Snow Apples (5 page)

I strained to see Paul.

There he was! Twenty-one, tall in his pilot's uniform— my handsome brother. Jumping up and down, I called to him, “Paul! Paul! Here!”

As soon as he was down the gangplank, he swung me up and around in a circle.

I wanted to show him off to everyone.

“Hey, Mr. Percy! Paul's home!”

As we went up the wharf, people stopped and clapped Paul on the shoulder, admired his wings insignia, and told him, “Mighty glad the war is over!” We turned off the wharf onto the beach trail, and home.

I saw Helga before he did. She was like a gray wraith flitting through the trees. It looked as if she was on one of her walks. She always seemed to just walk and walk...

As Paul and I walked home, I told him about Helga, and before long I found myself telling him about Mom wanting me to quit school. His mouth tightened, and I had a sudden rush of hope that perhaps he could persuade her to change her mind.

We could see our house now, and light shining through
the trees, and Paul began to whistle when we turned into our yard. The door opened and everyone came out on the porch. We all talked at once, it seemed. No one finished a sentence before someone else started a new one. We talked while we served supper, through the meal, and while we cleaned up.

Paul brought out presents for all of us from his duffle bag. Mine was a locket bracelet made of soft yellow gold.

It was after midnight before my mother noticed the time. “Sheila, Tom, Jim, Mike. Off to bed,” she ordered as she poured another cup of tea for Paul and herself.

Their voices came seeping into the living room as I was going to sleep, my mother's rushing along with plans to buy the land and build a house.

Then I heard Paul's deeper one questioning, “Sheila... quitting school?”

I got out of bed quickly and went over to the living-room door to listen. Their voices came clearly down the hall.

My mother sounded annoyed.

“Helga refuses to sell the land unless Sheila can go to school. Why should she make it her business... Well, all I can say is she's not quite right in the head. But it is a beautiful piece of property. There's even some first-growth fir. And to have the creek! I'll never get another chance like this. Sheila's not to know about Helga's part in this—”

“Does Sheila know she's going back to school next year?”

“No, and I'm in no hurry to tell her. That girl is getting
harder to manage all the time. You've no idea how difficult she can be. I swear she's more trouble than all you boys put together. Just like her father. She's the same through and through. Selfish...”

I had heard all that before, and I stepped silently back over the cold floor and to bed.

I could stay at school! Oh, Helga!

D
AD MUST HAVE
written the day he got my letter. It was just a short note, really, about the weather, what he was doing, indefinite plans for the future—and a P.S. “Don't worry about school, honey. Something's bound to turn up.”

My mother didn't say anything to me about school, either. Paul started to tell me in a roundabout way, but I told him I had overheard everything.

“Okay, then,” he said. “You can stop worrying about that.”

About a week after Paul's homecoming, my mother went into Vancouver to see a lawyer about transferring the Ness land title to her name. I went down to the boat to see her off, and after the
Lady Pam
had pulled out, I was surprised when Robert came over to talk to me.

I hadn't been back to the Kolosky house since that first day I'd met Robert and his family, and I had only said hello if I had to.

He asked me to baby-sit that night. He said he and his wife were going to the Legion dance at Gibson's, and could I come at about eight?

I had never baby-sat before, and since my mother had gone to Vancouver, I couldn't check it out with her. But I needed the money for a dress for the end-of-the-year school dance, so I said yes.

That night it rained and blew. The wind was fierce and building all the time. I was chilled and soaked by the time I got to the house on the Upper Road.

There was only the light on in the kitchen at the back. If I hadn't known the place so well I would have had trouble finding my way. The dog was tied up to the veranda rail, and he barked and snapped at me when I approached.

The back door opened. It was Robert.

“Come on in.” Taking my jacket, he hung it behind the oil stove. “Sit down at the table and I'll get you some coffee. Get you warmed up.”

The table was set with two cups and two plates and a cake in its baking pan. There was no sign of anyone else.

“Go ahead, have some cake. I baked it especially for you.” And he poured coffee for both of us.

The light from the coal-oil lamp pooled around the table, leaving the area beyond in darkness. I was no longer sure where the door was. There was a heaviness in the air,
maybe from the smell of diesel oil on Robert's clothing or from the heat of the stove.

“Where's your wife?” I asked him.

“Oh, she isn't quite ready yet,” he answered easily, and I felt the perspiration break out on my back.

“Could you show me where the kids are, so I can check on them? When you're gone.” I started to get up from the table. I had to keep my legs stiff to stop their trembling.

“Well, now, just a minute. They aren't here at the moment. The wife and kiddies are visiting the McDougals up the road. They'll be back soon. Relax. Sit down. Tell me about school.”

He passed the cake to me. I saw that he had only the last two fingers on that hand. He saw me staring.

“It was an accident at Port Mellon,” he said, watching my eyes.

I took a piece of cake and began to eat it slowly. Outside I could hear the fury of the wind as it slammed itself toward the open sea.

“I always wanted a chance to talk to you,” he said. “It's good we have this chance alone.”

The cake stuck at the back of my throat, and I got up to get a drink of water at the sink. I ran the tap and reached for my jacket.

Instantly he was at my side, his hand with the missing fingers on my arm. “Where are you going? I told you they would be back soon.”

“I know.” I located the kitchen door in my mind. “I
think I'll go up to the McDougals. Remind them of the time. Maybe they—”

The vacuousness left his face, and he became heavy-lidded, full-lipped. His voice was very soft and wrapped itself around me.

“They're not there,” he said. “They went into the city on the same boat as your mother. Stay and talk to me. We've never had a chance to talk, you and I. There are things I want to tell you.”

I had my hand on the doorknob by this time.

“No!” I cried out when he lunged for me, and I pulled open the door and hurled myself into the blackness outside.

I was off the veranda and onto the path by the time he got out the door. I heard him shouting, swearing. Then he went back into the house, reappearing almost immediately with a powerful flashlight. The beams came down the path after me, and I veered sharply off the road and into the tangle of the garden. Blackberry vines caught at my clothing and ripped my face.

Tearing my way through them, I cut across the property toward the road. The light played up and down the path.

I reached the road and started to run. The wind was a wall coming at me. Trees creaked all around. All I cared about was running, running until I was sure he was far behind me.

By the time I was near home, I had a stitch in my side and was limping.

Everyone was in bed, even Paul. He looked up at me through the open door.

“You're back early. Did they change their minds?”

I stepped into the bedroom. He looked at the torn clothing, the rips on my face, the mud on my knee.

“What happened?”

I told him. He got out of bed and pulled his clothes on over his pajamas. Put on a jacket. Got a flashlight.

“What are you going to do?” I asked him.

“I'm going to take care of him. He's going to find out he can't do that to my sister and get away with it.”

I was horrified.

“No, don't do that! He's really...scary.” But Paul wouldn't change his mind.

After he had gone and I had cleaned myself up, I went to bed.

So this was what it was like having a man defend you.

My dad had been away now for five years—except for brief leaves—and I had forgotten the feeling of having a man in the house.

Paul came in about an hour later. His footsteps sounded slow and heavy. He blew out the lamp in the kitchen and went to bed without a word. I heard the sound of his boots drop to the floor.

I lay there listening to waves pound on the beach below the house, and the wind lift the shingles on the cottage.

Why didn't Paul say something?

“Paul?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

“Did you...have a fight?”

“No. Now will you quit bothering me and go to sleep?”

“What do you mean, go to sleep? An hour ago, you're mad at him. Now that you're home, you seem mad at me!”

No answer.

“Paul! Tell me! What's the matter? Why won't you tell me? Did he say something?”

Another long silence. Then, just when I thought he wasn't going to say anything more about it, his voice came, harsh and flat.

“He said you had been asking for it ever since he moved here, and how was he to know you didn't mean it?”

I couldn't reply. There were no words. I knew, instinctively, that there was nothing I could say to defend myself.

The wind shifted and rattled down the chimney. One of my younger brothers turned in bed, knocking his arm against the wall. The rain lessened to the gentlest of sounds. From the boys' bedroom I heard Paul's breathing deepen, become slow, regular. He slept.

I was emptied, hollowed out, conscious of feeling a profound loss. I sensed that there existed in the world a mysterious banding together of men. Against women? Whatever—I was outside it. And there was nothing I could do but lie there and stare, uncomprehending, into the darkness.

M
Y
MOTHER
came back from Vancouver two days later with the land title in her purse.

“It's registered in my name only,” she told Paul late that night when the rest of us were in bed. “Your father won't be able to touch it.”

Then Paul said something that shocked me.

“Did you ever think of divorcing him?” Since joining the air force, he had started to smoke, and the smell of his cigarette drifted into the living room where I lay, no longer sleepy.

I strained to hear my mother's answer. Her voice sounded pleased. She seemed to welcome Paul's concern. Yet there was something else in it—a pride, a falseness.

“Oh, no, the Church doesn't believe in divorce. You know that. A promise is a promise.”

“But you haven't been happy with Dad for years. At least with a divorce you'd be free of him.”

I heard the stove lid lift and a piece of wood being dropped into the fire box. “Free? I'll never be free of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when you love somebody, you stay. Hoping for the best. The first time I set eyes on your father, I knew he'd be trouble for me. And yet I couldn't seem to help myself.”

A smell of freshly perked coffee and the sharp, sweet scent of cinnamon toast made me hungry. I had questions I wanted to ask, too. But I knew if I got up and went out to the kitchen, my mother would be angry. There were times when she liked to talk to Paul alone, as if he were the only adult she could confide in.

And the right time for questioning my mother about love—and how it could make you so unhappy—didn't come.

For one thing she was studying house plans. Mr. Percy had given her the latest issues of several magazines that featured house plans. Each evening, as soon as supper was cleared away, she and Paul and Tom went over the magazines, trying to decide on the house they wanted.