Guy Vanderhaeghe - Homesick

“So where does the strain come in?”

“I’m a grown woman. I’m thirty-six years old and I want to have my own money. I mean to have a salary, not a housekeeping allowance. I don’t intend to snitch nickels and dimes from household expenses so I can buy myself a new bra when I need one. I want a wage. I’m not sixteen years old like before.”

The word bra caused Mr. Stutz to cast his eyes down to the toes of his boots.

“I was a poor man in those days,” her father announced.

“I get a wage or I’m dust. I’ll cash one of my bonds and climb back on that bus tomorrow and head right back where I came from.”

“Look at her, Stutz!” cried Monkman. “Look at her! There’s fire for you! Exactly like she was when she was seven, skipping rope with the other little girls. Going over that rope with her jaw set solid as iron and her pigtails cracking up and down like buggy whips. Little Miss Determination. When I saw that, I said to myself, Lord help and protect the man who gets her.”

“Let the Lord look after whoever He has to. I’ll look after myself. Do I get a wage or not?”

“What was it your mother did down east?” Monkman inquired of Daniel. “Trade horses? I got a feeling I’m about to be skinned. I best remember you don’t sup with the Devil unless you own a long spoon.”

“I’m not joking,” said Vera. “I’m deadly serious.”

“Well then, how much?”

“Room and board for Daniel and me and a hundred a month. When I find a place and move out – two hundred a month.”

Monkman shot Stutz an ironic smile. “Sound fair to you, Stutz?”

“This is family,” he said. “I don’t put my nose into family business.”

“You got any idea what minimum wage is in this part of the world, girl?” demanded her father. “Any idea at all?”

“I don’t work for minimum wage. I’m not a minimum wage person.”

Monkman pushed back his fedora with the tip of his forefinger. “Stutz,” he said, “why don’t you take the boy and his luggage upstairs to his bedroom. We’re going to have a money discussion here and I don’t want you getting any exaggerated notions of your worth from my daughter here.”

Daniel looked questioningly at his mother. “Go along,” she said, motioning to the stairs with her head. Stutz and he disappeared up the stairs, toting a duffel bag and suitcases.

“Daughter,” said Monkman, “you can have your money. But let’s not get into the habit of public wrangles. I don’t like them. I prefer a soft voice in private. Besides, this isn’t just about money, is it? What else is eating you?”

“I want one thing clear,” said Vera. “Daniel is my son. I’ll have no interference from you. I saw what you’re up to.”

“What the hell kind of nonsense are you talking now, Vera?”

“Trying to get on the good side of him and put me on the bad. Offering him a drink. Winking at him or pulling a face whenever you made a reference to me. I won’t be turned into a witch or a fool, or talked around as if I wasn’t in the room.”

“Jesus, didn’t somebody come prepared to stomp snakes? I meant nothing by it.”

“I won’t allow you to put yourself between me and Daniel the way you did between me and my brother.”

“You’re dreaming, daughter. I never came between you and your brother.”

“Not much. Then why didn’t he write when I sent my wedding announcement? Because you wouldn’t let him. He was always under your thumb.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I did no such thing.”

“Then why didn’t he write? He wrote once a week during the war.”

Monkman stirred from one foot to the other. “Maybe you should remember who stopped writing first. He went down to the mail box once a day for almost a year after the war, looking for a letter from you. There weren’t any.”

“I had my reasons.”

“Maybe somebody else is entitled to reasons, too.”

“I got my suspicions why he didn’t write.”

“She has her suspicions,” Monkman told the ceiling.

“You say you never stood between us,” declared Vera furiously. “Then how come every time I asked you for his address I never got it?”

“You never got it because I didn’t have no address to give. He’s always on the move. I never know where he is, Alberta, the States. Those drilling rigs never stay put. He doesn’t have an address.”

“A man without an address,” said Vera sarcastically.

“That’s about it.”

“And he never visits?”

“No more than you ever did.”

“That’s not like Earl. What happened? Did you two have a falling out? Is that it?”

Monkman avoided meeting her eyes. “No,” he said.

“If you didn’t, it’s a miracle. The way you treated him.”

“I was drinking then,” said her father. “But I never run out on him. Just remember who was the one done that.”

“If there’s a grass whip in there, pass that out, too,” Vera ordered, leaning into the doorway of the tool shed, a hoe in her hands.

“A what?” said Daniel.

“City boys. Is there a scythe then? You know what a scythe looks like, don’t you? You’ve seen pictures.”

It was her first Sunday in Connaught and Vera had decided to pay a visit to her mother’s grave. The decision had been made on the spur of the moment when her father announced after breakfast that he would be gone most of the morning, checking crops on the farm he had rented to an unreliable tenant. If Daniel and she hurried, they could be back home before he returned from his tour of inspection.

The long, awkward, rusty blade of the scythe poked, felt, sniffed its way out of the door of the shed. Behind it Daniel appeared, blinking his eyes and trying to wipe the ghostly, clinging sensation of cobwebs from his face.

Vera hefted the hoe. “All right,” she said, “these ought to do the trick knocking down weeds. Because if I know your grandfather half as well as I think I do, he’ll have neglected to see to her grave. It’s likely ass-deep in nettles. A disgrace, which we will remedy.”

Daniel, who was not particularly eager to spend a Sunday morning grubbing weeds in a cemetery, especially after learning it was situated a considerable walk outside the town, said, “If you want to do this, why not wait until he gets back? He’d drive us out there.”

“Because I don’t want him involved.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s my mother,” Vera stated with dreadful finality, “and I don’t want him involved. Get me ?”

He got her.

Shortly before ten o’clock they started for the graveyard. Vera led them off with an air of purpose, slapping a pair of work gloves against her upper thigh in time with every stride she took, her hoe shouldered like a rifle. Daniel lagged a step or two behind, the scythe cradled clumsily in his arms. The streets were deserted, sunny and silent, pervaded with the sweet, aching stillness of Sunday morning in a small town. Some still slept in their beds. In churchgoing houses, boys were spreading newspapers on the floors in preparation for polishing shoes to be worn to Sunday School. Other children were having their hair washed, their mothers dippering soft water from the reservoir in the wood stove in warm, soothing floods over bowed heads and hair stiffened and peaked with lather. Working men drank a second cup of coffee in their undershirts without hurry, drew meditatively on cigarettes while they listened to Uncle Porky Charbonneau on the radio read them the Saturday funny papers. Only occasionally was the deep, slow, steady quiet broken by the excited barking of a dog, or an automobile with a hole in its muffler.