HOW BUSY PEOPLE WERE, racing through town, rushing to work, rushing home, rushing back to work again. Nobody walked anymore in Great Village, other than the children, who dragged themselves back and forth to school, too young yet to drive. And Flossy knew they were only putting in time until they turned sixteen.
The steel bridge framed her view of the main street. She was half watching for her young people, imagined them making their way back from Five Islands about now. She checked her watch. It was early and they’d be in no rush. Ruth and Phil would be stretching out the time together, stopping for fried clams and chips at Bunchy’s Canteen with sun-burned noses and shoulders and excited eyes from a day of hunting amethyst along the shore. Flossy was relieved to have Phil around. He’d turned out to be a courtly companion for Ruth. The two of them were becoming close. They sought the other’s eyes when things amused them. Phil was spending more and more time at Flossy’s house. This was harmless, she thought, the circumscribed affection of cousins, a gentle initiation.
She wished these young ones kind loving, tender and careful loving; the first one was a path to be laid straight and clean, that was so full of consequence for all that might come after. In the small hours of disquiet before the robins stirred, Flossy found herself thinking about them, worried that hearts would hurt. Naturally, it made her remember David. Theirs was not the whirlwind she was witnessing in her little house these days but attraction was no doubt attraction no matter how lightly or heavily it overtook one.
She wondered how Marjory was feeling about the possibility of sharing Ruth with Richard. Was there still a little irritation from the Richard days, a little unresolved rash flaring up but not so much that Marjory’d ever had to figure it out? Flossy and Richard had found common ground right from the start in the Bishop. She’d given him a copy of her first book of poetry, North & South, when the two married. He’d done a thesis on Elizabeth Bishop’s work, written articles and become a kind of local authority on her life, dedicated to the cause of broadening an awareness of her poetry among the wider Canadian academic community. Richard and a handful of others were determined to keep her poetry alive to new generations of readers. Flossy was proud of them. No doubt Marjory had entirely forgotten that Flossy and Richard could talk about Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry for hours on end. They would get their volumes out late at night, read and talk about the work as Marjory slept on that same parlour chesterfield. Maybe Marjory always thought she was vital to their attachment, that after she dropped Richard, Flossy would too.
Now Ruth had also taken to the Bishop, with no encouragement from Flossy. She’d only pulled the books out in preparation for the coming meeting of the Society, but Ruth had turned out to be a voracious reader. These days Flossy nearly had to hide a book under her pillow to keep it from her. A couple of times she’d found her napping on that same chesterfield with Bishop’s Complete Works open on her chest. It wasn’t easy poetry for a young person, and yet here she, Phil and Richard would be attending the founding of the Elizabeth Bishop Society with Flossy tomorrow. It was an encounter that might well have occurred with or without Marjory’s intervention.
She wondered what would have happened if Ruth hadn’t been told about Richard. Would father and daughter have recognized each other? Flossy imagined all of them ending up at that meeting and some stranger putting it together: “You two must be related.” That would have caught everyone’s attention. You never know what people are going to see in a face. Everyone had always said she and Jimmy looked alike. They still did. Heavens, they could fit six of her in a Jimmy.
Flossy thought of all those couples she knew of that all but vaguely looked alike, might Richard and Ruth have been even a little attracted to the Electra-mirror they’d have seen in the other? Ruth had some of her grandmother’s likeness in the striking red hair and certain gestures, enough to astonish her great-aunts. Up close, though, at the expressive heart of her face she was entirely Archibald: brown eyes twinkling, eyebrows flaring when she was pleased about something, her nose crinkled at the top of the bridge, and she drew a deep breath in through that huge, gorgeous Archibald smile when she was about to say something she thought would enchant you, as it always did because when she brightened, so too did any room.
Walking back up the hill, Flossy slowed her pace. She placed a fist hard against her chest as if it might settle the uneven thumping inside. The ache was echoed by her weather hip as she limped along. Surely they’d be getting rain soon.
as she started up the steps to the door, she could hear her telephone ringing.
“Hello,” she said, a little breathless.
“Hello Flossy, it’s Marjory.”
“Oh, hello dear.”
“Did I interrupt you? You sound winded.”
“No, no, I was just out mailing a few letters. Where are you?” “In Sackville. How are things going?”
“Splendiferous. And you?”
“Fine, just fine. I’ve been thinking a lot about things over the week, Flossy, and more and more I’m inclined to just come down there tomorrow and get Ruth. It probably wasn’t a good idea to leave her there in such a mood in the first place.”
“Oh, I see.” Flossy hesitated. “Well, you’ll probably want to talk to her about it and she’s not here just now. She’s been down shore all day hiking and hunting for amethyst at Five Islands.”
“She’s been what?” Marjory had to hear it again.
“Do you remember your Aunt Milly? Ruth’s with her great grandson, Phil, her cousin, your cousin,” Flossy said. “They’ll be home sometime later.”
“Later?” Marjory asked.
“Yes, sometime later.”
“Do you know when?”
“No. Soon I expect.”
“Did you not give her a time to be home, Flossy?” Marjory asked.
“No, no,” she answered calmly. “They don’t seem to need that.” “I thought she’d be there …”
Flossy hesitated. “All the time?”
“Well, no,” Marjory said, “but yes.”
“Well, since she isn’t, why don’t you tell me how the conference is going?”
She sighed. “Oh Flossy, I realized this wasn’t a good idea,” she began. “The conference was a mistake. This has all been a terrible mistake.”
Flossy shook her head, thinking of all the feathers Marjory had ruffled in order to get into that conference in the first place. David and Goliath, phah. Maybe she’d even have the nerve to ask for a refund. “Can’t be all that bad. What’s the trouble?”
“Oh, it’s all very New Age here, Flossy, not my kind of thing, so I thought I’d just come and get Ruth and take her back to Oakville. We might do some shopping before she goes back to school. Has she been horrid?”
“Well no,” Flossy chuckled. “Quite the contrary. I’m thinking of keeping her.”
“Oh,” she said, “that’s nice.” There was silence for a minute. “I called Richard.”
“I thought so,” Flossy pulled her chair over to the phone. “He was here.”
“Richard was there?” she said it in a half hush as if he might overhear.
“Yes, of course. What did you expect, dear?”
“Did Ruth…?”
“No, no — she was with Jimmy. She’s been a busy lass. Tomorrow morning, she’ll be meeting Richard just before the Elizabeth Bishop Conference.”
“Well, maybe I should just come and we’ll go tonight,” she said. “It’ll only take me an hour or so to get there. I thought she’d want to go back. Home.”
“To Oakville?” Flossy asked, hearing incredulity slip into her own voice.
“Yes, Oakville.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’ll be wanting to go just yet.” Flossy tried to betray no annoyance. “She has a lot on her plate: baseball twice next week, she’s going back to the weir with Jimmy in the morning, the Bishop Society at ten — she’s been reading her poetry and asked to come along, she and Phil — and the Campbells are having a reunion Sunday after the conference is finished, just to meet her, and she’s got Mealie’s Life Studies on Tuesday,” Flossy glanced at the calendar beside the phone. “She’s taken over my calendar. Let’s see, fishing down to Parrsboro next weekend. I think she’d be disappointed to be missing all that, wouldn’t you?”
“She could finish the games with her own team, in Oakville,” she countered.
“Marjory, it wouldn’t make things better to take her back just now,” Flossy said in a low voice. “From what I can tell, she’s quite … fond of this cousin and having a reasonably good time.”
“Oh.” Marjory said. “She’s not even there a week.”
“A week, yes. Sometimes a week’s a long time,” she said. Flossy looked outside, across the way to the light on in Mealie’s studio. She sighed. This was so like Marjory: she was bored with the picnic and thought nothing of pulling the cloth out from beneath everybody else’s good time. Flossy had an idea. “You don’t suppose you might just be worrying about Ruth meeting Richard?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” she said, a bit too quickly. Flossy lowered her voice again. “Marjory, you can’t whisk her away now, before they meet. You can’t do that to Ruth or Richard, now that you’ve told them, surely you wouldn’t think of interfering with their meeting, would you?”
“Noo,” she said defensively. “Well, yes,” she was getting impatient too. “Flossy, it wasn’t my idea to tell them!” she snapped. As quickly as she let her anger bubble up, she became contrite. “Oh, what a mess. What a mess I’ve made. I’ve done everything wrong,” she said. “What have I done with my life? Everything I promised I wouldn’t do. I wasn’t a good wife, mother, minister, a good anything. All I’ve been good at is taking a place in a line that never goes anywhere, sitting around every day eating and using up resources — scarce resources that future generations won’t have because of me.”
“Now, now, dear,” Flossy said softly, “there’s no reason to single-handedly claim the undoing of future generations. I dare say you’ve done a little better than that.”
“What’ll I do?”
“Well,” she began, “there are any number of things you can do. You could think about this another day or two, see if the conference picks up. You could go back to Oakville on your own and we’ll send Ruth home by bus before school. You might finish your holidays here, go to Halifax for a few days or up to the Cabot Trail. What else? You could take Richard out for a nice dinner after the conference, become acquainted again. You may wish to make a little adjustment for him in your life now, and you know what?”
“What?”
“You’ll find he’s the same wonderful man you once married,” Flossy said.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about, Flossy,” Marjory replied.