Bodies and Sole (8 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Marlene was taking another stab at a meeting with a direct appeal to the men this time. It was an appeal that spoke to Vera, with one word.

Men.

Hers would not be going. But she would. Perhaps she'd find one there. Right at her doorstep. She had a few days to glam up. Not that glamour was what Vera was selling. She was selling handmaiden. Matron. Nurse. Rich widow?

As it turned out, there was no suitable man at the meeting. Those of the right age were married or poor or both. Not one of them attracted Vera's interest.

But she certainly attracted it. Almost no one had seen
her close up. When she entered the hall, the villagers were grumbling and complaining and working up their arguments against the “tourism woman.”

But when they saw Vera, there was silence. Absolute. Total. Silence. Mouths dropped open or set in firm lines. Eyes scraped her couture clothing, soft slinky silk, completely out of place on a cool June morning in The Shores. The click click of her four-inch heels resounding off the dance floor, and totally out of place. The hands, covered in rings, engagement rings and wedding rings. Blue diamonds and white gold.

So it was true that she'd had three husbands?

The men and women had been sitting on different sides of the room, as was their custom. The women, reading Vera as predatory, began to gravitate toward their men, clutching them by the arms, taking ownership. Wally Fraser, Harold MacLean, Germaine Joudry and the rest of them might be no prizes, but, as the village wives would say, “we're used to them.”

Vera's arrival took the stuffing out of Marlene's meeting.

With all eyes on her, no one was paying attention to what Marlene said.

“I'm looking for ideas. From you. This is your celebration. It should be what you want it to be.”

“A yard sale. Let's have a yard sale,” offered April Dewey. It was her answer to every celebration or statutory holiday. When you have six kids, there's a lot of clothing and toys to be recycled.

“A yard sale.” Marlene looked doubtful, but she wrote it down. Her notebook was otherwise blank.

“A ride-on race, around the village,” Billy Pride suggested. “With prize money.” He squeezed Madeline, Moira's little sister. He was saving up for a car and an engagement ring.

Marlene looked even more doubtful, but she jotted it down.

“A quilt competition,” Rose Rose, the minister's wife, said on behalf of Gus, who'd quietly suggested it, knowing she would win. None of the other Institute women pieced any more. They quilted, but they didn't piece.

“A costume party,” piped up Millie Fraser, teenage granddaughter of Gladys and Wally. Marlene rewarded her with a smile. Good to have the young people involved. She sketched a star beside that idea.

“A historical re-enactment,” Hy suggested.

“Great idea. I'm in.” Ian backed her up, safe in the knowledge that it would never happen, and, if it did, might at least bring them closer again. She did glance his way. She appeared grateful for his support.

Marlene was pleased, too, at the quantity of suggestions, if not their quality.

There was a brief, a very brief discussion about the ban on lawn mowing.

When Marlene brought it up – it was, after all, her main reason for the meeting – everyone in the hall, in unison, said: “No.”

In the end, she said she'd send around a flyer and they could vote on the items they were willing or not willing to do.

Her big mistake was allowing “none of the above” as an answer in each category.

That's what everyone ticked. About almost everything. Most definitely the lawn mowing ban. The yard sale and the costumes squeaked through. In the first case, April tipped the balance by having all of her children vote. In the second, Millie Fraser, the only teenager at the event, sent messages on Facebook to all her friends to vote.

Apart from those two items, Marlene was back to square one.

But not Vera. She'd picked herself up and moved on. Going forward, as people were fond of saying these days. Forward. Back from the hall and a return to the computer, and bingo! Husband number four would soon be knocking on the door.

Except that husband number four wasn't capable of knocking on the door. He had to be brought in by ambulance – or what passed for an ambulance in The Shores. Volunteer paramedic Nathan Mack's beat-up old van.

Nathan lived just down Shipwreck Hill from Vera, with his beloved Lili, the local yogi and flower farmer. Nathan was the son of Ben and Annabelle Mack.

That's about as concisely as it can be said. The thread of relationships and family connections in the village got a lot more tangled than that. It was hard for an outsider like Vera to keep them straight.

But she knew what she wanted, and how to get it. Combing through the online obits she'd found a man who had everything she wanted in a husband: a dead wife. Cyril Boomhauser needed a live one, someone to take care of him, and he was quickly enraptured by Vera, in a flurry of online correspondence. He had a few rental properties in town and a comfortable government pension, as a veteran who'd not only served his country, but been injured for it, in the worst place a man can be. He had mobility problems as well, but neither bothered Vera. She was used to taking care of people.

She didn't mention the three ex-husbands upstairs. Time enough for that. After they were married.

They were married in haste, by a justice of the peace in the gloomy living room of Cyril's Victorian in Charlottetown. Heavy velvet curtains framed tall windows that let in very little light because of the trees outside and buildings opposite. The groom was in a wheelchair, and the bride was in a plain dark housedress, a muddy brown, the kind of brown that seems practical because it won't show the dirt. There were no flowers, except the small bouquet in the bride's hands. There were no attendants. The housecleaner and Nathan signed as witnesses.

It was the kind of wedding a witness should perhaps be leery of putting a signature to. Isn't that what witnesses are for: to say it was all above board and everything was done correctly?

And maybe it was. Vera got what she wanted. Cyril. Cyril got what he wanted: not so much a wife as a caregiver.

It looked as if it were going to be another bad summer for Moira's Bed and Breakfast business. With the exception of Marlene, who at least was long-term, she had no guests booked this year. It meant she had to continue cleaning cottages on the cape.

It was with mixed feelings that she had taken on a new customer – Vera had answered her online ad for “discreet, quality cleaning services.”

“You'll not need to do all twenty-four rooms every week of course.” Vera had poured tea in the front room of the house, soon to become a sickroom, while Moira had memorized every detail of the woodwork, wainscoting and tin ceiling.

“In fact, you'll confine yourself to downstairs. This is where I live. I can worry about dusting and do the occasional vacuuming upstairs.”

They had agreed on a day and a price, and Moira had left with a mouthful of gossip for those curious about what the place looked like inside.

Moira had been working for Vera for just a week when Nathan's ambulance transporting bride and groom arrived. Vera had been out when Moira got there, but now she stepped out of the back of the ambulance, a bouquet of flowers in her hand and wearing a smart little hat with a veil.

Nathan wheeled an elderly man into the front room. He looked pleased, but a bit confused, and he was drooling.

Vera saw that he was comfortably set up in a rental hospital bed, and slipped through into the kitchen, where Moira was aching with curiosity.

“My husband,” Vera said, with her closest approximation of a smile. “We were just married today.”

Moira's hands flew up to her mouth to stifle a squeal.

“Come, come and meet him.”

Moira followed Vera into the front room.

The old man showed a spark of interest when the two women came in, but his eyes quickly dulled and the drool resumed sliding down his chin.

Leaving the house, Moira reflected on her own marital situation. Non-marital situation.

She'd decided on the venue, a word she loved to use. Now it was just a question of when, and what to wear.

Hy popped her head into Ian's. She didn't just stride in as she'd been in the habit of doing. The recent distance between them had got in the way of their old, easy style with one another.

“Hello,” she called out. Something she'd never have done in the past. Was it just she feeling this uneasiness or did it go both ways? She wasn't sure.

“We're in here.”

Jamieson would be there, then.

Hy joined them at the heart of Ian's home – his computer desk. He and Jamieson were side by side, shoulders touching. Cozy.

On the screen, in living iMac colour, was a woman slumped in a car seat with a bullet hole through her temple, dripping blood.

“Lovely.”

“Interesting.” Ian looked up at Hy. “It's the case study in our online forensics course.”

“For-en-sick…sick…sick.” Jasmine the parrot chimed in as she always did when she heard the word. Then she made repeated gagging sounds. Ian and Jamieson had tried to avoid saying it, referring to it as “the f word.”

“Learning anything?”

“Quite a bit, actually. Every contact leaves a trace.”

“And that nothing is a given.” Jamieson pushed her chair back and stood up. “Can you download today's material for me?” She handed Ian a shocking pink USB drive.

Odd. Girly. Not at all like Jamieson. Trying to show Ian her feminine side? What feminine side?

The jump drive loaded, Jamieson left. As soon as she had shut the door, Hy turned to Ian.

“Will you do me a favour?”

“If it's in my power.” He smiled, a smile that appeared to have a conciliatory message in it. “What is it?”

“Just come down to Moira's in an hour.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

Chapter Fifteen

Knowing Moira would object, Hy had devised a scheme to sell her on the fish wear as wedding garb. She brought the blouse and skirt to Moira's and changed into them in a spare room. She told Moira to wait in the front room – a signal that what was going on was significant. It was the room reserved for the important occasions of life.

“What is that?” The first words out of Moira's mouth, when she saw Hy in the sole blouse and salmon skirt.

“Your wedding outfit, I hope.”

“But it's…it's…” Moira touched the fabric. “What is it?”

“Fish skin.”

Moira pulled her hand back, and held it away from her body as if it had been contaminated. She looked around for something to wipe it on. Nothing. Everything in here was “good.”

“It's your heritage, Moira.” That argument had worked before. It might again. Hy had nothing to prove that Mi'kmaq had worn fish skin. But they might have.

Hy saw hesitation in Moira's eyes. The fact was, the blouse and skirt were beautiful and unusual, neither of which Moira was. She could see it though. The rarity. The quality.

But the hesitation dragged on. Moira opened her mouth without saying anything. Hy heard the door open.

“We're in here,” she called out. Ian, in the hall, cocked an eyebrow. The front room. Must be important.

When he opened the door and saw Hy standing there, Hy who never wore dresses or skirts, in this fabulous outfit, the breath was knocked out of him. When he recovered it, one word came from the depths of him.

“Stunning.”

Hy smiled, a big generous smile, with no undercurrent of cheekiness.

“Yes, isn't it?”

He touched the fabric of the skirt.

“Salmon,” she said.

He stroked the blouse.

“And this?'

“Sole.”

“Of course I've read about native North Americans using birds and fish to make shoes and clothing, but I've never seen it before. Is this something for the 200th?”

“Not exactly. This is what Moira's considering wearing at her wedding.” Hy hoped that by saying it – in front of Ian – she would force Moira's hand.

Ian was confused. If it was Moira's wedding outfit, why was Hy wearing it? He put it down to a woman thing.

“Well, it's stunning. Beautiful.”

Moira's mind was racing. Ian was looking at Hy the way she'd like him to look at her, even though she was marrying Frank. Frank had asked, the only man who ever had. Ian had not, but he was the one she still loved.

“Clever link to our heritage celebrations. Very clever, Moira. You'll look great in it, even better than Hy with your dark hair.” Ian knew exactly what he was saying and why. He'd caught Hy's look, and knew he was supposed to conspire to convince Moira to wear the outfit.

He pulled it off. What he'd said sealed it. Almost. What he said next most definitely did.

“You wear that, and I'll give you away.”

Moira nearly swooned.

It was the next best thing to marrying him.

Right now, she was anxious for him to go so she could try the outfit on. And show Hy up. When Ian did finally leave, with a wink to Hy on the way out, Moira abandoned her usual modesty, and slipped out of her housedress to reveal sensible cotton underclothes. Frank liked them. It was as far as he'd ever got.

“Matched only by the couture houses in Paris. Actually only one of them…” said Hy, pinning the top, where it hung on Moira. She had no breasts.

“But
Cosmo
says nothing – ”

There was renewed doubt in Moira's eyes, creeping back after Ian's exhilarating pronouncement: “Stunning.” She could still hear it, and now she had herself almost convinced that she, not Hy, had been wearing the clothing when he'd said it.

“
Cosmo
, forget
Cosmo
.” Hy broke a thread with her teeth.

“You are on the leading edge of fashion, Moira…what do they call it now? Oh, yes – fashion forward.”

“Fashion forward?”

“Yup.”

Moira, who wasn't in the habit of glowing, glowed.

She always felt that she presented herself well, far better than the rest of the ladies of the Institute, keeping up-to-date on fashion through the Sears catalogue. But she had secretly known that, if anything, she was fashion backward, not forward. She had a niggling thought that this might be fashion backward, too. After all, hadn't fish skin been worn in the past? Had her Mi'kmaq ancestors worn it? She winced at the thought of her ancestry, still not fully at ease with the idea.

She was on the point – reluctantly – of allowing her family history to be included in the book.

“Else what would you say about the Toombs?” Gus had pointed out to Hy. “You can't leave them out, and them living there right next to the hall all these generations. But they never done anything. Not until this.” Gus was taking a greater interest in “the book” since she'd washed her hands of it.

Moira had Marie's letter still, but she finally gave it to Hy at a fitting one day. She set her qualms aside when she saw what Hy had found for her. The outfit was on and off the hanger every day as Moira tried it on over and over again, admiring herself in the mirror.

It – she – was utterly unique.

“Perfect for your physique,” Hy had said. Moira was, at best, stick thin, scrawny. She didn't look it in the sole top, though.

The salmon skirt rippled to the floor in a sheen of fabric. When Moira tried it on with the top, the two complemented one another perfectly and looked just right on her.

“Born to it,” said Hy. “All we need now is a finishing touch.”

“A finishing touch? What?”

“I don't know now. Yet. But I will. I'll know it when I see it.”

Frank gave Marlene a cheeky grin and a wink, behind Moira's back. Marlene flushed red. Small and mousy, Marlene was not without her charms. Her mother would say – and did – that she had “a good bust.” Her facial features were largely unremarkable, except for her lips. They, like her bust, were generous and well-formed. Kissable, so Frank thought. Her usual expression of dissatisfaction formed her lips in a pout, which made them more kissable.

It didn't take much to satisfy Frank. A nice kiss could set him up for the day. A bit of fooling around while waiting for the main prize – Moira.

Frank was the only man who could possibly consider Moira a prize. He thought of her as a dark chocolate cream – bitter and crisp on the outside, but with a delicious interior to be savoured. And now that they had discovered her Mi'kmaq heritage, Frank thought of her as his Indian princess.

Moira had not come around to it herself. She'd always made much of the fact that her father was a waste management supervisor. A garbage man. Elitist and racist, she'd not been happy to find out that a grandmother, several times great, had been a Mi'kmaw, no matter the circumstances.

“But it's so romantic,” Marlene gushed when she heard the story. “You must do a presentation for us on the 200th.”

It was a romantic story, with a rough start, that was told in the letter that Moira had inherited.

The native woman had taken in a shipwrecked Toombs. Shipwrecked, sick with scurvy and rude. She ignored his cursing, cleaned him, made him a comfortable bed and fed him tree bark tea against scurvy.

She was graceful, quiet in her movements, silent except for her eyes that implored him not to curse, not to spit out the concoction she had made him to cure him. As he got better, the cursing diminished and then ceased altogether. Interest grew in him, and one day, his strength returned, he grabbed her and threw her to the ground. She whimpered, but lay still, speaking only with her eyes, as he fumbled with her clothes.

And then he stopped. The look in her eyes spoke to him, and with a curse that he could not do what he would, he threw himself off her. He grunted, and made motions with his hands for her to fetch him food.

It wasn't a great start to love and marriage.

But the two became used to one another, began to understand one another, and when he recovered, he took on the duties of the man of the house. She taught him to hunt and to trap, to smoke meats and fish, to make his own clothes.

They exchanged words and learned a bit of each other's language, and they began to convey meaning in their glances.

Meaning that could mean only one thing.

The inevitable happened. They became man and wife – or that is how Marie referred to it in the few pages found among Gus's collection.

Whether they were actually ever married is doubtful.

That was another thing that bothered Moira. Conceived in sin. All the way down the line. But surely all those legitimate marriages should have wiped that out?

It made Moira even more determined to save herself for marriage, to continue the cleansing that all those legitimate marriages had accomplished. She'd also begun to have a suspicion that she wasn't going to like “it,” that she wouldn't want to do “it” as often as Frank did. So that had made her stall on the wedding date. Frank seemed to think their engagement was a license for lovemaking. Once they were married, it would be harder to turn him away.

Like now. Why couldn't he be satisfied with a little peck on the cheek when he headed off in the morning? Here he was, yanking at her skirt, trying to pull it up, feeling her bottom, and she wriggling, which only seemed to make him more excited.

Finally, he gave up. With a peck on the cheek, he smacked her bottom and left the kitchen. Then she remembered – the list of errands she wanted him to do in town.

She chased after him to be stopped in her tracks by what she saw in the hallway. Frank had grabbed that Marlene, and was giving her a full kiss on the lips, hauling her up off the floor into his arms.

Moira was too shocked to say anything.

Frank dropped Marlene. She looked flushed and pretty.

Moira said nothing. Retreated quietly back through the door into the kitchen.

Perhaps she was going to have to be more giving.

She'd start with Frank's favourite meal tonight.

Wieners.

And seal the wedding date. A.S.A.P.

Hy found what she was looking for in an unexpected place. She'd gone back to Big Bay to “stage” the wedding – figure out where the flowers would go, where the pair would take their vows, where guests could watch from.

She found another boutique open in one of Ben and Annabelle Mack's shacks. Their son Nathan's girlfriend Lili had opened an outlet for her fresh flowers.

Hy placed an order with her immediately for Moira's wedding. Moira might be miffed that she hadn't been consulted, but when Hy told her she'd picked up the bill, she knew Moira would be happy with whatever she'd chosen. For one thing, it wouldn't be mean and small.

That business done, Hy noticed a display case of jewellery.

“This stuff is gorgeous,” she said. Lili opened the case and let her have a better look.

“Just beautiful.”

“I'm making it myself. A modern take on traditional North American jewellery. Not just Mik'maq, which I am, in part, but Inuit, and Navaho as well.” Hy picked up an elaborate bead-embroidered cobalt necklace and earrings, the beads matching beautifully in colour and roped in a chain of ascending sizes. When she saw it, she knew it.

“Some people have actually commissioned pieces.”

“Is this for anybody?” Hy fingered the tightly knit beads.

“No.”

“Can I buy it for Moira?”

“Moira?”

“For her wedding.”

Lili frowned. “No, you can't.”

Hy frowned, disappointed.

Lili smiled, picked it up and gave it to Hy.

“It's a gift.”

“You'll never make a living that way.”

Lili smiled, even deeper.

“I know.”