Five Roses (11 page)

She would have to undo the bolts that joined the parts of the loom. She clutched the wrench tight, but the first bolt wouldn't budge. She tried another, leaning her weight against the wrench, and sent it flying, smashing her hand into wood. “Ow!
Merde!
” She squeezed her hand in her armpit, then took up the wrench again, more gingerly. She tried another bolt. Crawled beneath the breast beam. Each bolt seemed to have been fused in place.

She stood with her hands hanging useless, unsure what to do next. She'd expected to take the loom apart and carry the pieces through the woods to the road by four o'clock. The harnesses were too heavy and the loom wouldn't come apart. It was a wide-legged skeleton, too unwieldy to manoeuvre out the door.

Her stomach grumbled. She'd made lunch for herself and Kenny but had forgotten it in the van. She knew there would be some food in the cabin — in the Mason jars on the shelves by the stove. She couldn't wait until four o'clock to eat. She strode to the cabin and shoved against the door. She ignored the sofa and the table, looking only at the jars. Kidney beans, split peas, rice, oats.

She didn't want to light a fire but she was so hungry. If she didn't eat, she wouldn't be able to carry the heavy harnesses through the trees. She grabbed the axe from behind the door. A tree stump served as a chopping block. She propped a log upright, her hands and arms remembering the movements. She wedged the axe in the log, knocked the log on the stump. One more knock and the log split in half. She split the pieces again, gathered the kindling, scooped twigs off the ground. Dry pine needles, yes. That would start a fire.

Rose waited in the trees by the road. She'd staggered along the path with a harness on her shoulder — only one. There were four.

She needed Kenny to help. Where
was
he? She'd already waited so long that she could have walked back to the shed for the wood crate she'd stacked with reeds, shuttles, and bags of yarn. She bit the skin around her thumbnail. The loom was still in one awkward piece. If they turned it on its side, maybe they could angle it through the shed door. Or maybe not. She couldn't tell.

She heard a car in the distance and leaped across the ditch to wave, then scrambled back into the trees when she saw two vehicles. She hid behind a cedar, but they still slowed and stopped. A door slammed and she heard Kenny. “Hey, thanks, I appreciate it. She should be here soon. Why don't you wait and say hi?”

Through the cedar branches Rose saw a red car in front of the van. She didn't recognize the driver until he turned his head to peer into the trees. Jerome. Armand's do-nothing son — who had, however, spotted her. He opened the car door and stepped out. “Hi, Rose.”

Kenny still scanned the trees. She walked out from behind the cedar, surprising him. His jeans were muddy, his thick hair raked to one side. “Sorry, Rose, I know I'm late, but I couldn't find the place. Did you take down the rag I tied?”

Rose had forgotten about the rag. But he was right, it was gone.

“Yeah,” Jerome said. “Your friend here was lost.”

Rose expected Kenny to object that he hadn't been lost, but he only grinned. She saw him as he would appear in a story Jerome would tell over supper tonight: a soft-fleshed city boy trying to fish minnows. Not even smart enough to stay out of the mud. Armand would be sitting at the table, listening. Jerome would describe her, too — in her silly capris, ankles scratched, hoping no one would notice she'd come to Rivière-des-Pins. How stupid could she be?

Kenny said, “Man, was I lost! I'm lucky Jerome helped me. He knew who you were right away. Even though you left, Rose, people still remember you.”

Remember
her
? People in Rivière-des-Pins still remembered how Maman's parents died — one coughing to death without even the benefit of oxygen, the other in a field under the wide open sky. When Rose was a child, people had told her. Had told her, too, how Maman left for Montreal and returned with a baby. Not for a minute did anyone ever forget that Rose was that baby. When she was four years old, then fourteen, then twenty-four, she would always be the baby Maman had borne in secret in Montreal. And who was her father? Who? People squinted at Rose as if she must know but was too stubborn to volunteer the details.

Kenny was explaining how he'd driven up and down the road looking for the rag.

“I would have seen you,” Rose said. “I've been waiting for a while.”

“When I couldn't find the rag I went down some other roads. Then I couldn't find this one again. There aren't any signs.”

Of course there weren't signs. Strangers didn't belong on these back roads. Rose wished that Kenny would stop talking — and that Jerome would leave.

Jerome peered past her into the woods. “So you came to get your loom.”

What else had Kenny told him? Everyone in Rivière-des-Pins would know before nightfall.

“Is that it?” Kenny pointed at the harness she'd leaned against a maple.

“That's a part,” Rose said. Could he try any harder to look stupid?

“How are you going to carry your loom all the way out here?” Jerome asked.

“We'll manage,” Rose said. And to Kenny, “We should go while we've still got light.” He was such a city boy that he might not realize there weren't streetlights hanging off the trees.

“I'll put this in the van.” Kenny hopped across the ditch for the harness but didn't expect the heavy sway of the heddles when he lifted it. “Jee-zus!”

“Need help?” Jerome asked.

“Thanks, bro. I've got it.”

Jerome leaned against his car. “I can't figure out why you're in such a rush to drive back tonight. You've got a cabin.”

“That's what I was telling Rose —”

“No. We're not staying here.”

Still hopeful, Kenny said, “My buddy said I could have the van for the weekend.”

“It's not yours?” Jerome gave it a slow once-over.

“Nope.” Kenny obviously didn't know that, in the country, not owning your own wheels meant you were socially retarded.

“Come on,” Rose said, turning to head into the woods.

Kenny slammed the van doors. “Got my marching orders. See you around, eh?”

Rose heard Jerome start his car and the crunch of gravel as he drove off. She walked quickly, impatient to get the loom and leave. Her steps were quiet, but Kenny scuffed and stumbled as if there weren't even a path. The sun wouldn't set for three hours, although here among the trees, with the light filtered through the branches, shapes were already beginning to lose definition. The trees grew close. The loom would be bulky and difficult to carry.

“Rose … don't you like Jerome?”

“He's not a friend.”

“He sounded really interested when I said who you were.”

“What did you say?”

“That you used to live in a cabin in the woods with your mom, who passed away. He knew right away who I meant.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

He wouldn't have had to tell Jerome much. Jerome would have enough of a story describing Kenny. Even if he didn't tell his father directly, Armand would hear. There would be gossip in the village or his wife might tell him. Rose had always believed it was his wife who found out about her and Armand. Or maybe one of his sons. Someone who'd been walking in the woods and had glimpsed the unlikely movement of bodies among the branches and foliage. She couldn't bear to think it might have been Maman.

Kenny lumbered behind her, huffing. “There's perch in that lake, did you know? I caught a couple, but they were so little, I threw them back.”

The path opened into the clearing of tall maples that circled the cabin.

“Wow,” Kenny breathed. “Cool.”

The cabin was not cool. There was no toilet or electricity. You had to pump water from the well, light a fire to cook and to heat.

“Come.” She crossed the clearing to the shed. “I'll show you the loom.”

They tipped the loom on its side and tried with one edge, then the other, butting its splayed wooden angles against the unyielding rectangle of the doorway. Kenny suggested they carry the pieces they could to the van — the remaining harnesses and the beams. Every time they stepped from the woods onto the road and he unlocked the van doors, Rose imagined someone spying through the trees, though there wasn't a house close enough and they would have seen a parked car.

“But what about the loom?” she asked Kenny.

“Let me think.”

The sun had already dropped behind the trees. Above the clearing the sky was still blue, but at ground level dusk was grey. Mosquitoes whined around their heads, though they'd sprayed themselves with the repellent Kenny had brought.

He squinted at the loom with its front corner thrust from the doorway. They'd managed to detach the treadles, which he kept calling pedals, but that hadn't made the boxy frame of the loom any smaller. Inside the shed it was already dark. “I don't know, Rose. Nothing's moving tonight. Either we head back to Montreal or we sleep here and figure this out tomorrow.”

“I don't want —” she began.

He raised a palm. “I know you don't want to stay in the cabin. I'm talking about your loom. How badly do you want it? Tomorrow … I don't know. We'll figure out something. But it makes no sense to drive all the way to Montreal and come back tomorrow. That'll just waste time.”

Rose stared at the obstinate loom stuck in the doorway. She'd already bought the yarn for her first project — a gold-and-brown herringbone bolster to match the satin cover on Yushi's bed. She hadn't thought it would be so hard to move the loom. She'd imagined having it in her studio, with its view of the canal, as early as this evening.

Barely moving her lips, she said, “You have to sleep on the couch.”

“Sure.” Kenny tilted his head. “Is that what's bothering you? Hey.” He lifted three fingers. “No monkey business. Scout's honour.”

That meant she would have to sleep in Maman's bed — as Maman had when she returned from Montreal, sleeping in the bed where her parents had once slept. The hypnotism of patterns repeating.

Mouth tight, resolved now, Rose strode to the cabin and shoved the door open. She knew there was no gas left in the Coleman lantern. She'd finished it last fall. She reached behind the cutlery in the drawer of the table for the emergency candles. As she dripped melted wax onto two plates to fix the candles, Kenny said, “What can I do?”

“Chop wood.” She pointed at the axe behind the door.

She held a candle to the Mason jars. Rice. And a can of tuna. She grabbed a pot for water and followed Kenny outside. The metal hee-haw of the pump screeched, but the water spurted fresh and cold. When she stopped, the woods were so silent she realized that anyone listening would have heard the rusty cry of the pump and Kenny's blows with the axe.

Back in the cabin, she stared at the rocker with the rope seat. The plank steps that led to the hole in the ceiling that opened into the small attic bedroom. On the wall hung a crucifix Maman had kept in memory of her parents. Rose had never seen her pray. More useful, she'd said, was the fly swatter hooked on a nail by the door.

Here I am
, Rose thought. Though it wasn't the same. She would sleep at the head of the stairs where the roof slanted close over the iron bedstead. She would sit in Maman's chair at the table and let Kenny sit in hers.

The door crashed open with Kenny breathing heavily, clasping an armload of wood. He tumbled the long wedges onto the floor by the stove. “You want more?”

“Yes.” She bent to the stove.

At supper Kenny said little. His hair was still raked at a slant. Either the silence in the cabin — only the sounds of their eating and the snapping of the fire — kept him silent or he was too tired to talk. When he asked about a toilet, she directed him to the outhouse behind the cabin. “But if you only have to pee, go in the trees.”

She'd forgotten how much longer it took simply to cook rice when you couldn't turn on a tap or a stove dial. After they ate, she washed the dishes in the water she'd heated on the stove. Kenny dried. Each gesture was exaggerated by wavering shadows and light.

She opened the chest where she kept her sheets and woven blanket, and tossed them on the sofa for Kenny. He fingered the ribbed blanket. “Wow, this is real old-timey Quebec. My grandma had blankets like this. They're made from rags ripped into strips.”

“I know, I made it.” She turned to the stairs, the flannel pajamas she'd taken from the chest under her arm. She didn't want to think about him sleeping on the couch. Alone in the cabin together was already closer than she wanted them to be. Eating in the silence, handing him the plates and forks to dry, hearing the stream of his pee against a tree outside.

“Rose, stop.” He waited until she looked at him. “I want to thank you. I love sleeping in the woods. It's one of my absolutely favourite things to do.”

Was it the candlelight or emotion? His eyes gleamed bright. “Okay,” she breathed, not sure what else to say. Was he really that excited about staying in the cabin?

She carried a candle up the stairs. Each step creaked. No one had walked here since she'd left last fall. Light yawned up the slant of the gabled ceiling. Heat from the stove had risen, so the attic was warm. She undressed quietly. Didn't answer when Kenny called, “G'night! Good dreams!” She didn't want him to hear how close they were in the small cabin. She could hear a spark pop in the stove. His body shifting on the sofa.

She blew out the candle and slid between the sheets onto the sagging mattress. She'd been afraid that being in the cabin would deepen the emptiness she felt between its walls, but the weight of Maman's blanket comforted her. In the pillow she could smell the faint scent of Maman's hair. The anxiety of the day came to rest under the steeply angled ceiling.