Augusta took Karl’s hand now, as they sat side by side in the apartment. The skin on his old hand seemed almost transparent, and papery in texture. She cupped his hand in both of hers, and stroked the bumpy, scarred skin where his thumb should have been. “Do you miss this thumb?” she said, realizing, as she said it, that of course he would.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s gone,” he said. “Sometimes I think I could pick up a pen with it, but of course I can’t. When I put on my shirt, I can feel the material of the sleeve sliding over it, as if it were there. When I wash my hands, I feel the water on it.”
Rose and Augusta glanced at each other. “Really?” said Augusta. Karl nodded and blushed, as if he had given away a great secret. Augusta lifted his hand and kissed the air where his thumb would have been. “Feel that?” she said. He smiled and nodded. When she brushed her lips over the phantom thumb again, he giggled. “Tickles,” he said, and wrapped both his hands around hers.
She couldn’t help but think now that a little more hand-holding just after the Reverend died might have brought about a resurrection of their marriage if money had been less tight and if Karl had been wiser about her grief over losing the Reverend. If only he’d asked what might please her, and after a time courted her a little; offered her a little tenderness. As it was, he was clumsy with her. He made sheep’s eyes at her in bed the night of the Reverend’s funeral, but she put her arm out to stop him. “Is it your period?” he said.
“No, it’s not my period.”
“What then?”
“Good God,” she said, and then, because it felt like too much work explaining her grief, “I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
“All right then.”
Oh God, she thought. How was she going to survive the loneliness and drabness of the farm without the Reverend’s companionship and the little niceties he brought her? The bit of money from the sale of the Whorehouse Ranch that had smoothed things over was gone. She’d be fighting Karl’s cheese-paring all over again, and she’d be living the rest of her life without the pleasure she’d known during those few months with Joe. The Reverend had made that loss bearable; the sweetness of his company had made her feel that longing less.
She thought she might go back working for the health unit in Kamloops. Joy was older now, nearly seventeen, and could help out by making meals if need be. The money wouldn’t be much, barely enough to pay for the gas, but it would get her out of the house. She still had the ancient Austin. Maybe she could get work that was a little steadier, something that filled the whole day to make the drive worthwhile.
She took a drive into Kamloops to find out. “You have any bigger jobs?” she asked the nurse. “Something that makes a little more pay?”
“Nothing but piecemeal work right now. Except that one live-in. But you won’t want that.”
“What’s the job?”
“An old man. Needs somebody there just about round the clock. Usual housework and meals. He’s looking for somebody to be there should he fall or take sick. He’s nearly eighty-five but won’t leave that house. He has no kids to look out for him. Never married, as I understand it. Pay isn’t great, but it’s steady. He’s got a nice room for his help—I’ve seen it—and he pays board. He wants someone who doesn’t mind doing a little fix-up work. Not heavy stuff. Just painting, that sort of thing. He’ll take just about anyone. He’s getting a little desperate for some help. But like I said, it’s a live-in.”
“I’ll think about it.” But she wasn’t thinking seriously about taking the job. There was Joy to consider, and she didn’t like the thought of leaving the farm and the garden. Still, it was a tight time for them. The winter had been cold and they’d run out of feed and had to buy it. It would be May before the wool cheque came in. They wouldn’t starve—they were never short on meat or eggs, as they were right there for the taking—but they had little money left for the extras they didn’t grow themselves, or even staples like coffee, sugar, and salt, and as they had run up such a large bill at Colgrave and Conchie’s she was ashamed to go in there.
Thinking that they were completely without money for groceries, she put ham stock into a pot for split pea soup and realized that they were even out of dried peas. She lifted Karl’s town pants from the hook by the door and felt for his wallet, hoping for a bit of change to buy some peas, and found a fifty-dollar bill. He’d seen her desperate scrounging for meals and had kept this money from her—from them. She was so angry she didn’t hide the wallet or the money when she heard him scraping the mud from his boots on the porch. She waited for him—rather theatrically, she thought now—with the wallet in one hand and the fifty-dollar bill in the other, and looked him straight in the eye when he came in. He glanced at her, the wallet, the fifty, then turned his back to her to hang his hat and scarf on the pegs by the door. The backs of his ears were red. He took his coat off slowly and hung it and shuffled to the table without looking at her.
“Well?” she said. “Well, what?”
“You were keeping this from me.”
“I was saving it.”
Augusta threw the wallet and money down. “Saving it? For what?”
“Emergencies.”
“I think we’re having one. This should be going on our grocery bill. Buying some food.”
“We’re not starving. We’re getting by.”
Augusta pressed her knuckles into her hips and stared down at him. He glanced up and away, scared, she thought. He’s scared of me like he was scared of Olaf.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” she said. She ran upstairs and pulled out her suitcase from under the bed and started filling it. Some time later Karl followed her up.
“What’re you doing, Augusta?”
“I’m taking a job. A live-in job.”
“Where? What job?”
“I’ll tell you when I know the job isn’t filled already.” She swung the suitcase off the bed and marched downstairs and out of the house. Karl trailed behind her.
“Are you coming home tonight? Augusta! Are you coming back?” She didn’t answer. She got in the Austin and sped off. She was at the Kamloops health unit before it was time for Joy to arrive home.
She knew as soon as she arrived at the old man’s house that it was a mistake, a stupid decision made in anger. What had she been thinking? Joy was just sixteen; she wasn’t old enough to go without a mother. She already missed her so much. Even so, she called Sara McKay, a neighbour with a phone, and asked her to tell Karl she’d taken the job and would be staying there. She spent much of that first night away from home crying and jerking awake from some unfamiliar noise. She hated the steady clamour of the city streets, and missed her bed, and more than anything she missed Karl, who warmed her hands at night. It was the first time she’d been away from home since she’d lived on Olaf’s ranch.
The old man had a bachelor’s nature and kept to himself. As he had few needs and didn’t make much of a mess, Augusta found herself coming up with busy work to fill her day. She rearranged the kitchen cupboards to suit herself, washed curtains, and went through the old man’s clothes searching for things to mend. After supper she tried to entice him into a game of crib and a bit of conversation, but he wasn’t interested. He answered her questions with a terse yes or no and didn’t offer anything more. He read a book in his chair as she washed up the supper dishes, and went to bed at eight o’clock.
A few days into her new job, she phoned Sara McKay again and asked her to ask Karl and Joy to come to Kamloops the next day, Saturday, and meet her at the Silver Grill café. Once they had ordered their meals, she regretted the choice of café. She didn’t like having Karl there, in the place she still thought of as hers and Joe’s. She felt nervous that Joe might walk in the door and discover her sitting with her husband. Joy slouched angrily in the corner of the booth beside Karl and only picked at her food. “Can we go now?” she said.
Karl ignored her. “You’ll c
lean house for him, a stranger, but you won’t come home and straighten things for your own husband and daughter.”
“It’s a job,” said Augusta. “I get paid.”
“If it was income you were after—”
“You’d pay me a wage for keeping the house?”
“Well, no. But we could have come up with something for you.”
Augusta glanced at the couple sitting beside them, at one of the tables for two, and lowered her voice. “Don’t you see that all I want is a bit of independence? I’ve never had anything to call my own.”
“You’ve got the farm, don’t you? You keep reminding me it’s yours.”
“But you run it. You decide what’s to be done. You’re the one taking in and laying out the money.” The waitress came by with the bill. “I’ll pay for my lunch,” said Augusta. She put her purse on the table and searched it for change. The bill was only a dollar seventy-five. She must have enough. But she came up two bits short. “Karl, could you loan me a quarter for this, until I get paid next week?”
Karl picked up the bill. “Keep your change,” he said, and stood.
Joy got up after him. “Oh, you’re independent all right,” she said.
“Wait,” said Augusta. Joy turned but Karl, not hearing, walked out the door. “I miss you.” Joy looked down at her feet, turned, and walked out under the music-box clock.
Augusta collected the change she had counted out on the table. Enough for a few cups of coffee. All she had until the old man paid her in a week’s time. What was she doing? She gave her notice to the old man that night, and packed her things and left for home after making him lunch the next day.
When she arrived, Sara McKay’s Mercury Comet was in the yard, though the International was nowhere around. The kitchen door was open. Sara was at the sink, cleaning fish. She was short and portly, matronly, though she wasn’t much older than Augusta. “Sara, what are you doing here?”
The woman jumped. “Good Lord, you scared me.”
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Does Karl know you’re here?”
“Of course he does. He’s the one who hired me.”
“Hired you?”
“To keep house. Make meals. I’m staying in that room there.” She pointed at Augusta’s sitting-room. The door was open and all the furniture had been moved around. Augusta’s silk parasol was hanging upside-down from the roof so the lightbulb shone through it. “We got to talking the night I came over to give him your message. I’d been looking for a job.”
“What about Roger?”
“I left Roger. Kind of funny, eh? You left Karl, then I left Roger to come here.”
“I didn’t leave Karl.”
Sara snorted. “You say so. Karl will be back shortly. Joy will be home from school in about ten minutes. Are you staying to dinner?”
“What did you do to my cupboards?”
“I arranged them so they make sense.”
“They made sense before.”
“You say so.”
Sara didn’t have the skillet out. Only a pot of water sat on the stove. “Aren’t you going to fry those?” said Augusta.
“Karl doesn’t like his fish fried. He likes them boiled, like I do them.”
Who did she think she was, telling Augusta what her own husband liked or didn’t like, as if she knew better? That night Augusta, Karl, Joy, and Sara ate a silent dinner of bland, tasteless fish. Sara kept glancing at Karl, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was intent on his plate and the fish he ate hungrily; he’d never eaten Augusta’s fish with that much energy. When he was done he patted his belly and smiled at the woman and said, “That was good.” Augusta looked at Sara, and at Karl, and at Sara.
“What’s going on here?” she said later, after pulling Karl outside.
“What do you mean?”
“Sara McKay, that’s what I mean.”
“Joy and I couldn’t keep up school and farm work and the house besides. So when she offered on Friday night, I hired her.”
“I thought you were broke. That’s why I went off to bring in a bit of money. Now you pay that woman to keep house when you’d give me nothing.”
“You’re my wife. I can’t expect a stranger to work for nothing. That’s slavery.”
Augusta groaned and threw her hands in the air. “What do you want from me?” said Karl. “You left. I made the best of it and now you don’t like that either.”
“What I want is some respect. What I want is some income, something I can call my own, a reason for getting up in the morning. I need to get out, to have some friends.”
“You’ve got all that here. If money’s what you’re after, we can work something out. Not much, but something.”
“It’d still be your money, not mine.”
“It’s my money I give to that woman, and she seems happy enough.”
“It’s not your money she wants.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“Don’t you see how she’s looking at you?”
“Don’t go off—”
But Augusta wasn’t listening. She stormed off into the kitchen, where Sara was washing the supper dishes. “You’re fired,” she said.
Sara wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “What?”
“Out. Get your stuff. In fact, I’ve got a job for you. A live-in situation. Just perfect for you.”
“You can’t—”
“Yes I can. This is my house. My farm. I own it. Karl doesn’t own any of it. Did you know that? Only the sheep and machinery, and the bank owns half of that. If you thought you were working yourself into a cosy situation, you were sadly mistaken.”
“I didn’t—”
“Go on. Get packed.”
“What does Karl have to say about all this?”
“That depends,” said Karl. He was leaning against one side of the doorframe. “That mean you’re coming home?” he said to Augusta.
Augusta sighed. “I guess,” she said. “If you’ll have me.”
Sara threw down the towel and marched into her room—Augusta’s room.
“She’ll need to be paid.”
“You know where my wallet is.” He nodded at the pants hanging on a coat hook by the door, then turned and walked off into the cornfield, which was nothing but mud right then as the snow had just that week melted. Augusta shook her head at his naiveté. He’d trust that woman and leave his wallet any old place. But she herself should have been watching Sara as she packed her things into burlap bags, because the silk parasol the Japanese girl-bride had given Augusta so many years before went missing for good.
Augusta spent days after that cleaning the house, rearranging the kitchen, putting the furniture back in place, erasing all evidence of the other woman’s presence. When she’d set the kitchen to order and washed all the floors, she started work on the dark, hidden-away places, the top cupboards and the pantry, the attic and beneath the beds. Karl’s old suitcase was under the bed, where he always kept it. Augusta slung it onto the bed and opened it, already angry, yet hoping he’d thrown out the filthy magazines. He hadn’t. He’d added to the collection, but along with those magazines there was also a book in the suitcase, a book unlike any she’d ever seen him read, called How to Love a Woman. It was a lovemaking manual with tasteful, instructive drawings, not smut, and chapters on courting a woman, assessing her likes and dislikes and the ways she might like to be touched, and commenting on things that should never be done. Had he been thinking of her, that she might come back? Or had he been thinking of Sara McKay? Surely not Sara.
Augusta put the book and the suitcase back under the bed, then went downstairs and left the house. She wrapped her sweater around her. It was past noon and still a fog hung over the valley, draping itself over the barn and outbuildings. Hoar frost gently snowed down from the birch and glistened on the bare lilac bushes near the house. There was still a bite of winter in the air, though they would begi
n seeding in less than two months’ time. It was so very quiet. Even the occasional bleating of a lamb for its mother was hushed by the heavy mist. She headed towards the barn, thinking she’d check for newborn lambs. But there was someone ahead of her, walking among the outbuildings—a dark figure masked in fog. “Hello?” said Augusta. Karl was in town and Joy was at school. Neither of them would be back before four. “Are you looking for Karl?”
The figure kept walking, slowly, as if he hadn’t heard her. “He’s in town,” Augusta called out, then regretted it. She shouldn’t be admitting that she was home alone. She retrieved a shovel Karl had left propped against the implement shed and, carrying it between her hands like a shotgun, made her way past the many granaries and sheds towards the barn. The figure had disappeared. Had he slipped between the outbuildings? She walked slowly, checking each of the passageways between the buildings. “Hello?” she called out. “Can I help you with something?” A chill went through her. Why hadn’t she thought to put on a coat? “I’ve seen you, you know.” Maybe it was some kid out to scare her. Or maybe it was one of Joy’s many boyfriends sneaking around. “If you’re looking for Joy, she’s not here.”
Augusta turned to walk between two granaries. Whoever it was must have gone behind the outbuildings. She turned the corner at the back of the buildings and there was the figure, trotting off into the fog. Was it a woman? “You there,” she said. “What do you want? What are you sneaking around here for?” Augusta followed the figure, heading towards the honey house. She couldn’t see the building at first, it was so hidden in fog. But she heard the rusty squeak of the hinge on the door she hadn’t opened in years, and then the door slammed shut. There was no way she was going inside. The window she’d spied her mother and Harry through all those years ago was filthy, covered in fly specks and dust. She pulled the sleeve of her sweater down over the heel of her palm and rubbed a circle in the grit. The inside of the honey house was pretty much as Helen had left it: the Dandy Perfection woodstove and the honey extractor, the rows of honey jars on the shelves above. And there was Helen, standing with one hand on a stack of beehive boxes, smiling. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders; she was wearing the dress Augusta had cut down the back to bury her in. She patted the hive box.
A Recipe for Bees Page 20
