Children of the Day Read online

  Oliver paused at the bottom of the stairs in the front hall to gaze out the screen door at the town, the several narrow, tree-lined streets turned into tunnels moving with light and shadows cast by the new greenery. A shaggy-looking mongrel emerged from a yard, ambling aimlessly along. The stray had wandered into town and stayed, either because there was a bitch in heat or because someone, who should’ve known better, had fed it. The dog was marking, stopping here and there to lift its leg against a fence post, a bush fronting a yard.

  He thought about coming home at suppertime last night, wanting to take Sara to the bedroom and sit her down on the hassock. Tell her, See here, I don’t mean to cause worry, but this afternoon a man and a woman came round. From what they said, I suspect that Henri Villebrun has sold the contents of the hotel out from under me.

  During supper the kids had been jabbering all at once, it was like being in the middle of a three-ring circus, and he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Sara adding to the racket, going on a mile a minute about the meeting, telling him that he must speak strongly against the proposed closing of the school. Emilie and Ida whined to go with him and Sara agreed. At least there’d be two kids out from under her feet, she said, but he knew it as a ploy to ensure that he would come straight home.

  He’d made a spectacle of himself. Gone off half-cocked and fired his rifle into the doorsill. Scared the wits out of the kids and Sara. He wasn’t proud of that.

  The ditch beside the gravelled street was still marshy from a week of rain that had caused everything to grow in a hurry. The RCMP officer emerged from a side door of a two-storey house, wearing his scarlet jacket, which usually meant he had official business in either Winnipeg or Alexander Morris, the nearest large town, minutes away on Stage Coach Road. Constable Krooke was new in the municipality, a rookie who went by the book, and another ball of wax entirely.

  Oliver passed through the living and dining rooms, where the blinds were still drawn and the light was as serious as a Mennonite funeral. The usual clutter of crochet, dark varnished furniture seemed to be purposefully unwelcoming. As he entered the kitchen he noticed some of his kids staring at him, and others trying not to. He thought, the girls, they were out on the veranda, on the swing, and the swing was off to one side of the window—they couldn’t have seen me and Alice.

  Howdy-do, he said, not making eye contact with any of them. He went over to the washstand, in a corner of the room near to the back door, which opened up to the porch.

  He glanced at his image in the splattered mirror and saw the bachelor he’d once been, a man women had made excuses to seek out. In his mind, he wasn’t who his children took him to be—middle-aged, slightly rotund—and there were women still attracted by their father’s generous dark hair. In the eyes of his children, the way he combed it straight back from his brow, and the baggy, off-white trousers he preferred to wear, made him aged and pathetically out of fashion.

  Oliver picked up the wash basin, whose soap-curdled water had cooled, and went out through the porch. Water splashed against the earth, and he returned, stumbling on the gash in the doorsill. He felt his children’s eyes turn to him, waiting to see what he would do.

  It’s not my fault, Emilie thought, being accustomed to having fingers pointed in her direction. She hadn’t ruined the doorsill. That pale Vandal slip was Emilie, and not Emily, as teachers preferred to spell her name. Sara had once worked for a woman named Emily Ashburn. She had borrowed a blue silk scarf from the woman and failed to return it, and entered her name in a diary along with all the other names she collected for the time when she’d have children. Emilie and not Emily, as Oliver had insisted. If you’re going to saddle the girl with an old woman’s name, then at least give it some class. Which pleased Sara, as she was determined that her children’s names would be not at all like the names she’d grown up with in Russia. I named you after Emily Ashburn, a rich woman who was good to me, Sara said. But she neglected to say anything about stealing the woman’s scarf.

  Was it my fault? Emilie now wondered, beginning to question her innocence, as scapegoats are known to do. She knew she was responsible for wanting the Arizona boy, Charlie, to be outside his grandmother’s house waiting to give her a ride to school. She was responsible for having spied on her father last night, leaning forward on the veranda swing and swivelling her head to look into Alice Bouchard’s living-room window.

  Emilie’s lips tingled, and the more she struggled against it, the more a guilty smirk pulled her mouth sideways. It was understandable that she was the first to be suspected of having committed various transgressions, and that she eventually found herself owning up to them. A dot in the fry pan’s handle glowed red as she plugged it back in and began furiously scraping at congealed bits of egg. If Oliver ran off to live with his school friend, she’d go with him.

  Oliver looked into the oval frames that captured his children’s features. Strong and dainty noses, dark- and light-coloured eyes, white and coppery-tinged complexions. They seemed gratified by his embarrassment, and he understood that kids might relish catching their parents doing something wrong. Perhaps they hoped for a show of remorse, hoped he would go for his change purse in his back pocket. A dime for each of them, two-bits for Simon, whose boat he’d ruined.

  At the squeaking sound of bedsprings, Oliver glanced at the ceiling and made the sign of the cross, muttering a promise to fix the ruined doorsill. Then he handed the emptied wash basin to Ida, a frizzy-haired and high-complexioned girl a year into her teens who’d inherited Oliver’s love of skating. She was pleased to now own a flesh-coloured latex girdle, and prayed that she’d soon grow into it. She poured water from a kettle simmering on the Rangette and returned the basin to Oliver, her green eyes swerving with a mixture of pride and shyness to have been the one to do so. Evidently she hadn’t witnessed Alice’s kiss, Oliver decided, with considerable relief.

  Crack two eggs into the pan for Dad, Alvina instructed Emilie. Once Oliver was done at the washstand, it was her turn.

  No, no. Toast. Toast is all, Oliver objected, his face rising from the basin. Water dripped onto his white shirt as he groped for a towel that should have been hanging on a hook alongside the washstand mirror. You girls don’t need to bother none with eggs for me. Sugar toast will do, he said, as Ida set a towel into his hands.

  Alvina saw the troubled thoughts roaming beneath the surface of Oliver’s smooth face, his dark eyes darting about the room, looking for someplace safe to rest. Last night she had tried, unsuccessfully, to shut out her parents’ quarrel with a pillow. Burning with indignation all the while, and wanting to shout, I have exams tomorrow!

  In despair she’d crept from the house, climbed onto the shed roof and hugged her knees, imagined that the sky was made lighter by the lights of Winnipeg, that the air hummed a beckoning refrain. A refrain Alvina was ready to take up. She would disappear into a junior secretary position, if only she could pass her typing and shorthand exam. She felt the seductive draw of stillness in the grounds of the Trappist monastery west of town. A silence that sometimes drew her to a grotto there, near a creek, to plead for a means of escape. Please, please, please.

  She’d returned to bed and managed to fall asleep th rough the give-and-take of her parents’ quarrel, the long silences in between. As usual, halfway through the night Sara’s call prodded her awake, Alvinnnaa? Her siblings enjoyed the peace of oblivion while Alvina stumbled down the stairs to check if the locked doors were locked, as they always were, although no one else in Union Plains bothered.

  Alvina had seen the muscles in her father’s jaw and neck working when he came home for supper last night, while her mother, preoccupied with complaining about the ladybugs, missed the signs of his inner turmoil. She went on and on, clueless, griping about the ladybugs streaming into the house all day. She’d given up on having the kids tromp on the insects, and had dusted the sill with poison. But still they kept coming, found a way into the house by going under the sill to avoid the dust.

>   Sara had prepared a light meal, as she didn’t want Oliver to be in his usual after-supper stupor. Sit near the front, she said, so you can be seen and heard. How can closing a school be called progress? I don’t want our kids riding a school bus three hours a day. During the winter they’ll be leaving and coming home in the dark. When will they do their homework? They’ll be up half the night and tired the next day. I won’t be able to get them to bed, or out of bed. And before you go, you’ve got to do something about the bugs. I found one climbing up the flour barrel in the dining-room closet.

  His chair crashed to the floor as he leapt up from the table and went down into the cellar. The clink of cutlery and chattering of voices gave way to silence. Sara swivelled in her chair, her ear cocked towards the open cellar door. Moments later Oliver stormed up the stairs with his rifle, which he aimed and fired at the doorsill, Simon’s tugboat catching the brunt of the impact.

  Alvina didn’t know what had been worse, the deafening blast of the gun, or the animal sounds Sara made when she scrambled up onto her chair, covered her ears and screamed.

  My boat, Simon had protested in a quavering voice.

  I’ll get you another boat, Oliver said, and the floor shook beneath the force of his feet on the stairs as he descended into the cellar. He returned long moments later without the gun, his hands trembling and chest heaving as though he’d just run a mile.

  That should fix the frigging bugs, he said, and left the house, Emilie and Ida hurrying after him.

  This loony bin of a house, Alvina thought now, and dipped her hands into the water Oliver had just used. She splashed sleep from her eyes. With any luck, she’d be out of this shitty family by the end of summer.

  TWO

  Oliver going around with a shadow

  LIVER WAITED IN THE STREET in front of the house for his children to join him. I’ll walk you kids to school, he’d said, feeling that he owed them an explanation for having fired his rifle in the house.

  Boston ferns pressed against the front windows in the living room as Alvina drew the blinds. She peered out at Oliver for a moment, her hand coming up as though she might rap on the glass, and then her moon-shaped face turned away. He had to work hard these days to get that girl to smile. She’d been named after his grandmother, and had inherited her bushy dark hair. A good woman. Unfortunately, Sara and his kids hadn’t been privileged to know her.

  The house looked awkward and top-heavy. The two windows in the girls’ bedroom were like baleful eyes this morning, with the blinds half drawn. Hang on to your hat, he’d say when the wind got up and the house shook, fearing that the top floor might one day be wrenched loose. Near to twenty years ago, when he’d chosen this house, it hadn’t had a top floor. He’d been drawn to it for what it was, an unpainted two-room dwelling of split-log construction, sturdy and substantial. Its front door looked out across Union Plains and the back door opened onto the prairie. The dwelling seemed to have one foot in the wilderness and the other in society. Like Oliver, a French Cree Metis—mixed blood or half-breed, as he was sometimes called—the house appeared to be welcoming the possibilities of both worlds. Given that not a single nail had gone into its construction, he imagined that the history of the people who’d lived in it long ago was like his, one of make-do and invention.

  When for the first time he went through its two rooms and felt its tongue-and-groove floor give beneath his weight, he fancied that the dwelling had been waiting to be inhabited by the likes of him, an elastic-natured and loose-jointed man, weathered to a dusty brown. Its location so near to a string of early settlements along the Red River suggested it might have been a wintering place for hivernants who had once followed the herds.

  That possibility suited Oliver, as he’d been a cold-weather person from the start. As a boy, at first snowfall he’d run out into it immediately, and felt his blood quicken in the brittle air, anticipated the inevitable hot gush of snot cresting on his lip, its familiar taste satisfying. At the first hard frost, the bachelor Oliver had cleared a path on the river, and anyone looking towards it after sundown might have seen what appeared to be a shooting star streaking round a curve of frozen water—Oliver Vandal, his skate blades strapped onto his boots, the light of a headlamp bearing down on that black corridor of winter.

  The house had always been there, long before his time. But he hadn’t given it more than an occasional curious appraisal when passing by, until it appeared he might be faced with the possibility of raising a family in a moribund hotel. Come and see this house I found, Oliver said to Sara, and she was as eager to view it as he was to show it to her.

  The five short streets of Union Plains were laid down north to south. The abandoned house was on the edge of town, facing a rutted road that went east and west; the southerly ends of the town’s five streets butted up against it. There was one other house near it, belonging to Florence Dressler, a widow, who would become their closest neighbour. The Dressler house was a neatly kept yellow cottage, its back turned to the rough-hewn dwelling as though wanting to ignore it.

  As they neared the house, Oliver sensed Sara’s growing disquiet. What do you think? he dared to ask. They stood before it, Sara cupping her hands and blowing to warm them, the biting November wind sweeping grainy snow across the road in front of the house and down into the overgrown yard. Licks of snow climbed up the weathered wood; in the dead of winter they would grow to three- and four-foot drifts. Sara shrugged and made for the door. Oliver followed.

  She stood in the main and largest room, struck silent as she stared at drawings on a wall that would eventually become a wall in her kitchen.

  Pictures, Oliver explained, unnecessarily. He’d asked round and learned that, years ago, a family of Assiniboine had squatted for a short time before being encouraged to move on. Likely the pictures were their doing. The drawings were red, and looked as though they’d been made by very young and artistically inept children. Stick men mounted on horses shot arrows into a herd of buffalo. In another, men killed each other with lances and arrows.

  An Indian war party, Oliver said, when Sara wrapped her arms about herself and shivered.

  A killing, she said.

  We’ll throw on some whitewash. Is all she needs. For sure, I know there’s mouse dirt and the rabbits have got in, he continued, when she didn’t seem convinced. The house, she has somewheres to go, he allowed.

  From what little he knew of Sara, Oliver sensed that potential inspired hope. That was why, like most immigrants, she’d come to this country in the first place. For a new life. For the reason of hope.

  We’ll get a Quebec heater for the small room, a cook-stove in here, he said, and you’ll see, we’ll be snugger than a bug in a rug.

  He began pacing, his hands slicing the air as he spoke too quickly for her to fully comprehend; nor had she understood the concept of snugness in a rug. The two rooms would be filled with fiddle music, he said, and sit-down dancers, when his St. Boniface relations came visiting in winter. He vowed that he and Sara would cross the Red River to the French side to attend the winter carnivals, the snowshoe, horse and dog races a new priest in the parish of Ste. Agathe had taken to organizing. Go from house to house on New Year’s Eve, and celebrate the French way, as he used to do, firing his rifle into the wind, begging the favour of a drink and a kiss. I have relations coming out of my ears up and down the river, he told her. As far south as St. Joe and Pembina. The Carons, Berthelets, Branconniers, Dubois, St. Germains, Delormes. He recited the names, the syllables like a church bell tolling across the snowbound land.

  No guns. There won’t be any guns here, Sara interrupted, as though laying down a condition to her agreeing to make the house their home.

  She had promised her older sister, Katy, there would be no guns. No crosses either, she now added, meaning crucifixes on the walls. No strong drink. No dancing, she said, reminding him of who she was, a Mennonite, one of a people who throughout the centuries had fled various countries for the freedom to practise the
ir religious beliefs. Russia having been the latest country. Thousands of German-speaking Mennonites like Sara had called Russia home for over a hundred years, and then had been forced to flee, following the revolution.

  You don’t say, Oliver said, after a moment of silence.

  But Katy didn’t say we shouldn’t do That, Sara said. Her smile was a suggestive one as she spoke, her grey eyes a radiant hardness beneath the brim of her hat. You and I know the things we’ve done, her eyes told him. Her felt hat was the colour of pigeons, its band of feathers iridescent shades of blue. It was too large and the rim rode low on her forehead, making her eyes look perpetually watchful.

  Her hips shifted beneath her dark wool coat as she went to the open door, the pear shape of her bottom emerging when she stooped to pick up a wooden crate. She set it down in the centre of the room, stepped onto it so that she might look Oliver eye to eye. Then she raised her arm and proclaimed in German, There will be no drinking! You must not have any fun!

  Although Oliver knew she was mocking, he heard her sister Katy’s admonitions echo in the frost-tinged walls. It wasn’t necessary for him to understand German to know that Sara’s people considered him to be rough around the edges. She stood with her hands at her hips, looking down at him for a moment, before stepping off the crate. Her round young cheeks were rosy from the crisp air, her small pink mouth turned up with the beginning of a self-conscious smile. He remembered the incredible softness of her skin next to his, her heat; the blue crepe dress she wore beneath the coat—a new dress, he’d noticed before they’d set out—its tiny pearl buttons marching up between the mounds of her breasts, which were surprisingly full and heavy for such a small woman.