toast.
“Your father’s out in the shed,” she told him. “Nursing himself, no doubt.”
He stood by the sink and watched her, feeling within himself that hushed quiet of a mourner already at the wake. She leaned past him for the dishcloth and he smelled her scent of lavender and remembered Sylvie once saying how she thought as a youngster that lavender was a flower that smelled like their mother.
He followed her to the table as she carried his tea and toast, sitting in the chair she hauled out for him.
“Eat it for me too, I suppose,” he said and flinched as she pinched his ear.
“Now, I don’t want no foolishness,” she said to him.
He swallowed lumps of toast and gulped them down with the tea.
“And try keeping your father sober.”
“What about Sylvie?”
“She called day before yesterday. We won’t be hearing from her for another week.”
“So—she don’t know?”
“I didn’t know for sure when she called. It’s fine she don’t know, let her have her holiday.”
He felt a stab of resentment, a strong stab of resentment.
“She should be here.”
“There’s nothing she can do, only worry.”
“We can call the embassy there, they’ll find her.”
“Call the embassy. Yes now, we’re doing that. Foolish. The doctors haven’t made any decisions yet, and there’s nothing she can do anyway. Let her have her trip.” She put her purse on the table, rooting through it. “Take this.” She took out a packet of bills and laid them on the table. “Nine hundred. I’ll get the rest from the bank this morning.”
“We won’t go ahead with that.”
“Yes, go on. I spoke too quick last evening. He likes building. The pride he took building this house—you’d have thought he was building a castle. I’ll keep five hundred in the bank.”
“Would—will that be enough?”
“I’ll know more when I talks to the oncologist today.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, stay with him. Bonnie’s taking me.”
“Who?”
“How many Bonnies do we know, Kyle. That’s her outside, now. Go get her some coffee. Use that mug on the table there, it’s clean. I’ll finish getting ready.”
“Christ, Mother, you don’t need Bonnie Gillard driving you to Corner Brook.”
“Rather have her now than anybody else. She knows how to keep her mouth shut, that’s for sure. Now, go get that coffee.” She vanished into her room and he tried not to stare at the bold form of Bonnie Gillard as she came in through the door—her too white pants and too white jacket and blood-red blouse and shoes and red handbag and lipstick and white plastic discs pinned to her ears. And a big dark scarf curled loosely around her neck.
Addie came rushing out, apologizing for being late, and faltered for a second upon seeing Bonnie, then quickly smiled.
“My, don’t you look nice. Perhaps I should have pressed something. Kyle, did you get Bonnie a coffee? I’ll just be another minute.”
“Take your time, I got lots of it,” said Bonnie. Her voice was loud, like her colours. Kyle noticed her eyeing his mother’s trim dark sweater and pants as she hurried into the washroom, and he noted her quick glance at her own red and white checkered self. She crossed the room and sat down, a cloud of cheap scent trailing behind her. She was about forty, first signs of age etching the corners of her eyes. Her jacket strained across her wide back as she folded her arms onto the table, her wrists stretching a mite too long for the cut of her sleeves.
He reached past her for the mug resting on the table and she drew back and he saw for the first time a little rash of blisters, glistening amidst a swath of salve, on the right side of her face near her hairline. The right side of her neck, partly hidden behind the scarf, was equally burned and blistering and swathed with salve. She looked up at him, her eyes big and brown and bold. Their black orbs pulsated softly and he turned from her, shamed for having looked so deep. Taking the cup to the sink, he poured her coffee.
She stood up as Addie came out of the bathroom, toilet flushing behind her. “All ready?”
“I suppose I am, can’t think properly this morning.” Addie crossed the room and lightly pulled Bonnie’s scarf away from her neck. “Looks awfully painful, dear. You sure you want to do this?”
“I could sit home and suffer it out,” said Bonnie, and she smiled. “A bit like you now, likes keeping to myself. Hates everyone gawking and talking at me.”
“We’re a pair, then,” said Addie, knotting a silk scarf around her neck. “I’ll be back sometime in the afternoon, Kyle. There’s baked beans from yesterday in the fridge for dinner. My!” She shivered as though struck by a sudden draft and pulled the flimsy scarf from around her neck. “I can’t find my wool scarf,” she complained, looking around the sofa and hummock. “Have you seen it, Kyle?”
“Take mine, it’s a woman’s anyway.”
“Don’t you be foolish. If your father can wear his now.”
“Under his shirt collar.”
“Because he likes the feel of it. And so do you.”
“Too short.”
“They’re stylish. It was their Christmas presents—cashmere,” she said to Bonnie, catching the soft woollen scarf Kyle was tossing her from the depths of his coat pocket. She folded it around her neck and smiled. “I was hoping for one to get cast aside. Small chance,” she added ruefully. “They haven’t took them from their necks since they unwrapped them.”
“Making her feel good is all,” said Kyle. He caught his mother’s smile and smiled back reassuringly. “Drive safe, then,” he said to Bonnie, and with a last reassuring look at his mother, he plunged his arms into his coat sleeves and went outside. The air was dampish to his face, the fog rising from the land and hanging in wisps above the hills and fading into dove-grey skies. He stepped around Bonnie’s shiny red Cavalier, thinking things must be good in the fish plant these days. His father was hunched down at the end of the wharf and looking across the bay whence he’d floated them all those years ago. Kyle barely remembered Cooney Arm. Could no longer distinguish between memory and stories told and retold by Chris and Sylvie and his dear old gran and his mother sometimes about the man Sylvanus was back there. Prancing about his stage-head and boats, fishing from five in the morning to sometimes ten at night, netting and gutting and curing fish and drinking one beer a week and sometimes not that. Kyle did remember one moment from back during his father’s hand-fishing days: his father taking him in the boat one windy fall morning, hauling his nets. Christ, but didn’t he look big standing up in that boat with his oilskins and sou’wester black against the sky. And not a fear as he stood in that wind-rocked boat, knees bending to roll with the swells. And he, Kyle, white-knuckled to the gunnels.
Everybody and their dog had moved on from those days of hand-fishing and hauling nets but his father mourned them as he would a fresh dead mother. There’s them who can’t change with the times and those who won’t, his mother told him. And your father’s both kinds.
Kyle was kinda proud. He liked his father’s story. Liked how he was the last one out after the seas were overfished by greed and governments were paying everyone to leave. The story was still told how Sylvanus thumbed his nose at the relocation money and stayed till the last fish was caught, stayed till they nearly starved, and then sawed his house in half with a chainsaw and floated both halves up the bay and landed them atop this wharf and declared to his astonished