Snow Apples (17 page)

“Orange juice, pancakes and bacon, and a large glass of milk,” I ordered, settling myself comfortably in the captain's chair and propping my elbows on the maple table. A small bouquet of sweetpeas sat in the center in a blue glass vase.

I didn't recognize the waitress who was writing my order, but then, she was dayshift.

“Coffee while you're waiting?” she asked, pencil hovering.

“Yes, thank you.” Under the table I opened my purse. Yes, I had enough money, and even a quarter for a tip.

When I let myself in at Mrs. Williams' an hour later, feeling comfortably full, I found her up to her elbows in flour making a rhubarb pie.

“Nothing to making a light crust, I always say, if only you don't handle it too much.” She flipped the pastry into a pie plate, trimmed it quickly with the side of her hand.

The kitchen was hot. I could see the red coals gleaming through the stove's draft.

“Make us a cup of tea, will you, love?” she went on, wiping the perspiration from her face.

“I've just had breakfast,” I announced, “at the Jolly Jumbo dining room.” I scalded the pot and added two teaspoons of Earl Grey, her favorite. “So I won't have any.”

“Well, now, that's a treat! I said to myself when you came in the door, I said, ‘Sheila's feeling better today and that's a fact.'”

I stood with the teapot in my hand, not knowing what to say. Did she know?

She began to cut up the rhubarb, letting the pieces fall into the pie plate where their juice stained the pastry pink.

“What do you mean, feeling better?” I asked.

“Oh, I don't know, duck. Just a manner of speaking, is all. I put it down to your not eating breakfast and all. To tell the truth, you were looking a bit peaked. I had a mind to speak to you about it. Wanted to tell you to get yourself some cornflakes from Safeway, a quart of milk, half a dozen oranges, that sort of thing. You really should eat breakfast, you know, every day. You're still growing.”

I started to answer, but she raised a floury hand in protest.

“I know, I know. It's none of my business. And you want
to be saving your money. Think you can eat all you need in a day at the Jolly Jumbo. I've heard it all before. But, well, take a look at yourself. Don't you feel like a different girl now that you've a decent meal in your stomach before five o'clock?”

“You think that's all it is?”

“Of course. You can take it from Florence Williams.” Through the lattice top, rosy bits of rhubarb showed white crusts of sugar. Taking a fork, she crimped the edges of the pie and then slid the plate into the oven.

She sat down at the green oval kitchen table with a sigh, reached down and eased her shoes off, then wriggled her toes, a look of ecstasy crossing her face. I poured her tea.

The phone rang. Mrs. Williams reached up from where she sat, pulled down the receiver and listened briefly. Then she handed the phone over to me.

It was my mother. It took a minute to realize that nothing was wrong. She was worried about me, she said, and wanted to make sure I was all right.

“Mom, I'm fine!” I tried to assure her. “Honestly! I did write you another letter. I guess you won't get it until Monday. How are the boys?”

“Tom's got a good job in the mines at Trail.” But she wasn't to be diverted for long. “I hope you're saying your prayers every night, Sheila. I've written Father Donnelly at Holy Rosary and told him you were living in Vancouver. I asked him to keep an eye on you. Did you go to Mass this morning?”

No, I talked to Dad this morning. But out loud I said, “No, Mom. I had to work until two this morning.”

“They have several Masses on Sunday, Sheila. You could go yet today if you really wanted to.”

“Yes, okay, Mom. But I have to be at work at five, you know.”

“You would still have time...”

I fiddled with Mrs. Williams' teaspoon. After a brief silence, my mother went on.

“Mr. Percy sends his regards. I'm sending you a small parcel. You should get it in a few days.”

Then with a few more words of caution, she said goodbye.

I went to my room and lay down.

I felt extraordinarily tired.

T
WELVE NOON
, Monday, at the King George Hotel, and there was no sign of my father. Murray worked away on a racing form at the desk, now and then looking over at me. He had given me the briefest of smiles when I had come in at eleven-thirty.

I seated myself in the worn leather armchair that faced the main entrance.

My stomach grumbled. I'd skipped breakfast again in my hurry. I had packed a change of clothing in a shopping bag and left a note for Mrs. Williams saying that I was visiting my father on my days off.

Twelve-fifteen. My bare legs stuck to the leather with perspiration. Had something happened to the plane?

Twelve-thirty. I couldn't bear it. He wasn't coming.

Grabbing the shopping bag, I almost ran out of the hotel.

Then, there he was just in front of me, getting out of a taxi. He pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and paid the driver.

“First thing we do,” he said to me after he'd kissed me quickly on the cheek, “is to leave my bag at the desk. Then we'll grab a quick bite to eat.”

“I thought...Helen...was coming with you,” I said when he rejoined me and we were pushing through the swinging doors of the hotel coffee shop.

“Oh, she came. Wanted me to drop her off at the Bay. She's determined to do some shopping. You'll meet her later on,” he added as he motioned me toward a booth at the back.

The table top was sticky. Quickly I moved my hands off the surface and put them in my lap, then put them back on the table. I suddenly didn't know what to do with them.

“Dad,” I began, feeling ashamed, “I'm sorry.”

“Now, never mind that, honey,” he said quickly. “You're not the first one to be caught, and you won't be the last.”

“I don't know what I'm going to do.”

Before he could answer, the waitress came to take our order.

“Bacon and eggs, I guess,” he told her. “What'll you have, Sheila?”

“The same, thanks.”

“And two coffees,” he added. Then he waited until she
was out of earshot before saying, “The best thing would be the capsules, and they're easiest to get hold of.”

“Capsules?” What capsules? I'd never heard of them. “Will they work?”

“Oh, they'll work, all right. Brown Bombers, they're called.”

“But aren't they dangerous?”

“No, not dangerous at all. Hundreds—thousands—of women have been taking them for years. Do you think you're the only one this has happened to? Sheila, girl, it goes on all the time! If every time a woman got pregnant she had the child, we'd have been crowded off the map long ago.”

How did he know all these things? But, of course, I knew he would, sensed it before I had asked him to help me. Now I would know all these things, too.

Our orders arrived. Then, without any warning. “Your mother broke my heart,” he told me, “when she said we were through.”

I couldn't believe I'd heard him right.

“I felt so low, I thought of suicide,” he went on. “Yes, Sheila. I thought the world of your mother. Would have done anything for her. But the Catholic Church...” He was silent as the waitress filled our coffee cups. “She's going to will that property to the Church. You wait and see.”

He actually seemed to believe what he was saying. Did he really expect me to take him seriously? But I kept quiet. I needed his help.

“So I said to myself,” he continued, wiping the egg from
his plate with a piece of toast, “that I would make myself a new life. Then I met Helen, so we got married.”

“How could you marry Helen if you were already married to Mom?”

“I never married your mother,” he said, as if I'd dragged it out of him. “I saw to it that you kiddies had my name on your birth certificates. I did that.”

I thought he sounded self-righteous, and what he was saying seemed so absurd that I had a hard time keeping quiet.

“I'd been married before.” His voice broke into my thought. “And your mother knew it.”

I didn't believe him, but I asked anyway.

“Then how can you be married to Helen?”

“Divorce, Sheila.”

“You can't be divorced and Catholic, Dad. Even I know that.”

“I married out of the Church in the first place, and I've never gone back.”

My head ached. The coffee shop suddenly seemed too hot and stuffy—stale with cigarette smoke. I wished my father would stop talking. He was confusing me.

I pushed back my plate, unable to finish eating. “Done then, are you?” my father asked. I nodded. “Well, we might as well take a walk. The drugstore isn't far.”

It was a small, crowded store, and we had to work our way slowly to the pharmacy at the back. My father spoke in
low tones to the pharmacist, an elderly man, crisp in his white jacket. I wandered toward the hot water bottle display and pretended to be interested. Several times I caught the pharmacist glancing at me, and I thought his face showed distaste and even anger.

His white jacket disappeared through a door into a back room. He returned in a few minutes with a small brown parcel in one hand, put it down on the counter for my father to pick up, walked away and busied himself at the cash register, then came back and picked up the ten-dollar bill my father had left in place of the parcel.

Before leaving, my father tried to placate him. I knew the voice.

“Well, isn't it the truth, though? It happens in the best of families.”

But the pharmacist turned back to his work, the expression on his face now clearly contemptuous. I felt kind of sorry for my father.

Dad placed the package in his shirt pocket, buttoned down the flap. We didn't talk much on the way back to the hotel. My father smoked one cigarette after another, and I was beginning to feel panicky now that we had the medicine. It meant that I'd be taking it soon.

Still, my father didn't seem worried. He seemed preoccupied, as if he hadn't liked the way the pharmacist had treated him. I realized then that one of my father's strongest needs was to be well thought of. Even more, to be made much of. It was the one thing my mother would not give him.

Back at the hotel, my father chatted briefly with Murray.

“Okay, Sheila,” my father said, dropping a room key in my hand, “you and Helen can share a room. She'll be there if you need her. I'll be right next door.”

I winced inside at the idea of being with Helen. I wished I could be by myself. I didn't think she was going to like it, either.

It wasn't until we got upstairs that my father handed the brown package over to me. It felt heavy in my hand.

“How am I supposed to take this?” I asked. It didn't sound like my voice.

“You take two capsules. Then if they don't work in four hours, you take two more. That usually does the trick. If nothing's happened in eight hours, you start all over again.”

Had he told this to someone before? How many times?

We sat in the lumpy armchairs and talked, mostly about his job at Campbell River. I nodded at what I thought were appropriate times. I was scared to death, but just when I was sure I couldn't go through with it after all, the thought of having a child made taking the capsules less frightening.

While we were still sitting there talking, Helen came in. She stood in the doorway, loaded down with Bay boxes and bags. A tall woman, she had harsh features, and there was a sense of power about her.

Dumping her purchases on the bed with one abrupt movement, she sprawled in a chair, lighting a cigarette with a lighter shaped like a pistol. She blew smoke in my direction
and said in a harsh voice, “So this is Sheila.” Her eyes stayed on me, examined me closely.

I disliked her intensely. Her eyes darkened, and I saw in them that the feeling was mutual.

“Why don't you two girls get dressed for dinner, and we'll go somewhere really special,” my father suggested. He seemed happy that we were all going to be friends.

“I can wear my new dress,” Helen said, her voice light with enthusiasm now. She began to open packages, finally finding the right box.

“Do you like it, Frank?” she asked as she shook out a coral jersey dress and held it up. It showed her dark hair off to advantage, and I saw a flame flicker behind my father's gray eyes.

“Mmmmm,” he said, “just beautiful.” Then, “Sheila, there's still a couple of hours before dinner. Here.” And he opened his wallet and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “Why don't you go down to the Bay and see if you can find yourself a pretty dress?”

I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to disappear for a couple of hours so he and Helen could make love.

“Sure, Dad. Thanks.”

I found a summer dress—more to please my father than for any other reason—at half price because of July sales. It was made of bright yellow polished cotton with a print of small angel faces outlined in black. It was original and daring.