A Recipe for Bees (26 page)

“I won’t do any more farm work than I’m already doing. I spend all my time here. I never get out. I’ll get a job.”

“What job? Who’s going to hire you?”

Yep Num, the Chinese man who owned the café in Chase, was known and liked for his habit of giving out sweet ginger, lichee nuts, and Chinese lilies at Christmastime to his few lady customers. Perhaps he thought Augusta pretty. Whatever the reason, he hired her with no experience and no references. It was a small café and waitressing there should have been easy but she had little talent for it. Manny drove her to work. She was dressed in the white uniform Yep Num had supplied and she felt stiff and awkward in it. She had no real clue of what was done at the café. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d been to a restaurant. Shyness made her stomach tie up in knots, so she hugged it and lurked at the back of the café, hoping to make milkshakes all day. But she was scared, too, of the milkshake machine. Yep Num had to prompt her to serve customers, and more than once she caught him and the crib-playing patrons gaping at her and shaking their heads. What were they saying? Were they talking about her mother in the way the Grafton boys did? At the end of the day Yep Num told her she wasn’t suited to the job, and the expression on his face told Augusta that he thought her lazy. Well, she wasn’t lazy. What did that Chinaman know? Shyness made her muddled and stupid, and if he’d given her a week to get used to the place she might have excelled as a waitress, as Joy did so many years later. Maybe then she might have gone on to something more
than marriage and mothering. But what did it matter now? Things went as they went and there was no changing them.

The Saturday after Charlie Samson’s visit, the Reverend placed his hand on Augusta’s as they sat having coffee. Joy happened on them as she passed through the kitchen on her way outside, and stopped dead in her tracks. “Let go of her!” she shouted.

“Joy, he’s only—”

“Let go!”

“Joy!”

“It’s all right,” the Reverend said, and withdrew his hand. “Your mother and I were just talking. I wasn’t hurting her.”

“You’re a liar,” said Joy, and she ran out of the house, the door banging behind her. The Reverend stood to go after her.

“Wait,” said Augusta. “Let her cool off. She doesn’t like company when she’s angry.”

“I should talk to her,” said the Reverend. “Explain.”

“Something else has been bothering her. I think the kids at school have been giving her a hard time.” She told him about Charlie Samson’s visit. “She won’t talk to me,” said Augusta. “Maybe you could take her out for a drive or something? See if you can’t get her to talk?”

The Reverend gave Joy his bamboo fishing rod to use and took her fishing at Deep Pool that afternoon. Joy stood near him, facing towards the reserve village, trying to cast as he had instructed. Out of the blue she said, “Was my grandma an Indian lover?”

“What?”

“Jenny Rivers said my grandma had a baby with an Indian.”

“You’re going to have to ask your mother about that.”

“She did, didn’t she?”

The Reverend reeled in his line but said nothing.

“Are you ever going to marry Mom?”

“Why would I marry your mother? I’ve already got a wife. And your mom’s got your dad.”

“But you love her, don’t you?”

“There are a lot of ways to love somebody.”

“Are you my father?”

“No! Wherever did you get that idea?”

Joy shrugged.

“Karl’s your dad, and he’s a good dad. Why would you want another one?”

The Reverend didn’t say anything more, but he told Augusta about the conversation. “Maybe you should talk to her about it,” he said. “All of it.”

“I will if she asks.”

“I think she has a right to know.”

“I said I will if she asks.” But Joy didn’t ask, not then.

T
HE
R
EVEREND PASSED
away in 1969, in his bed, asleep. He had never retired, never left the church he so often complained about. He’d preached into his seventy-fifth year. The whole town turned out for his funeral. Lilian took Augusta’s hand as she and Karl stood in the condolence line, and in front of all those gossiping people of Chase she kissed Augusta’s cheek. “You were such a good friend to Gavin,” she said. “I don’t think he would have stayed in this town if he hadn’t had you to talk to. And I didn’t want to move. You made my life so much easier. Thank you, my dear.”

So there it was, Augusta supposed, forgiveness, though perhaps there was nothing to forgive. Karl took Augusta’s hand then, and led her from the church to the truck. It was the first time she could remember him taking her hand in public, in front of all those eyes.

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.