Authors: Sharon Butala
She turned slowly back to the corn. She began to scrape again, thoughtfully, then gathered the kernels into a pile with both hands and tossed them into the basin. She dropped that cob into the pail by her feet and picked up another. Behind her she could hear the clink of the dishes as Phoebe put them away, and then the sound of more water running into the sink.
Already I’ve come face to face with exhaustion and despair, I know that’s what I saw on the face of a tired businessman. It wasn’t only his face though, when I think about it. It was in his hands holding his coffee cup, in his eyes looking at the doughnut he didn’t eat, in the curve of his back, and the way his knees bent under the flimsy table. I could even see it in his feet. I think he was too tired and too sad to even want to die.
Suddenly Selena wanted to go to Phoebe and hold her, to kiss her soft cheek and forehead, to hold her tight against her bosom. She thought of how earlier that morning she had wanted to hold Kent, too, in that way,
to comfort him, and somehow this surprised her and made her uncertain. Still, wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? To be a mother to them all? And who’ll mother me? she found herself wondering.
She glanced over her shoulder at Phoebe, but Phoebe was sweeping the floor, moving chairs and putting them back around the table. Which one of them wants to get married right away and which one of them doesn’t? she wondered. And why? Brian doesn’t want her to leave, he doesn’t want to lose her. I bet that’s it. He doesn’t want her to go. I suppose he thinks she’ll find someone else in the city and she won’t come back.
Why doesn’t she tell me? Why doesn’t she ask me to help her? Phoebe was bending now, sweeping a pile of crumbs and dirt into the dustpan. Selena wanted to speak to her, she almost did, but Phoebe straightened, emptied the dustpan, set the broom back in its place by the door and went straight out of the room and up the stairs to make the beds. That was another thing about Phoebe. She had developed a singlemindedness about work. She didn’t like housework, but instead of trying to get out of doing it, or doing it badly, she would grit her teeth and dig into it, not stopping till it was done. Selena admired that about her daughter, and was proud of her for it. And for the same reason, she didn’t press Phoebe because she knew that when Phoebe was ready, she would talk about what was bothering her, and it wasn’t right to try to squeeze answers out of her before then.
I’ve seen some pretty ugly things too. Lost teenagers, lost to normal life I mean, pale and sickly-looking and sort of evil under all that paint and weird hair and bizarre clothes. And people I know were criminals, don’t ask me how I knew. When I read over what I’ve written I know you’ll think there’s something wrong with me. Or at least you’ll laugh.
No, Selena thought, I won’t laugh.
Why did I never see these things before, at home I mean? There must be despair and evil at home too. But I never noticed it, and I can’t understand why. You get so used to
seeing the same faces that you don’t really look at them anymore. But I won’t stop looking at these things, ugly or sad or what. Because this is what I came to the city for, I think, and I won’t turn away.
It was Saturday of the Labour Day weekend, noon, and already one of those unseasonably hot days that sometimes struck in the early fall. At this time of year the countryside was usually at its palest—the grassland a creamy yellow the sky palest blue, the two shimmering together in a haze at the horizon. But today the landscape burned, golden and blue with light, and that look and the heat confused all of them and lent the familiar land around them a peculiar, unreal air.
It hadn’t rained more than a few drops the entire month of August and the roads were crumbling to powder in the heat and the dryness under the tires of the vehicles that ran up and down the roads. The dust trailing the car as it approached the house caught up with it as Tony stopped the car. He waited a second for it to settle before he opened his door. Then he was climbing out, Diane was turning to unlock the kids’ back door and Kent, Jason and Mark were striding across the yard from the corral where they had been treating cows for lice, the dog barking frantically at their heels.
Selena watched eagerly as Diane climbed awkwardly out of the passenger side. As Diane straightened, slowly turning toward Selena, her arms out, Selena could feel her own expression changing in surprise. Seeing this, Diane laughed nervously, dropping her arms to brush at her jeans.
“I’ve slept all the way,” she said. “I must look awful.” Quickly Selena recovered, reached out for Diane, feeling her sister’s thin shoulders under her fuzzy red sweater.
“You must have lost ten pounds!” she said. “And you’ve only been gone six weeks.”
“I’ve been too busy to eat,” Diane replied, a little distractedly. She bent, half-turning to reach into the car for her purse. Selena saw the streak of blusher along her cheekbone and realized that Diane was wearing a lot of makeup, like city women did. But then Kent had come around
the car to embrace Diane perfunctorily and kiss her cheek. Tony was hugging Selena, while Diane turned to Phoebe. The little girls were being lifted and hugged, and only Jason and Mark were standing back.
In the hallway in the house they divided, the men going into the living room, the women into the kitchen.
“Tammy, can you put Cathy on the toilet?” Diane asked.
“I’ll take her,” Phoebe volunteered. She and Tammy led Cathy into the hall and up the stairs.
“She leaves pretty soon, doesn’t she?” Diane asked.
“In about a week,” Selena answered. “It’s too bad she’s going to Regina. She could have lived with you in Saskatoon, helped you with the kids.” The deep murmur of the men’s voices provided a background to their conversation. Upstairs the two little girls could be heard chattering away to Phoebe, their piping voices carrying clearly down the stairs.
“That Tammy, she’ll talk your ear off,” Diane said, laughing. “I don’t have enough time for her.” She looked across the room to the screen door. As she watched, a flock of crows, with a rushing of wings, gathered in the trees at the back of the yard.
“Soon be winter,” Selena remarked sadly. “Although you’d never know it by this heat.”
“I hardly noticed it till today,” Diane said. “It seems like you don’t notice it so much in the city. You know, you’re sort of protected from the weather, and anyway, I’m so busy.”
“You must be starved,” Selena said. She rose and opened the oven door, and the smell of roasting beef filled the room. Using oven mitts, she took the roaster out of the oven and set it on the counter, then lifted the roast out onto the carving board. “What are you so busy at?” Diane stood, too, pushing back her long hair and began to take plates down out of the cupboard.
“Oh, my job,” Diane said. She began to set the table.
“And I had to find daycare for Cathy, and a school for Tammy and get her registered, and teach her the way there …”
“Teach her the way?”
“Yeah,” Diane said, giving a little laugh in Selena’s direction. “There’s no school bus in the city, you know.” She turned back to Selena, taking cutlery
from the drawer. It was as though she had never left, and to Selena, it was as though she had not truly felt the loss of Diane until now. “We’ve got this little rented house and the yard was such a mess I hated to have the kids play in it till we got it cleaned up—and Tony’s busy too, getting settled into his job.”
Selena put the roaster onto the stove and began to stir flour into the grease.
“And there’s still all the regular housework to do. The washing and ironing—thank God Cathy’s out of diapers—and the cooking, but I’ve been pretty slack about that. We’ve been going out to McDonald’s a lot.” She laughed a little ruefully. “But we’re surviving.” She did not look at Selena during all of this. The two of them moved from cupboard to stove to fridge to the table and back again, setting the table and filling serving bowls with food.
“Sounds like you like it then,” Selena said, her voice tentative. Diane suddenly pulled out one of the chairs and sat down in it.
“I love it,” she said. Selena looked at her then, saw that her eyes had changed, too, as Phoebe’s had not long ago, so that Selena wondered again how such things could happen without her observing or understanding them. There was a liveliness in Diane’s eyes that Selena hadn’t seen there since Diane was in high school. And yet she couldn’t seem to focus on anything for very long. They just kept moving restlessly from one thing to another, and the brightness in her face even under her makeup seemed unnatural to Selena.
“But,” Selena said slowly, “you just work in a doughnut shop, don’t you? You could have found a job like that in Chinook.” This made Diane laugh. Selena felt herself flushing.
“Sure. Thirty miles each way, through mud or drifts or on ice. So I could hand doughnuts to the guys I went to school with. The ones I wouldn’t marry. And have their wives come in for a dozen sugar-dipped, and look down their noses at me.” Even Selena had to laugh at this, in acknowledgement of its truth. Diane shifted her eyes to the floor, then lifted them again to her sister, her face filled with wonder, although it seemed to Selena that behind or through that wonder the same dark longing hovered. “Selena, you wouldn’t believe the things there are to do! All kinds of
movies, the best, the newest ones, not old things nobody wanted to see anyway. And you don’t have to drive for an hour to get to them. Concerts in the park by the river! Fashion shows. There’s art galleries … and night life! And people! Everywhere! You wouldn’t believe the people!”
“I’ve been to the city once or twice,” Selena said. Mark and Jason were both talking at once in the living room, with Kent’s deeper voice intervening now and then. She should call everybody for dinner before the food got cold.
“Next week I’m going to register for a night class at the university. I’m finally going to get an education, and there won’t be blizzards or mud to stop me. It’s ten minutes to the university.” She snapped her fingers to show how easy it would be.
Selena said nothing. She went into the hall and called, “Dinner’s ready.”
Selena was just about asleep when Kent said into the darkness, “Things aren’t so good for Tony.” She was awake at once, tense, listening for his next words. And Diane so happy!
“He says it’s hard to settle back into a nine-to-five job. The money’s okay, but he says he didn’t know how much he’d miss the farm. He expected to spend the rest of his life here you know. He says he misses being outside, things like that.” They lay side by side, staring into the darkened room as if they could pierce the darkness if they looked hard enough.
“Oh, Kent,” Selena said, “what’s going to happen to them?”
“Diane’ll never come back,” Kent said. “You just have to look at her to know that.”
“And Cathy and Tammy,” Selena said. “They’re so little, and Diane’s working too, and there’s no family to fall back on like here.” She searched for Kent’s hand under the blankets. She set hers into it and he curled his fingers around her palm, brought her hand up to rest on his flat, warm stomach.
“Lots of people in the city live like that,” he said, but there was no certainty in his voice, “and they survive. Their kids grow up. They don’t know no other way to live.”
“She told me she was starting Tammy on ballet lessons as soon as they get back, and piano lessons too, as soon as they can afford a piano.” She
thought with a flicker of bitterness how she used to drive Phoebe thirty miles to her lessons, wait for her, then drive thirty miles back, and how many lessons Phoebe had missed because of bad weather or bad roads.
“My God,” Kent said. There was such dismay in his voice that Selena had to laugh.
“Listen to us,” she whispered, giggling. “You’d think they were locking them in closets and torturing them.” She rolled over on her side close to Kent and he slid his arm under her neck. “They’ve still got both parents—parents who care about them and they’re well fed and clothed. Why do they have to have Diane with them every second?” She put her face against his warm neck. Did she really mean what she had said? Or was she just trying to put a good face on a rotten situation? The latter, she thought. Kids need their mothers, who could doubt that?
“Maybe we should offer to take them till they get settled,” Kent said. She lifted her head, her heart speeding up a little.
“The girls, you mean?” she asked, stalling.
“Yeah,”
She sighed, lowering her head again. I don’t want them. I don’t want to raise another family, I hardly have a minute to myself as it is. Then, don’t be so selfish. It would only be for a little while. “Maybe,” she said, trying to make her voice sound light and hopeful.
“Ah, hell!” Kent said, taking away his arm. “Tony’d never let them go. He’s crazy about those kids. And, anyway, he’s too proud. He’ll raise his own kids or die trying.”
“Diane’d never let them come back here, anyway,” Selena said. “She thinks there aren’t any opportunities for them here.” Her relief was mixed with disappointment. Already she was imagining combing Tammy’s fine, light hair, and kissing Cathy’s round little cheeks. I wish we’d had another baby, she almost said.
“Opportunities,” he said, disgustedly. “What opportunities? Our kids grew up okay. It was good enough for them.” But Selena was thinking, what if Phoebe had had ballet lessons? What if she had gone to concerts every week, had heard the classical music her teacher was always telling her about, and had seen ballet and gone to art galleries? Would she be a
better person? Would her life be better? She remembered the French count who had settled seventy five years before only twenty miles or so from their ranch. Presumably he had been accustomed to all those things in France, knew all about art and music and culture, yet his kids had been no more cultured than any homesteader’s kids, to hear people tell it. So what good were centuries of breeding, if it could be washed away like that, in one generation? Or was that not the point? What was the point? she wondered. Haven’t I been happy with only the radio and the tv?
Kent let out a deep sigh, blowing the air out through his lips, and she half-laughed at herself for wasting her energy thinking about questions which she knew she would never find answers to. She thought then of telling him about Phoebe’s remark that she might be getting married. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. Better say nothing yet. Although he had never really said so, she knew Kent couldn’t see much point in Phoebe’s going to university. As far as he was concerned she was only going to get married anyway, and all that money would be wasted. If she told him now, Kent might use it as an excuse to stop Phoebe from going. She turned away from him, onto her shoulder, and pulled up the covers.