Sylvanus Now (34 page)

Adelaide stopped, her hand to her chest, gaping for breath. Suze stood before her. “Are you all right?” she cried. “Lord, Addie, it’s this damn old wind—smother you, it would.”

“It’s not the wind,” said Adelaide quietly. “Just leave me now, please. Just leave me. I’m fine. I’ll think about what you said, if you’ll just leave me.”

“You hates me,” cried Suze. “I shouldn’t have said nothing, I promised Syllie—”

Adelaide shook her head, in silent praise of the tears tumbling down the Suze’s cheek. Impulsively, as though willing those healing waters inside her own cramped self, she leaned toward Suze and pressed her lips against one of the tears. “Now, go on,” she whispered to the surprised girl. “I wants to be by myself.”

Speechless, Suze nodded. She stood for a second, not knowing if there was more to be said, then turned, casting worried looks back over her shoulder as the wind pummelled her along the shore.

Adelaide stood, the huge September sky barrelling clouds overhead and the overly bright sun bouncing sharply off the cemetery’s white picket fence. The wind gusted harder, jiggling the loosely toggled gate, as though bidding her entry. She glanced about, noting a few fishermen tarring their boats way down the beach, another hammering at his stage, a couple of boys yelling and tussling as they gathered wood chips for kindling.

Almost furtively, she untoggled the gate, stepping inside. She could scarcely breathe now, yet the wind was heedless, nudging her along the footpath trailing around the knolls, some marked with crumbling clay tombstones, most not. Her step slowed and she crept nearer those three sleeping graves as though in fear of waking them. Foolish, she thought, yet she faltered, lowering her eyes, and knelt a foot away, the grass so cool it felt wet beneath her knees. For the second time that day she felt the timid stranger, an encroacher, as she lifted her eyes almost warily onto the three little crosses. Immediately she recoiled, her eyes moored onto the names—Eva, Elikum, Eliza—all painted black against the garish whiteness of the crosses.

He’d named them. Syllie had named them. She reached out her hands as though to touch them. Eva. Elikum. Eliza. Her babies. They were her babies, gone, banished to the underground, and with no grieving mother bargaining their return. The tightening in her chest gave way to deep remorse, and she lowered her eyes, wanting to shrink, to cover her face, to hide amidst the tuckamores and the trenches of Eva’s garden, to withdraw into the tuck of her own arid self. Eva. Which one was Eva? The son she knew was the last born, but which one had been Eva? Eliza?

She grasped at the grass on one of the mounds, a wave of hysteria growing within her as she struggled through that dim corridor of memory whose walls were dank with the sweat of her suffering and the wretched stench of death. The labyrinth, she was reaching back into the labyrinth again, not wandering this time, but searching for some one thing, for Eva—that little hand hidden within the white of her caul, for she’d be the one he’d name after his mother, wouldn’t she? The first born, wrapped into a misshapen wing and buried without a mother’s blessing? All of them, banished, forsaken. The thaw was complete, and her flesh, no longer anaesthetized by cold, was racked with grief as she leaned upon that second grave, Eliza’s grave. That startling blue of an eye, that’s what she remembered of the second, and the old midwife saying, “It’s a girl, my dear, it’s a girl,” and she had shut it out, had shut it out. Something came to her—“Like Janie.” Isn’t that what Syllie had said, that one had looked like Janie? Yes, yes, he’d said that, Eliza, that’s who. That startling blue of an eye—she’d seen that, she’d seen that, and for sure it did look like Janie’s, and her cheek had been cold, he’d said. Her cheek had been cold. “Oh, my Lord,” she whispered, and not knowing if it was an exclamation of prayer or pain, she lay down her head, feeling a prickling of tears upon her cheek, and watched them drip onto that shorn grass, gliding along its blade as it might a child’s lock, before soaking through to the underground, baptizing the fretting brows of her babies, Eva, Eliza, Elikum. Poor things. Poor, poor things, and she started a slow rocking, her weeping growing deeper.

After a while, despite her sobs, a curious calm betook her. She remembered back to something of Eva’s, about souls at rest and those still labouring. And that’s how she felt, sitting there beside those little engraved markers, her sobs subsiding, like a mother’s release when the babe is finally brought forth from her labours. Eva. Eliza. Elikum. And she sat there awhile longer, after all had stilled, quietly rocking her babies. Forgiveness. She knew it now. From herself it had to come, and onto that skinny-kneed girl whose sustenance demanded she paste life around her as if it were wallpaper, but then who had scrambled into hiding after it started crimping and peeling and falling in strips around her. She touched her hand upon the coolness of a cross—the middle one, Eliza’s—the bluest eye, and was besieged by the teary blue of her sister Janie’s, and her softly whispered
bye
that had dispersed yesterday’s treacheries like ashes in the wind. Was hers not a cheek deserving of warmth?

Holding back what sobs were left, Adelaide wiped her face and rose. Stepping carefully around the graves, she let herself out of the cemetery and toggled the gate. Cursing the tears that still wanted to flow, she hurried toward Eva’s, sniffling into sleeves that were now wet, and cut around to the back of the house so’s not to encounter the old woman who was surely watching her from some window. Rooting through the tools in the old wooden wheelbarrow, she pulled out the gardening shears, exclaiming loudly as she jabbed a finger on their pointed top. Sticking her finger into her mouth, she headed toward what was left of the rhubarb patch. Shunning the old and the young, she cut what was left of the medium-sized stalks, snapped off the oversized leaves, and when she had a good-sized pile beside her, she lifted it into her arms. Eva appeared in the doorway, but she took no notice, marching steadily onwards.

“Go help Am with the boxes,” she said to Syllie, as he straightened up from cleaving wood at her approach, “and make your mother some hot brandy.” Shutting the door upon his curious look, she set about scrubbing and chopping the rhubarb, and digging out the flour and shortening from the cupboards below, the salt and baking powder from the cupboards above, and the oblong syrup bottle with the long, skinny neck that she kept on the mantel-shelf for a rolling pin.

And whilst the rhubarb was stewing, she blended the flour, shortening, and butter, adding a bit of salt, water, and sugar, dumping all onto the table, rolling and stretching the dough as she herself was being plied and stretched from the coiled little self she’d become into that greater sphere of selflessness, where thought was more focused onto sisters despairing before bake sales, and brothers swaggering before sisters, and mothers rising or sinking to the needs put forth by their children, and fathers resurrecting the long-lost love for a child.

And as she fitted the rolled-out dough into the pie pans, trimming the edges and pouring into their centres the tart sweet jam of the rhubarb stalks, her heart quivered with the hope she was resurrecting within it, for that’s what she had done by burying God along with her babies, she had buried hope—hope of any precious thing: the bliss of a meadow, the comfort of a kitchen, the love of her man. Like the fantasies of her youth, those things had been, and without hope, they had been dead, all dead, her soul more frozen than the winter soil and weighing like a mantle of rock upon her. And now once again, she felt that greater Hand moulding her, soothing her, for what is hope if not faith?

Slipping Janie’s pies into the oven, she walked out to her little speckled rock by the brook and sat, watching the sun sink red over Big Arm Head.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
after Sylvanus had left for his fishing grounds, she wrapped her pies and sought out Ambrose, begging a ride back to Ragged Rock. Eva watched through her window at her comings and goings, like a lost soul, thought Adelaide, like her man must look on those nights he comes back and finds no place set for him at his supper table. Guiltily, she laid her pies beside the gatepost and ran up to the door.

“I got to go back to Ragged Rock,” she said, breathlessly, ducking her head into the kitchen. “Are you resting?”

Eva pulled back from the window, dabbing at her reddened nose with a bit of balled-up tissue. “Bit late in the fall to be on the water so much,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Ooh, mind now, you’re scared of a boat ride,” scoffed Adelaide. “Get yourself in bed, crouped up like that. Sure, you can hardly talk. You want me to rub you with Vicks?”

Eva shook her head. “Go on, you’re going,” she said and looked back out the window.

Adelaide hesitated. “Is everything all right?”

Several hooted coughs were her reply, and a scrawny hand waving her on. “I never did like the bloody sea,” Eva croaked, hobbling away from the window to her rocker. “Always darkens the second you leans over it.” She sat back, dabbing at her nose and her rheumy eyes. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she added crossly, as Adelaide stood, ill at ease. “Bit of peace is what I’d like to have.”

“My, you’re the one, this morning. Worrying, that’s what you’re doing, and I already told you, you’re worrying for nothing. We’re not going nowhere, and who knows, it’s probably just talk yet. Nobody’s been around, telling us for sure.”

Eva nodded, settling back—more to get rid of her than reassure her, thought Adelaide, and why wouldn’t she worry with all this moving business, and Syllie not getting his fish, and she, Adelaide, running off to Ragged Rock two days in a row, and nothing solid, nowhere, to cast her mind upon? Lost, that’s how Eva looked to her, sitting there in her chair all by herself, lost. Like her drowned man.

Eva sat forward, pointing a crooked finger at the window. “Is that pies them goats are eating?”

Adelaide beat it out the door. There was no goat in sight. “Blasted woman,” she uttered, the corners of her mouth hooking on to a grin. Scooping up the pies, she waved goodbye to Eva, who was peering out the window again, her features drawn, tense. She thought to lay down the pies and run back in, assuring her again, but Ambrose was already in the boat, calling out to Suze, who was running down the path with her coat on.

Damn, she didn’t want that woman’s company today, she thought tiredly. A last worried look at Eva, and drawing a breath of resignation, she walked slowly to the boat.

Once they putted off from shore, Adelaide settled back, half listening as Suze launched into a running commentary for the next half hour about the coming shutdown of Cooney Arm, and Am’s mother’s bad stomach ever since she heard the news, and the old midwife declaring she’d be dead before they got her out of the arm, and Wessy and his brothers already planning where to build, and Elsie and Jake fighting over where to spend all the money they were going to get. “And you can be sure they’re not the only ones fighting. People never had this much money before, and I dare say there’ll be lots making a mistake—going for the money, and after they gets it spent, wanting to come home agin. Because it’s not working out the way the government thinks, is it, Am? Those ones from Bear Cove, they’re not too pleased, moving all the way to Hampden and finding out everybody already got the good fishing holes staked. Not surprising, seeing’s how they’ve been living there all their lives. And all them jobs that huddling people together was suppose to make, sure that’s not happening at all, not in Hampden, leastways. So I wouldn’t expect it to happen much anywhere else, either. And besides, all them old people—sure they’re all homesick two days after they leaves their houses, and the government got a real job, then, brother, keeping them from climbing in their boats and moving back to their old houses agin—especially since they got their money spent. Well, sir!” Suze broke off, her eyes widening in astonishment.

Adelaide turned to see what had caught Suze’s attention, and rose, her eyes gaping at a sight that would be forever imprinted on her mind. It was the Trapps from Little Trite, all of them, old and young, crowded into their boats—two skiffs and two motorboats, and each with a punt in tow—all loaded down with tables and chairs and beds and highboys and brooms and dishes and all else it takes to furnish a house, along with rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows and hoes, and never mind the dogs howling over the sides, and two pigs grunting from one of the punts, and two goats neighing in another, and two sheep baaing from the last, and a cat wailing from somewhere in their midst, and the flock of gulls circling, screaming overhead, as though trying to banish this oddity from the seas.

“Don’t go too close, Am,” Suze warned as one of the Trapp men, upon seeing their boat, stood up and deliberately turned his back toward them. “Cripes, no trusting a Trapp. What’re they doing? What’s they packed up for? Well, sir, they’re not being resettled, are they? Is that what they’re doing, resettling somewhere?”

Adelaide shook her head, bereft of words. Ambrose simply stared.

“Well, sir.” Suze clucked her tongue. “Now isn’t that something? Just like the Trapps—resettle and not tell nobody till the day comes. I tell you, they’re sly as conners. Where’s they moving to? Where’d you think they’re moving, Am?”

Ambrose shook his head. “Don’t ask me about a Trapp.”

“Well, sir, I knows you’re not sly. And I always thought that of the Trapp women—smile to your face, then wear your guts for garters.” Suze clucked her tongue again, as Ambrose slowly overtook the last of the Trapps’ boats, pulling ahead, leaving them putting slowly behind.

It was all the talk in Ragged Rock. The Trapps had secretly put in to the government for resettlement from Little Trite the year before and had made a secret deal with Hector Rideout to buy the old house he had abandoned few years back and another falling-down old thing belonging to his father and the wood-house and stages still standing alongside, with not a word, sir; not a word about them getting resettled.

“Not sly, are they, sneaking in and buying up the houses like that,” said Florry, looking through the window, along with everybody else in Ragged Rock, watching for the Trapps. “This is the third trip they made this morning. How much stuff, in the name of gawd, do they own? Sly, by cripes, they’re sly. And now we got the whole brood living right alongside. I say they’d better keep their noses out on the point, then, because nobody wants mixing with their blood, sir. Robbed poor old Hector blind, they did.”