The Seary Line (8 page)

Yes, her sister Grace was long gone. But what to do with Amos? How could she squeeze him into this picture? Resolve his existence? There would never be any mention of her. Of Grace. A child his age would have the memory of a sieve, everything slipping through.

That evening, Delia was nearly reduced to tears as she sifted through the trunk – clothes hastily piled up, a book of nursery rhymes, embroidered handkerchiefs, a pair of shoes, a lot of empty space. An abundance of miniature outfits,
nearly too small for the boy now. As though someone, an experienced seamstress, had created with feverish intensity, and then suddenly stopped. Those tiny overalls, pants, sweaters would hardly be worn by the intended owner. And at the time, she recalled, that saddened her more than anything else. That this small boy, so lost in the world, would barely get a chance to feel the affection in the stitches, the touch that still lingered in the fabric.

Delia stepped away from the window, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and sat down in the rocker. She wanted so badly to watch her family, watch her husband bend and lift in the cool October air, the children, cheeks flushed, pretend to labour diligently while they covertly played. She still hadn't gotten used to how enormous Percy became when the children arrived. His hands were dinner plates when he patted Amos's back, his thighs, like overnight logs, when he sat beside Stella on a bench.

She longed to compare them just now, but she could see nothing. Absolutely nothing, only a handful of old man's beard clinging to the trunks of those cursed trees. Next fine day, she would tear away as much of it as she could reach, burn every shred.

“You are a ridiculous woman,” she said aloud as she pictured herself with both feet planted firmly against a trunk, two fists gripping the stringy moss, tree howling. “And now look. You're talking to yourself.”

In the past five years her life had changed more than she ever would have imagined. The carefree existence between Percy and herself had vanished: the teasing, their special unspoken banter, the quiet dinners beside the stove when their toes would touch underneath the small table. With the arrival of Stella, and compounded by Amos, Percy had become deathly serious. He rarely smiled, and within six
months of parenthood, his hair had morphed from the shiny black she adored to the peppered fur of a winter hare. Taking care of one had been pleasant, but three became overwhelming, and sucked the marrow from his bones.

Delia wandered around every inch of the kitchen, tapping her shoe in each corner, running her hand along every smooth surface. Caged inside her own home, and she was convinced this confinement contributed to her exhaustion. She sat upon the daybed again, breathing laboured due to her walking, and she listened intently. Gusts pushed at her home, twigs tickled the windows. Inside was glaringly still. She hated being alone.

“How long you going to be gone, Percy?” Delia had asked as they hauled on dusty boots, hats, sweaters.

“Not long,” he'd replied. “We got work to do. Just because it's fall, don't mean things let up.”

“I knows.”

Delia was on the daybed, and as Percy unfurled a blanket, he nudged her backwards with his elbow. Unintentional, perhaps, but the gentle propelling riled her. Then he snapped the blanket in the air, tucked it around her, securely, intestine around the skinny sausage.

“God, Percy, I got to breathe.”

“I would hope so.”

“Are you going to be long?” Her voice echoed inside her head, the annoying repetition. A syrupy neediness that sickened her.

“You needn't worry yourself about that, maid.”

“I idn't worried, just you knows I don't like to be by myself is all.”

“Well, you're not alone. Why, there's . . . You got. . .” He looked around the room. “Stella can stay with you. Right, miss?”

“Noooo,” Stella whined. The child's undersized sweater was tucked into oversized pants, and when she gripped Percy's forearm, dangled there, her silky belly was exposed, pants threatening to tumble. “I wants to work.”

“And you needn't think I's staying in,” Amos announced. Delia turned, stung. Over the years, Percy had become the pleasure, while she was the painful punishment.

“Can't blame them for a wanting a bit of fresh air now, can you? Heh-heh.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” she had murmured, hot iron pressing on her words.

Delia lay down on the daybed again, threw the blanket across her knees. Percy would be upset if he returned, found her traipsing about their house. Tomorrow was Sunday, everyone would be at church, and she needed to appear rested. Other than Dr. Barnes, no one really knew about her peculiar illness. Percy never told a soul, and neither did she – not that she really had a soul willing to listen. But silently, both of them had agreed. Sharing the story of her sickness, speaking of it in the open, would only change it into something real.

Last night's storm had torn away the mounds of seaweed that clung to the rocks, then thrashed them about, tossed them up on the beach. Percy and the children were down there now, crawling over the stones, collecting the slippery strings and shoving them into four enamel buckets. When the buckets were filled, Percy would cart them up over the road, onto his property, and dump the mess in small piles on his garden. After strewing it around, he would leave it, allow
it to rot over the winter, creating a rich fertilizer for his potato plants in the spring.

As he tipped the fourth bucket from a load, Percy leaned his head in close to the pile, edges of the kelp already withered and blackened with the high October sun. He inhaled deeply, considered how it was an honest odour, the scent of hard work. His mother was jumbled up in that smell – along with his four brothers, a handful of squashed damsons – all part of the last pleasant family memory he held.

Every Sunday afternoon, when he and his brothers were boys, they were instructed to sit on the hard bench in the front room. The embroidered cushion was always laid aside, as their mother predictably announced, “Now's not the time to be thinking about comfort.” The older three were told to read from a thick book of yellowed pages. Children's Bible stories. Percy, who was not yet big enough to read, was told instead to simply sit still and concentrate on something “holy.”

Percy struggled with this, the concentrating bit. He tried, no doubt, but when he stirred his mind, a dirty stew of thoughts floated up, spoiled root vegetables bumping against the spoon. A dead chicken's head on a bloody stump. Blisters on his tongue after a fever. The queer excitement of watching his mother undress, the sheerness of her cotton slip. Nothing “holy” there. While he waited for something to arrive, he chewed and swallowed his fingernails, sucked the blood that often wept from torn skin.

“By the looks on your face, little Percy, your thoughts is a far cry from holy,” John, the oldest, sniped. “Well, fellers,” he continued, “if you asks me, I'll tell you something that idn't holy. Plunking our arses on this bench, when 'tis a fine day calling us. Surely God don't intend that.”

Though Percy shivered at the thought of disobeying, he rose as the others rose, made his way out the front door with them and into what their father affectionately referred to as, “Mother's Newfangled Garden.” A mess of sturdy sheep laurel, cornflowers, wild asters, and phlox. Other flowers now dead, tangles of sleepy plants beginning to wither.

They stole past a group of men in painted chairs, bellies like balls rising and falling as they dozed in the afternoon sun. “Holy dreams, I's betting,” John whispered.

Down the path and across the log that made a greasy bridge over the brook, the brothers reached the backend of Widow Samson's yard. Her house was plunked in the very middle, blue clapboard, faded and crackled like a smashed robin's eggshell. Jumping her rickety fence, they crept through the dry grass until they reached the rough trunk of her damson tree. “Say it ten times fast, b'ys,” John commanded, as the three younger boys whispered, “Samson's damsons, Samson's damsons, Samson's damsons” over and over again. “Louder,” he cajoled. “Eyes like the hawk, but she's deaf as a boot.” And louder they crooned, only falling silent when they shimmied up the tree, began the unlawful harvest.

Finding the branches heavy with sour fruit, they curled their backs into the elbows near the trunk, helped themselves, spit black slippery pits. The four of them gorged until their stomachs swelled, ached. “Shits tomorrow for the load of us,” John announced, and the middle two sniggered while Percy blushed. Then they stuffed their pockets, snapped whole limbs, dropped like cats to the earth below. Carted the works home, twigs, leaves and all.

When they displayed their trappings on the kitchen table, their mother did not smile.

Her voice was like jelly, quivering with anger. “On a Sunday of all days. Thieving on the Sabbath.”

“But–” John began.

“Don't utter a word! When your father catches wind of this, you'll all be lashed. And deservedly so.”

As though coached, Percy, head hanging, eased himself forward and murmured through purple lips, “Why, they was for you. To make something nice. For our family.”

She softened instantly, pinched his stained chin, said, “That's nice, my darling. But what do you expect? She'll be by for a drop of tea, and I'll serve her up a jam made from her own fruit? You don't suppose she'd be a mite bit suspicious?”

“Will you tell Father?” Percy's teary owl eyes were on her now, pleading.

“I could. And every one of you deserves to have your backsides reddened until they's raw, but I believes your intentions was nice, so I'll make you boys a deal. If you're up tomorrow before the crack of dawn and manage to surprise your father with the biggest load of kelp he's ever seen – well, that just might fasten my lips right tight. In the meantime, you can spend the remainder of the afternoon with your rumps stuck to that bench and thinking about how good your lives is.”

Percy stepped back, marched straight to the bench and took his seat. As they moved past him, one brother knocked him, another yanked his ear, John struck him firmly on his crown with a fist, then grabbed his own backside, whispered, “Phew.” There was pride blossoming inside Percy's small body. For once in his life, he was a hero.

The following night at supper, their father said, “'Twas a grand day. Never seen the boys work so hard, and now this lovely pudding. Was the widow by?”

Lifting the crumbly cake, Percy saw the illicit spiced fruit underneath.

“Mmm,” she replied, and began to chirp on about her day: paying the widow a visit, helping her pluck the stubborn feathers from an old white hen that was no longer a giver. “Stuck tight, those feathers. Poor old widow, fingers on her, already seen their best days, could barely get a grip. I finished it up for her, lit a small stick in her stove, and burned off every last trace of hair. Wind came up, though. My good Lord, if it didn't coax every feather off the ground, into the air, scattering them hither and yon. Believe it or not, the widow wasn't the least bit undone about the mess. Sat back, watched them dance through the air. 'Twas like a glorious dream.”

To the boys and their father, it barely mattered what she said. It was the lilt of her voice that captured them, made them chew slowly to prolong their meal. Her words were a harmony that filled every corner of their home. Making them forget the hardship of the day. She chirped about dipping candles, the secret ingredient in her steamed bread pudding, how she felt like a twirling child when she stared at the wonky lines of her log cabin quilt. She shared her life as a woman – a curiosity so beyond their world of muscle-work, it transformed even the most banal of her stories into something rich and exotic.

When she died in childbirth the following spring, a bitter stillness seeped into the home, uprooted every scrap of humour, of joy, and guarded the space with cold passion. At first the quiet was sharp and unbearable, but after a while the five of them grew accustomed to it. Over the years, they developed a system of nods and mumbles, and eventually, if a word was accidentally spoken, it was met with distain. Even the flowers fell silent, and Percy could no longer hear
the buds bursting outside his window during a spring evening. He had imagined early on that they drooped and died because the gardener had abandoned them. Not until he fell in love did he consider that perhaps they were all so desperate for life, they had no choice but to choke each other out.

Percy's three older brothers left, first chance that presented itself. Married as soon as they were able to earn a living. But Percy lingered, bound somehow to that dour, soundless man who was his father.

He was nearly forty years old when he met Delia. Even though he remembered it very clearly, he rarely thought about their first acquaintance. Not because it was upsetting, just the opposite, actually. Bringing it out into bright light and replaying it gave him such pleasure, he only did so on special occasions. He feared wearing it out. Fondness enveloped their second meeting as well, but he was more carefree with this instance, would conjure her words frequently, and after all these years, still feel the scratch of his excited shyness. “You got to be the pastiest man I ever seen,” she had said when they met on the road, day of drizzle. “Surely you've been living under a rock.” Throat dry, but skin soaked, Percy nodded yes.