Sylvanus Now (32 page)

“My, I haven’t scrubbed the floor in days,” she said.

“Looks cleaner than mine,” said Adelaide, taking in the canvas, scuffed clean of its paint in places, and the floorboards, uneven from their years of settling into the bedrock beneath them, now worn through in some places. “Not enough you’re sick, you got to start worrying about your floors, too, now, do you?” she chided.

Eva smiled, laying back her head, stroking the fringed ends of the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders, her rocker creaking beneath her. Nothing much got her goat these days, thought Adelaide, when the rocker ceased creaking and it appeared the old woman dozed. But ought not something be stirring on that gentle, resting face over this threat of upheaval, of leaving her house, her precious garden?

“You seems awful calm about this resettlement plan,” she said quietly as Eva fluttered awake.

“Hard enough it is on Syllie. He don’t need to see me bawling.”

Adelaide was about to chide her again, but paused, caught by the old woman’s eyes, their light grey faded almost to transparency as they gazed at her, her dark brow the only remnants of colour remaining on that thin, papery face. Leaning forward, she asked with sudden concern, “How old are you, Eva?”

Eva sighed. “Not good getting a fright at your age, my maid—” and broke off in a fit of coughing.

“My age indeed,” sniffed Adelaide. “If the old was that smart, you’d think they’d take better care of themselves— out hauling turnips, damp weather like this.” A smattering of rain struck against the window, followed by a sudden downpour. “Well, sir,” she exclaimed, lifting the edge of the curtain, “that’s not going to end for a while. That settles it, then, no more gardening for you today. Why don’t you lie down, take a nap?”

Eva was leaning back, her eyes closed. Yawning, Adelaide, too, sat back, relishing the comfy old chair and the rain drumming the window.

“It’s nights like this he comes back,” said Eva quietly.

“That who comes back?”

“Never nice out when he comes. Always raining or storming. No, I’m not going daft,” she murmured, her eyes still closed, seeing nothing of the startled look on her daughter-in-law’s face. “He comes back, is all,” she added, slowly. “Not so’s I see him. He comes late. And he sits here, in this rocker and rocks for a bit. Used to be I’d creep out from my room, a bit scared, when I first started hearing the chair creaking. But there was never nobody there, just the chair, rocking a little, like someone just got up.”

She paused, only the rain sounding on the window. “I don’t come running no more now when I hears him. I leaves him alone. I figure if it’s me he’s coming for, he’d stay. Or else visit me in my bed—or the yard. But it was always his to sit up alone and watch out the window on stormy nights—like he was keeping watch for us all, I used to torment him.” She opened her eyes, catching Adelaide’s startled look. “It’s not a ghost story, Addie. Lord, he’d be the one spooked seeing me after all them years.” She grinned, running the tips of her fingers over her fissured cheeks.

Adelaide shifted, uncertain. “Well, what is it, if it’s not a ghost?”

“A spirit, I suppose, maid. Ghost haunts. A spirit don’t haunt. Most times a spirit is haunted himself, and that’s why he comes back. He’s looking for something. Or perhaps just to give comfort.”

“Well, if he’s not coming to comfort, what’s he looking for? And how do you know it’s him—and not Elikum, I mean?”

“Because there’s always a little drop of water after he leaves. Right there,” she added, leaning forward and glancing at the floor beneath her feet.

Adelaide shivered. “Oh, my, Eva!”

“Nothing to worry about, my maid. He was never laid to rest like Elikum. Never given the Lord’s blessing. That’s why he’s haunted, why he’s not at rest.”

“Well, you could’ve still given him the Lord’s bless-ing—said prayers for him.”

“I could’ve,” said Eva lowly. “I could’ve given him prayers. Marked his grave. Everyone wanted to. But— ooh, I don’t know, girl. For the longest time I kept hoping he’d walk out of the woods someday—like Syllie done that evening. Even though I seen him go.” Her eyes flitted restlessly around the room. “Then I kept seeing him underneath the water somewhere, like a lost salmon, trying to find the river water that spawned him. Not a morning for years I didn’t prowl that shoreline, looking for him. Then, by the time I got used to knowing he’d never come ashore—well, then he started his visits. And I couldn’t give that up, either.”

She leaned forward, her hands clammy, shaking as they clutched Adelaide’s. “That’s why, when I dies, I wants you to bury my man, too—to stand over his grave and say prayers,” she whispered. “Listen to me. No, really listen,” she said strongly as Adelaide nodded reassuringly. “I got his coat—his one good one. And his gun. I want them put in the box alongside of me, then say prayers over us both. It’s what I request from you—bury us both, then have Syllie mark our grave with a cross for each of us. I can’t say this to anybody else—they’ll think I’ve gone daft, taking a gun to my grave—and they’re welcome to think what they wants, as long as I’m not around to hear it. So, you promise me now, Addie, promise you’ll make Syllie bide by my wishes. He’ll listen to you.”

Held into place by the urgency in the old woman’s eyes, Adelaide could do nothing but nod. “Not much to promise, is it?” she asked, her words thick in her throat.

Eva kept hold of her hand. “I won’t go far from this house, Addie. I’ll winter it out in Ragged Rock for the boys’ sake, because for sure they won’t go nowhere without me. But soon as the ice breaks, I’m coming home. Coming home and keeping his house going, so’s he got something to watch out for.”

“Well, sir, I’m starting to think I’m a haunt myself,” gasped Adelaide. “Don’t nobody hear nothing I says? Didn’t I say I wasn’t moving? And here you got us all paddling through the neck.”

Eva shook her head. “Be no place here for you when everybody else moves.”

“Sounds perfect to me,” cried Adelaide. “I’d be happy as a clam with nobody nosying about.”

Eva sighed. “Addie,” she said, her voice nearly spent, “just listen. I’m moving in with Manny, I already told him. Please, listen,” she begged. “It’ll be hard on Syllie. But that’s where you steps in. He hates Ragged Rock, and so do you. So, go on, somewhere—up Hampden. Find a nice place you—” She lapsed, overtaken by a spurt of coughing.

Taking advantage of the moment, Adelaide rose, helping her to her feet. “It’s you who ought to be taking it hard,” she scolded, “not we, the young and in good health. Take on anything when you’re young, I learned that from the flakes. Thought I’d die that first summer, but I survived it and would’ve survived the plant, too, if I’d had to. But not you. Different with the old. Something about the mind, I think. After it’s lived in a place long enough, it starts becoming part of all else around it. Least, that’s what it feels like to me. And it makes for a bad fit, then, when you’re wrenched out of it and put somewhere else. For gawd’s sake, will you lie back,” she commanded, as Eva, sitting on the edge of the daybed, kept trying to talk over her coughing. “No, I won’t listen, you’ve talked enough. Now, lie back and stop worrying, I already told you I’m not leaving the arm, either, so you got nothing to worry about.”

Eva lay back resignedly. “Be nothing to worry about soon,” she said, patting her heart.

“Lord, now she’s burying herself!”

“A well-laid plan, like I said.”

“A well-made bed is what you’re getting—leastways for the day,” said Adelaide, tucking her shawl around her, pulling it up to her chin.

“Don’t smother me, for gawd’s sake.”

“Oh, now, Miss Fuss. Lie still. I gets some Vicks and rubs it on your chest. You got some flannel?”

Eva was dozing off by the time Adelaide had found a piece of red flannel and the Vicks bottle. Scrawny as a bird, she thought, gently loosening the old woman’s dress and tugging it away from her chest. After she’d rubbed on the strong-smelling salve and covered it with flannel, she tucked Eva back in again and sat back in the chair, sipping her hot toddy.

“A well-laid plan, eh, Eva?” she asked quietly as the old woman slept. She gazed at the rain plinking against the window, thinking back on the skinny-kneed girl, sitting, dreaming on a church pew. Now, why hadn’t she, smart as she was and full of dreams, figured something as simple as a well-laid plan?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE SEEDLING MOTHER

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
Adelaide stood in her mother’s kitchen for the first time since the last burial a good two years earlier. Florry was finishing chopping the last stalk of rhubarb and scraping the pile already chopped into a pot. She laid down her knife, wiping her hands in her apron.

“Janie, get some water for the pot and put that rhubarb on the stove,” she said. “And don’t go picking it apart, either.”

Janie was searching through the bottom drawer, pulling out a rolling pin. She rose, lanky as a young colt and standing a head taller than Adelaide, took the pot of chopped rhubarb, and dumped them on the table instead.

“Now, what did I just say?” cried Florry, but she was immediately distracted by a youngster’s ball smacking against the window from outside. “Young buggers,” and she scurried out the back door, hollering at the boys hooting and singing out in the backyard.

Making a sour face at their mother’s back, Janie gave Adelaide a shy smile and continued discarding the small and thick cubes, tossing the medium-sized ones back into the pot. Adelaide gave her a sympathetic look, struck by the resemblance of her sister’s oval face to her own, her deepened blue eyes pitted with impatience, and the defiant, uplifted chin. Women, thought Adelaide with some surprise, her sisters had become women.

She glanced across the kitchen. Ivy stood before a mirror over the washstand, plying her dark, shiny hair into a ponytail that trailed down over one shoulder, her breasts fully curving the front of her knit pullover, and ochre lips staining a face smooth as ivory. Mimicking the same sour face toward their mother, she joined Janie sorting the rhubarb, whispering something that brought a flush of red to Janie’s cheeks.

“Janie’s got her eye on a man,” Ivy whispered loudly to Adelaide.

“Oh, right,” said Janie, pulling another sour face and slapping her sister’s hand playfully.

Adelaide grinned. “I’m surprised you’re not married,” she said to Ivy. “You must be all of twenty.”

Ivy gave a mock shiver. “I’ll be far from here if I ever gets married. I’m trying to get Janie to quit the plant and come with me to Deer Lake. I knows we can get work at Croaker’s Inn,” she added with emphasis, looking to Janie. “We could get a room between us.”

“Nope, you can go make all the beds you wants, but I’m not,” said Janie. “Rather work the plants.”

“Rather make Jordie’s bed, she means,” said Ivy aside to Adelaide.

“All the sweeter,” said Janie with a tilt of her chin. “Too scared to live by yourself in a city, that’s why you wants me with you.”

“Right,” said Ivy. “I spent enough time there this past few years to get my bearings. For sure people don’t bother me; fishermen and loggers, that’s all you’ll find on this island, fishermen and loggers. A few fancy people strutting around, but they’re eating salt fish for breakfast, just like the rest of us. Bet you’d come with me if you weren’t married, wouldn’t you, Addie?”

Adelaide glanced away from her sisters, her smile more shy than Janie’s had been earlier. Her sisters. Yet she felt a timid stranger before them, despite their quick glances and asides, including her in their chatter. Her chest swelled with an overwhelming gratitude. Feigning interest in the mounting shrieks and cries from the yard, she turned to the window, absently watching the ruckus outside, feeling undeserving of her sisters’ intimacy when, only a short time ago, it was she, Adelaide, out there ranting, and they, Ivy and Janie, the most likely recipients of her fury.

“Bet it’s nice,” she said. “Deer Lake. Not on the water, no flakes and fish plants.”

“Yup, real nice,” said Ivy. “And the cook’s from Hampden. She’ll get me on soon, watch if she don’t. I told her I’d keep her going in decent fish if she gets me on. Christ, you should see the bad fish they gets—buys it from Corner Brook, and nothing but cullage. I wouldn’t eat it, sir. And them businessmen, they haven’t got a clue they’re eating cullage.”

“There you go, two jobs,” said Adelaide. “Trading good-grade fish from Cooney Arm to stores in Deer Lake and working in the inn as well.”

Ivy grimaced. “Enough flies around me now, without dragging around quintals of old salt fish.”

“Then get somebody else to drag it for you—somebody with a truck. All you needs is a well-laid plan, my maid,” Adelaide added with a grin, her mind back on the hillock, sitting beside the cellar door with Eva.

Janie laughed. “It’d have to be a well-laid plan if Ivy was going to make it in business. She fared worse than me in school. You was the only smart one in the family,” she ended, blue eyes flashing at Adelaide.

A burst of shrieks from outside interrupted them, followed by a loud obscenity from one of the boys. Both Ivy and Janie grinned, and as the rising tenor of their mother’s cries overrode the youngsters’, they rolled their eyes and groaned in unison. The back door flew open, and Florry bustled inside, shivering from the late-September air.

“The young bugger, that Johnnie is,” she cried, kicking off her slippers, dirtied from the wet grass. “Brazen as anything he’s getting, and making Alf the same as hisself. Well, what’s she doing? Now what’d I tell you,” she sang out, toddling across the kitchen like an oversized youngster at the sight of the rhubarb spilled out on table. “Foolishness, foolishness, that’s all that is. Here, put it in the pot, all of it!” she ordered, scooping up the rhubarb.

“No! Wait—stop it!” cried Janie. “I won’t make them, I won’t make no pies,” she warned, standing back helplessly as her mother kept dumping the rhubarb into the pot.

“It’s all the same, I tell you, young, old, all the same. You mind now,” Florry called out as Ivy muttered an oath across the room. “It’s only foolishness, is all. Mother never picked apart a bit of rhubarb in her life.”