by Mary Lawson
The other thing they were famous for was loving children. They would stand together behind the long dark counter that ran half the length of the store and if a child walked in, those shy smiles would change to beams of purest pleasure. They should have had a dozen of their own, but Sally was their only one. They must have been well into their forties when she arrived—they were quite elderly compared to other parents I knew. I imagine they “tried” for years, and for years nothing happened, and then in the way of such things, long after they’d accepted that it was God’s will that they be childless, along came Sally. A surprise, as they say. And I imagine she continued to surprise them, too.
So, Luke went to work for Mr. and Mrs. McLean. I don’t remember what I thought of the arrangement. I imagine I didn’t think about it much. I liked the store, though, or had liked it in the old days, when I had accompanied my mother on her weekly shopping expeditions. It was a big old barn of a building, made of unfinished planking and lined with rough wooden shelves, and it was crammed to the rafters with everything you could think of: fruit and vegetables in quart or bushel baskets, sliced bread, tins of beans, packets of raisins, pitchforks, soap, knitting wool, mousetraps, rubber boots, long johns, toilet paper, rolling pins, shotgun cartridges, writing paper, Ex-Lax. My mother would give me part of her list (with the items printed very neatly so that I could read them), and I would wander up and down the aisles until I found whatever it was, and put it in my basket. Frequently my mother and I would pass each other, and we would both smile, and she would ask me how I was making out or if I had happened to notice raisins, say, or tinned peaches, on my travels. When we had both gathered our purchases we would take them up to the counter, where Mr. McLean would put them in bags for us while Mrs. McLean wrote down the prices in thick black pencil, both of them beaming at me all the while.
I love the memories of those expeditions. They are among the few I have of the two of us alone together.
Now Luke was installed behind the counter too, though beaming wasn’t something that came naturally to him. His hours were Monday to Friday from four in the afternoon, when Matt got home from school, until the store closed at six. On Monday evenings he worked later, driving the McLeans’ truck into town to pick up the week’s supplies and then stacking the shelves.
Sometimes Sally went with him on those trips. In the light of what transpired later, I expect she sat closer to him than was necessary and steadied herself, when they lurched over bumps and into potholes, by placing a hand on his thigh. What Luke felt about that I can only guess at. All the usual things, no doubt, plus the confusion that came from an awareness of his circumstances.
On Saturdays he worked mornings at Calvin Pye’s farm and Matt worked afternoons. As far as I know, nothing further was said about Laurie’s strange appearance at our door. Calvin could have used Luke six days a week, but Luke was restricted by his determination to look after Bo and me himself. More than one neighbour had offered to take us for a few hours each afternoon, but neither he nor Matt wanted that. Bo had taken against strangers in a big way, and I was giving them cause for concern as well. Apparently I was still very withdrawn, and they felt the less disruption I had to deal with the better.
Matt’s idea of babysitting, of course, was to take Bo and me back to the ponds, and as long as the fine weather lasted—and it lasted well into October that year—we went almost every afternoon. I recommend it, by the way—pond watching—as therapy. There is something about water, even if you have no particular interest in the life forms within it. It is the medium we came from, after all. We were all rocked by water at our beginnings.
The only fly in the ointment of those afternoons, as far as I was concerned, was that we often met Marie Pye on our way back. I was always tired by that stage, and hungry, and ready to go home, and I would circle around Matt, kicking impatiently at the railroad ties while he and Marie chatted. I couldn’t think what they had to talk about that they couldn’t talk about on Saturdays when Matt was at the farm. Both of them were weighed down, Marie with shopping, Matt with Bo sitting like a sandbag on his shoulders; you would have thought both of them would want to get home as quickly as possible. And yet there they stood, shifting about under their loads, talking about things that didn’t matter. Minutes would drag by and I would dig holes in the dust with my shoe and chew my finger fretfully. Finally Matt would say, “Guess I’d better go,” and Marie would say, “Yes,” and they’d continue talking for another ten minutes.
Once she said to him hesitantly, “How are you, Matt? Are you … okay?”
Everyone asked us that all the time, and what you had to say was, Yes, thanks, we’re doing fine. This time though, Matt didn’t reply straight away. I glanced up at him and saw that he was looking away, looking off into the woods beyond the tracks. Then his gaze came back to Marie and he smiled at her and said, “Just about.”
She made a sort of gesture, an involuntary movement of her arms, despite their being full of groceries. Matt shrugged, and smiled again, and said, “Anyway. I’d better go.”
I wonder, now, if Matt was hit harder by our parents’ death than any of us. Everyone assumed that I was the one most affected, but I wonder if that was so. I had Matt to turn to. He had nobody. He’d turned eighteen at the beginning of September; it was assumed—by him as well as everyone else—that he was adult and would cope.
I hope Bo and I were of some comfort to him. I’m sure the ponds themselves were. I’m sure he drew comfort from the continuity of life there. The fact that the loss of one life did not destroy the community. The fact that the ending of life was part of the pattern.
As for Marie … I see now that he may also have found comfort in those brief meetings with Marie.
chapter
TEN
I should tell you about the Pyes. Most of what I know I learned from old Miss Vernon, during my high school years, when I was doing her vegetable garden. It’s possible that her memory wasn’t too reliable, but on the other hand she was actually there, she saw the family at virtually every stage from Jackson Pye on down, so as sources go she’s pretty good. It wasn’t only the Pyes she told me about, of course; the entire history of Crow Lake and its early inhabitants came rolling out over those rows of carrots and beans. She’d talk while I worked, and as I progressed farther and farther down a row, she’d raise her voice to follow me until suddenly she’d shout, “Well come and help me move, for goodness’ sake! How’m I supposed to talk with you way over there?” And I’d go and help her out of her kitchen chair and move it farther down the path beside the patch until I reached a place where she could talk comfortably again.
According to her, Jackson Pye was quite a clever man. I remember her asking me if I’d ever noticed the Pyes’ house. I didn’t know what she was talking about—I’d seen the Pyes’ house about a million times— but afterwards I went and looked at it again. It was a big wooden structure, set well back from the road. The front of the house was what Miss Vernon called “handsome” in its proportions. It had very large sash windows on both sides of the front door and a wide, graceful veranda wrapping itself around three sides of the house. Jackson had left several large birches standing, fairly close, which provided shade in the summer and a bit of a windbreak in the winter. You could imagine sitting out on that veranda on a summer evening, listening to the breeze in the birches, relaxing after the labours of the day. That must surely have been what Jackson had in mind when he built it, though I can’t quite imagine him sitting there. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone sitting there. Relaxing wasn’t something the Pyes went in for.
But as Miss Vernon said, it was a better than average house, particularly considering that it was designed and built by a man with no education of any kind. He designed the Janies’ and the Vernons’ houses as well and made a good job of them too. “He had a picture in his head of how he wanted a place to look,” Miss Vernon said. “And he could figure out how to make it come out just like the picture. Oh, he was clever
enough. And a good farmer too. He chose his land well. The Pye farm’s the best of the lot, you know. Well drained. Good soil, for these parts. It’s better’n ours. Better’n Janies’. He could’ve had a real good place there, if only he hadn’t fought with all his boys. Farmer needs sons, you know. Girls aren’t worth as much. Well, some of them’s all right, but most just don’t have the muscle. Farming’s hard work. You wouldn’t know that, but it’s hard work.” This when I’d been hoeing her garden for two hours in the blazing July sun.
“How many children did he have?” I asked. A lot of her stories about the old days didn’t interest me much back then—kids aren’t interested in the past, it’s the future they’re focused on—but the Pyes were an exception. Everyone’s interested in catastrophe, and I had personal reasons as well for wanting to know about them by then.
“Seven. You carry on hoeing. You hoe and I’ll talk, that way we’re both doing what we’re good at. Seven kids, five boys and two girls. The girls were twins, but both of them died when they were babies. I don’t know what of, I was just little myself. Maybe scarlet fever. Anyways they both died.
“The boys, now let’s see. Norman was the oldest. He was older than me by quite a bit. He ran away. I told you about that, didn’t I? Went through the ice out on the lake one winter and was too scared of his daddy to go home. Next to him was Edward. Edward was a bit on the slow side. Mrs. Pye’d had a hard time bringing him into the world and maybe it had something to do with that, I don’t know. But he never did learn to read or write and his slowness just drove his daddy wild. Used to scream at him, Edward standin’ there no more idea what was goin’ on than a sheep.
“One day he just wandered off, right in the middle of being yelled at. Just turned around and walked off, as if all those years he’d’ to put two and two together and he finally managed it, and the answer was, things weren’t ever going to get any better. So off he went.
“That was two. Number three was Pete. You ever hear such a name? Peter Pye. Everyone called him Peter Piper, of course, always kept askin’ how many pints of pickled peppers he could pick, must’ve nearly drove him crazy. But I guess that wasn’t his biggest worry. No.”
She rattled her teeth, hunching over in her chair, staring into the past. I remember thinking how big her past was. Such a lot of it.
“You want some lemonade?” she said abruptly.
I nodded.
“Go get some then.”
My first task each afternoon that I came to her was to make a quart of lemonade and stick it in her smelly old refrigerator. Every few rows I’d be sent to get glasses for both of us, and every few glasses I’d have to help Miss Vernon get to her bathroom with a certain amount of urgency.
“What were we talking about?” she asked when we’d finished the lemonade, and I’d moved her chair down to the radishes.
“Jackson Pye’s sons.”
“Oh yes. Where’d I get to?”
“You were just starting on Pete.”
“Pete,” she said, nodding. “That’s right.” She looked at me keenly. Her eyes were pale and milky, but even so I always got the impression she saw more than most people.
“I liked Pete. Really liked him. He liked me, too.” She gave me a sly look. “You probably won’t believe that, being young. You think I was always like this.” The long jaw moved, ruminating. She reminded me of a horse—a very old horse, with sagging skin and whiskers and almost no eyelashes left.
“He was a nice boy. Sweet, like his mother. She was a nice woman, poor soul. Funny thing, the Pye men always had good taste in women. You wouldn’t think it. But Pete was like her. Quiet and sweet. Smart, too. He’d’ve done well in school if he’d been allowed to go. But he figured out sooner than the rest of ‘em that the smart thing to do was move on. Told me he was going to go. Said he was goin’ to Toronto. Wanted me to go with him. I didn’t know what to do.”
She paused again, remembering. Watching her, I almost saw her young. Almost saw her fresh and pretty, looking into the face of this boy, wanting to go with him, wanting to stay at home. Torn. Trying to imagine what her life would turn out like if she went, what it would be like if she stayed.
“I didn’t go. I was afraid to. I was only fifteen. My sister Nellie—she was a year younger than me—we were awful close, and I just couldn’t see leavin’ her, even for Pete.”
She sat for a while. Finally she stirred herself and looked at me.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Maybe you know what I mean then. Would you go off with some boy if you liked him? Right now, I mean. Just up and go.”
I shook my head. Privately I knew that I would never go off with some boy. I would go on my own, when I was ready. I knew that. I was working toward it. That was where the money Miss Vernon paid me went—into a special account, my “university” account. Luke had arranged it for me, and I was grateful to him because I knew he could have used the extra cash. I worked very hard at school, harder than anyone I knew. I didn’t much enjoy the social side of things—I was never “one of the girls”—but I did enjoy working. The arts—languages and history, art and music—did not come easily to me, but I worked at them anyway. The sciences I loved, particularly biology. How could it have been otherwise? All of my grades were good. Luke studied my report cards carefully, looking bemused. “You’re just like Matt,” he said once. But he was wrong. I knew I was nothing like as clever as Matt.
“You can give me one of them radishes,” Miss Vernon said. “I could just do with a radish.”
I picked a large radish and took it to her.
“Looks a good one. Have one yourself, if you like.”
I declined. Radishes on top of lemonade didn’t tempt me.
“We all have choices. Sometimes you never know if you made the right one or not. Not much point in worryin’ about it now. Anyways, that was Pete. Three gone, two left. Think of that poor woman watchin’ her family trickle away. Brought seven children into the world and now she’s down to two. I don’t expect the ones that left ever wrote to her. They weren’t given to that sort of thing. They just vanished off the face of the earth.
“Okay. The two that’s left are Arthur and Henry. They have an understanding between them that they’re going to stick around no matter what, so’s they both inherit the farm. It’s plenty big enough for two, and they reckon they’ve put so much work into it they’re going to get it, no matter what.
“All this while, of course, time’s moving on, and Nellie and me and the Pye boys are all in our late teens—maybe Arthur’s twenty. And their future has become kind of important to Nellie and me because we’ve decided we’re going to marry them.”
She gave a sharp cackle of laughter. “Guess you think that’s peculiar, ‘specially seein’ as I just said I liked Pete. But I waited a long time for Pete, hopin’ he’d come back even though I knew deep down he wouldn’t, and by the time I was nineteen I thought time was getting kinda short. As far as young men went, there wasn’t what you’d call a whole lot of choice in Crow Lake back then. You probably think there isn’t a whole lot of choice now, but it was a lot worse then. We were just the three families, and Struan was a good day’s trip away, you didn’t get to go there much. Frank Janie had a whole pack of boys, but the Janies were an awful plain family. Not a very nice thing to say, but it’s true. They were all scrawny and pasty-faced. They were nice enough, but when you’re young you’re lookin’ for more than nice. Or Nellie and I were anyway. To tell you the truth, we didn’t give too much thought to what the Pye boys were actually like. We had this picture in our minds of the two of us, Nellie and me, settin’ up home in that nice big farmhouse old Jackson had built. We saw ourselves chattin’ and gigglin’ away in the kitchen while we prepared their dinners, makin’ apple pies at five o’clock in the morning so’s we wouldn’t be standin’ over the stove in the heat of the day, doin’ the garden and the chickens and the pigs, cleanin’ the house—all the things our mother d
id, only it’d be fun because Nellie and me would do it together. And we’d have children the same age as each other, and the children would grow up together and never have a very clear idea who was their mother and who was their aunt. Oh, we had the whole thing worked out. We saw ourselves sitting on that nice big veranda in the evenings with the mending on our laps, chatting away to each other while our men talked about this and that.”
She paused, looking at the picture in her mind, and then gave a snort. “Two silly young girls, that’s all we were. Playing at being grown up. We didn’t have one sensible idea in our heads.” She ran the clawed fingers of one hand peevishly over the big swollen knuckles of the other. Seventy years on, the foolishness of her youth still annoyed her. She glared across the vegetable patch at me and said crossly, “Unlike you, young Miss Morrison. My guess is you’ve got nothin’ but sensible ideas in that head of yours. Too many sensible ideas. You want to try being young for a bit, while you still can. There’s more to life than good grades, you know. More to life than being brainy.”
I didn’t reply. I hated it when she told me things about myself. The previous week she had told me that I looked angry all the time, and that it was time I forgave whoever it was who’d made me so mad and got on with my life. I was so angry at her for saying it that I left without taking my money or saying goodbye.
Now she muttered to herself, watching me as I scratched out the weeds from around the roots of the radishes. It was extremely hot. I was barefoot, and the dark soil scorched the soles of my feet unless I scooped out little hollows to stand in. In the bushes behind us the cicadas sang their hymn of praise to the sun.
“You go and get us some more lemonade now,” Miss Vernon said, her voice still sharp. “Get some cookies too. Then come and sit down here while you eat. It’s a hot day.”
I went up to the house. I didn’t much like Miss Vernon’s house, for all that it had been well designed by Jackson Pye. It was too dark and too quiet and it smelled of old age and mice. I rinsed out our glasses and filled them again with lemonade, then got out the cookie tin and checked its contents. Cinnamon cookies. Cinnamon cookies meant Mrs. Stanovich. Sour cream cookies meant Mrs. Mitchell. Date and raisin squares meant Mrs. Tadworth. We Morrison children were not the only ones on the consciences of the Good Women of Crow Lake. I balanced the glasses on top of the cookie tin and carried them back to the vegetable garden. I sat on the scorched grass beside Miss Vernon’s chair, and we munched cinnamon cookies and listened to the cicadas for a while, until we stopped being annoyed with the past and with each other.
