“Those days, Mary Anne was a wonderful friend to me. Every day she’d come by to help. She’d do the work about the house, mostly washin’, and there was plenty of that, and I’d just tend to Matt. Pat came when he could. He laid in the wood for the winter that year and brought food and supplies from Placentia so we were well stocked up.
“Many times now, girl, I wonder why God sent him to me from halfways ’round the world. Did he mean to open a door for me so I could walk right through and have a different life? I stepped through the open door all right but there were many other doors I should have gone through instead of just standin’ there listenin’ and lookin’ and wonderin’ what might have been.”
“What would you have done differently?” Nora asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe tried to get him to come out of himself a bit more. To get over the feeling that he was an outsider. But you know something, Nora? Even when you belong to a place, you can still become an outsider. For years I cut myself off from everyone and sided with him. I should never have done that. You can’t live like that. It’s hard to understand but you know how it is sometimes: we just go along day to day and do whatever we can to make life manageable. I wish I had found a way to say right out in plain words what was deep in my heart. In a way I thought I was preserving what we had, bottling it away like you would a few turrs or a bit of fruit, the way it would last.”
There was a long pause before she continued. “I was always afraid that if I pushed too hard he’d be gone and I’d not see him no more.” She turned to look out across the water into the dark night. “When things turned bad with his health, it was a struggle then to keep going. It all became too much.”
The wind was from the north. It savaged its way along the side of the wood-frame house, seeking out small cracks and sending icy chills into the makeshift bedroom that had been set up in the parlour. Peg stood in the grey light by the window, alone with her thoughts. In the garden the ground lay fallow, ragged and unkempt, thick with dying weeds and grass. Inside the fence, the mounds of the potato ridges were still visible, like small waves on the landscape. The past spring, she had put down a small patch of vegetables close enough to the house to see them through the winter, but had it not been for Mary Anne’s husband, Pius, they would still be in the ground rotting away. Those days, not even a year past, Matt had worked alongside of her, like a child, helping for short spurts, sometimes being a nuisance, undoing what she had done, but more times he’d be off in a corner, busy doing other things. She had to be watchful, making sure he didn’t roam. When the weather was fine it was so much easier to cope. She could recall then the warmth of the sun on her back as she stooped to the earth, and hear the wind tug at the endless rows of washing on the line
They would never plant the garden again. Those days were done; the weeds around the edges would take over and the long grass would come right to the door and grow strong and tall in the rich ground. Winter was just around the corner, and with Matt and the state he was in, she knew in her heart that she couldn’t endure another January on the island. Yet each time Pat came she couldn’t bring herself to make a decision.
The wind came hard against the house again and she thought she felt the floor shake beneath her feet. All her life she had hated the wind, feared the force that could in a minute whip up the sea into a frenzy of rage and fling her father, his boat, and the silvery cod fish he’d caught, high in the air and then send it all crashing back down into the cold black water. She sat now, transfixed by her old nightmare. “Take away the night,” she had begged her father one time as they sat home curled up in his big chair while the storm battered the house. She had clung tightly to him, afraid that he might have to up and leave her, but he’d wrapped his great arms about her and held her all night close to his warm chest until the wind quieted and her little body relaxed into sleep. Peg wrapped herself now in her own arms and shivered.
A harsh raspy intake of breath sounded from the bed behind her and brought her back to reality with a start. She turned. A scrawny arm reached from beneath the blankets into the chilly air. She went to his side, taking his hand in both of hers. His eyes were closed, his face passive. She pressed the long fingers to her cheek; there was so little to hold on to anymore. Then without warning his eyes shot open. Wide and bright with fear, they stared at her long and hard. Terror hit the pit of her stomach. Something was happening, something she wanted but couldn’t admit to. The hand gripped her fiercely. It was strong and unyielding.
The busy clanging of pots and pans came from the kitchen. Mary Anne was making such a racket.
She shivered again. It was cold, so cold … “The coldest room in the house,” her mother always said. Then it came to her, a fire, yes, like Christmas time. She would light a fire in the old grate. No matter that the wood was supposed to last the winter. They would manage. Her heart was hammering inside her chest, making her breathless. A deep sense of urgency swept over her. She lifted the blankets to put the cold hand back in the warmth. The smell rose from beneath the covers. He needed changing again and he was cold.
She rushed to the door. “The fire, we must light the fire.” Her voice was sharp.
Mary Anne straightened up from her position over the stove and looked at Peg. “A fire is a good idea,” she said, accepting without question this sudden request.
Peg nodded, looking about her, uncertain what to do next. Her father’s face came to her. If only he were here. He would know what to do. He’d have the fire in and lighted in no time. Suddenly she felt helpless and confused, unable to make a decision about a simple thing like lighting a fire.
Mary Anne was in the doorway, her arms laden with sticks. “Matches, Peg?” she called over her shoulder, stacking the dry wood with expert hands.
Peg, spurred into action, hurried to the kitchen and returned with matches. The fire leapt in the grate, warm, bright. Peg watched, transfixed. Black smoke puffed back into the room from the chimney.
“Crack the window, just a small bit. The chimney’s cold, we needs a draft.”
Peg sprang into action. The fire began to draw nicely and roar up the chimney.
“A few nice junks now and she’ll be best kind.” Mary Anne looked towards Peg and inclined her head towards the kitchen. Without a word, Peg hurried out of the bedroom and returned with an armful of logs and set them by the fire.
Mary Anne piled on the wood and, satisfied that the fire was going well, gave Peg the okay to close the window and then went to the bed. “There’s a change needed again.” She was gone to the kitchen before Peg could object.
Nobody cleaned and washed him but her. But like it or not, the job was underway and somehow Peg didn’t have the will to stop it. Something had gone from her in those last few minutes, like her energy had suddenly drained away, running backwards through her veins and out into the floor beneath her feet. But it was more than that. It was a kind of resignation, a feeling deep down that it was over, that she could no longer protect him.
They worked together then, washing, cleaning, intent on his comfort. The fire blazed, the smell of fresh linen sweet in the room. His eyes were closed and he looked peaceful. When they had banked up the pillows and settled him comfortably, Mary Anne turned to Peg. “You need a cup of tea, girl. Now build up the fire and come in the kitchen.”
Peg watched Mary Anne leave the room, the soiled sheets in her arms. It was all right, she decided, settling a junk on the blazing fire. It was just business that needed doing.
“I believe he has a like to die and it won’t be too long,” Mary Anne said gently over tea, with the assurance of someone who has witnessed the beginning and end of life on many occasions. “I’ll stay and be with you while he’s drawing a breath.”
Peg’s heart had ceased its pounding. The hot sweet tea had settled her as it always did. “Thank you, Mary Anne, I believe you are right, but I’d rather be alone tonight, if you don’t mind. I think I can manage now. Maybe you’d come by in the morning.”
Mary Anne looked at her friend. “Peg,” she began, but seemed to lose the words that were on the tip of her tongue. She tried again. “I knows how you are, you has your own ideas and you knows what you wants. I’ve learned that over the past few years so I’m not going to argue with you.” She tapped her mug with her fingernails, making a little tinkling sound like pennies dropping in a jar. “Time was, I thought you was a bit up on yourself, but I knows better now. You are a good, kind woman, no doubt about it, and strong too. I’ve wanted to tell you that, Peg, but didn’t know how. So there it is. Anyway, if that’s what you wants, girl, then it’s fine with me.” She stood to go. “There’s a nice bit of rabbit stew on the stove for your supper. Mind you eat now. You’re goin’ needin’ your strength for what’s to come. I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
“That night I kept the fire going in the room and the lamp burning. Nice it was, not at all like someone was dyin’. I felt content. Can you believe that?” She cast a sideways glance at Nora. “It’s true, yes, I was content. I had done the best I could by Matt and now it was time. I piled the wood high on the fire and made it blaze and roar up the chimney and I did the same in the kitchen. I’d have no more need of the junks piled up outside, no need to spare the lamp oil. I sat by his bed the whole night and I’d only stir to tend the fire or make a cup of tea. Around three o’clock I began to nod off, so to keep myself awake I had the idea that maybe I could read to him, you know like we used do together nights.”
“What a lovely idea, Peg.” Nora, to her surprise, was feeling quite emotional. “What did you read?”
“He had given me a little book of poems one time. He got it to Dicks and Company in St. John’s. It was a collection of sonnets by different poets, all decorated inside with delicate, pale coloured vines and wildflowers. It was there by my bed when I got back from the hospital. That’s where I still keep it. That was what I decided to read to him.” She began to fidget. “I thought it was a lovely idea too at the time, but once I started, it seemed to kind of … put me over the edge and suddenly made me realize what was happening: this was the end. I was struggling, the beautiful words touching a sore spot inside of me when the next thing, my God in heaven, didn’t he rise up from in the bed and call out clear as a bell, ‘Peg’ and then fell back on the pillows and was gone.”
Peg looked across at Nora. “He called my name,” she said simply.