The Day the Falls Stood Still (4 page)

“There’s nothing left?”

“Nothing,” she says. “And it’s a whole lot easier for everyone to blame Father for their troubles than to admit their own greed. No one’s got time for him anymore, no one except Mr. Coulson. And I’ll bet he’s pleased as punch to have Father’s job.”

“Mr. Coulson is devoted to Father.”

“I know. I know,” she says, waving away my words. “Even so, he’s as ambitious as they come. And Mrs. Coulson, too. She hasn’t got the time of day for anyone with a smidgen less clout than Mr. Coulson.”

“She used to bring us ribbons and paper dolls.”

“Father was Mr. Coulson’s boss.”

Not quite ready to adopt Isabel’s view, I pick at a thread on the coverlet. “She still gives Mother the time of day.”

“Then she must figure Father isn’t down and out for good.”

“But if she thinks he’ll get his job back…”

“There’s no chance. Mr. Cruickshank had him sacked. That much I know. He must have gotten wind of the aluminum scheme.”

“So?”

“Near as I can tell, he decided he didn’t want his son involved with a bankrupt family, and the break would be a whole lot cleaner if he had Father sacked. At any rate, he could hardly keep Father on, not when he’s on the outs with a half dozen of Niagara Power’s customers.” Her gaze falls to the coverlet.

“Did Boyce tell you that?”

“When he broke off our engagement, he just stood there, a great cringing coward, hardly looking up from his feet.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, tucking my heels beneath me so that I am sitting cross-legged on the bed.

“Don’t be.” She shakes her head. “He’s spineless. He never could stand up to his father. I don’t know why I ever thought that he would.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

She raises her fingers to her temples, closes her eyes. “It gets worse,” she says. “Father disappears every day and only comes back after midnight.”

“He went out this morning, in his frock coat.”

“He goes to one of the hotels. I’m almost sure. He’s drinking too much. I’ve heard him late at night, stumbling up the stairs.”

“What?” My voice suggests shock, yet somehow it feels I have only been reminded of what I already knew, at least since the evening before, when I first glimpsed Mother in the dining hall, twisting the program in her hands. She sat alone, an aisle on one side and on the other three empty seats, a gap Mr. and Mrs. Huntington had chosen to leave. Father had lost his job and his fortune, and convinced a handful of his colleagues to gamble away theirs. Even so, there was something more that had caused folks to turn their backs on a woman as respected as Mother, something truly appalling, like a husband whiling away the days with his nose in a pint, particularly with so many young men suffering overseas.

“Last week I told him I could smell the whiskey on him,” Isabel says. “He said I sounded like a prohibitionist, and I said if prohibition meant keeping fathers sober, then, war or no war, maybe I was. He left after that, some excuse about getting to the post office before the mail was picked up. He’s drinking, and Mother knows it and just pretends everything will be fine as long as she manages five dresses a week.”

“We could help with the sewing,” I say.

She folds her arms. “We’ll earn enough for biscuits and tea, and if we work our fingers to the bone, maybe a ham at Christmastime.”

“Mother used to do all right as a dressmaker.”

“Father was working as a clerk,” she says, “and they lived behind the slaughterhouse, and smelled blood and entrails all day long. They didn’t have two daughters to support.”

Dr. Galveston prescribed sunshine and rest and positive thoughts for Isabel, and so far I have only set her worrying whether there will be a ham at Christmastime. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“I’ve said my news—Father drinks, Mother sews.”

“Just try, Isabel.”

She sighs, says, “Tell me about Loretto.”

There is a pause while I search for some scrap of safe news. “A young man helped Mother and me with my trunk last night. We took the trolley.”

“Father didn’t show up.”

“I’d guess he was a couple of years older than I am,” I say, refusing a return to the topic of Father. “He was camping at the whirlpool.”

“You met him on the trolley?” she says, eyeing me skeptically. “What does he do?”

“He was wearing a workingman’s clothes, but they were tidy, and plenty of gentlemen wouldn’t have bothered to help.”

She huffs, a clipped bit of laughter. “A shopgirl could do better if she played her cards right.”

It is the sort of sentiment I expect from Mother, not from Isabel, who is almost always delighted with any whiff of romance. “No one else offered to help,” I say.

“I’m surprised Mother didn’t decide the two of you should carry the trunk yourselves.”

“He carried the trunk on his shoulder, like it was nothing at all.”

And then for a moment she is her old self, speaking with the impish grin that says “I am in cahoots with you.” “Remember the heart from the birthday cake set?” she says. “You were promised true love.”

I found the heart at Isabel’s last birthday party, hidden inside a forkful of cake I had placed in my mouth. I slid my tongue over the metal, hoping for the heart, the token we all wanted most. But when I felt the hollow place where the two lobes met, I thought I had ended up with the thimble, which meant spinsterhood. I was pleased when I took the heart from my mouth, even more so when Kit picked a tiny, silver wishbone from her slice of cake. The wishbone, along with her good luck, confirmed the prophetic ability of the birthday cake set, even if Isabel was laughing and holding up the spinster’s thimble, unperturbed. By then she was engaged to Boyce Cruickshank and the tokens meant nothing at all.

The heart is in a square tin in the bottom of my trunk, alongside a mishmash of programs—the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, Loretto Day, a Christmas pageant—also, a geometry examination on which I scored one hundred percent, several bits of embroidery I completed as a child, and the ribbon I was given for the prize for sewing. I do not know why I keep the heart. It is not useful or particularly pretty, and I know it is nonsensical and superstitious to believe in a birthday cake set. And it seems entirely wrong to hope for a bit of magic when an implication of the magic is a sister’s spinsterhood.

I would like the conversation to linger on the heart and true love, but the thimble and spinsterhood are an easy leap away, so I say, “I bet we could find him. I’ve seen him before, one Saturday outing at the river.”

“Bess,” she says. “The Boyce Cruickshanks of the world might be out of the question, but you’re pretty and clever and kind. You don’t have to settle, not entirely.”

“It’s not like I’m marrying him, and besides, Father had nothing when Mother met him.”

Again, that huff. “Case in point.”

I want to tell her she is acting like Mother, but she appears fragile against the starched-white linens and the solid wood of the headboard, not at all herself. “I’ll open the window,” I say.

As I struggle with the window sash, I notice, just beyond the pane, small pieces of biscuit sitting on the windowsill. The birds left the crumbs behind, their bellies already full. I turn to her, my eyes surely saying what I know.

“If you tell Mother,” she says, “I’ll have to mention your crush.”

“You’re not well.” I hand her the plate, roughly, so that the biscuit nearly slides onto her lap.

Suddenly she is weeping, tears silently streaming down her cheeks, unhindered by an attempt to wipe them away. “You’re right,” she says. “I’m not well.”

What has become of my sister? Where is the girl who once taped a handy list of possible offenses to the confessional wall at the academy, the girl who let me borrow her rose chiffon gown even though she had not yet worn it herself, the girl who took so long to say good night that she regularly fell asleep in my bed? “I won’t tell, but you have to eat the biscuit.”

She places a small piece into her mouth and chews until it can be nothing more than a watery pulp. With great concentration, she swallows. I watch her throat constrict, also the barely perceptible heave that follows, convincing me she will be sick. Once half the biscuit is gone, I say, “That’s enough.”

She hands me what remains, and I place it on the windowsill with yesterday’s crumbs.

M
other is in the spare bedroom, which I suppose I should call a sewing room now. The bed is gone, replaced by bolts of fabric, a dressmaker’s mannequin, and a sewing machine. She is on her knees, pinning a craft-paper pattern of her own making to a length of pale gray silk. I piece together the forms, the almost rectangle of a skirt, the convex cap of a sleeve tapering to the wrist, the four pieces of a bodice, the smaller forms of the waistband, neckline facing, and cuffs.

On her feet, she lifts a length of the same silk from the back of a chair and says, “Take a look.” She loosely gathers the fabric and sweeps it back and forth, causing it to catch and reflect light as a swaying skirt might. She holds up a delicate tulle, a coil of rouleau, and another of soutache, all of the same luminous gray. The end result of her handiwork will be quietly elegant, refined in a way that will set it apart from the flounced and sequined frocks at the party where the gown will first appear.

“Mrs. Coulson’s third order,” she says. “It’s for a party at the Clifton House. The Chamberlains’ eldest girl is coming out.”

“Are we invited?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I know I should not have asked. The Chamberlains are acquaintances, unfamiliar enough to dodge any obligation others might feel.

She shakes her head and says, “But I’ll have two gowns there: Mrs. Coulson’s, and Mrs. Atwell is wearing one, too.”

“I can pull out basting threads or sew on buttons or run up the seams,” I say, “until I prove myself.”

“You proved yourself with the tea dress. I unpacked your trunk this morning. Such a pretty thing deserves better than the corner of a trunk. You can press it later.” She returns to her knees, smoothes the craft-paper cuff over the silk, and begins to pin it into place. “I won’t let you cut. Not yet. The fabric is too expensive and I haven’t got time for another trip to Toronto. I’ll look after the fitting. You can hand me the pins and chalk, and learn as much as you can.”

So I am to work for the first time in my life. I can almost feel a needle between my fingers, basting together bodice seams, each stitch exactly the same length as the one before. There is serenity in sewing, maybe something like what I found sitting in my window seat.

“But Isabel takes priority,” she says, looking up from the silk.

“She’s sleeping.” At least her cheek was on the pillow and her eyes were lightly shut when I tiptoed from her room. I let her think she had me convinced, even though her breathing had not slowed. She is not the type to be a burden, not now. Not ever.

“How did she seem?” Mother says.

“She didn’t eat much, a biscuit and a few sips of tea.”

Mother lets out a sigh, and it nearly causes me to run down the hallway and gather the crumbs from the windowsill and tell Isabel she must eat them no matter what, but surely it would be better to entice her with something other than the biscuit crumbs. “Are the strawberries by the back fence ready to be picked?” I say.

“I’ve been meaning to check.”

A
t first blush, Mother’s garden seems as immaculate as always. Intricate blooms of columbine nod in midmorning sun. Coneflowers stand erect, their central cores thrust forward, bristling with seeds. But all except the hardiest spires of foxglove and delphinium lay toppled, stalks collapsed under the weight of their own flowers. Peonies droop, their heavy blooms, unsupported by stakes, decaying on the ground. Beneath the garden’s canopy of foliage, purslane spreads its weedy tendrils. Fronds of yarrow and tapered blades of crabgrass poke through once orderly beds of hosta and cranesbill. Instinctively, my fingers seek the base of a clump of crabgrass and gently ease the roots from the soil. As I reach for another, I see Mother has made a decision. Beauty is superfluous, beyond what we need to live. The weeds fall from my fingertips.

The strawberry crop is meager, half-choked by a tangle of silver-lace vine. As a child, I had been given the task of carefully untwisting the vine from the strawberry bushes. Today the work is tedious, though it had seemed pleasant enough back when a summer morning was only something to fritter away. I pinch off an offending tendril and let it fall to the garden floor, where it will rot in the shade.

Once I have gathered a small bowl of strawberries, I walk past the house into the front yard. Here, too, the gardens are unkempt, although slightly less so than in the back, as if Mother had not given up the pretense of order in the front quite so early on.

When I notice the faint rumble of the Niagara River tumbling through the gorge, I move closer, to the front of our property, and listen to the Whirlpool Rapids far below. I stand with my eyes shut, imagining great waves of surging green crashing and toppling to masses of frothy white. When I open my eyes, the fellow who carried my trunk is passing along River Road, likely returning from his camp at the whirlpool. He tips his cap, and I quickly turn away, embarrassed at the thought of myself a moment earlier, listening to the river.

As I reach for the screen door, I look over my shoulder intending to wave but, too late, see only his back. Three fair-size fish hang from a line slung over his shoulder. His bedroll swings back and forth in time with his gait. When he is far enough away that I can no longer tell his collar from his cap, I see him look back toward Glenview. I wave, and it seems he nods, though I cannot say for sure.

I decide then and there I will supervise Isabel’s convalescence outdoors. She will sit on the veranda, and I will read to her from the collection of books Sister Ignatius piled in my arms. I will speak to Mother about moving the chaise longue to the veranda and bring down a wool blanket from the cedar-lined chest. Isabel will eat strawberries and tomatoes and cucumbers straight from the garden, and sip lemonade. But with Mother’s commitment to sparing food for the troops, had she found time to plant the vegetable patch this year?