Then he sighed and looked about.
Antony had come here in a hurry after drinking a bottle or two of Hermit. Now here he was. Why, it was hard to say. Perhaps he wanted to warn them about Ivan coming, but, at any rate, Antony was caught up with this. Antony, when drinking, often got on a train of thought and couldn’t get off it, or he found something going on and he had to be involved in it. It didn’t matter what it was – bingo at the centre three summers ago – Antony had to try and run it. And when they were making MacDonald Farm a historical property, Antony had to be there as well – as a matter of fact, he was there every day, right from the moment they were beginning to clear out all the old bricks and rubble until they kicked him off the property for trying to sell a stuffed beaver to the tourists.
He was hoping he would be able to show everyone how much he was doing – but even this was too definite. It was more that he was here instead of staying at home. He had taken Margaret’s duck and put it in Val’s room. He was still thinking of the fill that he had to get for Dr. Hennessey. He was back and forth instead of staying put.
Something happens, and you think you are the one making it happen – that if you decide to go somewhere, you are reasonable enough to understand why, and so on. But the people in this room were a perfect example that this was not the way things happened to anyone. Ruby would not have been involved except it was the way she spent all her summers. For Ruby, all her summers contained the same things. Excitement and bravado, and usually at someone else’s expense.
Last year it was one of her father’s workers. He had cancer, and Ruby, who had never lacked good-heartedness, spent the whole summer taking him back and forth to Halifax for treatment. She organized a party for him and did what she could, always slightly conscious that she, beautiful and vital and alive, had taken over the centre from his own family, who at the end resented her.
Secretly Ruby had not felt close to Cindi in the last few years. They had drifted apart. In fact, until this happened, she felt Cindi was a bother, and hardly visited. Now that she had become Cindi’s guardian she was also responsible for her, and found all the dislike she had had for Cindi every time they got at close quarters together.
For a long while Antony had them worried that Ivan would come. At every sound Antony would turn his head. “What the hell is that – listen.”
“Jesus, Antony, ya got us all nervous as a cat,” Ruby said.
“Cindi, you can come out of the bathroom – he’s not here.”
And Cindi would come out of the bathroom and sit near the window.
“Dangerous lad,” Antony said, “dangerous lad, that!”
That night there was one of those impromptu parties that happen so often in the summer. People, knowing Ruby had rented an apartment, dropped in. Lionel was there. And Oniseme walked in and sat down for a moment. Then Gordon Russell came in. They brought beer and wine and rum.
Often Ruby would disappear for whole minutes at a time, leaving Cindi alone with six or seven men. Cindi would look out and see her in the phone booth down the street. She was telephoning her boyfriend in town. Only Cindi knew this other aspect of Ruby’s summer. Like a bird forced to fly in the dark, Ruby zigzagged.
The party opened up, and things were said. And like parties on the river, everything could foul up at any second.
“I’m scared Eugene is so involved in this here racket,” Antony said suddenly. “I mean, I know how he is just visiting here – it gives him a bad impression of us, and sorta a bad impression of my family.” He wanted this statement to have a very good impression on them.
He looked over at Cindi for a second, and then looked towards Gordon, who nodded. Gordon already had put his arm around Cindi. Cindi, who always loved people to hug her, felt that because they used to go together he could take this liberty. It added piquancy. And so Cindi started to cry.
“I know,” Cindi said, “I know – I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She kept saying that, for ten minutes. Her shorts were very loose, and the men, some of them trying not to, could not help staring up her legs – for everything was visible there.
“That’s what I told Eugene today,” Antony said in a heavy voice. “‘I don’t want to know where she is,’ I said, I don’t want to know a thing about it – because Ivan’s certain to find out.’ I had enough trouble with that young fucker already,” Antony said, tears coming to his eyes as they often did when he drank.
Cindi suddenly lit a cigarette, and looked scared, and Gordon gave her another hug.
“But I told him, ‘Gordon, you wait until Cindi finds another man – a man who knows the value of a woman, and everything about a woman.’”
“I’m sorry,” Cindi said, in that peevish singsong voice she had when she was accused of something, or when people told her she was lying.
“And then Margaret went and said to me tonight, ‘Dad, ya always loved yer own,’” Antony said, conscious that people were listening to him because he was talking about Ivan, and conscious and irritable that he was attacking his own again, in front of people, just like Margaret said he would, and couldn’t seem to stop.
“Loved yer own?” Oniseme said.
“Loved yer own – that’s what she said, loved yer own. ‘Why now do you turn against Ivan,’ and I just said to Margaret, ‘Listen here – just a minute’” – he said this very loud, so everyone looked at him – “I loved my own till it hurt. I sacrificed my marriage, and went to the hospital, but Cindi is my own also – and Ivan is my own too – but do I hurt a hair’s breath on yer heads or do I fly off the handle?’
“‘No Daddy,’ she said to me, crying ya know – crying like that all, crying ‘no Daddy, I just want to know.’ And so I said, ‘Well – how can I love Ivan the less if I love Cindi the more?’”
“I don’t know,” some people said.
“I sure don’t know either, eh,” Antony said. Then he asked if there was any tea in the house, and looked towards the cupboards.
“I bought some tea,” Cindi said. “I’ll make you some.”
She stood and went to the cupboard. Since her pregnancy her feet had started to swell, but Gordon didn’t know why. He simply looked at them and said:
“What’s wrong with yer feet?”
Cindi turned, with a dreamy expression, and looked down at them.
“Feet bigger than Harold Matchett, if you ask me,” Gordon said. Then he laughed that coarse, unpleasant laugh, which was loud and always tried to bring attention to himself, something that Antony could never like.
And Cindi laughed too.
Ruby came back in and sat down near Oniseme. Two other men came in with her. A huge grey moth with a succulent body and lots of powder batted itself haplessly against a light. The place was filled with smoke, the smell of smoked oysters and beer.
Cindi had promised herself that she was not going to drink, but the man Ivan had seen in the apartment with her, the man who had the band on his wrist, made her a rum daiquiri.
Up until now, Antony felt he had spoken too much, and had said all the foolish things that he always seemed to say in front of people he wanted to respect him. But he wanted to redeem himself. He wanted to hit someone, to make people go away. He knew three or four of the men had gone into the kitchen with Cindi, and this bothered him for some reason.
“Oh wow,” he heard Cindi saying.
He knew that if Ivan were here they wouldn’t dare do such a thing. He was overcome thinking of little Margaret and her ducks, and how she was saving her money for the Exhibition – and how innocent that seemed compared to this.
“Tell us how the ram went at Nevin,” Ruby said, looking at him, and kicking him on the knee, as if she understood that he was upset. Ruby could read people very well, and she tried to get him back into a good mood.
“Who me?”
“Yes – tell me – I heard it last time I just about fell down and pissed my pants.”
Antony looked at everyone.
“Well, animals of any sort have to
respect you or they’ll take advantage of you,” Antony said, lighting a cigarette and looking at the match for a second. “So many people don’t know the psychology of an animal.” He blew the match out. “The first thing you do in front of a horse is kill a chicken – then that horse will never kick you in the head or bite your ear off.” He looked at them suspiciously for some reason. “I had a dog – you know, Muffins. I had to kick the shit out of it, or it would have torn my throat out. It never learned till the day it ran away – kept trying to attack me. I tried to get it to attack other people, but it wouldn’t. Jesus, it wasn’t a big dog either – no bigger than a fox really. So every day I’d grab it by the scruff of the neck and kick it … boot it … and hide its dog dish – and everything else – and still it kept coming back for more.” Here he paused knowing he had gone off track. “But let me tell you – those goats down at Nevin’s are having the time of their lives, because they take one look at Nevin and go right at him, chase him all over the lawn, and him scared. And then Margaret – you know Margaret, my oldest girl, going in to be a veterinarian in two years there at the university – she just had to go down and handle those goats for him and catch his rabbits – which he is continually mixing up, the males and females, so there is more and more rabbits popping up everywhere. It’s a circus down there,” he said, with that particular self-righteousness he had whenever he finished a statement.
“Well,” Ruby said, disappointed, “it’s not the same way as you told it before – but it’s still okay.”
Everyone laughed, and Antony laughed too.
Everyone was silent for a moment, and then some friend of Dorval Gene’s, the tanned youngster with the wristband, began to laugh hysterically over something in Antony’s story. And Antony felt stung. He looked at Ruby, as if for some approval or reassurance, but she paid no attention to him.
“You,” he said to Cindi, suddenly and angrily, “have got to get your life together.”
“I am,” Cindi said.
“Ha – you are,” Antony said, sniffing. “I bet you are.”
“I’m sorry,” Cindi said. “I’m sorry like I toldja all before – I toldja last week and everything.” And she put her head down and wouldn’t lift it.
“Leave her alone now,” Gordon said, “for Godsakes, Antony.”
“Oh, I’m not saying anything to her,” Antony smiled weakly.
Gordon looked at him, in the disappointed fashion a more wordly and clever man can do, and Antony said:
“Hell, I’m just jokin” – and he felt his face sting. “Aren’t I, Cindi – I’m just jokin, dear – just jokin – ya know that.”
“Yes,” Cindi said, head still down. “Antony is always coming to visit me.” She spoke into her sweater, so they could hardly understand what she said.
“Oh, Cindi dear,” Ruby said, and real tears flooded her eyes. Her face looked almost more beautiful when she cried.
“I don’t think we should be too hard on Ivan,” Lionel said suddenly. “I mean, he just made a mistake – all of this has been going on now for over a long time. I know Ivan – he helped me rig up a switch to bypass to my starter. Never charged me nothin.”
“The hell with Ivan,” Antony said suddenly. He looked about and grabbed himself a beer, opened it and drank.
Cindi, however, still kept her head low, breathing peevishly into her sweater.
“I know lots about Ivan,” Antony said. “Lots and lots, but I’m not blaming anybody. Everyone thinks I’m blaming people. I could tell you about a party at Ivan’s and Cindi’s, Ruby. Let me tell you,” he said. “Remember, Cindi? I come in in the morning and here a woman is on the couch with Ivan –”
Cindi knew that this had happened in an innocent way, that she had had a seizure the night before, and Brenda Gulliver was down there because of that. That Ivan, so he wouldn’t disturb her, fell asleep sitting on the couch where Brenda was lying. But Cindi couldn’t lift her head to speak. She only nodded and fumbled with her fingers.
Antony nodded his head and looked about, as if he had proven something. Falsehood doesn’t care whether it is false or not, but dares people to expose it as such. The young men only laughed again.
And suddenly the rage of the whole afternoon’s drinking, of Margaret, of Val going out for dinner, of Gordon being there, overcame him.
He jumped up and grabbed Lionel and hit him twice on the top of the head.
“Don’t you dare mention Ivan to me. I put up, and Gordon knows – Gordon knows – Gordon knows.”
Everyone jumped up to stop what was happening. There was some pushing.
“For Godsakes, settle down,” Ruby said, “or get the Jesus out.”
Lionel tried to cover his head.
“Gordon knows I put pinball machines on this river – Gordon knows –”
Then Cindi walked by them, went along the hallway, and had a seizure. She fell over with a thud and landed on her side, blinking and in convulsions, near her plotted plant.
9
Ivan did not hear about the seizure. He didn’t go to the apartment. The next morning he had to return two bridles to his grandfather’s, and it was here he met Antony.
Antony was in his father’s shed, trying to find a bucket for Nevin and Vera. He had promised them a bucket the week before, and had not got one of them, and was irritated that they should remind him – and went about as if he was forever having to get buckets for people.
Ivan walked in with the bridles, knotted together in one hand, and looked at his father and smiled. “Now what are you up to?” he said.
“What am I up to – what do you think – what am I up to – taking care of business, as the song says. You see Margaret?”
“No, I just came – I haven’t even been into the house. I promised to give two more riding lessons. I have two really good kids – only ten and eleven – no older than Valerie. I don’t know why you won’t let Valerie ride –”
“She’s not riding and have no horse kick her in the head, let me tell you.”
“No horse would kick her in the cocksuckin head – I can get a helmet for her at half price.”
“No,” Antony said, “she’s not fuckin riding – I lost one little child, and I’m not losing another.”
And then he went about looking for his bucket.
“Did you go and see Cindi last night?” Antony asked.
“No, I’m not going to either.”
“No – either did I,” Antony said. “I’m through with all the big hype over that there – I don’t care what they do.”
Ivan went out of the shed, blinking. The day was windy. Margaret had planted pansies and dahlias along the wall, and he could still see her footmarks where she had stepped about the beds. The impressions were softening to dust, and light sand was blowing up against the west wall of the house.
This reminded Ivan that he had promised to build his grandparents a patio deck this year so they could barbecue and look out at the bay. For some reason he remembered this promise because it was so windy. Now they were barbecuing down by the shed, where Allain used to smoke salmon. He did not smoke salmon any more. Just as, twenty years before, three-quarters of the traffic on the river had to do with work – fishing boats, scows, and pulp boats – now three-quarters of the traffic were people with inboard motor boats and sailboats. It was to this second group that Ruby and her cousin Eugene belonged, while he and Cindi, because of their natures, belonged to the first group, and would always belong to it. Just as Ruby’s father, Clay Everette, with over half a million dollars in the bank, would always belong to the first group. And just as Vera and Nevin tried desperately to belong to the first group, they could not by the very way they perceived things belong. At times these groups became blurred and infused, and there was no way to separate them if one did not know what it was to look for. Money had nothing to do with it, nor did age. But still the two groups could be defined. Education might be the key – but that was not true either, although people who wished to make
simplistic judgements would use the criteria of money, age, and education to accredit the difference.
As he walked about the west side of the house, he saw Margaret sitting in a lawn chair, reading Teen magazine.
“There was a call for you,” she said.
Immediately his heart sank when she told him it was not Cindi who had called – but Olive and Gerald Dressard.
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Something about coyotes, and you could trap them.”
“Well, why didn’t you find out?” he said irritably.
He returned the call about thirty minutes later.
“Yes,” he said. “I doubt if it’s many coyotes – just a mother rounding up her pups.”
He found out that Olive was afraid because of her child playing in the yard. Two coyotes had come out to it.
“They’re all around us,” she said.
“Well, I don’t really care to trap them.”
Olive said that not only could he have the pelts, but he would be paid also. Then Ivan reflected that it was Adele and Ralphie’s child she was talking about.
“I have to boil my traps,” Ivan said. “Okay – I’ll be over in a few days.”
“I don’t agree with trapping,” Olive said, “but this is a special case.”
He went back outside, and, lighting a cigarette, sat on a stump.
“A good man’s position is always the right one,” Margaret said to him. He stared up at her. She was looking not at him but above his head as she spoke. Then she touched him on the top of the head gently and smiled.
There was a general excitement over Vera’s pregnancy.
Everything was already done for Vera’s baby – everything was already collected – money was already sent and people were already talking about who the baby would look like. Things were largely done that were done everywhere when a pregnancy occurs. And Vera and Nevin were happy that everything was the same.
Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace Page 9
