“I’m not even going to think about that,” Phoebe said, pulling out her chair. “Everybody says university is really hard.” Mark had sat down silently in his place.
“No way you’ll catch me at university,” he said.
“Me neither,” Jason echoed. Mark drank his orange juice in one gulp, while Selena set the three lunch kits on the floor by the kitchen door, then sat down in her place.
“More coffee?” Kent said, holding up his cup. She got up quickly, apologizing, and got the coffee pot.
“So, you write history today,” Kent said to Mark. Mark nodded.
“Grade ten history’s easy,” Phoebe said.
“Phoebe,” Selena warned her. “It wasn’t so easy when you were in grade ten.”
“Did you study?” Kent turned abruptly to look at Mark, his voice suddenly harsh. Mark nodded again without looking at his father. He reached for Selena’s homemade raspberry jam.
“I said I quizzed him last night,” Selena said, keeping her voice neutral. “He’ll do all right.” Kent grunted, then sipped his coffee.
“We shortened my dress last night,” Phoebe announced.
“Nobody cares,” Jason said, and Mark laughed. Phoebe flushed.
“Boys!” Selena said. “Wait till your grad and we have to go looking for new suits for you. You’ll care then.”
“Leave them alone, Selena,” Kent said, without emotion, so that Selena felt herself flushing, too. Phoebe sprang up, pushing back her chair, then stopped by the door for her lunch kit.
“No more stupid lunch kit after this week,” she said, and went into the hall where they heard her opening the outside door.
“Hurry up, you two,” Selena said, unaware that she had been saying this to the two of them every morning since they’d started school. Jason jumped up and Mark unwound his long legs and rose as they heard the school bus rolling in on the gravel to the front door. The horn honked, once, Phoebe had probably told Basil to do it, and in a rush of activity the two boys were gone, the door slamming behind them.
Then it opened again and Mark called down the hall, “I got a ball game after school and Jason wants to stay to watch. I’ll phone if we can’t get a ride back with Jerry.” The door slammed again before either of them could answer.
“Damn!” Kent said. “Well, that means you’ll have to ride with me.” Selena nodded. Now that the boys were old enough to help they did most of the riding, but Selena found that if she didn’t get out every week or ten days, she began to miss it.
Kent rose then and went out into the hall with Selena following him. It was cramped there, and dark, since the front of the house faced north and never got the direct sun. They could hear the whine of the bus as it turned onto the grid and began to pick up speed. Sparrows were chirping in the trees beside the house and red-winged blackbirds whistled, then trilled cheerfully. Kent set his cap onto his head, felt his back pocket for his wallet, then opened the door.
“Hey,” Selena said softly. He turned, looked down at her.
“Don’t forget to check where the cows are. It’ll save us some riding later. I’ll get back as early as I can.” He bent and brushed her forehead with his lips and then was gone. She stood in the doorway and watched the half-ton pull out of the yard.
He was not the same man during the day that he was at night. At night he seemed vulnerable, she could reach him. During the day she was just another person who worked around the place, who ran to him when he called, like the kids did. Watching the billowing dust swallow his truck she thought she could feel his kiss, too, vanishing from her forehead, and she felt a lassitude creeping through her so that she had to lean on the doorframe. Oh well, she thought, finally, that’s the way it is for everybody, I guess, and pushed herself away.
She went to the back door, kicked off her shoes, and began to pull on the old, muddy pair she wore for gardening, then, remembering, kicked them off again and went to the phone. She dialled and waited.
“Diane? Are you coming over? We really need to talk.” She could hear Cathy crying.
“I don’t know,” Diane said, sounding exasperated.
“Where’s Tony?”
“Gone to see the Pool man in Mallard.”
“Put the kids in the truck and come over then.” Diane was silent. “Come on,” Selena said, coaxing. “Don’t think about it, just do it.”
“Where’s Kent?”
“Gone to Swift Current, he won’t be back before four, and the school bus just left.” Cathy was still crying.
“Tammy!” Diane’s voice was a muffled shout as if she had put her hand over the receiver. “See what’s the matter with her!” There was something, some new recklessness in Diane’s voice that alarmed Selena.
“Diane,” she said, “I am your older sister. Our mother’s dead. I’m telling you to put those kids in the truck and get over here. Now do it.” Diane laughed.
“Oh, Selena,” she said. “I had noticed that our mother is dead.”
“Diane,” Selena’s determination was turning to a kind of impotent, fearful anger, “I …”
“Oh, okay,” Diane interrupted. “I’ll be over as soon as I can get Cathy settled down and pack some diapers and a bottle.”
Selena hung up, then thought, good heavens, there’s no reason why I couldn’t have gone over there.
Hurriedly she tidied the kitchen, put the dishes into the sink, wiped the table, then took the left-over toast to the back door, where she stepped into her gardening shoes, opened the door, and tossed the toast into the carragana hedge. Without waiting for the birds she had disturbed to fly back to the toast, she went down the steps, took the hoe from where it leaned against the corner of the house, crossed the grass to the garden, which was directly behind the house, and stopped by the rows of corn.
She loved her garden. Each year she began to think about it in February, by March she had ordered and received her seeds, in April she was watching the still snow-covered patch impatiently, until finally, in late May, Kent worked it for her and manured it and worked it again, and then she could at last seed it. She spent part of every day in it, sometimes only making work for herself, tying things up, pulling off dead leaves, or just studying the plants, touching a pea blossom here, or kneeling to smell the scent of a squash there.
It was nine o’clock, and the inevitable wind had risen, rustling the knee-high corn and making the powerline overhead hum. Already the sun was hot, it would be unbearable if the wind died down, fat chance of that, and she noticed how brown her hands and arms were already. She sighed, thinking of the even hotter months to come, of the hard, dry heat of August.
At first she hoed too hard, chopping at the dry ground, the grasshoppers whirling away with every stroke, but gradually she slowed, found a working rhythm, and began to cut at the ground with lighter strokes and more care, even with a certain precision. She concentrated on what she was doing, watching the ground, occasionally going down on one knee to pull a weed she was afraid to chop at with her hoe for fear of damaging a plant. It needs water, she thought, testing the ground with her hoe, but it was no use watering the wind. The water only blew away or evaporated and it was too scarce to waste. She would water in the evening, if the wind went down. She finished the four rows of corn and moved to the beets, letting the hoe rest in the grass at the edge of the garden, as she worked on her knees among the red-veined, dark green leaves.
The wind was blowing harder now, but crouched low and sheltered by the corn and the row of lilacs that ran down the side opposite the carraganas, she didn’t notice it. Forgetting her presence, the magpies came nearer, and a robin caught grasshoppers on the lawn. As she thinned the row, her fingers became stained a wine colour from the beet stems. She rested, squatting on her haunches, and squinted up at the sky. The inevitable hawk, only a speck against the pale blue, circled slowly. She thought she could hear its sharp cry carried to her on the wind. Behind it, the faint, white outline of the half-moon hung eerily, a shadow in the sky. There’s
a killdeer, she thought, surprised at hearing the “killdeer, killdeer, killdeer” cry so far from water. Then she heard the sound of truck tires on the gravel at the front of the house. She rose hastily, regretful, and brushed the dirt from her knees and off her hands. At the front of the house, Diane’s truck had rolled to a halt.
Cathy was asleep in the car seat beside Tammy, her head lolling to one side. Tammy opened the passenger door carefully, got out, and shut it quietly without being told to. Selena could see that Tammy had been crying, too. She put her arm around the little girl and said to Diane, who was still sitting in the driver’s seat, “Why don’t you leave Cathy here till she wakes up.” Diane nodded and got out quietly. The three of them went inside the house and down the hall to the kitchen. Tammy stood in the doorway looking uncertainly toward her mother as if she didn’t quite know what to expect from her, and was a little afraid to ask.
“Tammy,” Selena said gently, “you go up to Phoebe’s room and get that box of toys from her closet. You know where it is?” Tammy broke into a smile, nodded, and ran out of the room. They could hear her awkwardly climbing the stairs.
“Good old Auntie Selena,” Diane said.
“Oh, shut up, Diane,” Selena said, running water into the sink. “I’ll make some more coffee.” She felt better, less concerned now that she had Diane in her own kitchen. She busied herself filling the coffee pot, taking down clean mugs, and looking in the fridge. Suddenly she shut the fridge door and turned to her sister. Diane raised her head and their eyes met.
“Are you pregnant?” Selena asked. Diane flinched, then her face resumed its closed, disinterested expression.
“No.”
“Is Tony running around?”
“No!” This time she sounded angry.
“Well,” Selena defended herself, “something’s sure bothering you, and he was quite a lady’s man before you married him. You can’t blame me …”
“I know, I know,” Diane interrupted. “He isn’t running around as far as I know. Not that I’d care if he did.”
“You don’t mean that!” Selena said, shocked.
“No,” Diane said, sighing. “I don’t mean that,” although she did, in a way. Tammy was coming down the stairs now, dragging the box behind her.
One of them should help her before she fell, Selena thought, but neither of them moved. She reached the bottom of the stairs and began dragging it down the hall toward them. Selena went to the doorway and said, “Good girl, now take it into the front room. You can spread the toys around, there’s nobody home to bother you.” Selena turned, as Tammy dragged the box away, and said to Diane, “She’s so good about playing by herself.” Diane had leaned her head back so that it rested against the wall, and that deep, inward-turning look that Selena found so disquieting had returned to her eyes. It was as if Selena wasn’t even there.
“Is it money?” Selena probed. Diane moved her eyes slowly to her sister. She took a moment to answer.
“We’re no worse off than anybody else. If this drought keeps up there’ll be no crop this year, but …” She shrugged and lowered her eyes. Selena sat down across from her. Studying her, she noticed that Diane’s skin had a sallow, unhealthy tinge to it. She remembered her as a teenager, full of life, daring in a way Selena could never have been. It had been a relief when Diane had married Tony, young as she was.
“Something’s sure wrong,” she said, knowing she must have said this before, perhaps more than once, “you’re grouchy with the kids, you act like you couldn’t care less about Tony, and you were crazy to marry him not even seven years ago. You don’t want to do anything.”
Diane said nothing. She bent her head so that her dark hair fell on each side of it, hiding her expression. Selena realized she was crying. Good, she thought, now we’re getting somewhere, and at the same time, look, her hair doesn’t even shine anymore. Pity swept through her, but she dampened it at once. She just needs a good talking to, she told herself, and opened her mouth to speak. But before she could get out any words Diane spoke.
“I’m sick of this place. I’m sick of this life.” There was a noise in the hall and Tammy’s small voice came to them in the bright, quiet kitchen.
“Mommy? Cathy’s crying.”
“I’ll get her,” Selena said, and jumped up before Diane could respond.
Diane wants to say, something terrifying is happening to me, Selena. She wants desperately to say to her sister, sometimes I wake in the night and I know I’ve been somewhere, somewhere huge and dark that’s inside me. It’s not a bad place. It’s beautiful, I think, it’s … right … somehow, it’s trying to tell me something and I don’t know what it is and I’m so afraid that I won’t be able to come back. I fight, I struggle back to consciousness and find myself lying awake in our bedroom with Tony, my beautiful, long-boned Tony asleep beside me and I think, no, no, I’ll never leave him. Never. And I know that wherever he is in his sleep, it’s not that dark and rich place, that lies beneath or inside the ordinary world, where I go. And I don’t know what any of this means. Am I losing my mind?
But she says nothing, only watches Selena hurry down the crowded hall and out the front door.
Cathy was screaming, flailing with her fists at the chair that confined her. Selena, angry with herself for forgetting her, hastily lifted her out and carried her into the house. By the time she got to the kitchen, Cathy had stopped shrieking and was hiccoughing into Selena’s blouse. Diane was at the stove, wiping it where the coffee had boiled over.
“She’s okay, she’s just scared,” Selena said. “Did you think we forgot you?” she asked the baby, kissing her damp cheeks. Diane reached out to take her, but Selena said, “No, let me hold her for a bit.” So Diane filled their coffee mugs and admired the way Tammy had dressed Phoebe’s old doll, while Selena rocked Cathy in her arms.
Diane sits down and watches Selena cradling her daughter, rocking her as she sits across the table from her. My baby, she thinks. My little girl. She looks around the kitchen, at the taps above the sink glinting in the morning sun, at the shiny toaster, at the dish towel hanging on the stove door. My life, she thinks—this is what it is to be a woman—and the clarity of this understanding, which both repels and appeals to her, is new. Her emotion crystallizes in the baby Selena is holding, the child she both wants to take and press to her breasts and at the same time to refuse to ever hold again. This confusion of desire is almost too much to bear.
“The cat’s brought her kittens to sun on the back step,” Selena told Tammy. Tammy set the doll on the table and ran out the back door. Diane and Selena could see her bend down and between gusts of wind, could hear her high, light voice crooning to the kittens. Cathy had grown quiet so Selena set her on the floor and put a cracker into her plump fingers.
“Are you tired of being a wife?” Selena asked. “Of being a mother?” Diane was leaning back in her chair again, her head resting against the wall. Selena noticed that her cheeks were wet.
“I love my kids,” Diane said.
“I know that,” Selena said, chastened. Yelling at your kids, having no patience with them didn’t mean you didn’t love them. Sometimes kids were too much, that was all, every mother knew that. Even the kids knew it. “What about Tony?” she asked, a little timidly now. Diane moved her head, blinked, and finally spoke.
“He’s so much more than this life lets him be.”
“What do you mean?” Selena asked, not sure whether to be angry or not. What is ‘this life?’ What is ‘more?’”
“Life on the farm,” Diane said, bitterness creeping into her voice, although she didn’t mean it to. “You can’t imagine anything else, can you?” Selena was silenced. It was true. She tried, but city life—how could you live it, except running, running all the time, in the traffic and the bad smells, never feeling safe …
“Tony’s a bookkeeper, you know. He did two years at university. I’d like to see him without that filthy cap on his head and grease under his fingernails.”
>
“Tony’s a good-looking man, all right,” Selena said. Out on the steps Tammy gave a little scream and Selena half-rose from her seat to peer out the screen. “Be careful, dear,” she called.
“I’m not talking about his good looks,” Diane said, annoyed. “I mean, he could get a job. He doesn’t have to stay here beating his brains out for nothing.”
“But,” Selena said, hesitating. “He’s a country man,” then, translating this into something more manageable, “he wants to farm.”
“He’s been at it long enough to see the writing on the wall.”
“What writing?” Selena retorted, even though she knew perfectly well what Diane meant.
Diane didn’t even look at her and there was no answering rise of anger in her voice. She recited, “Costs are going up all the time, prices are dropping, all over the world competition is getting stiffer and stiffer. You don’t have to be too bright to see there’s no future out here on the farm. And this damn drought is the finishing touch.”
This much Diane can say. This much Selena can understand. How can I tell her the rest, she wonders, when I don’t know myself what it is, or what it means? Selena doesn’t know that I’m hanging onto my sanity by the tips of my fingers, that I know if I stay here I’ll go crazy, I really will, because in this tiny, smug little world no woman can ever matter, she can never be taken seriously, and I can’t stand it. I’ve got to get away from here—even though I am terrified that for me there may be no escape anywhere.
Selena was thinking, if this is all that’s wrong with her … and she had to remind Diane, “You know Tony quit university so he could come back and live this good life here on the land.”
“What good life?” Diane asked, her voice suddenly fierce, light appearing in her dark eyes for the first time since she had arrived in Selena’s kitchen. “What good life?” Tammy rose and pressed her face against the screen, trying to see into the kitchen. After a moment, she stepped away again. Cathy toddled into the hall and the women let her go.
Luna Page 4
