The Seary Line (7 page)

She made no move to stop him when he eased through the door and walked in. He sat at her table, and waited for her to finish. Scraping the pot, she topped up the last jar, wiped each one with a damp cloth, and flipped up the glass lids, snapped them shut with the metal lever. Then she cleaned her hands, dried them in her apron, a black fabric, stark white flowers embroidered around the edges.

Still, she never spoke, and busied herself making tea. Uncle couldn't bring himself to look directly at her – only parts of her – the small puff on the shoulders of her dress, her narrow back, calves, unblemished shoes, and trim ankles. And then his mind spat up an image of his wife's ankles, almost splitting their seams, her kitchen shoes, so distended, bunion feet bulging.

She laid a cup of tea in front of him, and his hands went for it. There was something different in her face now, a hint of pity, and he did not find it unpleasant.

“What do you want here, Willard?”

“I don't know,” he said. And he honestly didn't.

But he did know what had pointed the way. The event that had rudely driven him into foul discontentment. He knew. Precisely. Something so small, so insignificant, if he told her now, she would surely think him senile. In fact, he wondered about that himself, if he was slowly going mad.

It happened in the springtime when he was bringing in armloads of wood – Uncle noticed an enormous brown scale adhering to the underside of one junk. A cocoon of sorts, he thought, and he set the log aside. Every few days he would lift the log and peer at the brown fuzzy patch. Sometimes he would stroke the tough exterior with his finger, marveling at the level of protection the insect had created. He was curious what would emerge, and checked the progress frequently. But nothing happened.

Uncle knew something about the life cycle of the creatures sharing his farm, and he decided he had given the insect plenty of time to hatch. One afternoon, when he was alone, he bent down on his knees, took the log in his hands, and peeled away the cocoon. Larger than a thumbprint, he placed it on his palm, turned the fibrous bundle over and over. Ingenious, he thought, sealed completely shut, no escape route. Uncle tugged away the tough layers, felt a pang of disappointment when there was only a shelled creature inside, development arrested. Then, when he pinched the shell gently, it exploded, shooting liquid, the brilliant colour of spring grass, across his hand, up over his wrist, onto his chin. He threw the casing and the stringy casket as far as he could, swiped the watery remains
of the insect on his pant legs.

That night he dreamt he was a young man again. He was naked, appeared fit, but his stomach began to convulse and threads spewed from his mouth, coiled his body in layer upon layer of dirty twine. Berta was beside him, smoothing the shell, whistling all the while, and once encased, he was relaxed, happy. But soon it soured. Confined and bathed in a jaundiced light, he sensed he was softening, felt his throat beginning to swallow an endlessly available liquid. Panic stabbed him, and he pressed against the sides of the casing, but could not budge. Soon he was gasping. Choking. And somewhere in the distance, above the faded whistling, he heard a sharp shovel wounding a plot of wet earth.

Uncle awoke, sweating, cramped legs wrapped in a sheet. He got up, dressed, and went for a drink from the jug in the kitchen. Glancing at the ceiling, the papered walls, he suddenly felt trapped, stunted, had the urge to strip off his clothes, peel off his skin, and flee. But he had simply stood, staring at the wrinkled cotton towel hanging near the stove, and wondering how to go back in time.

“Willard. Willard?” Firmness in her voice, a firmness he needed.

Uncle's cup and saucer rattled in his hand. She was the only person on the earth who called him by his name.

“You okay?”

He watched the steam from his cup rise straight up, ascending towards heaven.

“You're so pale. Would you like–”

“Don't,” he whispered, then put his hands on his lap, leaned his chest into the table.

“Don't what?”

“Try.”

“Try what, Willard?” Her back was straight now,
pressed against her seat. “You're sitting here in my home. At my table. I'm just trying to be hospitable.”

“Don't. I don't deserve it.”

“You're right. You don't deserve it.” She took a long slurp of her tea. “It's all just foolishness, anyway. Utter foolishness. This life. Our tangled story – or lack of a story. I feel like a silly old woman, Willard. All these years.” Her voice was an undercurrent, invisible, overtaking him. “What's wrong with me? How come I never stopped?”

“Stopped?”

“You know what I'm talking about. I should've moved on. There was certainly plenty of opportunity.”

He closed his eyes. “Of course.” There would have been.

“But I couldn't. I never stopped.”

“Stopped.”

She whispered now, body slumped. “Never stopped believing I was yours.”

With these words, Uncle gathered himself up and pulled himself in. He squeezed his face, his shoulders, his behind, his legs and toes as hard as he could. A horrible tightness gripped every vein in his body, constricting the blood, constricting his heart, constricting the blast of emotion that throttled him. He was unable to speak, and stood up, stumbled from her home. Falling through the fields, the grass twined around his legs, claiming him.

He made it to the fence, their shared fence, and stopped at the gate. He had touched that gate untold times over the years, but never lifted the latch, never tested the metal hinges. With as deep a breath as he could muster, he pushed it open. The wood was nearly rotted, but it moved effortlessly, not a single squeak.

Bending over, he gripped his knees with his hands, tried
to calm himself. It was then that he noticed the hinges. So new-looking. Not a single speck of rust. He tilted closer, knocked them, then peered at the shimmer on his knuckles. A faint smell of grease tweaked his nose. Left alone, nature would have destroyed them. Instead, someone had been tending to those hinges all these years.

He sat down there, in the opening between the two properties, one bent leg leaning to the north towards Annabelle's, and one to the south towards his own home. Divided. Uncle leaned his head against the gatepost and allowed his lids to droop.

She came upon him like this, placed a pale hand on his bristly mottled cheek and began to weep. He never made it home.

Even though Delia Abbott was on the tips of her toes, face pressed up against the window, she still could not see the beach. And to this day, it irritated her. Her husband owned a decent piece of land, and she could never understand why he chose to build their home where he did. While there had been many level areas, he had selected a small patch of struggling woods in the upper northeast corner. He cleared a path to the centre, felled the trees, then sawed them into logs and stacked them. The summer before they married, he and his father had built the saltbox home and the small shed beyond.

“Don't see why more don't do this,” he had said after the work was completed. “Breaks up the wind for one thing, and 'tis a bit more grand, if you asks me. Living in a forest.”

But Delia didn't agree.

Forest was a stretch. Grand was preposterous. Instead, they lived among a cluster of straggly spruce twigs that never flourished in the cold salty winds that tore through them. Underfoot, there was a never-ending supply of fallen needles, roots and knobs, and the ground was perpetually moist. To some extent, the trees did keep out the wind, but
she also felt they somehow kept her in. She suspected that this was Percy's real wish – to protect her, hide her away from any peril that could walk, without care, right up to their doorstep.

Just once did she confess she didn't like it. Told him that only late afternoon sun could slant sufficiently to find its way to her windows. Said although her laundry did have a pleasant woodsy odour in summer, more often than not, it was graced with daubs of turpentine, a scattered whitish smear from overhead birds. And most importantly, she explained, she couldn't see when the ladies were strolling up and down the lane. There was no opportunity to invite someone in, have a moment to gossip, and she often wondered if her life was lonelier because of it.

She was about to suggest thinning out the trees, but Percy appeared so deflated with her complaints, and she immediately regretted saying anything. Then he stared at her with a curious expression, and it made her question if he thought she'd become somewhat spoiled since they were married. So, she let it go.

Percy was not only mistaken about those trees, he was mistaken on another account as well. Since the day they'd met, he'd treated her as though she were something far more fragile than she really was. Sometimes she felt like an enormous speckled porcelain spaniel, similar to the ones sitting so primly on her bedside table. In the fickle eyes of fate, that had surely been a blunder. Shielding her like he did. She didn't blame him, really, though she firmly believed that by tangling the trail, he had lured calamity towards her.

She began to feel ill a few years into their marriage. As she plucked weeds or kneaded bread, she noticed her arms weaker than they should have been. Throbbed after only a few minutes work. When she stood quickly, sometimes her
knees would buckle, and she would fall, leaving oval bruises and a shock that resonated in her pelvis. More than once Percy had found her like that, and she lied to him. Said that she was such a devout Christian, occasionally the need for prayer simply brought her down. Then the stomach troubles, too embarrassing to mention to Percy. And the tedious weight loss. No matter how much she ate, she sensed her body was starving.

Over the years, Dr. Barnes would come and go, though he was never able to reach a diagnosis. Once, she heard him say to her husband under his breath, “She's a woman with a delicate constitution.” She remembered Percy nodding pleasantly, as though Dr. Barnes were confirming an inkling he'd held all along. He liked to fix things, and it seemed to suit him better to be joined to someone broken.

Harrumph, she thought as she paced in front of the window and tried to find a crack of light amongst the clump of trees that had swallowed her. Even though her upper arm was not much bigger than her wrist, she still considered herself to be a tough old bird. Lesser women would have shriveled up, climbed so far inside themselves, never to be found again. What with James, her first child, and Emma, her second. Then all those hopeful starts and disastrous stops. The last time, she bled so heavily, she was convinced she saw the sinewy hands of long dead Great Aunt Enid reaching for her, and Percy swore he would never touch her again. He relented, of course, though only after much badgering, a handful of shaky assurances.

And then came Stella. Delia welcomed her with an open heart, even though the child was born from peculiar circumstances, to say the least. Delia hadn't questioned a thing, never asked Uncle for a single detail, just loved the child as though she were her own. Then, as if her hands
weren't already full, within two months of Stella's arrival, she got word that her younger sister had passed away. The husband, who was the cook on a boat that carted loads of salt fish to Boston, was unable to take care of their three-year-old boy. The news came by way of a concise letter, something hinting at Delia's childless state, and the boy arrived shortly thereafter. A skinny child, he seemed lost in Sunday clothes, a brown wool sailor suit trimmed with pumpkin-coloured cord. Eyes of clear blue, and his nose and hollow cheeks were decorated with a smattering of freckles. His name was Amos Flood, and in the time it took her to take him by his sweaty hand, she had fallen in love once again.

As soon as Percy walked in for his lunch on the day Amos came to them, Delia said in a hush, “He idn't budged an inch. Been in the porch this last hour, staring at me. I don't want to force him.”

Percy walked straight up to the child, bent slightly, hands to his knees. “Now, you don't look familiar. Not from around here, I'd say.”

No response.

“Any chance you works over to the mill?”

He shook his head slightly.

“Didn't think so. I knows most men that works to the mill. Do you fish then?”

A slight nod.

Delia started to walk towards the child, but Percy jigged his hand for her to stay put.

“Well, now. A fisherman. I guess that means you're looking for a job. No self-respecting feller goes too long without a job. You idn't nothing if you idn't got work. Isn't that right?”

The child stuck his toe in the rug, wiggled his heel.

“I'll take that as a yes. You're after a bit of work, I'm betting. Well, wouldn't you know it, you're in luck.”

The boy glanced at Percy now, and there was a faint twinkle of curiosity in his eyes.

“I'm betting too that you're a strong feller, with shoulders like that. And I needs a strong feller. But you got to eat a good meal. Keep up your strength and all that.”

Amos toddled over, sat down in Delia's chair at the table. Then he spoke, his voice like a bird's chirp. “I's strong. My mommy says.”

Said
, Delia silently corrected, and the tense pinched her heart. It was difficult to reconcile her sister and the presence of this child. Delia had left home when Grace was only six weeks old, and in her mind, her sister was still only a newborn. She could hear her mother's warnings,
watch where you seats yourself
, as her sister was always tucked into the corner of the sofa or the back of a chair. Somehow it was easier for Delia to believe her sister was lost when she was an infant, perhaps someone did the unthinkable and plunked themselves down without consideration for the plump white pillow beneath them. This way, Grace had never lived a full life. She'd never skinned her knees or braided her hair, never felt her soul ache with love, the awe of conception, the bittersweet joy of severing the cord.