Cambium Blue Read online

  Cambium Blue

  Cambium Blue

  Maureen Brownlee

  Copyright © 2022 Maureen Brownlee

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].

  Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

  P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

  www.harbourpublishing.com

  Front cover illustration, bottom © Pictures Now/Alamy

  Edited by Caroline Skelton

  Text design by Carleton Wilson

  Cover design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Printed on paper containing 100% post-consumer fibre

  Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Cambium blue / Maureen Brownlee.

  Names: Brownlee, Maureen, 1960-

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210383372 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210383380 | ISBN 9781550179309 (softcover) | ISBN 9781550179316 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8603.R6993 C36 2022 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  For Lesli and Ron

  Again. Still. Always.

  Prologue

  Ravens circle and call. One, a cocky beggar, much bigger than the others, glossy black wings tucked, perches on a sign: ragged, blood-red brush strokes scrawled on a whitewashed slab of chipboard: No Scavenging! The sign is wired to a metal cross driven into the ground too close to the edge of the pit. It is already tilting. By spring it will teeter over the yawning, stinking abyss. Eventually the weight of a raven will tumble it down the bank. A sleeping flame will awaken to lick clean the paint and incinerate the wood chips. By then no one will care.

  Winter

  1

  It was four a.m. Monday morning and she was afraid again.

  Behind her at the kitchen table, Kurt was fumbling with a box of shotgun shells. The box was pastel-green cardboard, the shells waxy red tubes with shiny brass bases.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn to work on Friday: plaid mackinaw, grey woollen bucking pants, orange suspenders.

  “Go ahead,” she said. She was curled in the tweed armchair that was hers when Kurt was home. Across the narrow living room, where he usually camped out watching television on his days off, the black recliner was empty.

  “I mean it, Stevie.”

  “So do I.”

  Of course, she didn’t mean it. She didn’t want him to blow his brains out, all over the kitchen, just to prove that he couldn’t live without her—now that they both knew that she didn’t love him, and possibly never had. She hugged her knees to her chest, ignored her reflection in the black window beside her. She knew what she looked like: splotchy, pale skin, red, puffy eyelids, plain brown eyes, plain brown hair wisping out from under a blue polka-dot handkerchief. Instead, she watched Kurt’s wavy reflection in the blank screen of the television perched in the bay window. They’d fought about that too, when they arrived last fall for this perfect new life: a job at the sawmill for Kurt, home nights, weekends off, no more camp work, he’d promised. No more moving was what Stevie had promised her tearful girls when she pulled them out of school. Things will be better, she’d told them. Except Kurt wanted to put the TV in the bay window, and Stevie wanted to keep it for plants. Except they shut the mill two months ago, laid everybody off. Except he went back to work for the Bentwells, who were going north for the winter, Mackenzie this time. Despite Kurt’s promises, 1994 had turned out just like every other year.

  He hadn’t believed her, Friday night, when she’d said no. He’d slammed out the door, shouting that they were moving whether she liked it or not.

  “Start packing,” he’d hollered.

  And so she had. Everything he could lay claim to was out on the deck. His suitcase, three bags of clothes, two boxes of saw parts, his toolbox, his fishing tackle. The stereo was there, and his cassettes. She’d set aside her Bruce Springsteen, her Madonna LPs, packed him all of Bobby’s metal. She’d kept her clothes, the kitchen stuff and the girls’ things. The furniture had been hers from the start.

  She’d known that he would say she was overreacting. They’d moved before, a hundred times. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t as if there was something to hold her here. Certainly not this dumpy three-bedroom trailer, with its grimy aluminum windows and putrid green shag carpet. Certainly not this crappy little mill town, with its dirt streets and sway-backed shops. She hardly knew a soul besides old Mrs. Marsonkowsky who lived next door. And yet, she would not budge. Not this time.

  Kurt rapped a shell down hard on the kitchen table. The sound of brass on Arborite rippled across the room and down her spine. She sucked in a careful, quiet breath, eyes glued to his reflection. He stared at the back of her head, waiting for her reaction.

  She didn’t move.

  He wouldn’t do it.

  She forced her weary brain to consider how she might explain it, again, if she wasn’t so tired of explaining shit to men who never listened anyway.

  I was fifteen…

  The trail started there, didn’t it? That party at Bobby Jeffers’s house, three days shy of her fifteenth birthday. Bobby’s parents away at a logging convention in Vancouver, Big Bob always was some kind of wheel, they went every year. Bobby had been celebrating. What? The Grizzlies—they’d won their tournament, and Bobby was high on having scored the winning goal. Stevie had arrived with her brother, Adrian, but he’d gone home without her. She’d been one of the stragglers: long past midnight, maybe a dozen of them left, the stereo turned down, the keg in the kitchen empty, the haze of tobacco and marijuana smoke waning. She’d been standing hip to hip with Bobby Jeffers, their backs against the kitchen countertop while Kurt Talbot, Bobby’s right forward, play-by-played the last minute of the last period, the magnificent winning goal. She’d been pretending to listen, but all her senses were attuned to Bobby Jeffers’s thigh leaning into hers. When he draped his arm over her shoulders, she nestled along his ribs, and without looking at each other, they merged. She cherished that moment: his heartbeat, hers, the delicious weight of his forearm, the whisper of his fingertips against her skin. Later, in the dark cab of his pickup, parked at the end of her parents’ driveway, his touch roughening, Bobby had used his knee to pry apart her clenched thighs—

  Kurt cracked open the shotgun.

  Stevie whirled, stabbing a finger into the air. “You wanna know why? That, right there, that’s why! I’m done being pushed around. You hear me? Done!”

  “We’re not done until I say we’re done. I can’t—you’re all I have, you and the girls.”

  “Right. Which is why you’re always happier without us, off drinking or hunting with the Bentwells, hanging out at the bar, drooling over the peelers.”

  “I don’t have to do that. I can stop.” His voice broke. “I need you.”

  “You don’t. You never did. You’re—” She stopped. They’d been over it too many times already.

  Kurt sniffled, the empty gun across his knee, his hands limp against the barrel. She knew what was coming now: he’d work himself up about the mess that was his life, and then he would cry. Her breathing eased.

  Bobby hadn’t ever cried. Except the once. His face tinted red from the dash lights, his hands twi
sting the steering wheel. He had wanted her to say it wasn’t true, wanted her to say it wasn’t his. “He’s going to kill me,” he said, and they both knew who he meant. He tried to laugh but it came out strangled and harsh, and he slumped over the steering wheel and cried. She sat beside him, his leg quivering against hers, and she hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to say that might comfort him. Or herself.

  “My life is over,” he had sobbed. “Over.”

  When he stopped crying, he sucked in one last, hiccupping breath, and banged his head on the steering wheel three times. “Fucking. Stupid. Idiot.” For years, she thought he meant her.

  He drove her home, held the driver’s door while she slid out, and said he’d tell his parents if she told hers. He had never asked, then or later, how she felt about it. No one had.

  Kurt rapped a second shell onto the tabletop.

  Stevie laughed, a single, short bark. She stalked to the kitchen, snatched the shells from the table and crammed them back into the box. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get a second shot,” she said.

  “Give those back.”

  “Not today.” She took the shells to the addition, where the gun case lay open on the top of the chest freezer.

  Kurt followed her, the gun abandoned. He caught her into a clumsy hug. “Stevie.” He caressed her back. “What about the girls?”

  Here it came. His other tired story. This notion that he was duty bound to Bobby’s memory, to Bobby’s children.

  Bobby’s children.

  Never Stevie’s children. Always Bobby’s children.

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. He would never understand.

  Everyone had been so thankful to have her off their hands—the widow and the right-hand man, how romantic. The same relief on her parents’ faces as the day she had walked out of the church on Bobby’s arm. She hadn’t told anyone—who was there to tell?—but she’d known from the start that it was a gamble. Kurt was a good provider, just like everyone said, happy to hand over his paycheque in exchange for a handful of twenties to take to the bar, but he had always been awkward and impatient with the girls. Some idea he had about being in charge never let him relax around them. He was constantly dismissing them from the dinner table for contradictory infractions: eating too fast, eating too slow, talking too loud, whispering. He wasn’t exactly mean, just a bit rough when he was tired or when he’d had too much to drink. With Stevie’s help, Brit and Peg had learned how to tiptoe around him.

  She shrugged out of his embrace. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Since you care so much about the girls, try to be quiet on your way out. They have school in the morning.”

  He grabbed her arm. “I’m not leaving.”

  “Yes, you are, Kurt. This time, you are.” She let him hold her and searched his face: three-day whiskers, bloodshot eyes, acrid whisky breath. There was nothing left. His grip relaxed. She held his gaze without blinking, watched him calculate her silence. She wanted him to understand: she wasn’t negotiating. He dropped her arm. She went to the kitchen for the gun, zipped it into its case, and held it out to him.

  “If I go, I’m not coming back.” He was stone cold sober now and angry.

  “That’s right, you’re not.”

  “You’ll never make it without me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “There’s somebody else.”

  “I told you, there isn’t.” The last thing she needed was another man. “Just go, Kurt. Get a room. You’ll be in camp by next week. By spring you’ll have forgotten us.”

  “You’ll regret this.”

  Her fear pulsed, forcing the air from her lungs. What if she couldn’t pay the rent? Feed the girls? She steeled herself, thrust the gun case at him.

  He grabbed it. “See you around,” he growled. “Bitch.”

  She waited, leaning against the woodbox, as he ferried boxes from the deck to his truck. Finally, the pickup started, backed onto the street, roared away.

  She crept to the tweed armchair and huddled, her knees clasped to her chin. He was gone. It was over.

  She heard a small thunk behind her, firewood collapsing inside the heater. Outside, under the overhang of the addition, there was enough wood to last another week, maybe two if she was careful. And it was only October.

  * * *

  Stevie held the phone to her chest and pointed Brit down the hall, to the bedroom where Peg was playing. She waited until Brit had closed the door before continuing her conversation.

  “Kurt is gone,” she said, holding her voice to an even tone. She’d practised this sentence, and a hundred variations, knowing that she would have to have this conversation eventually. She’d avoided it a few times, letting the machine pick up, but this morning Brit had been in the kitchen when the phone rang.

  “Another camp job?”

  “No, Mom. Gone. I kicked him out.”

  “What about the children?”

  “They’re fine. Kurt never…” She wanted to say gave a shit. “He never really cared about the girls.”

  “Stephanie! That boy has been nothing but good to you. Think where you were when he came along.”

  Where I was? Where were you, Mother, when that boy came along? Stevie swallowed the words, curled her lips between her teeth, bit down gently. It was clearer now: she could almost forgive her parents’ feeble response after Bobby’s accident. Before they’d even got the call, Vivian Jeffers had swooped in and taken charge. Stevie and the girls were already unpacking in the big Jeffers house in Deighton by the time her parents arrived.

  “Is he still…helping out?”

  “No, Mom. He’s not helping out.”

  “Why didn’t you call us? I can’t think what your father is going to say.”

  “We’re fine. I work—”

  “Work? Since when?”

  “I got a job serving.” She’d seen the help wanted sign in Betty’s window the day after Kurt left. Started work the following morning.

  “A waitress?”

  Another long pause. Yes, Beatrice, your daughter is slinging hash at Betty’s Café in Beauty Creek.

  “And the girls?”

  “It’s mostly days, just a few nights, and my neighbour Mrs. Marsonkowsky takes them when I have to work late.”

  “A stranger.”

  “No, Mom, not a stranger. My neighbour.”

  “Maybe you should think about moving back here?”

  “Our life is here now.”

  “But if you’re just going to wait tables—”

  “I’m not ever coming back to Deighton.” It came out harsher than she intended.

  “Oh, Stephanie…I don’t know what to say.”

  “We’re fine.” It was a small lie. She’d already had to ask Betty for an advance to fill the propane tank for the furnace.

  “What about Christmas?”

  “Mom, it’s November.” Stevie paced to the end of the telephone cord.

  “Your brother is coming this year. It’s our turn. It would be nice if you were all here.”

  “Don’t count on it. I don’t know if the cafe is open or what. Or how the roads will be. My winter tires aren’t the greatest.”

  “There’s always the bus. What if I sent you tickets for the bus?”

  “I have to go, Mom. I’ll call you about Christmas. But don’t count on us.” Stevie hung up the phone and paced, talking back to the churning in her chest. Deep breath. Count to ten. You’re fine. She’s fine. Everything is fine.

  “Mom?” Brit called. “Can we come out now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are we going to Grandma’s for Christmas?”

  “No. We’re not.”

  “What about Grandma J’s?”

  “No. Not there either. Remember how far it is? All the way to the other ocean?” Brit had been
three when Vivian Jeffers slipped into a deep depression that not even grandchildren could relieve. Recovery had led her back to her childhood home in Newfoundland, a high school sweetheart, and a new life. “But I bet there’s going to be a really, really big Christmas parcel for you. Because that Grandma J, she knows how to shop.”

  Brit giggled.

  “For me, too?” Peg came down the hallway, ducked under Stevie’s arm, clambered into her lap.

  “Yes, for you, too. Two really, really, big parcels. Because that Grandma J…?”

  “Knows how to shop!” they shouted in chorus.

  Peg nuzzled her bare foot into Stevie’s palm. It was so cold it burned. “Margaret Jeffers, how many times have I told you? Socks, child, socks!”

  * * *

  Brit shoved Peg into the kitchen cupboards and knocked her to the floor just as Stevie came around the corner from the living room. Peg wailed and Stevie gathered her up and glared at Brit. “What is up with you?”

  Brit’s eyes welled. She shoved past Stevie and ran to her bedroom. Stevie carried Peg to the living room and deposited her in the recliner with the Christmas catalogue and a blanket.

  She found Brit flung across her bed, sobbing. “Oh, Brit, shh, it’s okay.” Stevie knelt beside her. Brit curled away. She had been standoffish for months. Stevie remembered how it felt, that desire to align with your school friends, to separate from your mother, but it still stung.

  Eventually the sobbing eased. Brit edged closer to Stevie, wriggled into her lap. Stevie rocked slowly.

  Finally, Brit wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and retrieved a brown envelope from her school backpack. Inside was an oversized green report card, with charts of subjects and skill sets, and letter markings in tiny columns. G for Good. S for Satisfactory. I for Improvement needed. There were no Is, mostly Ss, just one line in the written comments: Brittany is demonstrating an acceptable level of proficiency in all subjects.

  “That’s nice,” Stevie said. “Not that I’m surprised. You are very proficient.”