soon as Jack turned out the light in the bedroom, Angela tiptoed into the bathroom, slipped her hand into the back pocket of Jack’s jeans, and pulled out the mining company’s address. Back at the kitchen table, she wrote a long letter, outlined her husband’s work history, and signed it with his name.
Chapter Three
On a rimy Thursday morning, Angela stood on the front steps in her mint-green housecoat. The frayed ends of the coat fluttered in the cool air. Brittle leaves whipped around her ankles. The grinding wind, sharpened and split by rock, had pushed late autumn’s warmth away, sucked the warmth from the town, and left tension and irritability in her bones.
She waved Jack off as he headed to the unemployment centre to comb the job boards. She came back inside and closed the door. She looked over her shoulder, crept to the bedroom, and opened the closet door. She riffled through bras and white socks in the top dresser drawer, socks full of holes, with dark grey stains on the bottom — she shook her head at the state of them — and reached for her Chinese lacquered keepsake box hidden behind the pile of underwear.
Inside the box was an unopened letter. It had come the day before with the evening mail. Lloyd Pinsent had handed her the stack with the Noraldo Mining Company letterhead on top.
“Some lot of these letters around here in the past few weeks, Mrs. McCarthy. Daresay we’ll all be up there in one way or another,” he’d said. She’d answered distractedly, fingers trembling as she held the letter.
Mr. McCarthy … your qualifications sound ideal for Noraldo … we’d like to interview you … a recruiter will be in St. John’s on October 15th, the letter said. Angela clutched it to her chest and smiled.
After breakfast, they walked Katherine to school. Angela waved across the lane at Wanda and Peter. They were busy packing towels, blankets, clothing, and furniture, and discarding knick-knacks, dishes, books, and newspapers. They were flustered yet worked happily. They were sure of themselves, gestures and features strong, not weak and slack like Jack’s, or frozen and worried like Angela’s. Our time is coming, Angela thought, and smiled smugly.
She looked at her two daughters trudging up the little hill toward the school. They all had beautiful hair, gleaming white teeth, soft clean skin, and cheeks scrubbed clean, shining like waxy apples. A surge of love tore through her chest. She’d do anything for them. So would Jack, she thought. Of course he would do what she wanted — he always did.
At school, Katherine reached up to give her mom a hug. Lily cried when her sister disappeared inside the heavy, solid door.
“We’re going to Nanny Harrington’s house, Lily,” Angela said soothingly. Lily smiled at the prospect of seeing Nanny. Maggie walked a few paces behind, timid and uncertain. Angela knew Maggie worried about visiting her mother. Her mother was less than kind to Maggie; she considered the child spoiled. When they reached her doorstep, Lillian Harrington opened the door. She was a smiling, rosy-cheeked, robust woman in a lilac floral housedress, her short, curly strawberry-blonde hair poking out of a frayed red kerchief. She invited her daughter and two grandchildren inside with a wave of her fleshy arm. Her hands and apron were dusty with dried flour. She’d spent the morning baking bread and making Yorkshire puddings for a roast beef supper.
“Hello,” she said and pried Lily from Angela’s arms. She held her tightly and coddled the child’s cheeks with her dusty fingers.
Maggie wandered into the pantry adjacent to the kitchen and noiselessly searched for chocolate pudding. Nanny’s pantry smelled like caramelized icing sugar. The clean chrome shelves were fully stocked with tins of fruit and dry cake mixes. She sat on an overturned silver mixing bowl on the serrated linoleum, chrome blender and eggbeater on the shelf above, and had tea with imaginary friends.
Lily sat on the kitchen floor and played with the crusty old calico cat. It barely raised a paw to scratch or a meow in protest when she tugged on its tail.
An old black stove in the corner, a relic from the forties, grumbling and moody, dominated the room. Above it on the wall was a solid wood block in the shape of Newfoundland, with various small spoons with enamel pictures of provincial flags, coins, or small animals on the tip of the arm, resting in special nooks. The rooster clock on the yellowing white wall ticked noisily.
Lillian Harrington eyed her daughter silently, her hands resting primly on her upper abdomen. “You’re after eating six of those cookies,” she sneered.
“Mom, I’m —” Angela said, her mouth full of chocolate.
“Pregnant. I could tell weeks ago. You swell up some quick, especially around the mouth and neck, you always do.”
Angela swallowed her cookie and wiped the crumbs from her swollen lips.
Lillian sighed deeply and shook her head. “I don’t know how you are going to do it. Jack won’t be working after the next few days, and UIC won’t feed the current lot, let alone another mouth.”
Here she goes again, badmouthing Jack, Angela thought. When Angela and Jack had started dating in their teens, her mother would warn her about the McCarthy family. “Little foxes spoil the vine, she’d say,” quoting scripture — her weapon of choice for the self-righteous way she had of proving herself right — as she stood in the kitchen baking. “It’s the little things he’ll do that will let you down,” she’d say and loudly tap the flour bowl with her wooden spoon. “He’s a follower, he’ll never think for himself. He’ll allow others to get him into trouble, and then what will you do? No, my dear,” she’d say, putting her hands on her hips, “you can’t count on Jack McCarthy.”
Angela would tilt her head to the side, stare at her mother with one eye closed, and try not to laugh. What did her mother know anyway? She’d been holding a grudge against the McCarthys for years. Jack’s father John had been calling her “Lily-white-arse” ever since she was ten.
Lillian’s father, Aloysius White, had given the boy a trimming for cursing at his daughter, and when they grew up John McCarthy would nickel-and-dime Lillian on plumbing jobs and use spoiled, rusted pipes in her house instead of new ones.
“A letter came yesterday from a mining company up in northern Alberta.”
Maggie meandered out from the pantry, chocolate pudding smeared on her face and fingers. “Your appetite will be spoiled,” Lillian said, appraising the child derisively.
Maggie grinned mischievously, chocolate stuck to her front teeth.
“Let her be,” Angela snapped. “She can eat whatever she wants.”
“Not in my house she can’t.”
Maggie stood, nervously knotting her black pageboy with her chocolate-covered fingers, innocent and bewildered blue eyes wide and round as those of the cows in her colouring books.
“Don’t bother with the tea. If my kids are hungry, I’ll go home and feed them.”
“I’m sorry —”
“No need to explain,” Angela said and rose to pick Lily up from the floor. “We’ve worn out our welcome here.”
Angela slipped on her coat, wrapped Lily in a shawl, and nudged Maggie toward the door. Outside on the wooden step, she turned back toward her mother at the door, her face slack and sad.
“Don’t
