Anna From Away (11 page)

She waded into powder over her knees, squinting cheerfully into the bright, silent field spreading over the pond all the way to the shore. But not far into it where the path should be, she began to tire: with each step the snow sank deeply and she had to lift her legs high and push down hard to find its depth which, sometimes uneven, unpredictable, made her stagger. What she’d anticipated as a casual walk turned into a workout, she was struggling clumsily through a drift next to the spruce grove, breathing heavily, sweating, anxious to reach the shore, but she fell headfirst before she got there, snow jamming cold up under her sleeves. The snowfield stopped abruptly in a wave-bitten bank tinged brown with sand. At least no one had witnessed her clumsy, exhausting trek. The beach was narrow now with the tide high, but the bare stones were clear walking at least. She had planned to inspect the fields, the point, see what she could find, but that would be a slog, and she’d have to stay at the shore edge. Looking back up at the house, thick snow layered on the steep roof, she realized that her car was trapped in the driveway and she was almost out of anything sensible to eat.

Over the sensuous contours of the field an animal’s tracks snaked toward the pond, the prints clean, it hadn’t been running, and she took a photo, then turned and snapped the Black Rock cliffs across the strait, Squatter’s Bluff now dusted with snow, and toward the open sea a shoal where waves broke starkly white. There was a fresh wind on her face, colder now that a grey sky had absorbed the sun. Sketching would be difficult, and the places she was after would be a tough haul, there and back, so she wandered the beach, picked up a rusty iron hinge with curlicued design, it might be off a boat. She plunged into a slow retracing of her own steps, uphill, disappointed at how the snow, so beautiful and inviting when she woke, had thwarted her. The crowns of trees were tilting—like me, she thought—meltwater dripping in their branches. How would she drive out of here if she needed? How quickly weather turned simple things difficult.

Tired, her legs stiff, she could not imagine shovelling herself out, so she called Willard. During the night the provincial plow had finished the road, he said, but he’d come round himself and clear her driveway, which he did, a blade affixed to the bumper of his truck, an old four-wheel drive. The new snow had seemed to perk him up, and he accepted Anna’s offer of tea when he was done, and talked about the old days here when they had to break their own roads after snow, and, oh, it once come heavy and often, up to the eaves, and a big double sled and chains and a strong horse would break a road, you see, smooth it like the floor here, and he tapped it with his boot. She listened but didn’t press him about delayed repairs, he’d freed her car, after all, and shovelled, with remarkable speed, a path to the front door.

“Them days,” he said, “we had the ferry handy. Not a dead end at all, a lifeblood flowed right through here. People coming and going all winter long. Now you don’t know who the hell’s around.”

“Like me?” she said.

“Och, you’re welcome enough, Anna Starling.” He reached for a raisin biscuit and chewed on it thoughtfully. “We’re all so damned old now, walking wounded. Except Breagh and her little girl, of course.”

“Red Murdock?” His name jumped out of her, she was curious about him, though not his age.

“Murdock’s got some good years left in him. When my house burned, he took me in till I was on my feet. That’s the way his family was, do anything for you.” He noticed on the table a clump of dry, grey beard moss Anna had plucked from a tree branch to draw. He clapped it to his chin, grinning. “Halloween,” he said. “We pasted it on like whiskers.”

“How did your house catch fire, Willard?”

“Old, old house, great-grandfather built it. Stovepipe heated up, too much wood in her. See, they’d used newspapers to stuff the walls with, for insulation. Same here maybe.” He rapped the wall with a knuckle.

“If there’s old papers in there, I’d like to read them,” she said.

“Better news than what you get now.” He leaned toward her. “See, it wasn’t me that stoked the stove so hot like that. Somebody broke in and did it, make it look accidental.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Hooligans. Druggies. Them I see at Sandy Morrison’s old house.” “Here?”

“Wait till summer.”

“Boy, am I waiting, Willard. For summer, I mean.”

“Summer will spoil you. You’ll see.”

IN BREAGH’S
front field there was a small, listing snowman topped with a woman’s crazy hat. Anna parked at the road, the driveway looked chancy. Breagh seemed pleased to see her at her door. A bit unkempt in a baggy denim shirt and black jeans, but radiant nevertheless, her hair up, a suffusion of red, wisps at her slender neck. Though domestically capable, she never seemed to look domestic. Chet’s affair had made Anna doubt her own appeal for a while, she’d lost interest in her looks, hiding in loose and sloppy clothing. Whereas she had once loved to dress up, the pleasure of a flattering outfit, she lapsed into drabness, which only made her feel worse. Stupid of course to make yourself dowdy, but she’d wanted to be free of seeing herself through the eyes of men, to figure out who she was beyond the boundaries of a marriage. Wasn’t that one reason she was here? What
did
a woman need from a man, a man from his wife? She had no duty to look sexy or alluring or desirable. So she had told herself.

Anna said, “I like your hair that way,” but Breagh scoffed.

“I look like a schoolmarm, it’s just for when I sew.” Her work lay scattered about the room, swatches of cut cloth in bold textures and patterns and colours spilled over a big table and onto the floor where Lorna sat and assessed, in her busy little hands, the white kitten.

Breagh made them tea and broke open the candy. Lorna got fussy and Anna appeased her with a chocolate. At the sound of an engine Breagh looked out the front window. “Well, if it isn’t himself. Snow and all.”

Livingstone entered by the kitchen door in a noisy display of stomping boots and clapping hands. “Give us a kiss!”

She offered her cheek perfunctorily. “Lorna heard you, Liv,” she said. “She wants to know what you brought her.”

“Oh, Jesus, Bree, I forgot. I got things on my mind.” He noticed Anna, and stepped back, adjusting his mood. “Who have we here?”

“My neighbour down the road, Anna Starling.”

He appealed to Anna with mock helplessness. “I always bring my little girl something. We’re trapped in a habit.”

“You’ve been trapped in worse ones,” said Breagh.

“Bree, here. Give Lorna these, three shiny loonies. She’ll have to learn money sooner or later.”

“Later the better, I think.”

“Next time, Bree, I’ll bring her something grand. I’ve been busy, a little project on the side.”

“I hope it’s the right side.”

“There’s money in it. Is there any other side?”

“What kind of scheme is this?”

“Not for discussion. Don’t want to jinx it.”

“Fine. Excuse me, Anna, I have to put Lorna down for a nap.”

“Is there any tea for this man?” he called after her but she didn’t answer. He looked at Anna and shrugged. “Poor hospitality. I hope she’s treating you better.”

“She’s treated me fine. There’s tea in the pot there.”

“She can be unpredictable, that girl. So you’re living down at the old MacLennan place?”

“I am. How did you know?”

“Things get around. You like our winter?”

“I like this beautiful snow.”

“I’m surprised.” She dreaded the predictable questions, the nosy skepticism about her circumstances, the undertone of bafflement she’d encountered before, much of which had to do with her being a woman on her own here, and married yet. But all he said was, “How could you give up California for this?” gesturing at the lines of fog now flowing above the cliff-edge behind the house. He was more interested in the pond incident Breagh had mentioned to him. “Red Murdock heard you and hauled you out?”

“Not me. A dog caught in a trap got his attention.”

“Ah, dogs. Dogs in traps.” He shrugged. “Women in traps.”

“I don’t think so.”

Livingstone raised his hand. “I’m just kidding. I’d like to know the whole story, the details.”

“I’d like to put it behind me.”

“That? No, Anna. Can’t be done.” There was something presumptuous about him she didn’t like. He had a handsome head, one that, in an actor, might make up for deficiencies of stature—you’d always be looking at his face, his profile would hold you, a strong chin and nose. His black hair fell over his brow, and his eyes were a deep, irisless brown, seemingly intense. He was tall but slight, with long restless hands, his fingers riffing silently on the tabletop as if it were a piano.

“Are you a musician?” Anna said.

He nodded, rooting inside his leather jacket until he fished out a cigarette and lit it with a kitchen match, squinting. “Guitar, keyboards. It’s not a living.” He smiled, blowing smoke. “I drove a truck too, down the province.” He did a steering motion with his hands. “But I’ve quit that. Better money to be made. You, Anna, what do you do besides fall through the ice on cold nights?”

“That keeps me pretty busy.”

“Ah.” His smile was charming, seemingly disingenuous, but without it his face took on a flat, appraising look that yielded little.Breagh returned, she’d taken her hair down, it fell golden red to her shoulders. Anna could see her easily in a Rossetti painting.

“Liv,” she said, “you know I don’t want cigarette smoke in the house. Okay?”

“She prefers weed,” he said to Anna.

“My preferences go through changes, so watch out.”

“Where does she get her ideas for all these funny clothes? You seen the hats in there, Anna? Wild.”

“Is this what we have to listen to?” Breagh said. “I haven’t seen you for two weeks.”

“Been looking into a couple things. And I had gigs. Eddie’s Pub, and a wedding.”

“Must’ve been a long wedding.”

“Days. You know Cape Bretoners.”

“I know you.”

“You know, Anna, when she’s pissed at me, she always puts her hair up.”

“Nothing at all to do with you. Don’t flatter yourself. We don’t always do what’s expected of us,” she said to Anna. “Do we?”

“Never.”

Livingstone nodded toward Breagh. “Unless we expect the same thing. Eh?”

“That’s all that’s on your mind.”

“Not really. Only when I’m around you.…”

“You wouldn’t have a little money to spare, I suppose? I’m behind on the electric.”

As he was reaching for his wallet, he said to her almost in a whisper, “I’ll have a hell of a lot more before too long.”

“I believe it. Hundreds wouldn’t.”

“Don’t sell me short, Bree.” He glanced at Anna as he handed Breagh a few bills. “Stick with old Liv.”

“Haven’t I? Anna, please, more tea? That cake’s from the store but it’s tasty.”

Livingstone steered away into a story about two bachelor brothers who’d lived back up the mountain, long dead, and when they finally got a television set, they would dress up in coat and tie to watch it because they thought the people on the screen could see them. Anna could tell he was deft at diverting Breagh when she pushed at him. He was a good mimic and had Breagh laughing despite herself. Anna was glad not to be Exhibit A, to be included like a local on the road who’d stopped by, not a woman from California whose presence altered the tenor of conversation, turned people guarded and wary. For the first time she felt like a person with some small stake in the place, she was wintering like everyone else, not a tourist, an object of curiosity, possibly derision, for all she knew, the woman who almost died in the pond (what was she
doing
out there, wee hours of the morning?). When Livingstone looped back to her night on the ice, she had to fall in, she simply started at the beginning, pleased enough it wasn’t a resumé or a defence of her current life but a discrete incident. She gave them details, but not of Red Murdock, of how he cradled her foot and the feel of his hands, or her almost shattering loneliness when he left, or even of missing her husband who, regardless, would have tended to her as he once had, or the whirling delirium that visited her in that rocking chair. She did try to call up, as strongly as language would permit, the sensations of being plunged suddenly into that killing water. Speaking of it, she imagined it again, one depthless second of bone-cold nowhere. She told them how glad she was that Murdock had freed the dog, how difficult that must have been, he already chilled and wet, the dog frightened and suffering. When she finished, she smiled and took a sip of warm tea.“Jesus,” Livingstone said. “You might’ve stepped in that trap yourself, girl.”

“You’d have heard me howling.”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Livingstone,” Breagh said, “give it a rest.”

He took binoculars off the windowsill and aimed them toward the sea. “Billy been by?”

“Looking for you. He said they got the boat, whoever ‘they’ are.”

“Guys I know. They fish.”

“What kind of fishing can you do? Never heard of Billy fishing except for beer.”

“All kinds,” Livingstone said. “Any kind going. Then we’ll have some fun.”

“You won’t get me on it.”

He smiled at Anna. “We don’t
want
you on it. There’s others around.”

“Not here, there isn’t,” Breagh said.

“Summer, girl. Summer is different.”

Anna, uncomfortable in the middle of their conversation, looked to the window. Not far behind the house a patch of snow was enclosed by a high fence of thin, bleached spruce poles, varying heights driven into the ground like rough spears. Old Dougal’s deer fence, Breagh had told her, a whimsical form against the grey sea, artfully assembled in a ragged but tight line, high enough to hinder deer from leaping into an old man’s garden. Seven feet high now, he’d made it only five the first time, he’d said, then he looked out the window and saw a big buck soaring over it like a show-jumping horse. Anna tried to imagine vegetables leafing in that blank white spot but couldn’t. Summer seemed impossible, almost a fantasy.“I think you’re crazy, getting involved in a fishing boat,” Breagh said.