Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (11 page)

On the night of the Escuminac disaster, he and his uncle were out in the twenty-eight-foot drifter,
The Margot
.

At first they only thought of riding the storm out, but there were too many other boats in trouble. Ivan had learned that Antony, with a rope attached to himself,
kept every boat in sight as long as he could, but they were continually battered away. The waves, at moments, were seventy or eighty feet high, and their boat was twenty-eight feet long, and their engine, too, seemed to take on a life of its own – unexpectedly heroic.

His uncle, who would be Ivan’s great-uncle, was short and broad as he was tall, built as if he had been made out of darkened stone. He had been fishing since he was ten. His nose was huge and crooked, and he had a goiter on his neck, which allowed him to drive his car about without a licence because all the police thought he had cancer and were sorry for him. So he would pile his nine children into the car and drive from Legaceville to Caraquet, everyone sitting on everyone’s knees and singing, with the windows rolled down and their legs and arms sticking out, each one of them trying to hold on to their ice cream, roaring and yelling when they saw an out-of-province licence plate, and pausing to take licks.

Once a wave picked him up, held him in the air, as the boat listed beneath him. Then it dropped him down again, and he stood exactly where he had been.

They had tied themselves together, and had attached the rope through two steel hooks along the gunnels. The prow faced the waves and rose up towards them, and then vaulted down again, stern skyward, and hit the bottom of the bay, before it started its determined journey up against the next wave. Antony felt a sharp pain in his left hand when he tried to steer it towards his father’s boat. Most of this was forgotten now.

Antony could make out his father’s boat behind them, off to the left but only on its rise. He could tell
that they had given up trying to make it to the wharf, and were trying now to hold off and ride the storm out. But he knew they would not, and they would have to give it up also, and concentrate on making it to the wharf. Most of this was forgotten.

When they saw the wharf in sight, Antony felt a delight and a sadness overwhelm him because it was not until then did he realize what was happening. Tears flooded his eyes because he saw lights on in the pink-and-white houses, and a pain came to his throat. They had made the wharf safely, and were about to tie.

And then, because they saw the lights in the houses – or because of
The Maralee
, with its wide prow and proud name, which they saw sinking, or of the women waiting in those houses – or
The Denise R
. from P.E.I., so far from her own wharf and struggling to make it to theirs, with her nets tangled behind her and sinking her stern first, they turned
The Margot
about and went back to save whomever it was they could. Most of this was forgotten now.

“Let’s go after them,” his uncle said, smiling broadly and patting the engine-housing, his smile making his face, covered in sweat and water, crinkle innocently, the same way it did when he piled his nine children into the car, with the little girls wearing dresses, all off to get an ice cream at the corner store.

“Let’s go after them,” Antony said, his left hand already broken and swollen and burning, so he hid it from his uncle. The boat again chugged out into the waves, leaking oil, to where they’d last seen
The Denise R
. with her bulky nets.

Ivan knew why Antony continually licked his big sapphire ring and took it off and put it on a while
later. It was because his left hand ached continually, but he never mentioned why.

Antony, now years later, and thirty pounds heavier, with sad eyes and big red ears, was sweating and pale. His breath was irregular as he puffed on his cigarette. He moved his shoes back and forth and looked out the cuddy window at the night. Every time his breath came up short it was as if he was about to speak. But he did not.

There were lights twinkling out there under the stars, so peaceful, and there were lights on in the houses as well, and the church with its cross lighted up the night sky, and the sounds of honking horns on the main highway, and now and then someone breaking glass, and screeching tires.

“She had a fit,” Antony said suddenly, while looking through the window and puffing on his cigarette, the cigarette spark flickering in the dark room, with the smell of oil on an old blanket, where the little dog lay peacefully watching both of them with his eyes open.

“How?”

“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Ruby – she knows all about it.”

He had been resolved not to mention it. But he was at Nevin’s telling him to be up at five in the morning – to start their business. And since Vera and Adele were there, he mentioned it to them.

“She had a fit,” he said to Vera. “And,” he added, looking quickly at Adele, “I think it’s all this trouble-making by certain people that are causing the problem.”

The one concern Vera and Nevin had was if this seizure had produced a miscarriage. Although it would probably be best if Cindi had an abortion, they thought that a miscarriage would be a terrible injustice.

Adele refused to speak. She had told Ralphie the day before that she was through with ever speaking about Cindi or Ivan again. If she saw, she said, a bomb coming through the roof, “or one of those Sputniks or something like that there, Ralphie – I’d sooner let us all die for openin my gob about it. I’d just go out and pick blueberries and forget it even happened – ’cause I’m no good to talk to. Everyone says I’m so mixed up and need a
sociology
course.” She was dead against sociology now because Ruby was majoring in it – though she did not know exactly what sociology was. But just as Antony was about to change the subject – he wanted to tell them how much Valerie made on her worms – $23.95, and he figured that was pretty fair for worms – Adele spoke up:

“Well, the best thing for her to do is have a goddamn miscarriage – and then none of ya will have any fucking thing more to say about it. There’ll be no more tears – just like the little doll, ‘No More Tears’ – well that’s what there will be.” Then she sniffed and lit a cigarette and then tiny little puffs of smoke came from her nose.

Antony thought she was making fun of him because of his “No More Tears” doll venture of the Christmas before. (In fact, Adele knew nothing about this.) He had gotten thirty boxes of regular stuffed dolls that “couldn’t cry with their nose to an onion,” and had passed them off down on the Indian reserve as the
authentic “No More Tears.” So all the Indian children had the “No More Tears” doll that really had no tears.

He looked at Adele, startled that she knew about this, and Vera said, “
DELE
,” like that.

Nevin looked up.

“I don’t fuckin care,” Adele said, “let everyone do what everyone does and I’ll stay out of it because I’m going to leave this family. I’m going to leave Ralphie – I’m going to leave home. I’m going away – walking fast – maybe then I’ll have all this cocksucking racket figured out.”

“You must admit,” Vera said, smiling naively, “that we have her best in mind.”

“Oh, of course,” Adele said. “Of course, it’s all poor Cindi and such.”

“Let’s not get all worked up,” Vera said.

“Well, then I’m all wrong and stupid, I know,” Adele said.

“No one says you’re stupid,” Vera said.

“Oh, for sure, but things are not always as they always seem!”

Then her eyes flashed, and she looked at Antony, who only stared at her. Then Nevin stood up and walked about the room.

Just as Nevin had never looked angrily at Vera until that moment a few weeks before, when he felt that what was deadly serious was taken lightly, so Adele, who always flew off the handle, went into rages, and kicked her husband – for something to do – now became calm.

“It won’t matter, think whatever you will,” Adele said. “No one profits from this.”

Cindi’s life this summer was like a movie, where all her friends were tantalized by and hoping secretly for more stories to come out of this affair, while telling each other they were not, and hoping it would end. Everyone from Ruby to Vera to Adele was listening and waiting, wondering what was going to happen – as if she were not a person but a character in a movie they were watching. Often, when it ran down a little, they were impatient for something more to happen – and something more had to happen to continue on watching. And every one of them, from Cindi herself to Ruby to Adele, watched this film, from a variety of different places in the theatre, holding on to the idea that they hoped for the heroine, and not knowing that the greatest visual effect was the one in which she was crucified for them.

This idea that she was being crucified, drunk and silly and vacant as she had been in her life, never entered their heads as they were pushing her in that direction. She had been, of course, as far as Vera and certain of the more educated women about, a Christ
figure because of her brutal marriage – but in no way because of their own pride and philosophy concerning her.

The more attention had been placed on her, the more Cindi felt part of the collective structure and morality of the gang. Circles revolved about a loosely defined oracle, which she had never belonged to before, and now suddenly belonged to – she had passed that litmus test.

Yet it was a small gang, and shrinking for some want of excitement. But people had come up with the idea that since the Levoy brothers were home they should go and “see to Ivan.” And people got excited over this.

The Levoy brothers were distant relatives of Cindi.

They hated Ivan because alone they were no match for him. The second brother was the man Ivan protected Ralphie from at the mines. But these were the people – the Levoy brothers who attacked verbally their old nemesis, and had gained the respect of those who had always more or less been frightened of them.

“The Levoys’ll take care of him,” Lloyd said, for instance. He said this because he was scared of the Levoys. “Yes, they’re the lads for him.” And psychologically this seemed to help Lloyd. Praising the Levoys he had become part of the great moral significance of the group.

“Yes – well, the Levoys’ll take care of the lad,” Ruby said one afternoon. “And, if not, Dorval will – right, Dorval?”

Dorval shrank sheepishly into himself. One time, past summer, when he had too much to drink, he had taken a bolo swing at Ivan, and Ivan caught him so he wouldn’t fall. It was because Dorval had always loved Cindi, and had lost her. And that was the worst pain in
the world. But Ruby now, and even Cindi, pretended that it had happened much differently, and that Dorval, being as he was from Montreal, could handle a man like Ivan.

“I don’t want him hurt,” Cindi said, as if she now controlled things.

Now, in the middle of summer, with this happy breed of people who cared for her, she reciprocated the ideas of others as if they were her own.

Most of all at this time she didn’t want to be censured by her friends. If she was suddenly important, she didn’t want to be not important.

Ivan was gone. She had had a string of men since she was sixteen. She was terrified to tell her mother she was pregnant again – but sooner or later her mother would find out.

“And then we won’t be able to help you any more,” Ruby said one afternoon.

“Oh,” Cindi said, looking up at the sun, as if she’d made an awful mistake. “You won’t?”

“I mean, it would make me some kind of Jesus laughing-stock now, wouldn’t it – keeping care of Ivan’s baby.”

(It was Ivan’s baby in this case.)

“Oh wow,” Cindi said, as if she’d made some pathetic mistake. Cindi used all the same out-of-date expressions she had learned eight to ten years ago and was sometimes surprised that no one else did.

“Don’t worry,” Ruby said, “I’ll take care of everything. I won’t let you down.”

It was not inherent in Ruby to forgo anything that was new or irreverent – and this is primarily what attracted her to abortion. What umbrellaed her concern was not so much that it would be right, but that it
would be rebellious and gain attention. Like everything else Ruby did. And Cindi felt those feelings of importance, when she was with Ruby, that she’d only caught brief glimpses of in her life.

She remembered that woman with the short hair on the local
TV
show saying such kind things about her. No one ever, not even Ivan nor her mother, had talked so kindly about her before.

Perhaps what brought matters to a head was Ernie – that is, the forty-four-year-old friend of Antony’s, who had the mannerisms and demeanour of a teenaged boy, and something of the arrogance thereof.

He started to hang about with them, as a member of their group, singing Elvis, and flashing his money about. Every time he came down, Cindi would hide in the bathroom until Ruby got rid of him.

Finally, one night, Ernie approached Cindi as she walked along the road.

“I’ll take care of your baby, I will – I’ll marry you and take care of it.”

It was the only noble gesture Ernie could think of, and he had been thinking of it all summer.

He had been thinking of it since the night he was with Ivan and Antony, and it had blossomed into a full-fledged obsession. He had never made love to a woman. He knew nothing about them, but he had become obsessed by this idea that by being noble he would have a ready-made family – a relationship that just three months before seemed impossible for a man like him, whom people all his life had zeroed in upon and teased.

Something so noble produced a self-righteousness in him as he looked at her, his hair dry and blowing in
the wind, his face nicked from a razor, and still weathering the leather jacket in the awful summer heat.

“I don’t have my baby,” Cindi said.

“What do you mean?” Ernie asked.

“I lost it,” Cindi said, “so please don’t worry about me any more.” And she reached out and touched his face. She held the hand to his face, as if he were a child himself. And then took it quickly away and smiled nervously. Then she turned and walked along the street.

“Here,” he said, “you need money” – and he tried to fumble in his pocket – “please,” he said, as she walked away, “take it.”

Ruby was furious over this intrusion into what was “her concern.”

“It’s not his problem,” she said.

There was a good deal of cynicism from Ruby and Dorval Gene that someone as “ignorant” as Ernie would try to help.

And, finally, a good deal of jovial laughter also.

The morning of the appointment, Ruby took Cindi to the site of her new house. They walked across the field, high with goldenrod and dandelions. Far down below they could see the highway and the river as it widened out into the bay.

The air was still and hot, and they followed the fresh road the tractor had made.

“Well,” Ruby said, looking sideways at Cindi and then smiling, “how do you like all this?”

Cindi looked at the huge foundation, saw the lumber piled in rows near the road that had just been
made, smelled the cement in the sunlight, and sneezed. Then she sneezed again. “It’s the biggest place I’ve ever seen,” Cindi said. (She was trying to be polite.)

“Well, it’s nice,” Ruby said, “but they are
doing
it
wrong
– and I told Big Clay, ‘Hey listen, you are doing this wrong,’ but I spose what’s done is done – hm?” Then she kicked a stone into the foundation as if to prove a point, dusted her hands together, and smiled.

Everywhere they went that morning – from the stable where she brushed her colt, looked at its hooves and immediately took on the look of a person who had been around a stable all of her life, to when she went to pay the bill at Jim’s Convenience and played the punchboard, wiggling her bum, to when she went back to the office and told Lloyd that some of the two by eights at the house were split – she became what she was doing, while Cindi followed her. It was as if she didn’t know Cindi very well – and wanted to impress her with how competent she was, and all that her own independent life offered her.

And everywhere they went Cindi went after her, smiling when people said things, and nervously waiting for the time to pass.

Then finally it was two o’clock – the time when Dr. Savard would leave the hospital and go to his downriver office.

For some reason, just before the appointment, Ruby was compelled to take Cindi shopping. She took out her credit card and bought her two dresses, a hat for summer, a new bathing suit, some underwear. When Cindi tried on one of the dresses, Ruby said, “There now, that’s the new you.”

She smiled at Cindi slightly, then frowned, as if this important decision was still painful, and then went over and hugged her. Dresses hung from racks behind them. She felt Cindi’s body melt into her, just as Cindi’s body melted into anyone she touched, with her tiny eyelashes blinking quickly, and her smile crooked.

Cindi was frightened. She was frightened of the room, and of everything immediately. She was frightened that she would do something, that her body would not look right. Dr. Savard was really a very tiny man, and she stood almost eye to eye with him. So both she and Ruby started to giggle.

He took her blood pressure, and made a joke. Many people said that Savard’s accent was soothing – he spoke in a very comforting voice and this reassured many people.

“Now there is no problem here whatsoever,” he said. “If you don’t want the child, that’s quite all right with us – no one here passes judgement upon you.”

“I’m ashamed,” Cindi said. And she giggled once more. And then held her breath when he looked up.

“Hm.” He looked up, as if he was puzzled. “Hm – oh – don’t be.” But one could tell he hadn’t understood why she said this.

He asked her how she was feeling, and busied himself asking questions that she tried to answer quickly.

She did not want to be frightened of things. And because they were
supposed
to like each other, they pretended to themselves that they did. But Savard in other circumstances would have had nothing to do with her. And Cindi knew this. So she had nothing to say.

This fear Cindi had of everything around her persisted throughout the questioning. She just wanted to get it all over and go home. She disliked Dr. Savard when she thought she would like him. And she mistrusted his soothing voice.

Cindi, when she looked at him, sneezed, and then sneezed once more – and then again. “Dust,” she said. He smiled. She reminded him, in fact, of one of Fortune’s daughters who was always doing poorly in school. Outside his office there was a gravel lot that ran far away to an old road, with a cul-de-sac sign, the post of which had been painted green, and a long darning needle flew out of the bushes and in front of the sign, moving here and there in the afternoon light.

Then there were some trees also, little ones, their branches looking sticky and hot, and there was a feeling of humidity. The sun hit the front grill of his Porsche, which was parked near the window – he had parked the car at the back because near the front entrance the children would put their fingers on it.

Since Cindi was nearing the end of the first trimester, he might have sent her to Moncton – but because of what happened today, he pretended to himself not to think of it.

Earlier in the day, Savard had made a decision concerning a pregnancy. And he was convinced it was the right decision. A woman had so much fluid at seven months that her kidneys had shut down. Savard took her husband aside and said: “We
can
save the child but we
can’t
save her.”

The husband had just come from work. He had gotten a call that his wife had been taken to the hospital.

“Well, she won’t stay here,” the young man said, almost immediately. “She’s been to you before and nothing was wrong. And now yer tellin me – telling us – about it and everything,” he said, losing control, and looking about. “She won’t stay here – she’ll go down to Moncton.” And at the word Moncton, he broke down and started to cry, saying, “She’ll go to Moncton – she will – we’ll go to Moncton.” Savard did not know what to do.

He spoke in French to one of the nurses, who immediately began to rub the young man’s back tenderly. Savard did not think the woman would last an hour, and he wanted to save the child.

Just at that moment Dr. Hennessey walked out of the small supply room behind them. And Savard could not help but feel that the old doctor had been listening to everything and made his appearance just at this time as if on cue. “Well,” he said, looking down at the boy, “why do you want to go to Moncton? What in hell is there in Moncton – what’s wrong?”

Savard gave him the details about Brenda.

“Nonsense,” Hennessey said, “that’s little Brenda Corrigan – nonsense altogether.”

And when Hennessey said this, Savard felt he was being criticized because Hennessey did not like him. He felt Hennessey looked upon him as an enemy, who was “open” to “change.” There was something appealing in Hennessey – in his ability to remain unopened to change. Savard could recount a dozen times that Hennessey went contrary to opinion just because of pride.