Snow Apples (8 page)

I
WOKE
to the teasing smells of bacon frying and fresh coffee. From the kitchen I heard my father's voice, low and rambling, and my mother's answering monosyllables.

Slipping on a clean cotton dress for work at the Lawsons', I hurried out to see my father.

He looked different. It wasn't only the air-force blue shirt that made his face look ruddy. There was a hardness, a leanness that hadn't been there before. It showed in the slight tenseness of his shoulders as he sat, the sharp way he turned his head toward me.

Once I would have described him as easygoing. Now I wasn't sure.

“Sheila!” he said, opening his arms. “You're looking fine.
All grown up in a year. Sit down and tell me what you've been doing.”

My mother set a plate of bacon, eggs and toast in front of him.

“When did you get home, Dad? How long can you stay?” I looked at his bacon. He picked up a slice, put it on a piece of toast and passed it to me.

My mother frowned. I took the bacon and returned the toast to his plate.

With his fork he broke the egg yolk.

“I've got a month's leave. The war's almost over, Toots. Any day now, and you'll see Japan surrender.”

“What are you going to do then?” I wanted to know. My mother, who had just picked up the coffee pot from the stove, stopped, coffee pot suspended in the air.

“Oh, I'm not sure,” he answered. “Probably go up north to the placer mines. Gold mining. Yes, that's where the money is.” He pushed away his plate and reached in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. My mother brought the coffee pot to the table and filled his cup carefully.

“Where would that be, Frank?” she asked, spooning three teaspoons of sugar into his coffee.

He stirred vigorously, slopping coffee in the saucer. “Around Williams Lake.” He lit a cigarette, and my mother fetched him an ashtray. Relaxing, he leaned back in his chair and smoked.

My brothers came to the table for breakfast. The two younger boys threw themselves at Dad, who held them off
at arm's length, pretending to be astonished at how they had grown. Tom stood, his grin joining his ears.

The boys were all talking at once—fishing, horses, the new house.

“New house? What new house?” My father leaned forward, suddenly alert.

“We were saving it as a surprise for you, Frank,” my mother broke in, brushing the crumbs off the table into her hand. “I bought that piece of land on this side of the creek. Paul and Tom have built a house on it.”

“Well, I'll say this is a surprise, all right. That's the understatement of the year.” My father's face was mask-like, expressionless. Only the slightest hardness at the corners of his mouth showed how he really felt. “Where did you get the money for all this,” and he waved his hand grandly, “land and new house?”

My mother's voice was quiet.

“I saved it from the family allotment checks from the air force.” She moved to fill his coffee cup again, but he shook his head and covered the cup with his hand.

“That's mighty nice, Agnes. Not many women can manage a dollar the way you can. Gives a man a real sense of security to be a home owner again.”

My mother began to clear the table. I moved to fill the basin with hot water to start the dishes.

“Jim and Mike are going to help me lay the water pipes today,” she told my father, “as soon as I've tidied up here.”

“You had no problem with the paper work? Everything's squared away in that direction?” His eyes were half shut, but I saw that he watched my mother closely.

She turned to face him.

“It's in my name, Frank, if that's what you want to know.”

“Your name. Not even yours and mine?”

She didn't answer.

He got up then and walked around the room. Sat down. Sighed. Pushed the ashtray back and forth on the table.

“We'll see about that,” was all he said.

As my mother stood beside me, drying the dishes, I saw the moisture on her upper lip. Her hand, as she hung up a cup, shook.

I dared to look at my father. He sat at the table, playing with the cigarette package. The clock ticked loudly in the silent kitchen.

“Oh, no! Quarter to eight!” I'd never make it on time to the Lawsons'.

“Wait,” said my father. “I'll walk with you as far as the new house. I'd like to take a look at it. That is, if it's all right with your mother.”

“Now, Frank, of course it's all right,” she answered, almost successful in sounding brisk and cheery. “We could use your help. I'd hoped we could move in by the time school starts, but I don't know. There's so much to be done yet and the money all gone...”

She flung the dish towel toward its nail, missed, but didn't notice. She picked up her sweater from the kitchen
couch and ran, with worried little steps, to catch up with my father, who was already out the back door.

I grabbed the dish towel and hung it where it belonged, then hurried after them.

*  *  *

We all worked hard on the house. My father did the wiring, and when it came to insulating, we all helped. We used blackout paper given to us by Mr. Percy, who had ordered too much of it at the beginning of the war. Nels and Mr. Bergstrom were paid and regretfully let go. The money had run out, and although my father was enthusiastic about the quality of their work, he didn't offer any money to keep them on the job.

Before Nels left, he made a closet for my bedroom. It was built on the narrowest wall, and he ran it across the whole width so that it didn't stick out.

One late afternoon Nels and I went swimming at the beach after work. He was a strong swimmer and stayed in long after I had tired. I dropped onto the hot sand, my skin tingling from the ocean. Now that it was mid-August, with its longer, colder nights, the water had a nip to it. I lay in the last of the afternoon sun, drowsy, completely content.

It made me shudder when Nels dribbled water from his hand onto my legs.

“You look too comfortable,” he said. He sat down, his back against a log, and kept flicking me with water until finally I sat up beside him.

The sun was dropping behind Gower Point. I shivered.

“Summer's almost over. School's in two weeks.”

Nels wrapped a towel around my shoulder.

“I guess so. I never liked school myself. Quit in grade eight. Wasn't learning anything, anyway.”

As we sat side by side, I could feel the length of his legs along mine. He began to gouge out the sand with his heels.

I pulled the towel tighter around me.

“I love school! And if I don't finish high school, I won't have a chance at a decent job. I'll end up working in a store or something.”

He looked at me through wet eyelashes.

“What's the matter with that?”

“Well, nothing. It's... I want something more. I'd really like to go on to university. But at least I want to finish high school.”

“It's never seemed that important to me.” He slipped down to lie on his back, a towel rolled under his head for a pillow. “I've never been sorry I quit.”

“Don't you miss learning about things? Reading?” Now I was making heel marks in the sand.

“Never. If I want to read, I read.”

“What do you like to read?”

“Oh, I don't know. Westerns, mostly. Comic books, I guess.”

I turned to look at him, thinking he must be joking. He pulled me down beside him.

“You're too serious, Sheila.”

His body was warm beside me, and I had to close my
eyes against wanting him. He must have felt something, too, because his body tensed, and he turned over on his stomach, away from me.

That evening around nine, Nels' truck stopped outside our house. I heard only the short beep of a horn.

It was Tom who called to me, “Hey, Sheila, your boyfriend's waiting for you.” My father looked up from his newspaper. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but I didn't wait to hear what it was.

I ran outside. Nels was smiling, pleased about something.

“I've got a surprise for you. Come on, get in.”

We were at the new house in a matter of minutes. Taking me by the hand, he led me to the back of the house to my bedroom. There, under the window, was a desk. Not elaborate, but with a wide writing surface and shelves at one side for books and papers. It was made of fir and had been sanded, ready for the can of varnish that sat unopened on its surface.

“Well, how do you like it?” he asked, running his hands over its smoothness. “I came back after supper and made it for you. After what you said at the beach—about school.”

“Oh, Nels! I love it! It's beautiful! I can't believe it—that you made it for me!”

“You really like it?”

I put my arms around him then. His long back felt hard under my hands.

“I love the desk, Nels. And...I love you.”

His hands went to my hips. Pulling me into him so that
I could feel his warmth, he held me.

“I love you, too, Sheila.”

*  *  *

On Saturday of the Labour Day weekend we moved into our new house, even though it wasn't finished inside. Black roofing paper had been spread over the floor until we could afford to put down a finished one. The inside walls were left with the two-by-fours showing.

“Handy for shelves,” my mother said.

It had been my last day of work at the Lawsons'. George and his father were out fishing, so it was Mrs. Lawson who paid me. She gave me a five-dollar bonus, “for satisfactory work.”

“I've enjoyed working for you,” I said, and was surprised when I realized I meant it.

*  *  *

Sunday, September 2, 1945. Another day for the history books. It was VJ Day. The war with Japan was over. Since the middle of August we had heard that Japan had surrendered, but this was official.

My father turned up the volume on the radio as we sat eating our breakfast. The United States battleship
Missouri
was anchored in Tokyo Bay with General MacArthur on board, ready to meet with the Japanese.

As the radio gave out the news about VJ Day, I thought about meeting Helga on VE Day, and how
upset she'd been when she heard the boat whistles and thought they meant her son and husband had been found.

“Mom, I'll do the dishes when I get back,” I said, getting up from the table. “I've got to tell Mrs. Ness. About it being VJ Day.”

There was a thin spiral of blue smoke coming from Helga's chimney. Otherwise there was no sign of life. As I knocked at the front door, I realized I'd never been inside her house, and some of my old fears came back, about her being crazy.

It seemed a long time before the door opened, and she held it so that it partially shielded her body.

“It's me, Mrs. Ness, Sheila Brary.”

Her eyes were sharp, stared at me for what seemed minutes, then lost some of their fierceness. The door opened and she motioned me in.

Following her down the short hallway to the kitchen, I became conscious of the smell of apples, although it was a month too early for them. Did she store apples in her basement?

It came to me that Helga always smelled of apples.

The kitchen at the back of the house seemed bare and clean, maybe because it was uncluttered, unlike our kitchen which was always busy in some way. Either there was bread rising or butter being churned, a radio on, people talking, something bubbling on the stove or baking in the oven. Smells, movements, sounds.

Here in Helga's kitchen it was quiet.

We sat at her kitchen table. It was covered with a much-laundered cloth, vivid with embroidered flowers, and with a wide edging of crocheted lace. I ran the tip of my finger around the outline of a blue cornflower, then a sunflower with a dark-brown center.

Helga's eyes never left my face.

“You like some coffee?”

Without waiting for an answer, she brought over the speckled blue enamel coffee pot. There were clean mugs upside down on the middle of the table. I turned two of them over.

While we sipped at our coffee, I looked around. Dish towels, bright with cross-stitch, hung from a rod near the stove. By the back door was an oval hooked rug. Samplers hung on the wall. “Bless This House,” “Home Is Where the Heart Is.”

A breeze flapped the curtains over the sink. They, too, had bunches of flowers embroidered in bright colors.

“This morning we heard on the radio that Japan has surrendered,” I said. “The war's over. People will be celebrating again, like last time. Do you remember? VE Day?”

“Ya-ah. I remember.” Her eyes clouded with misery. I couldn't help myself. I went over and gave her a hug. Her bony shoulders were like birds' wings under my hands.

I
T WAS
a beautiful September, an Indian summer month of mellow days and brilliant nights, when every star hung polished. The sea was a flat enamel blue, and the maple leaves showed yellow against a backdrop of hazy blue mountains.