Shelter Read online

  It was not the normal thing for Jenny to have to make supper. She tried to percolate along cheerfully, as if she didn’t mind, as if she liked it, liked to experiment with things she found in old spice jars under the sink, improvise a spaghetti sauce from the jars of stewed tomatoes that neighbours had brought. When we sat down to eat, she would not allow a gloomy silence; she described the things she drew in coloured chalk on the board at school for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day.

  “We each used a whole orange chalk on the pumpkins, right down to the nubbins. The nubbins, I tell ya!” Jenny’s science teacher that year had a verbal tic and punctuated his sentences with “I tell ya.” It made Mom laugh the first time Jenny mimicked him, so she used it often.

  Jenny had real friends and sometimes spent the night at their houses. I had Mickey, who I didn’t even like most of the time, and who couldn’t spell at all, not even words like “don’t,” which she spelt “donet,” or “when,” which appeared variously as “wen” or “wan.” This bothered me enough to make me think we could never be real friends.

  I pretended to be sick some school mornings that fall and Mom pretended to believe me. These were usually the days after the nightmares I’d started to have about Cinnamon. In the dream I came home and she was gone. Her absence was thick and sharp and it was the sound of my own wailing that woke me. In the morning, I couldn’t bear to leave Cinnamon knowing I would have to worry all day about whether Mom was paying proper attention. I held her in my lap in Dad’s chair by the fire and smoothed her fur. Mom let me stay home and brought me a salted boiled egg and a cup of weak sugared tea. After school, Jenny squeezed herself into the chair with me and tickled me until I fell out.

  —

  Rita came over on a cold Saturday in early November to help Mom split the wood that Glenna’s husband Ron had brought. Then the house smelled of coffee and tobacco and the light changed, like there was a spark of something warmer in the air, and Mom seemed to wake up. Rita put a Carole King 8-track on in her truck and kept the doors open while they chopped and we stacked.

  They both sang along to “I Feel the Earth Move.” They synchronized their movements, two axe-wielding dancers matching rhythms until someone’s axe stuck and threw them off. That night, Rita stayed over. I listened to their low voices rising and falling in the kitchen. When I came out of our room for a glass of water, the conversation stopped.

  “Can’t sleep?” Mom said, and they waited while I filled my glass and stood drinking. Back in my room, I heard them start again.

  “I feel like a teenager,” Mom said.

  “Do I make you feel like a teenager?” Rita asked, and they burst into laughter.

  Jenny was listening, too, and smiled. We both liked Mom’s mood better when Rita was around. In the morning, she was still there, teasing Mom while they made breakfast together.

  “Those eggs are all cooked the same,” she said.

  “I know,” said Mom.

  “Why’d you ask me how I wanted them, then?”

  “I was hopeful. But I always break the yokes.”

  “Next time, I’ll do the eggs.”

  After that, Rita came more often, always bringing something—fresh eggs, deer sausages, a moose roast, a bottle of her homemade berry wine. Mom brightened, and Jenny didn’t have to pretend to be happy. Rita and Mom stayed up drinking wine. I fell asleep listening to the hum of their voices, talking, talking. Late in the night, the clatter of the stove being stoked woke me and then their soft laughter and the squeak of the bedroom door was reassuring.

  Jenny teased them about their pyjama parties. “You two are like a couple of teenagers.”

  We drove the three and a half hours to Rita’s farm on Nakenitses Road for a few days over Christmas, with Cinnamon sleeping peacefully on the rumbling floor of the station wagon. We pretended not to notice that Dad wasn’t with us. We pretended not to miss the game he played, tapping the roof on Christmas Eve, Jenny and I imagining it was reindeer hooves. We pretended not to care that the selection of the Christmas tree from the bush and digging it out and chopping it down was mostly carried out by Mom and Rita, who warmed themselves with a flask of peppermint schnapps and giggled and cursed their way through the ritual with none of the proper solemnity or democracy, no standing and considering with us in respectful silence, no fire in the snow nearby.

  Christmas night I’d always felt a sadness I couldn’t explain. Maybe it came from Mom and Dad who I could see tried their best to make our little family everything we needed. But there was an absence even then, of something I had never understood. I missed it because they missed it, their links to their families broken or missing. This year, without Dad, it was worse. I couldn’t help resenting Rita a little for not being Dad and for trying to keep us from noticing he was gone. In my head I repeated Dad is dead, Dad is dead. Feeling the pain of it—properly feeling it burn and squeeze in my gut—was almost a relief.

  Rita roasted one of her own ducks for Christmas dinner and, after she opened a bottle of her homemade wine, she placed a glass each in front of Jenny and me.

  “Special occasion,” she said. “It’s not very strong.”

  “It’s good,” said Jenny, trying to hide a slight shudder as she swallowed. I liked the taste of it. After a couple more sips, Jenny said, “Why didn’t you get married, Rita?”

  “Jennifer!” Mom said.

  “I just wondered.”

  “It’s okay,” Rita said. “I didn’t think getting married would make my life better. I wanted to be independent.”

  “Like Chiwid?”

  “Not quite like Chiwid, no. Maybe I didn’t want to end up like Chiwid. You want to be careful you don’t marry someone who’s going to crush your spirit.”

  “Let’s hope you can aim a little higher than just not crushing your spirit,” Mom put in.

  “Hear, hear!” said Rita, and they clinked glasses.

  On Boxing Day, we put on snowshoes and headed out in the deep snow behind Rita’s place. I led the way because I could walk along on top of the crusted snow, sometimes not breaking through for a long time. In the wide-open meadow below the mountain, sun glinting on the blue expanse of snow, I forgot that they were behind me. It was just me and some chubby little winter birds feeding on frozen berries from the scrubby branches poking through the snow. I felt detached from my body, as if it were some amazing machine that lifted my knees, one after the other. Then everything disappeared except the snow and the webbed sinew of my snowshoes, forward, forward, forward and the reassuring pounding of my heart—not dead, not dead, not dead.

  The next day, just before we were to head home, a snowstorm blew in, plugging the road and Rita’s driveway with wide drifts. I was happy to be stranded, but Jenny wanted to get back to her friends, and even Mom seemed restless. That night, as the wind peppered snow against the windows in a frenzy, and the little house shook with the storm, I heard Mom’s and Rita’s voices rise in the living room.

  Rita said loudly, “Well I don’t understand what you object to.”

  “It’s nothing. I can’t explain it, Rita. Just quit—I don’t know what. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I’m just grouchy. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

  “Fine. I understand that. I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

  “You’re a great friend, okay? You always come to my rescue and you’re Rita my saviour, is that what you want to hear?”

  It was quiet for a minute.

  “No, not really,” Rita said. “I don’t really want to hear that at all.”

  More quiet, but now the wind screamed around the eaves of the house, like a human voice, rising and falling in moans. I pictured the meadow, the snow belting it in whirlwinds and the winter birds huddled in the pines for shelter, and I wondered if Chiwid was sleeping out tonight or safe in someone’s house with the fire stoked up red-hot. That was what they said about Chiwid, that she was warm outside, but when she was coaxed in by people who couldn’t stand the thou
ght of her out in forty below weather, she always felt cold. She’d been responsible for nearly burning down the cabins of a few people when she over-stoked their stoves, trying to get warm.

  “Listen to that wind,” Rita said. “I’ll try and get the tractor out tomorrow to clear the driveway.”

  In spring, Mom announced she had got a summer job baking for a fly-in fishing camp. We would be based at the camp owners’ beautiful log cabin on Dultso Lake about two hours west on Highway 20, just the three of us. Float planes would arrive every other day to take the baking into camp. The owners had agreed to let Mom start after the school year ended. Mom wasn’t much of a baker, but they told her they had their regular recipes she could follow. Rita knew the owners, who were mostly concerned about getting someone they could trust to look after their house while they were away at the camp. In the past, their teenage daughter had done it, but she had moved to Vancouver.

  Jenny calls Dultso Lake the best place we ever lived. I call it the last place we ever lived. I find it hard to call nights playing another family’s Scrabble game with Cinnamon sleeping warmly on someone else’s blanket our “best.” For the first time, we lived in a house with a TV. A giant antenna extended up the side of the cabin and we could get shows from the U.S., like The Partridge Family. The TV was run, like all the other electric appliances in the house, by a generator that hummed through the day. At night, when Mom shut it off, the quiet flooded back into the house like the rightful owner.

  Beside the TV was a shelf stacked with Yahtzee, Monopoly, Life, checkers. There was a hi-fi in a dark wood cabinet with a sliding door that enclosed someone else’s records: Elvis, the Beatles, the Bells, Conway Twitty. Jenny played Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” so many times that summer that even now I can’t hear the song without expecting the crackles and static of that album. On quiet afternoons, while Mom’s bread was baking and Jenny sat out on the dock reading, I leafed through these records, wondering about the family who had picked them out.

  I developed an intense dislike for the album Conway Twitty. The cover pictured a grinning Conway Twitty in a red shirt with a smoothed-back hairdo. His songs had titles like “I’ll Have Another Cup of Coffee” (then I’ll go) and “Guess My Eyes Were Bigger than My Heart.” I think for me this album came to personify everything about this stupid, fortunate family with this oversized house by the lake, equipped with everything their hearts desired. This was not a family who had their wounded or dead dragged out into the public eye at the Duchess Creek nursing station. The worst things that had happened to them could be made into maudlin songs that you could sing along with. Or so I believed that summer, with a hatred burning in the pit of my stomach that puzzled even me. Sometimes I took out the Twitty album just to stare at it and enjoy hating the fortunate family.

  Most days, I went walking in the bush around the lake, sometimes only coming home in time for supper. Cinnamon came with me, hopping along in her curious way over fallen logs and tree roots. When I stopped, she stopped, finding a patch of sunlight to sit in, her paws neatly together as she watched me. Sun lit the longer hairs on her fur in a halo around her. Sometimes the two of us nestled against the warm side of a rock and slept.

  One day when we were out walking, a high wind came up, sifting through the treetops and making the big trees sway and creak eerily. I was headed for the crescent of sandy beach I’d found on the west side of the lake. If it started to rain, I could build a shelter there for Cinnamon and me. I turned to let her catch up, but she wasn’t there. A sudden scuffle of leaves and branches came from about thirty feet away and then a short yowl. I ran back to see the flash of her white fur streaking through the woods, some small animal chasing her.

  “Cinnamon!” I called sharply. What good was that going to do? I followed the scuffling until I couldn’t hear it anymore and I had to stop and listen. Nothing but the rush of wind like a waterfall through the spruce and the trees swaying.

  “Cinn-a-mon!” I called in the singsong voice she would recognize. I walked and called, then stopped and listened. I couldn’t hear anything but the wind.

  What an idiot I was to let her get so far behind me. What was I thinking?

  I think about two hours passed before I started to cry. I didn’t know what to do. She could have gone in any direction. Dad used to tell me that if you were lost, you shouldn’t let yourself cry. Or if you had to, you should sit down on a rock and cry until you were done, then wipe your eyes and nose and take ten deep breaths until you were calm again. Crying could lead to panic and you didn’t want to panic. I sat down on a log and called her name a few more times, then I wiped my nose on my T-shirt and decided that the best thing to do would be to go back to where I’d seen her last and call her. If she still didn’t come, I would go home and get Mom and Jenny to help me look. There was still a lot of light left before night fell.

  When I thought that I might not find her, I sobbed until I was mad at myself. I wiped my eyes again and took the ten deep breaths, then stood up. The creaking trees sounded like plaintive meows, and so did the little peeps of birds sneaking through below the moan of the wind once in a while.

  Back at the spot I’d seen her last, I busied myself by building a small teepee shelter, big enough only for a cat. I didn’t really think she would use it, but I needed to mark the spot with something and I needed to keep busy as I waited. I found sticks to use for poles and I set them into place, stopping every few minutes to call her again. When it was done, I called once more, then walked home.

  Jenny was standing on the deck, looking out. “Maggie, where have you been?” she yelled. “Mom’s been worried about you. Maggie? What’s wrong?”

  “I lost Cinnamon,” I burst out, and Jenny came running and put her arms around me.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll find her.” She patted my back. “We’ll find her, Maggie. She’ll come home. That cat loves you like crazy. She’ll come home.”

  They had already eaten supper, so while I picked at the potato salad and ham Jenny put out for me, Mom scurried around collecting things to take with us on the search. “We’ll take a flashlight because it gets dark earlier in the bush. Jenny, get that box of catfood. We can shake it when we call her. We’ll need jackets; it’s getting chilly already.” Mom put her hand on the back of my neck. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes back before we’re even ready to go.”

  But she didn’t. As we headed back into the woods, I felt so sick with worry I thought I would throw up.

  “That little cat knows where home is,” Mom said, glancing sideways at me.

  But I wasn’t so sure. If she did, why would she always follow me so closely? Maybe being taken away from her mother so early meant that she didn’t have all the proper cat instincts.

  That evening, as we made circles out from the teepee and back again, crossing paths with each other, our three voices singsonging through the woods, Jenny rattling the box of cat food as she called, I believed that I was protected by their love and this would not be my second bad thing. As it got dark, I sank down on a log and stared into the dense woods, sure that any minute now I would see her hopping through the woods toward me. After a while Mom came and took my arm and helped me up. “I bet she’ll come home tonight. She could be there right now, for all we know.” But she wasn’t.

  I don’t think I slept. I think it was the first time in my life that I stayed awake all night, listening for scratching at the door, drifting and then starting awake again to listen to the house groan and the wind hum through the TV antenna. As soon as light showed through the skylight, I got up, grabbed an apple and one of the sweet buns Mom had set on the counter, and left the house. The morning was still and cold, a grey light washing the sky. A heavy dew lay on the trees and grass. Little creatures skittered into the underbrush as I made my way back to the teepee. I sat on a log. I was conscious of being cold and shoved my hands into my pockets. My voice sounded out of place as I called her. I listened. Then I thought I hear
d a tiny meow. I stood up and called again. I heard it again, a tiny, tinny meow. I walked maybe fifty feet into the woods, following the sound. It was louder now. “Cinn-a-mon!”

  And there it was again, very close. I looked up. Way up, high in a tree, she perched on a branch, looking down at me and crying. “On my god, Cinnamon, you crazy nut.” I laughed at her, ecstatically, crazily relieved.

  The tree she had got up was a tall skinny spruce with no lower branches, no footholds until about twenty feet up the trunk. I didn’t think I could possibly get up there. I tried a few times, clutching with my arms and trying to get a toehold on the bark, but it was futile. Another spruce, only a few feet away, had plenty of sturdy limbs. I hoisted myself into it and hauled myself up, calling softly, “Don’t worry, Cinnamon. I’ll get you out of there. Good kitty.”

  But at about twenty feet, I couldn’t climb any higher. The branches were too small, and even if they could have held me, the trunk was now too far from the one Cinnamon was in. I considered going home to get Mom. But I just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her there, so I stayed in the tree. “Mom will come looking for me,” I told her. “Don’t worry. She knows where to find me and she’ll get you down.”

  After about an hour, the sun started to come up in the distance and I felt a bit warmer. A little while later I heard the screen door slam and then I heard, very faintly, Mom calling “Ma-ggie!” I knew that we would not have long to wait. I heard the screen door slam again. It was either Mom going back in or Jenny coming out. I stood up on a thick branch so I could see them coming.

  Maybe ten minutes later I saw a flash of colour through the trees. “I told ya, I told ya!” I sang to Cinnamon. “Mom! Jenny! I’m way up here.”

  We told and retold the story of rescuing Cinnamon like a legend, to ourselves or whoever came to visit. Mom had wrapped the tree trunk with her jacket and used it like a sling to shimmy up the bare trunk, finding footholds on the slightest swellings and scars. When she reached the branches, she climbed quickly to where Cinnamon stood eagerly, rubbing her back against the tree. I’ve heard that mothers can perform incredible feats of strength when their children are in danger—lift a car off a leg or fight a cougar. My mother’s feat that morning, climbing the unclimbable tree, descending with the scared cat clinging to her shoulder, proved that she would do anything for me.