Snow Apples (6 page)

My mother wanted three bedrooms. Paul insisted that there be electricity. Tom wanted to have an upstairs.

At last they decided on a three-bedroom bungalow, wired for electricity and provision made for developing the attic and a bathroom at some time in the future.

The coupon for ordering the blueprints was clipped,
and along with a money order for twenty-five dollars, bought from Mr. Percy at the post office, it was sent to the magazine. Within two weeks the blueprints arrived, and I was elated when Paul pointed out a bedroom for me at the back of the house.

One day all of us walked over to the land to choose the best site for the new house. The late June sunlight made the woods a pattern of shifting shadows, and great yellow shafts of light beamed from the treetops to the forest floor. Near the creek we found a level area thick and heavy with meadow grass. The grassy clearing was ringed with dark glossy cedars, and through them we saw blue glimpses of the sea. Like soft music in the background, creek water ran over mountain rocks.

“It's perfect,” my mother said.

After the bulldozer cleared a way from the main road to the building site, lumber began to arrive by the truckload. There were cedar posts, beams, joists, two-by-fours, windows and bundles of cedar shingles held together with wire. None of the lumber was finished. It all had to be planed by hand.

Paul and Tom were up and ready to work as soon as it was light in the morning. When I saw the progress made on the house each day, I could hardly believe that my brothers had done it themselves.

My mother and I did a lot of extra baking. The boys were always hungry. And we always had kettles of hot water ready for them to wash off the day's dirt when they came in at dusk.

My younger brothers, Jim and Mike, took care of the water and wood supply for the household. My mother, besides taking care of the cow and chickens, had started to dig a shallow trench for the water pipes to the house. Sometimes at night her arms were so stiff that she couldn't take out the hairpins that kept her black hair in a neat roll at the back, and she called me to help. She sat, hands relaxed in her lap, a smile softening her face as she told me how Pep, our dog, had worked right along with her, his paws digging beside her shovel.

The new house never seemed to belong to me in the same way it belonged to my mother and brothers. Maybe it was because I was away eight or nine hours a day, working at a summer job.

It was Mr. Percy, really, who had got me the job. Jobs weren't all that plentiful for someone my age. When the Lawsons from Vancouver had inquired at the store for a girl to help out for the summer, Mr. Percy had recommended me.

The Lawsons had a cottage right on the beach near the diving float. It was one of the newer, more modern ones made of wood and glass, the sundeck gay with red-and-white chaise lounges and flower boxes of white-and-red petunias.

Mrs. Lawson was in her early forties, her blonde hair done in broad waves standing out from her head. She was only a few years younger than my mother, but they were very different. Although Mrs. Lawson always seemed to be
smiling, her smile didn't make it to her eyes. They were dark blue, with a black outer ring around the iris, and there was no expression in them. Not like my mother's eyes. When she smiled, her eyes were candle flames, and when she was unhappy, their depths were sad songs. Other times they could snap and glitter green.

I tried to describe Mrs. Lawson to my mother when we were doing the dishes together after supper.

“Right after breakfast she goes into the bathroom, and she stays there for an hour and a half, maybe two hours. She washes her hair and has a bath, puts on lipstick and powder and rouge—even mascara. Every day she does her nails a new color. Once it was purplish. It's called Hot Grape.”

“You're making that up.”

“No, honestly! That's what it's called. Hot Grape.”

“I guess she looks beautiful, then—her hands and all,” my mother said almost wistfully.

I was astonished. “I thought you'd think it was terrible of her to be that vain.”

My mother set down the dish towel and looked at her own hands, turning them over and back. “People used to say, when I was young, that I had beautiful hands. I did, too, even if I shouldn't say so myself. I kept the nails buffed and looking nice all the time. Look at them now.”

I looked at her hands. They were rough, calloused. One nail was violet where she had missed with the hammer.

“I think you have beautiful hands, Mom.”

When I said that, she sighed and picked up the dish
towel, and I wished I could say the right thing for once. It seemed I lacked the knack to please her.

“What about Mr. Lawson and their boy? What are they like?” She returned a fork that was still dirty to my dishpan of suds.

I worked away at the offending dried gravy on the fork. “Mr. Lawson's okay, I guess. Mild, sort of. George is quiet. Almost a sissy.”

“How old is he?”

“Six. Mrs. Lawson doesn't like him to play too hard. She makes him lie down after meals for an hour, things like that. She's always taking his temperature and giving him vitamins.”

“What's the matter? Is he sick?”

“No, that's just the way she is. Fussy.”

“Too fussy by far,” declared my mother.

“The pay's good, though.” Fifty cents an hour and lunch. I moved over to wipe off the oilcloth.

“True. It will come in handy for your books and things for school next year.”

My back was to her when she said this, and I was thankful. I spoke carefully. “Does that mean I'll be going into grade twelve after all?”

“Oh, I think so,” she said matter-of-factly. “Mind you, I want you to get a part-time job—after school, or at least on the weekends—to help out.”

“Okay,” I said, not trusting myself to say more.

We finished tidying up the kitchen in silence.

*  *  *

Paul's month-long leave from the air force came to an end. He was to report to the base at Gander Bay. Before he left he made arrangements to have a carpenter and his son come in and finish the house. The Bergstroms were new arrivals in Gibson's Landing, and Tom was going to work with them.

My first sight of Nels Bergstrom was of him laughing at something his father had said. His head was thrown back, his shirt was open at the throat, and I could only stare.

Paul introduced us. “Nels, this is my sister, Sheila.”

“Hi,” he said and turned back to his work.

From then on I tried everything I could think of to make him notice me. Mrs. Lawson took me into Vancouver with her one weekend to get their city house in order, and while I was there I went to the hairdresser and had a feather-cut. Everyone was having one that summer. It made my hair seem thicker and darker, and I looked older, I thought. That and a new sharkskin blouse, white sandals and a pair of yellow shorts that could be rolled high on the leg, plus a tube of Tangee Natural lipstick—all bought at Woodward's with my first pay check, just before we caught the Union steamship home.

I hoped Nels would pay attention to me now.

My brothers didn't help matters. The first afternoon I stopped by on my way home from work, wearing my new
shorts and blouse, I heard Tom shout, “Oh, boy! Watch out, Nels! Here comes your girlfriend!”

Jim, who was putting up shelves, called out, “Hey, Nels, did you know Sheila shaved her legs?”

“You creep!” I told him that evening when I knew my mother was outside, closing the chickens in for the night. “You'd better not do that again!”

“Or what?”

“You'll be sorry!” I tried to put as much threat as I could into my voice.

But none of it made any difference. Nels ignored me completely. And so after a couple of weeks I gave up and pretended I didn't care about Nels Bergstrom at all.

M
Y BIRTHDAY CAME
. Sixteen at last. Here I was, aching to have a boyfriend, and what did I have? There was Bob McLean at Port Mellon who never wrote again, and Nels, who thought I was just a kid.

I began to pay more attention to the boys who were up for the summer, the cottagers from the city. The summer before, I had had a paper route, and after collecting the newspapers off the late Friday night boat, I would sit on the grassy bank above the community hall and watch the couples dancing. I longed to be part of their magical world, but the dances were for the summer boys and girls. It was their record player that was used, and they owned all the records—Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Spivak.

I knew I didn't belong. Not then, not now. Not even in the way I dressed. I wore slacks and blouses and sweaters that had been ordered from Eaton's catalogue. Their clothes looked special, somehow. There was a craze for V-neck sweaters, the longer the better. Some of them were long enough to reach below the hips. All through the summer the girls sat on the village-store veranda knitting away at their sweaters. I heard one of them say she was working on her seventh one.

In every way, it was a summer of excesses. My family was busy all the time, my mother too involved with the progress of the house to pay any attention to me. I could have gone out every night with Nels if he'd asked me. Blackberries dragged down the bushes with their heavy, swollen clusters. More salmon were caught than ever before. The days were hotter, the ocean saltier, the nights softer, the music sweeter.

I saw Helga every day. From the Lawsons' many windows I had a good view of the beach and the diving float, and I often saw Helga come down the path to the beach, the same shapeless print dress flapping against her thin brown legs. Her feet were bare, and as a further concession to summer she wore a peaked fishing cap, faded blue. Her skin was brown and wrinkled, like walnut meat.

She spent whole days away, off by herself, somewhere in her boat.

I asked Mr. Percy about it when I shopped for the Lawsons' groceries. He told me that every summer Helga
took her boat out and searched the bays and rivers. She went as far up as Port Mellon and right out to the mouth of the Sound.

Was she still looking for her sons, I wondered?

“Leave her be,” Mr. Percy said. “She's working things out her own way.”

*  *  *

Mrs. Lawson liked things perfect. I think that was her problem—trying to be a perfect mother, keep a perfect house.

It was hard to please her. George began to wet his bed from time to time, which threw Mrs. Lawson into a frenzy. That in turn drove Mr. Lawson into having two drinks before dinner.

One of my jobs was the family laundry, and I knew things weren't quite right for Mr. Lawson when I came to wash his pajamas. After I had soaked them and placed them on the scrub board, rubbing the bar of Sunlight soap over the crotch area, I felt a diffusion of mucus. It came up in my hand like egg white. The smell reminded me of bleach. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it could be.

At school I had heard about wet dreams, but until now I thought only young boys had them.

One morning Mr. Lawson followed me into the utility room, a cup of coffee in his hand and his freshly shaven face bland and pink above his cardigan sweater. He watched me scrubbing George's sheets.

“How is it you're doing the washing, Sheila?”

“I always do it.”

“Mrs. Lawson used to send it to town.”

“I've done it ever since I started here.”

He swirled the coffee back and forth in his cup. “I'll see that it gets sent into Vancouver from now on. I don't want to see you doing it.” He reached out as if to pat my shoulder but dropped his hand on my breast instead.

I moved quickly away. I felt shamed.

First Robert. Now him.

After that I kept alert when Mr. Lawson was around. Otherwise I risked feeling his quick hand on me.

*  *  *

One late afternoon as I was making a potato salad for supper—or dinner, as Mrs. Lawson called it—I saw, through the window, Helga tying up her boat at the diving float. Mr. Lawson lay spread-eagled on one of the chaise lounges, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open. Mrs. Lawson's chair was next to his. She flipped restlessly through the latest
Vogue
. George was sitting alone on the beach, watching the other boys jump and belly-flop from the diving board. “No swimming today, George,” his mother had told him. “I heard you coughing during the night.”

It was a brassy, hot July day. The sun was too bright, and everywhere lights glanced and bounced off reflecting surfaces. The world shimmered and hurt the eyes. It even smelled hot—sweet and dry.

Helga looked exhausted when she straightened up from her boat. She dragged her feet along the float and stumbled, almost falling when she reached the beach. I watched her ease herself down off the float and sit on a log.

Quickly I filled a glass with water to take to her, but I had no sooner got out the door and down the steps when she got up slowly and moved toward George.