THE EDWARDS’ PLACE in Williams Lake smelled of old hamburger grease with an undertone of mothballs. This was not the scent of a happy house. I could sniff some tragedy—large or small, I didn’t know—hanging in the close air. I wondered what it was. It may have had to do with the husband, Ted, who sat in the kitchen in his wheelchair, using a bent spoon to dunk his teabag in a stained white mug. He smiled crookedly at us as we came in.
I disliked Mrs. Edwards instantly, with her straw blonde hair and her runny eye. She was not like my mother or Rita, women who took charge, did what needed to be done, enjoyed their competence. Mrs. Edwards seemed helpless, trapped, a woman who wrung her hands and wept and moaned—I could see that right away. I could tell by the dingy house, lit by fixtures dimmed with drifts of insect bodies inside the glass globes, the TV on in the corner, dusty drapes drawn against the brilliance of a fall morning.
Our mother’s need to find a viable solution to whatever problem plagued her must have been strong, because she blinded herself to what was obvious even to an eleven year-old: Mrs. Edwards was not a happy woman and she would be no use to two unhappy girls.
Our mother took us into a bedroom with two twin beds covered in matching blue bedspreads with a synthetic sheen to them. I expected a puff of dust to rise up when I sat on one. Later, when I had had a lot of time to reflect on every object in the house, every plastic, pretend-crocheted doily and scented, fake flower–decorated toilet roll cover, I thought that even the bedspreads spoke of Mrs. Edwards’ unhappiness and helplessness. Only a person who had no idea how to be comfortable and happy in the world would pick such a slippery, staticky, uncomfortable fabric to adorn a guest’s bed.
“You’re going to billet for a while with the Edwards,” Mom told us, as Jenny and I sat side by side on one of the beds, frightened by the look on her face.
“What does billet mean?” Jenny asked.
“You’re going to stay here,” Mom said. “The Edwards are old friends of your dad’s. They’re good people. They’ll take care of you while I go cook in the logging camps.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Jenny said.
“Neither do I,” I said. “We can come with you. We won’t be any trouble. I know how to take care of myself.”
“I know you do,” Mom said. “But they don’t allow kids. Those are the rules. We need money.”
“Why can’t you get a job here in town? Why can’t you be a secretary or something? Why couldn’t we go back to Duchess Creek? Glenna could get you a job in the nurses’ station.”
“Stop it right now,” Mom said. “This is the best I can do. Let’s just hope it won’t be for long.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Let’s hope not too long.”
“How long?” Jenny said. Her voice cracked and she started to cry.
“Stop it,” Mom said sharply. “There’s nothing I can do. The Edwards are good people. You’ll be able to go to school here.”
Good people. Never trust someone described as a “good” person. I know now that “good” means that they won’t murder you, throw you out into the snow or let you starve. But also that there are obvious shortcomings and you’re going to find out what they are pretty damn quick. Those were the kind of people our mother left us with.
Jenny pulled her knees up under her chin and cried softly into the circle of her arms. She was like an island on the slippery bedspread. I knew she would be of no more help to me in persuading our mother to collapse with regret, then drive us to the nearest campground where Mom would boil up some coffee, lean back in her lawn chair, gazing up, then Jenny and I would ask her for spoons to dig for Chiwid’s treasure by the river.
Mom led me outside to the car. I remember the feeling of my small hand in hers. She was still my protector that day. If I held on to her hand, I didn’t think she would let me go. I didn’t think she would be able to. But at the car she shook free of me, and there was nothing I could do.
“Maggie,” she said. “I know Jenny’s the older one, but I’m going to rely on you. You were right when you said you know how to take care of yourself. I don’t have to worry about you.”
She must have meant it as a compliment, a way to get me to look at myself as something other than a helpless child. But when she said it, smiling at me softly, her face open like a wish, it felt more like a recognition of a weakness I had, a thing I’d always have to live with, like a harelip.
“Okay,” I said because I couldn’t say anything else. Mom began to unpack the car. I picked up Cinnamon from the back seat and carried her into the hamburger-smelling house. Mom followed with our pillows and suitcases.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Edwards said.
“What?” Mom said.
“Is that a cat?”
I slipped quickly into the bedroom and dropped Cinnamon to the floor, as if I could hide her.
“No, no,” Mrs. Edwards said. “We can’t have cats. I’m very allergic.”
“Beatrice, please,” Mom said. She pulled the bedroom door closed and I heard their voices going back and forth.
Jenny raised her head to look at me. Behind her on the wall above the bed hung an embroidered picture of two hands clasped together, praying. I picked up Cinnamon and she curled two soft white paws over my shoulder and clung to me like a baby. I buried my nose in her blanket-scented fur. She began to purr, deep contented trills. Cinnamon could be happy anywhere, as long as she was with me.
When Mom came into the room, I could tell by the look on her face that she had lost.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” she said. “I promise I’ll take good care of her.”
That was the second time I saw Mom cry. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks leaving tracks across her brown freckles. Some brief understanding of her situation flickered in my brain, just for a moment, and I wanted to say something to make her feel better, maybe tell her that Cinnamon wasn’t a city cat anyway, but a lump had risen up from my heart and was choking me, and I couldn’t say it.
Neither Jenny nor I said a word about this being our second thing. To acknowledge it openly would be to acknowledge that the third thing was still to come.
I had once seen a house demolished, a little shack of a house in Duchess Creek where an old man had lived until he died. The shack was razed to be replaced by a bigger, solid log house, the kind that wants to look rustic even though it’s brand new. Jenny and I had watched from the road as the backhoe bit into the roof and pulled down the walls like they were cardboard. Faded flowered curtains, still on the rod, clung to the tines of the backhoe as it came up for another round, then the curtains and rod were folded into the dust of the ruins and disappeared. With my unpacked suitcase on the bed in front of me, I felt like that house, a tumult of dust and disorder, nothing where it should be, nothing left standing.