hands through his hair. He’d seen our father in her too.
Aunt Annie said, “It’s what you want
now.
In a year’s time it may well not be, but you’d have lost your chance. I’m sorry, Luke. I cannot allow you—”
There was another sound. High-pitched. A wail. It was coming from me. I found that my mouth was open, strained open, and my eyes were strained wide, and I was wailing, wailing. The others were staring at me, and my mouth was trying to form a word, quivering and straining and trying to shape around a word.
“Please… . Please… . Please… . Please… . Please… .”
part
TWO