Snow Apples (11 page)

“I thought you were with Nels!”

“I was. I don't know what's the matter with him, other than he's had too much to drink. Would you take him home?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, Sheila. Sure thing. I'll get a couple of the guys.”

I found my jacket under the pile of coats at the door and hurried back outside. I watched Arnie and Doug Jackson support Nels between them as they walked him to Doug's car. I saw Nels bend over, being sick again, before he got in.

When they drove off, with Arnie and Doug in the front, Nels had his head hanging out the back window.

I had a four-mile walk home. I bent my head into the wind and pulled my jacket collar up as far as it would go. By the time I was through Gibson's Landing, I was soaked, my feet sloshing in my shoes and my new skirt, heavy and wet, dragging with every step I took. Going through the Indian reserve where the trees grew right to the edge of the
road, I heard ominous creaks and groans. Branches were blowing off trees and into the road. Once in a while a tree splintered with a shriek and crashed.

I began to run, not knowing if I was running away from a falling tree or into one.

It was black. Black sky, black forest. Only my feet felt where the surface of the road was. Waves were pounding on the beach below me. The wind was a banshee—eerie sounds, screeches, sighs, groans, cries, moans.

Down hills, around bends, along level stretches. I'd never get home. There wasn't a car on the road, but I began to feel the presence of somebody—something—near me.

So strong was the feeling that I stopped to listen. The high-pitched wail of the wind, the splitting groans of trees, the surf crashing on rocks. My heart pounding loudly in my ears, and a sound of heavy breathing.

I took one step forward and walked into a large, hot, breathing body—hairy, moving. I sank to my knees, waiting for the blow.

Only a cow. There was a faint jingling of a bell, a loud moo as she moved away. A swish of her tail caught the corner of my eye.

I moved through the herd, bumping into sloping flanks, slipping in cow patties and crying with relief.

Two hours after I had left the hall, I pushed open the kitchen door of our new house. The recently acquired electric light was too bright for my eyes after the black night.

My mother, who had been writing a letter when I burst in, took one look at me and said, “Glory be to God! Whatever has happened to you?” She helped me off with my wet jacket and, scolding and comforting, she had me sit in front of the kitchen stove and opened the oven door for more warmth. “You've walked all this way home?”

I wrenched off my sopping shoes and flung them on the open oven door.

“I have,” I burst out. “It isn't fair! Girls have to be so... nice! We can't do or say anything! But we're supposed to put up with anything anyone else does. I hate being a girl!”

“Now, Sheila, calm down. It'll be all right.” She filled a basin with hot water, handed me the soap. While I washed, she hung my nightclothes over the stove to warm, something she did only when we were sick. “The men don't have such an easy time of it, either.”

“Name me one thing! Just one!”

“Two. I can name you two. Come on, sit down, I've poured you a cup of tea. There's not many things a cup of tea won't help.”

I sat across from her, wrapping my wet hair in a towel.

“For one thing,” my mother continued, “they have to worry about work, making a living for us.”

I stared at her. Had she forgotten Dad?

“And for another thing.” Her voice lowered. “They have a stronger drive than we do.” I knew she meant sex. “It can be dreadful hard on them.”

“I still don't think it's fair!”

“Nobody said it was going to be fair.” My mother's voice was mild. “It never has been, as far back as time. For anybody.”

N
ELS PROMISED
not to drink again if I promised not to meet the Union steamship. I told him I wouldn't if it meant that much to him.

I missed going, though. There was so little to do at the Landing that the steamship calling in was the highlight of the day. And I liked walking up the wharf with Mr. Percy after the boat had pulled out. He always had some news. Had he told me that Helga was talking more these days? And that Dr. Howard had mentioned to him that I was “a right smart girl and pleasant to boot”? And so he went on, sure that in me he had a captive audience.

Of course, I'd miss Jack, too. Whenever I saw him he reminded me of the excitement, the things to do in Vancouver. There were times I felt pressed between the
mountains at the back of me and the ocean in the front, and I thought I couldn't wait to finish school and leave the Landing.

But I still loved school. My brother Tom and I were taking Science 12 together even though he was a grade behind me. That's the way it was in our small high school with only the one teacher. We had to double up on some courses. Sometimes Tom got a higher mark, but that only made me study harder to beat him the next time.

My father had decided to leave Jericho Airforce Base and go to Williams Lake to work at the placer gold mine. My mother was unhappy about this. But he said he'd send sixty dollars every month.

My mother was even talking about buying a piano secondhand. Mrs. Robinson on the North Road had tacked a notice on the bulletin board at the post office:
For sale, cheap, piano in A-1 condition. B. Robinson, North Road
.

“Of course,” sniffed my mother when she read it, “that means the piano would have to be washed down with Lysol before I would let it in the house. They say she has a social disease.”

“You mean like T.B.?”

“No, I mean syphilis. She's been a loose woman.”

*  *  *

“Agnes,” said my father, home for the weekend, “how would you like that piano for a Christmas present?”

“We can't afford it,” my mother said. “Don't be daft.”

But we could see that she was excited by the idea. She went through her music sheets, which were stored in the cedar chest.

“Do you remember this?” she asked my father, and she began to hum “The Flower Song,” following the notes with her finger. She could read music. My father played by ear.

Dad went ahead anyway and bought the piano, even though Christmas was two months away. He had it delivered when my mother was out at a Water Board meeting. I wiped it with a cloth wrung out in a hot water-and-Lysol solution, then dried it and rubbed lemon oil into the wood grain. It was made of cherry wood, and when I had finished, it glowed with a soft red sheen. The ivory keys were faintly yellowed, but the tone was good. Dad said he'd have a man come out from Vancouver to tune it.

Helga had shown me how to embroider, and I had already made a dresser scarf with yellow butterflies and bluebells for Mom's Christmas present. I smoothed it out on the piano and placed the picture of Grandma Brary in the middle.

“Oh, you shouldn't have, Frank!” my mother said when she came into the living room at Dad's urging. “You really shouldn't have.”

She walked, trancelike, over to the piano, sat down at the bench and began to play. Her fingers, stiff and unaccustomed to the keyboard, still remembered how. And she was still playing hours later when I went to bed.

*  *  *

One evening, Nels' parents invited me to dinner. I just dreaded the thought. I wanted to like Nels' mother. Why should I care if she wanted to look like a teenager?

I didn't taste anything because I was trying so hard to make a good impression. But I probably didn't. Mrs. Bergstrom asked me how school was going, and I told her about studying
Macbeth
.

“Mac who?” she asked.

“You know—Shakespeare.”

“Oh, him.” There was a silence. “Nels, pass Sheila the ketchup.”

Later when Mr. and Mrs. Bergstrom left for the Legion to drink beer, I did the dishes. Nels sat and read at the kitchen table to keep me company. He hadn't been kidding when he'd told me he liked comic books and Westerns. He actually had a pulp Western propped up against the salt and pepper shakers as he read about the adventures of Luke, Montana Ranch Hand.

Still, at the end of the evening I felt uncomfortable— about Shakespeare and about Nels reading pulps.

The next day Nels told me, “My mother thinks you're pretty. She isn't too happy about you being a Dogan, though.”

“Dogan?”

“Yeah, you know, Catholic. Says you'll want to get married and have a kid every year.”

“I'm not getting married for a long time, Nels Bergstrom, so you don't need to worry about that!”

We were sitting in his truck after school. It had begun to snow lightly, the flakes melting as soon as they hit the window.

Nels took my hand and turned it over, tracing the lines on the palm.

“How long before you want to get married, Sheila?”

“Well, I want to finish high school first, then go on to university or nursing school, then I want to work for a few years, travel...”

“What am I supposed to be doing all this time?” Nels asked.

“I don't know. What do you want to do?”

He watched the snow coming down, heavier now. It blanketed the windows and shut us in a small, silent white world.

“I want to get married. Build my own house. Have a kid or two.” He turned on the engine. “You cold?” He pulled me closer, wrapped his arms around me and blew down my neck.

“I'd like to get married, too, Nels, but not for a while.”

“Sheila, I mean soon. What do you think it's like for me, having to leave you every night, go home and...”

“Go home and what?” He had completely unbuttoned my blouse by then—the snow was giving us privacy—and was stroking the skin of my breasts very gently with his fingertips. At times he was so tender that I thought I would melt. Other times he could be crude and rough, and I would pull back, afraid.

“And what, Nels?” I asked, not really wanting to know, only wanting to prolong what he was doing.

“Take care of myself...”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Jesus, Sheila, don't give me that crap. Jack off, what do you think?” He took my hand then and placed it on himself.

“Undo the fly,” he pleaded, kissing my ears and neck.

“No, Nels...” I started to say. Then a warmth was growing in me, spreading, like the sun rising.

He fumbled with the opening himself and took my hand. I heard him groan. Suddenly my hand was filled with a wet warmness, and Nels groped for his handkerchief and wadded it into my hand. I could hear him breathing deeply.

I dried my hand on his handkerchief and put it on the seat between us. I didn't want to look at him. His breathing slowed, relaxed,

But I didn't feel relaxed at all. My stomach felt like I'd taken a sudden lurch in an elevator, and I ached so much it hurt.

But I did know, then, what he had been talking about.

*  *  *

Christmas was only a month away. I sent to Woodward's for a record for Nels, Margaret Whiting's “I'm in Love with You, Honey.” He always asked for it at dances.

Trust Tom to come up with the idea of a correspondence
course for my mother. All the years I'd seen her read my school books, and it had never occurred to me she might like to be learning, too.

That was one of the differences between Tom and me. He was more thoughtful of the family than I was. Tom and my mother were alike that way. They were both shy and more comfortable at home.

I guess my mother was right. I was more like my dad. We both liked to be out and meeting new people. Maybe that was the reason my mother liked Tom so much and me not very much.

Anyway, Tom sent away to the Department of Education in Victoria for a catalogue, and we spent hours going through it. Finally we narrowed it down to either a poetry or a literature course.

I took my grade twelve book of poetry out to the kitchen where Mom was making plum pudding.

“Listen to this, Mom. It's by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Tell me if it doesn't remind you of Helga Ness.

“Love in the open hand, nothing but that

Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,

As one should bring you cowslips in a hat

Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt”

My mother had shut her eyes when I'd begun to read. When I stopped, she took up where I left off, her eyes still closed.

“I bring you, calling out as children do:

‘Look what I have!—And these are all for you.'”

She opened her eyes and, seeing my astonishment, said, “I've always loved poetry.” So Tom and I decided to give Poetry 12 to Mom for Christmas.

*  *  *

Nels gave me a beautiful set of Evening in Paris for Christmas—soap, cologne and talcum powder. I wished I had been able to give him a nicer present.

Dad and Paul were home, and my mother cooked a goose. We didn't usually celebrate Christmas much at our house, but this was one of the happiest we'd ever had together as a family. When I went to sleep, my father was playing the piano, and my mother was singing along.