A Handful of Time
Page 11
But Ruth just kept staring at the watch. “Well, good-bye, then,” Tom continued. “I hope you don’t get into trouble.”
“I will,” Ruth said gloomily, looking up at last. “Thanks for walking me home,” she added absent-mindedly.
Tom suddenly grabbed Ruth’s shoulders and kissed her on the mouth. Then he ran fast down the road.
Patricia waited curiously for Ruth’s reaction, but all Ruth did was touch her mouth with the back of her hand, a surprised expression on her face. Then she shrugged and turned up the driveway.
Now for another tongue-lashing, sighed Patricia. She heard excited voices coming from the cottage. Probably Nan had already noticed the missing watch. But maybe she’d be so relieved when Ruth gave it back, she wouldn’t be angry with her daughter for leaving the party.
Ruth, however, didn’t go up to the cottage. She opened the door of La Petite and entered the small, dark space. Just as Patricia followed her in, Andrew Reid’s voice called, “Get the child to bed. I’ll look in the driveway before I go back for Ruth.”
Ruth stood inside the cabin, gazing at the watch in her palm. Then she took short rapid steps in all directions, peering into corners as if she were looking for something.
All at once Patricia guessed what she was about to do. She remembered Nan’s sad voice telling them how she had lost the watch “through my own carelessness.”
If she had lost it, then Ruth had never given it back.
Ruth knelt down on the floor and ran her hands over it. She hesitated a second, then searched her pockets and drew out Rodney’s large white handkerchief. Wrapping the watch and chain in it, she lifted up a floorboard and laid the bundle carefully into the cavity underneath. Then she dropped the board on top. She raised her head and looked directly at Patricia, her vivid face flaming with triumph and guilt.
On the way back to the cottage Patricia waited while Ruth detoured to the outhouse. She reappeared just as her father came striding down the driveway with a large flashlight.
He directed it upon his daughter. “Ruth! Where have you been? You’re in a lot of trouble, young lady! Your mother’s beside herself. She’s lost—”
Patricia didn’t hear any more. In the next instant she was sitting in the attic in the mid-morning sunlight.
14
“Not now!” Patricia cried aloud. The watch always ran down just before lunch, never at night. She must have only wound it halfway last time.
She yanked the chain over her head and clutched the warm gold disk in her sweaty hands. Her fingers slipped on the knob as they twisted, twisted, twisted … She had to get back to Ruth at once and see what happened to her.
She turned her fingers even more frantically and the winding mechanism clicked faster and faster. Then her thumb snapped past her forefinger as the knob lost its friction and revolved too easily. It felt loose and empty and turned backwards as well as forwards.
She’d broken it. The knob had lost its connection with whatever it turned inside. In vain, Patricia shook and tapped the metal case, opened it up, jiggled it and held it to her ear with a desperate hope. But the watch was dead.
She dashed down the attic stairs to the kitchen. There was the modern stove and fridge and the door to the bathroom. The sun blazed through the windows and bounced off the shiny electric kettle.
Patricia ran out to check La Petite, but it was the same. Nan’s things were neatly placed on the dresser and chair. A mosquito whined in the still air. The floor, under which she had just witnessed Ruth hiding the watch, was sealed with the shiny new tiles Uncle Doug had laid.
Take me back! Patricia implored, shaking the watch again. Something rattled inside; she knew it was truly broken.
She rushed out of the cabin and down to the beach, crawled under the canoe, stretched out on the cold pebbles and cried.
She would never see Ruth again. She would never know what had happened to her that night or for the rest of that summer. And she would never again be as safe, concealed and free as she had been. The adventure was over, and the person she had felt closest to in her life, troubled, rebellious, spirited Ruth, was gone.
After a while Patricia stopped crying and reflected on Ruth’s act of revenge. She had been so sure that Ruth was going to return the watch to win her mother’s approval. Even though Patricia felt just as angry with Nan, Ruth’s deliberate cruelty shocked her. She wondered why she hadn’t simply hidden the watch for a few days, then “found” it. Ruth’s mother would have been so grateful that she’d have forgiven her daughter’s transgressions and the stormy relationship might have improved. Patricia wondered if Ruth had ever felt guilty, in all the years following her decision. She felt guilty herself, knowing.
The long day wore on and the family talked about Nan leaving tomorrow. Patricia kept the watch concealed under her clothes and began to consider if she should give it back to her grandmother. It was no use to her anymore. Maybe doing so might somehow help make things better between Nan, her mother and her.
But Ruth had chosen not to. Should she respect that choice? Yet it was Nan’s watch…. That night she tossed hotly under the heavy quilt as she wrestled with the problem.
“You’re keeping me awake,” Kelly complained sleepily.
“Sorry.” Forcing herself to be still, Patricia lay on her back, the watch sliding sideways under her nightgown. Her tears returned as she became overwhelmed by all it stood for: the lost past it contained and the impossible decision it seemed to be asking her to make.
“Why are you crying, Patricia?” Kelly sat up and stared at her cousin. Patricia didn’t even try to stop. Her body quaked and she sniffed noisily.
“Should I get Mum?”
Patricia shook her head.
“I’ll get you a kleenex, then.” Kelly padded out of the room and returned with a handful of toilet paper. “Sorry—no more kleenex. It’s your parents, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Patricia, everything will work out.”
Kelly thumped her cousin on the back as heartily as if she were Peggy. Patricia blew her nose and tucked the wad of toilet paper under her pillow. “Th-thanks,” she murmured, swallowing the rest of her sobs. “I’m all right now.” Kelly looked relieved and settled back to sleep.
When she thought it was safe, Patricia let herself cry again, but now her tears were not as urgent. They drained out like the last bit of water in a tub. Part of her noted dully that, for the first time, Kelly hadn’t called her Potty.
BY THE TIME Nan left, Patricia knew she couldn’t return the watch. Not yet, anyway. She tried to control her guilt by reminding herself that it wasn’t her fault the watch was lost; it was Ruth’s. The decision could wait. At the end of the summer, maybe, she would give it to Aunt Ginnie to return to her mother. Right now she longed too much for the past to let the watch go; it was all she had left. Besides, she couldn’t help hoping that somehow it would begin to tick again.
As Nan hugged her granddaughter’s stiff body, all of Patricia’s bitter feelings arose again. Now she was glad she was keeping the watch from her; she tasted some of Ruth’s revenge.
“Dear Patricia,” Nan crooned. “I’m sorry we didn’t have time to become friends, but we will. Next summer I’m going to insist you come and visit me, especially now that your mother will be alone. It will help her out.”
“I have to stay in Toronto next summer,” Patricia lied. “There’s a special course I have to take.”
Uncle Doug started the engine and everyone waved. “Goodbye, Nan!” called Trevor, sprinting beside the car.
It was a relief to have her gone. Even Aunt Ginnie seemed to feel it. “I love seeing your grandmother,” she confided to Kelly and Patricia as they helped her strip the bed in La Petite, “but I don’t think she enjoys the lake anymore. She doesn’t like being as informal as we are in the summer.”
“That’s for sure—a fork for ice cream!” said Kelly scornfully. Every night Nan had insisted that Kelly set the table with a spoon and fork for each person’s dessert.
“Well, Patricia and I are glad she’s gone, aren’t we? Come on, let’s go find the others.” Kelly pulled Patricia out of La Petite before Aunt Ginnie could scold her.
FOR THE NEXT two weeks Patricia was numb with grief. Her longing for Ruth and the past was such a sharp pain that she moved around slowly so as not to aggravate it. Once she thought of taking the watch somewhere to be fixed, but there were no watchmakers or jewellers listed in the thin town phonebook. She gave up hope that it would work again and put it away in the attic.
In a forlorn daze, Patricia tagged after her cousins as they finished their fort and began building a raft. It wasn’t until the beginning of August, as she lay on her stomach on Uncle Rod’s pier and listened to the others hammering behind her, that she realized she was now accepted.
No one dangled small animals in her face. No one called her Potty. When Maggie had, Kelly said fiercely, “Don’t use that dumb name anymore. She doesn’t like it.” Maggie compromised on “Patty” instead.
They felt sorry for her. Patricia was sure that Kelly had told Christie and Bruce about her parents and that was the reason why they, too, were being friendly and patient. She had to admit that she had not returned their friendliness; she just watched, as usual. No one minded. They treated her like glass, like an invalid who might break.
There’s nothing wrong with me, thought Patricia resentfully. They don’t need to be so careful. She sat up and brushed flying bugs away from her face. Trevor panted as he moved along the boards, hammering each one to a horizontal plank underneath. His plump sunburnt back quivered with each blow.
Patricia went over to him. “Do you want me to do that for a while?”
“Sure! Gee, it’s hot!” Trevor handed her the hammer and plunged into the lake.
Patricia pounded carefully, copying Kelly and Christie’s rhythmic strokes at the other end. It was a relief to do something and satisfying to watch the wooden platform grow as they added boards.
“There!” Kelly sat back and wiped her dripping face. “That’s great, Patricia. Now we just need to find some inner tubes to hold it up in the water.” She grinned at her cousin and Patricia smiled back tentatively.
15
Then began the only restful part of Patricia’s summer. The past and the future were both too disturbing to contemplate: she couldn’t dwell on Ruth without being heartbroken and she dared not think of what awaited her in Toronto. It was easiest simply to exist in the present.
She and Kelly were now friends. Patricia admired her cousin’s strong principles on everything from the peace movement to how to split a popsicle without breaking it. Kelly had even written a letter to the prime minister stating her concerns about nuclear war.
“My mother did a special series on disarmament,” Patricia told her.
“I saw it! I didn’t tell you … before.”
Before we were friends, Patricia added to herself.
“I’m sorry we were so mean to you when you came,” Kelly told her sheepishly. “You were so snotty, we thought you didn’t like us.”
“But I thought you didn’t like me!”
“Well, I was upset because of not getting a sailboat. I guess we didn’t give you a chance.” Kelly grinned at her. “But now we know each other. And we’re cousins, so we always will.”
The two of them began talking long into the night. Kelly told Patricia what interesting lives her friends with divorced parents had. “Sometimes I think it’s a drag, having such an ordinary family.” She didn’t sound at all convincing, but Patricia appreciated her efforts to cheer her up.
They chatted so late that Aunt Ginnie threatened to separate them, but she looked indulgent as she said it. Her aunts and uncles beamed on Patricia now. “The lake has done her good,” she heard Aunt Karen say. “She’s a changed child.”
Sometimes Patricia sneaked up to the attic and tried the watch again. But it was definitely broken. Once she visited the badminton court, straining her ears as if she could hear Ruth’s voice cry again: “It’s not fair!” The over-grown, neglected space was silent.
Each August day dawned with a clean, blue sky. By noon it was hot, but the evenings were crisp, with none of the stifling humidity Patricia was used to in Toronto. Swimming lessons were over and nothing in the day was organized but meals. The cousins spent every possible moment outside, either in the fort or on the beach. Patricia’s hair grew into her eyes, her skin turned brown and the soles of her feet became as hard as Kelly’s. She wasn’t afraid of weeds or bloodsuckers anymore, she could paddle a canoe and she caught another perch. I’m getting as good as they are, she thought.
Her cousins continued to protect her, however. “You won’t like this, Patricia,” Bruce warned when he showed the others his worm farm. “Patricia doesn’t have to do it,” ordered Kelly, when they dared one another to dive off the high board on the Main Beach raft. Patricia was grateful for their concern; she still didn’t have the nerve to do everything they did. But she wished she could win their respect as well as their sympathy.
After lunch one day Aunt Karen rushed through the back door of the Grants’ cottage. “Bruce cut his foot with the axe! It’s bleeding a lot. Ginnie, can you drive us to the hospital in Stony Plain? If only Rod was here!”
They all ran out to the driveway. Bruce was lying on the back seat of the car. Christie was beside him, holding a blood-soaked towel to his foot. He looked up weakly and tried to smile. “Gee, my blood’s sure red.”
“Oh, B-Bruce …” wailed his sister.
“Christie, let your mother do that,” said Aunt Ginnie. Aunt Karen gathered her son in her arms.
Aunt Ginnie handed the baby to Kelly. “Maggie, run and get my purse. Now listen carefully, you older ones. We’ll probably be gone until dinner-time. Rosemary’s formula is in the cupboard by the sink. You shouldn’t have any problems, but go to Mrs. Donaldson if you do. There’s lots of food for snacks … I’m sure you’ll manage.”
Maggie returned with the purse. “You do exactly what Kelly says,” her mother told her. She scrambled into the driver’s seat and backed the car down the driveway, Peggy following it yelping and jumping.
Rosemary’s eyes widened with astonishment at the sight of her retreating mother. Then she opened her mouth and took a deep breath.
“Oh-oh,” said Kelly, jiggling her desperately. The cry seemed to take forever to emerge. When it did, it pierced Patricia’s ears. The baby’s face turned crimson as her screams became regular.
“Let’s take her inside.” The others followed Kelly into the living room and slouched around the baby as she continued to thrash and wail.
“Do something!” Trevor entreated his sister, his lingers plugging his ears. “You’re in charge.”
Kelly bounced the baby higher. “I don’t know what to do! She never carries on like this.”
Christie cried too, softly in a corner, while Maggie brought all of Rosemary’s toys to her and waved them in her face.
Patricia watched until she couldn’t bear it. She took a steadying breath and stood up. “Stop that, Maggie. You’re just making her worse. Give her to me, Kelly.”
Kelly looked surprised, but handed the baby over with relief.
“Go and heat up some formula,” ordered Patricia, folding her arms around Rosemary and trying to still the small, shaking body.
Kelly looked embarrassed. “How?”
Patricia led them into the kitchen and directed her. Kelly opened the tin of formula and heated it slowly in a pot. Trevor helped funnel it into a bottle. But Rosemary would have no part of it. She spat out the nipple and screamed even louder.
“She’s not hungry,” said Patricia. “Your Mum just weaned her anyhow—she’s not used to the bottle.”
“Get Mrs. Donaldson!” urged Trevor.
“She isn’t there
,” said Maggie. “I just went over.”
The others watched as Patricia tried everything. She checked Rosemary’s diaper, took her outside, walked her up and down and sang to her. Nothing worked.
“Please, please stop,” she whispered helplessly into the baby’s neck, close to tears herself. She tried to think clearly. What made Rosemary happy?
“I know! Run the bath, quick! Not too full and not very hot.” She pulled off the baby’s clothes as Kelly turned on the taps. She tested the water. Then, holding the baby carefully under her neck and ankles as Aunt Ginnie did, she lowered her into it.
It was a miracle. As soon as she felt the warm water Rosemary’s cries diminished into hiccups. Then there was a wonderful silence. She moved her arms and legs around and started to smile.
“You’re a genius, Patricia!” marvelled Kelly. “How did you think of it?” She splashed her sister’s fat stomach and Rosemary laughed.
“Well, I know she loves baths. I guess she just needed to be distracted.”
They kept her in the tub as long as possible, then dressed her apprehensively, terrified she’d begin again. But Rosemary was exhausted. As Patricia rocked her she closed her eyes.
Patricia laid her carefully in her crib and shut the door. “Whew!” She collapsed in the rocking chair. Her cousins were all gazing at her with respect and expectancy. All but Christie, who continued to sob.
“Oh, poor, poor Bruce. What if he loses his foot?”
Patricia made herself speak with confidence. “Listen, Christie—all of you. I have an idea. Let’s make a special dinner for them. There’s a chicken in the fridge, I saw it.’
“But we don’t know how to cook a chicken,” said Kelly.
“I can. I do it all the time at home. And we’ll have boiled potatoes and green beans and a salad and chocolate pudding. You can all help.”
Christie stopped sniffing as she and Trevor peeled potatoes. Patricia made a bread stuffing and got Kelly to trim the beans and Maggie to pick flowers for the table. She was amazed that they let her be the leader so easily.