What They Wanted (7 page)

“Remember how we used to sneak into those boarded-up houses in Cooney Arm?” I asked quietly. “Well, do you?” I said again, irritably now, as he hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even glanced my way.

He shrugged. “Not lately.”

“And how we sometimes spooked ourselves, thinking we heard voices in the wood? That’s how I see you, full of voices and all boarded up. Yeah, I do, I really do,” I said to his tired look. “Full of things you can never fully say. I can see you now, sitting for hours, when we were youngsters, staring at a mud hole. Or a rock. Or just sitting and staring, and thinking so hard you’d either burst out bawling or burst out laughing, or both, scaring the bejeezes out of me sometimes.” I smiled. “Always remember the time you dozed off at the supper table with a crust of bread across your face. Had Mother worried to death.
Like he goes into a trance
, she was always saying.”

“Yeah, well, she still thinks that.”

“Daydreaming, I think she calls it now.” I caught a duffle bag he threw up onto the wharf and propped it next to myself, watching him climb inside the boat, sorting through some canned food in Father’s lunch bag.

“I never worried,” I said. “I always knew you were seeing the newness of something.”

“The newness of something.”

“Yeah. The newness of something. I remember once, you drawing a finch. You started with a claw gripping a twig when I would’ve had you starting with its head, its beak. And then when you’d done, there was no head or beak. The page held no place for it, not even the other foot. Just one tiny, wiry claw clutching a limb. And I never saw a bird again without seeing its claws first—I told you, you takes the ordinary out of everything. Do you remember that—drawing that claw? No, you don’t,” I said to his blank look.

“Sylvie—”

“Let me tell you why you don’t remember that claw. You’ve never been outside of it to see it. Like Dad, once, trying to tell me how grand Cooney Arm was when I’d never been anywhere but Cooney Arm. But I remember
feeling
its grandness, the way we used to be half scared, half excited climbing over them cold, wet cliffs. And feeling the falls thundering through the rock—like it was thundering through me, too. Sometimes, when I used to get up and walk away, my legs would be rubbery—remember that, the power of it? And then racing along the beach and them big sounders rolling up on shore—remember that? How cold they were, smashing about our feet? Gawd, they were cold. And the wind, near lifting me with it sometimes.

“I can’t remember feeling anything that strong since I was a youngster,” I said nostalgically. “But you”—I leaned towards him, unable to keep my tone from becoming urgent—“you always feel like that, don’t you? You don’t need the wind or the cliffs. You feel it inside. I see it every time I look at you—always fidgeting and squirming—never quiet unless you got a pencil in your hands, or a knife. Or going into one of your
daydreams
, as Mom calls it. Yes, it’s true,” I said at his skeptical look. “You know you do. Just sitting on a wharf you feels it. Like something inside of you, never at rest, always drumming through your bones, stirring your blood—it must pummel at your fingertips, do it, trying to get out?

“I’m not talking crazy,” I said as he rolled his eyes. “I’m not. I’m talking your talk, you don’t even know your talk— that’s why you’ve got to leave here. What frightens you, Chrissy—what keeps you on this stupid, friggin wharf? No, don’t go, listen to me—oh, there he goes,” I said with resignation as he leaped upon the wharf, walking away from me. “Why can’t you leave—why can’t you ever leave?” I yelled, and got up to chase him. But he was swinging around to face me.

“So’s you can go,” he said evenly. “I stays so’s you can go. Somebody’s got to be here. Somebody’s got to help him—tar his roof, his shed, lug wood, split wood, stack wood, mend the wharf and all the rest of it. He don’t stop, he’s always at it— hunting, fishing, fixing this, fixing that, and a hundred other gawd-damned things that got nothing to do with wages.”

“But—”

“But nothing. Jeezes, Sylvie, he’d be dead by now if not for the bit of help I gives him. It’s not much, because, yeah, you’re right—surprise, surprise—I’m not cut from his stock; I’m not good at any fuckin’ thing. But!” And here he drew himself upright. “I’m helping a bit. Yes, that’s right, I do help him a bit. Till the other day,” he added bitterly, his face dropping, “drawing
birds
when I was suppose to be launching the boat alongside of him.”

“Ohh, don’t think like that—”

“And you’d still have me go, would you?” he asked, his eyes challenging mine. “Him on his sick bed, and you’d still have me go?”

“’Course not. I mean when he’s better. You can’t always do this—live his life for him. He wouldn’t want that. He just don’t think of it, is all, you wanting to go off; else he’d have you in art school if he thought of it, he’d love it if you went to art school.”

“Sure! He’d love it,” said Chris dryly. “Drawing birds—he can hang them around his bed and shoot at them while he’s getting better.”

“So he would shoot at them, why wouldn’t he—that’s what he does, isn’t it, shoot birds? And yes he would love it, he’d feel it right to his bones, shooting them birds. And that’s what he’d have for you—doing something you feels straight through to your bones. Besides, there’s other ways of helping,” I cajoled as he started away from me once more. “Can always send money home.”

“That right? And how much they paying art students these days?” He walked off towards the woodshed, leaving me staring hopelessly after him.

I jammed my hands in my pockets, facing the sea, the wind hard on my back. A clump of ice thudded against the wharf and I looked down sourly, as if it were a surly dog growling up at me. “Dirty stuff,” I muttered. “Dirty, filthy old stuff.”

That night I eased into the bed I shared with Gran and lay restless, listening to the ice creaking and groaning outside the window, the wind rattling at the panes like phantoms. One of the boys—Chris? Kyle?—was equally restless, for I could hear the scrooping of their bedsprings through the joining wall. Sighing for the thousandth time, I curled into Gran’s back, resting my cheek on her pillow, all scented with face powder. The wind fell off at some point during the night, and a heavy quiet descended.

COME MORNING
, I awakened to an eerie silence. Gran was just up, her side of the bed still warm. Flicking apart the curtain, I blinked in surprise. Blue. The bay was bereft of pan ice, the sea a choppy brilliant blue beneath a full sun and with scattered bits of slob ice floating atop its surface like fettered clouds.

Heaving aside the bedclothes, I wrapped a housecoat around my pyjamas and padded barefoot down the hall into an empty kitchen. Muffled voices from outside. I bared the window onto Gran, her shawl wrapped around her nightdress, and Chris, readied for sealing in heavy, dark clothing, standing near the grump, looking down to where the boat had been with a stunned look on his face.

“The boat’s gone,” Gran greeted me as I ran outside, her voice shrill in the sharp morning air.

“Gone. Gone where?”

“With the ice, it went out with the ice. And just as well— Chris was going sealing, he was, and not letting on to nobody.” Her gnarled hands grasped the sleeves of my housecoat. “You tell him—tell him we don’t need no bloody old seal meat, Dolly. Enough his father’s in the hospital, all we needs is him drowning himself this morning, all we needs.”

Chris came towards us, his face taut. “The rope,” he said to me. “I threw you up the rope—did you tie it on, did I tell you to tie it on?” He stared at me beseechingly, his eyes near black on a blanched face. And had I thought for a second—had I known what he needed—I would’ve replied differently. As it was, twas the truth I told.

“No. No, I never tied it on, you never said to tie it on—oh, but wait. Oh, shit, wait, I should’ve known—I should’ve known to tie it on.”

His shoulders slumped. So filled was he with the fault of his own doing, he could only shake his head helplessly.

“Phone around,” said Gran. “Someone might’ve found her. Perhaps she run aground—on Big Island, somewhere— Chris!”

Chris was walking off, his ears filled with his own denouncement. Kyle appeared by the side of the house. Slipping his hands into his pockets, he followed behind Chris, carrying the same dejected slump to his shoulders.

“Leave them here today,” said Gran as they vanished inside the woodshed. “I’ll stay with them. You go by yourself, Dolly, spend some time with your father, let your mother get some rest.”

“No— Oh, Gran, I can’t leave him—”

“He’ll not listen yet. And your mother’s needing you, she’s worn out, poor thing. Say nothing about the boat—your father’s heart will stop he hears his boat’s gone. Go on now, go be with your mother. You’ll spend the night with her? She’ll need that, you spending the night with her in that room.”

Gran walked stiffly to the house, the wind cutting her nightdress to her legs. The sun was just slanting across the shed door as Kyle peered outside. Seeing me looking towards him, he gave an apologetic nod and then hauled the door shut— Chris’s instruction, no doubt.

“Some good doing that now,” I muttered, “when it’s himself he needs protecting from.” Receiving nothing but a gust of wind for my words, I followed after Gran, readying for the drive to the hospital.

MOTHER WAS SLEEPING
in an armchair in a windowless waiting room, her face wearing the same pallor as yesterday despite the yellowish light from a heavily shaded lamp falling across her brow. She stirred as I neared, her straight dark hair falling away from her face, baring strong cheekbones tauting her skin, a defiant chin, and a fine, fine brow. A striking, strong face, I thought with a second’s pride, for, aside from Father’s brown eyes, I knew I carried my mother’s likeness.

I pressed closer, drawn to her mouth which was softened by sleep and curving into a natural smile. How quiet she looked without her glittering blue eyes cutting through the light. They had intrigued and frightened me as a youngster, sitting at the table with Chris during home-schooling times, she standing tall before us, no longer the mother sounding out warnings and ordering us about, but like a beautiful teacher-aunt of sorts, speaking richly and clearly about foreign places and people. I can still remember how those eyes sharpened with intent as she queried our learning, snapped impatiently if we failed an answer, then bore through us as she lectured about thinking deep and thinking far so’s someday we might travel past the outports, past the island itself, and on to bigger worlds.

Once, in the middle of a lesson, I fell into daydreaming about owning such eyes, thinking how much prettier I would look with deep, glittering blues instead of the dulled browns I’d been given.

“What’re you thinking?” Mother had said sharply, and I dug my eyes into the book laid out before me, scarcely breathing as she came to the table. Putting a finger beneath my chin, she tipped my face upward and smiled, her eyes sparkling like a sunlit sea. “Well then?” she repeated more softly.

“I’m going to go everywhere,” I answered breathlessly, then delighted in her proud look.

“Heavens, that’s a good plan. And what’re you going to be— a teacher? A nurse?”

“I’m going to be a captain.”

She laughed. “Now, there’s lofty,” she replied, and I hugged into the moment, spending the rest of the lesson and many more after that imagining myself getting off ships and airplanes, Mother waiting on the ground while I ran towards her holding out bags of presents with fancy glass jewellery boxes inside, and watches and rings and strings of necklaces.

Why, I wondered now, touching a finger to Mother’s hand resting on the arm of the chair, had I always been coming from a distance towards my mother? Gran’s house was no farther than a bedroom away, and Mother was more of a fixture than Dad—coming twice, thrice, a dozen times a day sometimes, when either me or Gran was feeling poorly. Always she was traipsing through the door, bringing soup, bringing stews, bringing buns or whatever she was cooking for her own dinner. She came most evenings, too, no matter that Father was still there, lying back on the sofa with me on his chest and snoring. Jostling him awake, she’d send him home with the boys and sit, sipping a hot toddy with Gran, stretching good beside the bustling hot stove and helping ready me for bed.