Juliet in August (10 page)

“Huh,” he says out loud. “‘The end.' Well, that's a bugger.”

He shoves the flyer in his pocket along with Joni's phone number and walks through the storm of paper to his wife's restaurant.

Sweetheart

Vicki Dolson always says of herself that she is not really capable of understanding great unhappiness. On the worst of days, she sees, or at least tries to see, the best. With the exception of something having to do with the kids, like one of them getting childhood leukemia, she can't think of anything that would make her mope for longer than an hour or two. It's the way she was raised. So it's hard for her to understand Blaine and the dark lens through which he sees the world these days. Not that she doesn't understand the gravity of their situation and the extreme actions Blaine has been forced to take. He'd first sold off his herd of Charolais-Hereford cross cattle, and then the bank had insisted on the dispersal of his machinery, and then the sale of all his land but the home quarter. But Vicki's position is that they should be thankful they still have their house, and they can rent out the pasture for a bit of income; every dollar helps. The bank did allow Blaine to keep an old stock trailer and one saddle horse—although not the good mare who would go all day for you, and Blaine claims the horse he kept requires an instruction manual to operate—so at least he can still drive up to Allan Tallman's place on a Sunday for a little team roping. “There you go,” Vicki says to Blaine on occasion, “it's not all bad.” Even as she knows this drives him crazy.

Most mornings, Blaine is up well before Vicki. This morning he sleeps right through the radio alarm and Vicki decides to let him sleep for a few more minutes. She's lying there listening to a voice tell her that a heritage building in Regina is slated for demolition and there's a petition circulating, when she hears Blaine say, “My whole life has been slated for demolition and no one is organizing petitions about that.”

She turns to him and says, “Good morning, you.” She can see right away that she's annoyed him. He hates it when she talks to him as though he's one of the kids.

She throws back the covers and both she and Blaine notice that she's wearing jeans under her nightie.

“Oh,” Vicki says, “that's odd.” She has a sudden memory of the plane, how she thought she was going to have to go out and look for it. “Did you hear me get up in the night?”

“No,” Blaine says. “How the hell can you sleep with all those clothes on? It's still hot in here from yesterday, for Christ's sake.”

“I heard a plane,” Vicki says. “It seemed pretty real, but I guess it was the dream.” She steps out of bed and slips her feet into her flip-flops.

Blaine gets up, too, hurrying now. He prides himself on arriving at the job site ahead of most of the other men, including the foreman.

“Are you going to do those beans today?” he asks as he pulls on his jeans and tucks in a gray T-shirt.

Not the beans already,
Vicki thinks, but she says, “Yes, Blaine. I'm going to do the beans. I've set aside the whole day.”

“You're not planning to go into town then?” Blaine says.

“Why? Did you want me to pick something up for you?” Vicki asks, teasing, trying to turn Blaine's already-bad mood.

“No,” Blaine says. “I want you to do the beans.”

Vicki goes to the kitchen, still in her nightie and jeans, to perk Blaine's coffee for his thermos. She discovers that there's hardly any coffee left—just enough for half a pot.

“Sorry, hon,” Vicki says when Blaine arrives in the kitchen a few minutes later. “We're all out of coffee. I forgot my list when I picked up groceries last week.”

“Never mind,” Blaine said. “I'll drink water.”

As Vicki half fills the coffee pot, she can't keep her mind off the dreaded beans and what a pain in the neck a garden is. She makes a commitment to herself to get the beans done, if for no other reason than to get them out of her head. And Blaine is right, they won't keep long sitting in tubs in the basement, where they've been for the two days since she and Shiloh picked them off, sweating in the hot sun, because Blaine had said, “God dammit, Vicki, if you don't pick those beans today I'm taking away your car keys. We'll see how far you get without a car.”

“We can at least wait for a cooler day,” she'd protested. “Anyway, I'd be happy to give them away. I could put up a sign in the café.”

Blaine had given her one of his looks, and Vicki had felt instantly sorry for being flippant. She doesn't know what she has against the idea of preserving garden produce. Maybe it's the work, when it's so easy to buy frozen vegetables. Or maybe she's just trying to let Blaine know that she's not his mother and never will be. Whatever the reason, they go through this every year: Blaine harping about the garden and Vicki putting off the freezing and canning for as long as possible.

When she sees Blaine's lunch box on the counter, she realizes she forgot to make his sandwiches the night before. There's no ham—Blaine's favorite—so she grabs a jar of jam and slaps together some sandwiches and pours the half pot of coffee into Blaine's thermos as the kids begin to wander into the kitchen for breakfast. Blaine grabs the lunch pail from her as soon as she closes the lid.

“I'm not kidding, Vicki,” he says as he heads for the door. “We can live on jam for a few days. Don't go getting any ideas. You get those beans done or else.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Vicki says. “You're talking to me like I'm the hired help.”

“Pretty bloody useless hired help,” Blaine says.

Vicki stands in the porch with the door open and watches Blaine cross the yard to his truck. It won't start. He gets out, fiddles with something under the hood, then slams the hood down. He gets back in the truck, starts it, then leans out the window and yells, “Don't you dare go to town today, Vicki.”

Vicki blows him a kiss. “And don't you take any wooden nickels,” she calls; she doesn't even know why.

Seven-year-old Daisy has come to stand beside her. “What does that mean,” Daisy wants to know, “‘don't take any wooden nickels'?”

“Nothing,” Vicki says. “It's just a silly thing to say, like ‘don't let the bedbugs bite.'”

Blaine fishtails out of the yard, driving too fast, and Vicki and Daisy sit on the step and watch his trail of dust. The morning sky in front of them is pink.

“Look at that sky,” Vicki says to Daisy. “Aren't we lucky to live where we can see that right out our door, every single morning if we want? It's better than a movie, don't you think?”

Daisy starts to list all the movies that it's not better than.

“Okay, okay,” Vicki says. “I get it. But you have to admit, it's pretty.”

“We should spray Bucko for flies,” Daisy says.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at him.”

Vicki looks. Blaine's horse is kicking at his belly as though he's got a horsefly biting him.

“You're right,” Vicki says. “After breakfast. You remind me.” She can see the spray bottle hanging on the fence. “I guess we can't sit here all day, can we?” she says. “We'd better get at those beans.”

When Vicki returns to the kitchen, she finds four of her six kids sitting at the table eating jam on bread: nine-year-old Martin, little Lucille (the youngest at three and a half), and the five-year-old twin boys, who look so much alike that even she has a hard time telling them apart. Shiloh isn't up yet.
He must be enjoying his new room
, Vicki thinks.

The children look at her.

“Daddy doesn't like jam,” Lucille says.

“Well, it's not his favorite, that's for sure,” Vicki says. “But you can't always have your favorite, can you?”

“Are we going to town for ham?” Daisy asks.

“Not today,” Vicki says. “We have a big job to get done.”

“I need a fudge sundae,” Daisy says.

“You don't
need
a fudge sundae,” Vicki says. “You might
want
one, but you don't need one. Anyway, they're too expensive.”

“I heard Dad say we aren't supposed to go to town today,” Martin says.

“That's right,” Vicki says. “At least not until we get the beans done, and that's going to take all day.”

“Fudge sundaes aren't that expensive,” Daisy says. “Don't tell me we're so poor we can't even buy ice cream.” She sticks her lip out and sniffles.

“Oh, stop it,” Vicki says. “Those aren't even real tears. Those are crocodile tears if I ever saw them. You've been watching too much TV.”

While the kids are finishing their breakfasts, Vicki gets herself dressed and then, there's no way around it, she might as well get started. She kneels on the floor in front of her kitchen cupboards and fishes around for her two blanching pots. Pots and lids clatter as she drags them out and sets them on the floor. After the kids pile their breakfast dishes on the counter, she decides she has to wash them up to make more room for the whole ordeal of doing the beans. Once that's done, she takes a final swipe with the tea towel at a few wet spots on the counter, and as she does so she notices just how white the towel is. It's amazing, like fresh snow in bright sunlight. The tea towel is like a pep talk, and as she looks at it she thinks,
I'm not such a bad homemaker—just look at how white that towel is.
She lays it on the counter and goes downstairs for the plastic tubs full of beans.

At first she tries to be quiet in the basement, but then she thinks Shiloh could be a help, so she crosses the cement floor to his new room and parts the curtains. She notices that the light is on, and she smiles to herself at the thought of her big boy Shiloh being afraid to sleep alone in the dark.
He's not quite grown up yet,
she thinks as she switches off the light and says, “Wakey, wakey.” When Shiloh opens his eyes, she says, “So, Mr. Man. What did you think of your first night in the royal chamber?”

As soon as she's said it and sees the look that crosses his face, she knows she's made a mistake, just like when she said
Good morning, you
to Blaine. Everything she says to either of them is wrong these days. She probably shouldn't have called Shiloh
Mr. Man
.

“You should knock before you come in,” Shiloh says.

So that's it. The new room is to be private. Well, that makes sense. She'd wanted privacy when she was a teenager, although she'd never gotten it.

“You're right,” she says. “Sorry.” She steps back outside the bedspread curtains and says, “There's no place to knock.” Then she stamps her feet on the cement floor. “Wakey, wakey,” she says again.

Shiloh says, “If you weren't so useless you'd go away and leave me alone.”

Vicki is shocked. Shiloh has been sullen lately, but he's never said anything like that to her. She isn't sure what to do.
Is this just typical teenage behavior?
she wonders. She can't help but feel hurt by what he's said, but on the other hand she remembers saying a few rude things to her mother and then immediately feeling bad. She imagines Shiloh already regretting what he's said, but being unable to apologize because he doesn't know how. She decides to ignore the outburst. She leaves him in bed, gets a tub of beans, and carries it upstairs to the kitchen. Then she retrieves the other two and sets them on the kitchen floor with the first tub.

She looks at the two little blanching pots and the three huge tubs of beans. She tries to imagine how many beans she will have to snap, how many times she will load the beans into the pots, time them, cool them in cold water, bag them, carry them down the basement steps to the freezer. The thought is unbearable. She prays that she'll be out of freezer bags, but, of course, when she looks in the cupboard, there are plenty. Years' worth. Every year she makes a special trip to town for more freezer bags. Her ability to maintain a positive attitude is being sorely challenged.

Vicki picks up a handful of beans, hoping there'll be something wrong with them, but there isn't. There's nothing to do but put them up. She looks at her stove. It has four burners. If she had two more blanchers, she could cut in half the time she'll need to do the beans. She could borrow from a neighbor, but if she's going to load the kids in the car to go and borrow blanchers, she might as well drive to town and buy another two, and then she'll have them for next year. It will only take an hour or so.

“Come on, kids,” she says. “We're going to make a quick trip to town. A quick one, mind you. In and out of the hardware store, that's it. And no fudge sundaes, Daisy. Don't even ask. And no crying about it, either. We're in too much of a hurry.”

“But Dad said—” begins Martin.

“Never mind that,” Vicki says. “Dad means well, but he doesn't know anything about freezing vegetables.”

Vicki calls down the stairs to Shiloh that they're going to town and to hurry up if he wants to come with them. Five minutes, she says, and within the five minutes Shiloh comes up the stairs with his hair all over the place. He doesn't say anything but makes a quick trip to the bathroom and then grabs a bag of Oreo cookies from the cupboard.

“That's not much of a breakfast,” Vicki says. She almost adds
Mr. Man
, but catches herself.

At the last minute Vicki tells the kids to get their bathing suits; maybe there'll be time to stop for a quick swim at the pool since it's supposed to be such a hot day. She unzips a huge gym bag and they all shove their suits in, all but Shiloh. Vicki adds a handful of old towels.

“Shiloh, don't you want to go for a swim?” she asks. “It's going to be hot.”

Shiloh ignores the question and heads out to the car, shoving the cookie bag in his backpack. Vicki and the rest of the kids follow, and they all pile into her old Cutlass Supreme. Shiloh says, “Shotgun,” and gets into the front seat, and none of the kids argues with him. Vicki is about to start the car when Shiloh says, “Wait,” and he runs back into the house.