Wild Rose (51 page)

She went on out of the house, Charles trundling behind, beginning to whine for her to pick him up. It was clear to her then that her friendship with Mrs. Emery had just ended, and it seemed that her heart was beating hard enough that it pulsed against her coat making the fabric quiver in rhythm. She thought of how far she had come from the day she had left her convent in Québec, an innocent, filled with excitement about what the world would bring her.

It would bring her this. She knew this now. And yet, she had to save herself and her child, she had to take opportunities when
they came; she would not stay behind forever in Bone Pile, stuck in her little café until she ended like Charlotte Emery, reduced once again to nothing, and with no place to go. She wanted to berate herself; she
was
berating herself for being such a foul human being as against all the teachings she had ever heard, she was walking away from need: Worse, she was acquiescing in evil –
Charlotte’s house would be a brothel; Campion making money off abused, destitute women who with him could only fall further into alcoholism and disease, no matter how pretty their dresses or how much fun they might have for a while – she was entangling herself in it. She could not, by this action of turning her back on Charlotte Emery, keep her skirts clean. She would have wailed aloud, all the years of her teachings at the hands of priests and nuns flooding over her – the fires of hell, damnation – but hugging Charles to her, she moaned only so that he pulled his head back from her ear to look into her face inquiringly, his
maman
frightening him.

“Yes, my Charles,” half-whisper, half-groan to him, kissing his round little cheek, pushing his head back against her own. “This is what the world is. Sometimes one has no choice,” but Charles had nothing to say to this.

~

Once she had made up her mind
, in just under a week she and Charles were living in the Gowland shack, her business having moved with her, most of their belongings piled onto Charles’s sled, that she had used making trip after trip. The shack itself, roughly the same size as Harry’s but with a shallow earth cellar, wasn’t really in as bad a shape as she had expected it to be, and although she also felt that major cleaning was required, she knew very well that it was more because Gowland had been a reprobate, a character who had lost all respect of anyone, what with his drinking and gambling when he should by now have parlayed his land grant into a sizeable ranch, but instead had died in grimy poverty. She had felt no need to clean quite so ferociously with Harry’s house; it was Old Gowland’s shame she needed to remove with her scrubbing. Or was it her own? Ridiculous, she told herself, and scrubbed harder.

Chapter Fifteen

Return

O
ne morning, it being such a bright, hopeful day
with the sound of water dripping off rooftops and running in the distant coulees, on her return from dropping off Charles at Mrs. Wozny’s house, instead of going straight back to her house, she stopped in at the Kaufmann’s store to buy some yeast. Ever since her move she had been experiencing a kind of freeing of her spirit not only because spring was finally arriving, but also because she now owed Harry nothing, that is, but the rent, and because she felt that now they could be clear and honest with each other. The two feelings vied with each other, first her uneasiness at her own ambition – or whatever it was – and then her lightness of spirit that she was free of everyone who might, whether well-meaning or not, oppress her, prevent her from finding and fulfilling her destiny, whatever that might be. But it swelled inside her, every day telling her there would be more, much more, if she kept strong.

“How is the new house?” Mrs. Kaufmann asked at once. She was nearly a full foot taller than Sophie, and carrying her height as if it embarrassed her, had taken to standing in odd positions so as to look less tall. When she could, she sat behind the counter. Seated, she and Sophie could look face to face.

“It will do,” Sophie said, it not being the way in this village
to wax eloquent about anything, and ever trying to fit in, subdued her tendency to gush. “Mrs. Roberts kept it clean, I’m happy to say.” Mrs. Kaufmann’s eyebrows went up, just a little.

“Not easy with that old man,” Mrs. Kaufmann said. On Sophie’s left Mr. Kaufmann was busy moving the barrel of pickles so as to make a better path to the shelves behind them.

Sophie said, “I’ve come for some yeast.” Mrs. Kaufmann reached behind her. It being her duty to attend to the orders of the women of the town, she had lightened her work by keeping the in-demand items easily within her reach. “Soon it will be real spring,” Sophie offered.

“And mud everywhere,” Mrs. Kaufmann replied, the exchange purely ritual. Could there be no real conversation in this village? Not that Sophie had experienced ‘real’ conversation with anyone but Pierre, his sister Violette, and lately, with Séraphine Beausoleil. The package of yeast sat between them on the counter. Sophie kept an account with the Kaufmanns which she paid promptly every two weeks. No need to dig in her reticule. There was a silence, Sophie having run out of the standard conversational bits, and Mrs. Kaufmann seeming to have an air of expectancy about her.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to the mud,” Sophie ventured, trying to keep up her end.

“Have you heard?” Mrs. Kaufmann said suddenly, in a rush coming in over Sophie’s lame remark. She knew that she was about to hear bad news by the look on the storekeeper’s face, and drew air in through her nose, nervously, trying to steady herself.

“That woman, the Tremblay woman, is back in town.” Her voice fell away at this last, as if she had just realized what she was doing by telling this to Sophie. Sophie didn’t reply, trying not to give away her emotion.

“Oh?” was all she could come up with, this after a second too long, although the air in the badly-lit store had grown nauseatingly rank with the smells of leather, oil, fish, coffee, pickling brine, and too-strong cheese. Heartened by so innocuous a reply, Mrs. Kaufmann took it as license to go on, her tone shifting to self-righteous.

“Oh, yes, indeedy, she has come back,” lowering her voice to a whisper although only her husband and Sophie were in the store besides herself, “She is going to give birth any day now by the look of her.” The woman pulled her hands back from the countertop where she had been leaning forward, her weight on them. She sat straight, moving her shoulders self-importantly, as if to set them in a proper position. “Wanted her mother, she did, I hear. Fine time to want your mother after what she did to you. And no sign of
him
.” Behaving as though her indignation were on Sophie’s behalf. If Sophie could have fainted, she would have; she wished to sprout wings and fly away, or to dissolve into invisibility in front of the storekeeper.

It seemed to her now that all the goods on the shelves, stacked along the walls, sitting in barrels and boxes, and hanging – halters, bridles, small-animal traps – from the ceiling, were listening attentively, that the wave of listening would engulf her, and the smell – she would be ill with the smell. She picked up the yeast cakes, took a step back from the counter, gave a small, speechless nod, and forcing herself to a normal pace, not looking back, went out of the store. Outside, she walked straight to her new home, went inside and shut the door. She would leave Bone Pile this very day, if only she could. She wished also to sob and cry, but the pain in her chest was so great that it squeezed out all possibility of tears. She made a fist and held it against her forehead, not breathing until she had to, then took in three, four long, deep breaths, subduing her own tumultuous feelings, pressing them down, down, to where they could – she thought – do no harm. When she was calm again, she began to set her bread. Before too long, her hands stopped their trembling, although it was hours before her stomach felt normal. Already her business had gone back to normal, and cooking and dishwashing with it.

A few days later she was sitting on her steps to enjoy the early afternoon sun on her face, shading her eyes against the brilliance of the melt water and the diminishing piles of snow all down the street. Stream after stream, some short, some very long, of wild geese passed through the clear air over the town, sounding their plangent calls as they beat their wings in their unhurried, purposeful way. Some flew so high that when she tilted her head upward she had to shield her eyes with her hand and even then they were only a black v-shape of dots passing between earth and sun, while others flew so low it looked as if she might reach up and pluck one out of the sky for her dinner. How noisy they were, she thought idly, and yet their very cries, like organ notes, celebrated spring. Ducks too, fluttered by, quacking; she even saw a flock of white birds that she recognized as swans, or thought she did. They might have been snow geese, flying in a clump, blazing white against the cloudless blue. All over the prairie there was water, puddles, ponds, whole shallow lakes of it, plenty for the birds. Their cries stirred something in her reaching up into her throat, so that she blinked, and puzzled over what it might be. The desire to leave this place forever, to go somewhere better, more exciting. To find love as she had once had love with Pierre. But she turned away such thoughts, resolutely, as beneath her now that she had learned what she had learned about life. The sun shone warm on her face, and for once she basked gratefully in its heat.

From between the houses before her and to her right she caught glimpses of a wagon pulled by a team of horses coming into the town from the south. She watched idly, thinking how she must rise and get Charles and not be so lazy, enjoying a brief respite between the noon and supper customers. When the team didn’t reappear as it passed the next house when she expected it to, she assumed that it had stopped in front of Harry’s house. She gave a start: Surely it was Harry, returned from his winter’s labour. She found herself standing, hurrying inside, closing the door, leaning with her back against it while she tried to calm her unexpected confusion.

What was this reaction? She wasn’t sure. All winter long he had not sent her a single note, not a word, not even by someone else, except for that early note to Mrs. Emery. When she moved to the Gowland house, she had left a note for him on his table saying where he could find her and telling him to come and collect his rent from her that she hadn’t thought it wise to leave there on the table with the door not even locked. That he would soon come by she had no doubt, perhaps not today, but tomorrow. But then, she thought, if he hadn’t brought supplies with him, he would have no food in the house and would have to come to her for his evening meal. But then, didn’t everyone in town know him, and knowing his situation, wouldn’t they all offer him supper? People loved to have company, were especially starved when the winter had been so long.

Unable to stand her own unsettled feelings any longer, she put on her shawl to pick up Charles at Mrs. Wozny’s whose house sat mid-way, although back a street, between Harry’s house and Sophie’s new residence. But she fixed her hair with some care, or began to, before she grew annoyed with herself and stopped, put on her winter boots without thinking about it though rubber boots would have been better what with all the standing water around, and left her house.

She chose not to go down the main street, although that was where there were a few stretches of rough wooden sidewalks, because she didn’t want anyone to think that she was out because Harry had returned, knowing very well that if she had seen him return, so had everybody else. She was going carefully, her head down, skirting puddles or jumping over them, nearly falling and putting out a hand to steady herself against a melting snowbank when she became aware of a movement to her right. She glanced in that direction, was in time to see a woman pulling back the outer door to enter a house, was horrified at herself that in the tumult of feelings at Harry’s return – if it was Harry, she suddenly thought – she was passing Tremblay’s house. It was not that she saw the woman’s face, but knew at once by the awkwardness of her movements, of the kind only pregnant women make, and the curve in her back from carrying the load of the child at her front, that it was Marguerite Tremblay.

The door had already shut, no curtains moved in the two front windows. She kept walking, beginning to speed up, thinking there had been no sign of Pierre, no saddle horse tied to the fence, or a wagon or buggy pulled up by the house. Perhaps he had left Marguerite too, she thought, before she dismissed it as merely her own desire not to be the only one humiliated. She felt sure that Pierre was not in Bone Pile, this mostly, she had to admit, because she couldn’t bear the thought of his being there, with her, this girl-woman who had stolen him. And their baby. She had been leaning forward from the waist, her feet moving in short steps, clutching her shawl to her chest, and now, thinking of the baby they would have – her husband – she straightened, stiff and as tall as she could make herself, lifted her head, slowed, tied her shawl over her chest, and dropping her arms to her sides. At Mrs. Wozny’s house, when the door opened at her knock, she did not know where she was, or why she was there, but went confusedly inside, blinking, struggling to adjust her eyes to the gloom. It was not until the woman spoke that she began to collect herself.

“They play out there,” Mrs. Wozny said, tossing her head to indicate the back of the house. Now that she thought of it, she had heard the faint shouts of children in play out behind the houses, on the low knoll nearby that would be dry, and had ignored the sound as normal, not thinking that Charles might be one of them. Sometimes she still thought of him as a baby, had forgotten he was four years old. “I will get Olga to bring him home to you when they…stop.” Her English had improved, but she still had to search for words, as indeed, Sophie still did. But every day her French receded farther from her. Still confused, Sophie could think of nothing apt to say, although she was thinking, he will be soaked, his clothes will be sopping wet. I’ll have to… “Sit,” Mrs. Wozny said, turning a chair with one hand. “I need to rest. Coffee,” waving her hand as Antoinette might have done. At this Sophie nearly sobbed aloud, but held the wretched noise in, gulping and pretending a cough. She did not want to sit, but she did, still trying to get her mind to settle on the moment and the place.