The Seary Line (36 page)

Thumb out again. “I really want a dog, Nanny. Can you ask Mommy?”

“No, my treasure. I can't do that.”

“Why not?”

“It would be better if you asked.”

“I already did.”

“And what did she say?”

“Keep dreaming. That's what she said.”

“Oh.”

“She said she had one when she was young, and it ran off. And I told her if I got my Ribsy, it won't never run off because I'll love it.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She said it don't make no difference. Dogs is dogs. And sometimes things run off. Even if you loves them. And she said that idn't nothing a youngster should know about.”

“Oh.” Stella marked her page with a finger, ran the other hand over her forehead.

“Did she have a dog?”

“Yes, we did. Once.”

“Did it run off?”

“Ah.” Stella swallowed, glanced at the doorway again. “That was a long, long time ago. Do you want me to read on?”

“Uh-huh. But can you tell the story like it's about me? Me and my dog Ribsy?”

The first time it happened was on her wedding night. As soon as she slipped into bed, Fuller rolled over on top of her, began to twitch his hips in a tormented manner. Immediately following, Harriet howled and banged her body against the bedroom door. Perhaps it was the sounds that came from Fuller's phlegmy throat or the stressed joints on the headboard. Whatever the reason, Harriet scratched and growled and knocked until Fuller tore out of the bedroom, long underwear still unbuttoned at the front, grabbed the dog by the fur between its shoulders, and kicked her out into a vicious sleet storm, gale force winds.

From that moment, Fuller developed instant hate for Leander's loyal sidekick. When Harriet came around the following morning, icy clumps dangling from her belly, Fuller looped dirty rope around her neck, secured her to the door handle on the shed. “That'll learn you.” First sign of spring, and he built a wood and wire enclosure, lured Harriet in by dangling a scrap of meat, then latched the door with a quadruple knot, meat still in his fist. After a few weeks, Harriet had worn a three-inch groove in the dirt. Stella watched from the porch window. And for some
uncomfortable reason, that continual pacing reminded her of her mother.

The growling and moaning were relentless, but only during the act. Sometimes, Stella would find herself coated in Fuller's aggravated sweat, and he would curse such a streak that she wished herself deaf. Moon or no moon, it was irrelevant. That dog knew what was happening inside the house, and needed to complain bitterly to heaven above.

Perhaps Fuller viewed this as a confrontation, Stella never knew. But one night during mid-summer, Harriet snarled nonstop, her growl like hailstones tumbling into the ocean. With alarming calmness, Fuller went to the porch and clutched the stabber. Earlier that day, Robert had fashioned the tool, several long nails driven through an old broom handle, and used it to kill flatfish down by the wharf. Fuller balanced the stabber, coated in slime and fish guts, on his shoulder and stepped lightly out to the wire enclosure. Peeling the roof off the structure, he reached his arm in, and stabber poised, whispering, “Come here, puppy.” Fuller struck that dog over and over and over again. Noises that Stella couldn't even bear to conjure, cries that might erupt from a scalded child.

From that night on, Stella could only evoke partial images of Harriet. The thick fur of her legs, a pleasant curl in her tail, stripe of impossible white on her underbelly. But all memories of her head disintegrated. Whenever she thought of the dog, chasing gulls up and down the beach, racing beside Leander, licking Robert's sticky face, there was only a bobbing shadow where her head might have been. Layer upon layer, she had gradually willed it away. The crimson spatter, dislodged eye, blue jutting tongue, protective paw up. Gone. All washed clean. Harriet Edgecombe was no more.

Stella dug the grave herself, hid it from the children. When they returned from a night with Nettie and the cousins, she told them their father's dog had run away. Likely she was old, and ready to die. Yes. It wasn't fair. But sometimes dogs do that. Run off without warning.

They asked none of the obvious questions. Instead, Robert eyed his mother in a sideways glare, kicked the dirt, and wandered down towards the wharf. Elise darted over to Fuller, who was seated on the step of the stoop, his forehead like a storm at sea. She buried her face in the soft cotton of his shirt, steadied herself on his plump lap, arms looped around his neck. He placed one arm around her girlish waist, and through her tears, she smiled when he pressed a warm peanut butter kiss into her mouth.

“Mother?”

Stella looked up from the book.

“She's asleep. You can stop reading.”

“If you don't mind, I think I'll finish.”

“And why on earth would you do that?”

“I was enjoying the story.”

“I can give you something better than a book about some kid and his stupid dog.” Elise rolled her eyes. “You know, the older you get, the queerer you get. When will it end?”

The conclusion to their relationship was on the horizon. November 17, to be precise. They were not yet married a year.

Stella had been visiting Nettie when a wind rose up, hefty flakes patting the windows, tumbling down to the sill. By the time she was halfway home, she was practically blinded, moving through a million icy veils. Stopping just outside her gate, Stella looked upwards, eyes closed. The world made a slishing sound, as though a pair of unearthly scissors were cutting the sky away. She sensed the weight of the snow on her lashes, and for a romantic moment, she longed to stay there, gobbled up by the blizzard. But she could not give in to desire, plodded up the icy sheet of rock towards home.

When she reached the storm door with its wooden Z, her entire body looked as though she'd been rolled in flour. Behind her, the harbour had disappeared, Nettie's golden yellow house no longer glowed on the hill. Everything, save her small home, was gone, lost inside the storm.

Snow caked her coat and scarf, and dropped in mushy puddles around her feet when she stomped in the porch. Out of her boots, her feet felt naked and cold. She glanced about for her slippers. They were not by the woodstove, and she remembered placing them beside her dresser earlier as she'd tugged on a pair of woolen stockings. Stella rubbed stiffness from her neck, went to the hallway, but stopped short when she saw Elise rapping at her bedroom door.

“I wants to come in,” Elise whispered, shoulder and head leaning against the frame.

Stella could not hear the response.

“Please?” Elise rolled ninety degrees so that her entire front was pressed against the door. Mumbling, then a giggle, and, “She won't. I knows she won't.”

When Elise noticed Stella, she skittered across to her own room, quietly closed the door. Stella tore down the hall, rapped her fist against Elise's door, cried, “Don't you come
out of there, miss. Don't you come out.” Then she burst into her own room to find Fuller, squat overtop of a bucket, brown trousers around his ankles, suspenders draped across his thighs. As her reluctant eyes moved over him, she caught sight of his backside, the colour of death, and realized he was using the miniature wooden bathtub that Leander had made as an oversized chamber pot.

“What are you doing?” Her voice vibrated in her throat.

Twisted his neck around, shoulders still square. “What do it look like, maid? My business.”

“But, that's a wash basin. For a baby.”

“Don't see no babies 'round here. You got some stashed away or something?” He pulled his bottom lip in over his teeth. “What is you staring at?”

“My tub.”

“For the love of Jaysus, I could get lost out there. Is that what you wants? Who in God's name would take care of the load of you?”

“I managed.”

He chuckled now, and his backside pressed deeper into the tub, pair of fat dinner rolls squeezed. “We all seen how you managed. Acting like a mad woman down to the harbour trying to bust up the ice with a dull axe. Never seen such a sight in my life.”

Stella could feel her heart beating behind her eyes, inside her jaw. “Elise. What did she want?”

“She's at me. At me all the time. I don't know what she wants. Ask her yourself.”

Stella whipped up her slippers, clutched them to her chest. Face crinkled with the sour stench, and she strode to the door.

“Hey.”

She stopped. Hand still on the doorknob.

“What.”

“Arn Tuck brought in some steak to the store. Killed his cow. Made good on his credit.”

“Oh.”

“Cook it up right. I don't want to see no pink. If I sees pink, you'll be doing it again.”

“I knows how to cook it.”

“Pink meat'll kill you, you knows.”

“Pink meat'll kill you,” she repeated.

On the kitchen table Stella found a beige bowl, crackled glaze, chipped white plate over the top. Inside was a thick slab of meat, two-inch border of membrane and fat, pool of watery blood. She opened the door to the cellar stairs, retrieved the frying pan from the hook on the wall, an onion from the braided bundle dangling beside it.

Deep even breaths as she chopped the onion, leaned her eyes over top of it as excuse for a few tears. How had this happened? She knew, she knew, she knew. But it was so tough, insufferably tough to admit. She was afraid of Fuller. Right down to the inside of her bones. She was afraid of him.

Growing up with Percy and Amos, being married to Leander, they all allowed her to be strong and opinionated, encouraged her to fight back. Something of a luxury, this was now clear to her, as a single slap, a single fist pounding upon a table might have turned her inwards. But they often seemed amused with her snarkiness, came to expect it, even though it was all a ruse, a childish mask that covered her insecurity. Gradually, though, her insides were growing, fusing with that crisp outer shell of resilience. The woman she was had begun to transform into the woman she wore. All this, before she married Fuller. When the rules changed.