YOUR TIME MY TIME
Your Time my Time
Ann Walsh
Copyright © Ann Walsh, 2009 Originally published by Beach Holme Publishing in 1984. Seventh printing
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Cover art by Ron Lightburn
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Walsh, Ann, 1942-
Your time, my time / Ann Walsh.
ISBN 978-1-55488-437-7
I. Title.
PS8595.A585Y6 2009 jC813’.54 C2009-900818-1
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Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
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For Robin Skelton and Gwen Pharis Ringwood
who taught, encouraged, and had faith.
Chapter 1
Margaret Elizabeth Connell, fifteen years old and sweaty, pushed her hair behind her ears and thought wistfully of air conditioning. The small trailer that she and her mother now called home seemed to absorb the August heat and intensify it until the air felt too hot to breathe.
Elizabeth sighed and looked down at the letter she was writing. Spread out on the arborite top of the kitchen table, the sheet of paper seemed wilted and damp. Her perspiring hands had left dark smudges across the page and it looked as untidy as she felt. She read over what she had just written:
Dear Dad,
You told me that Wells, British Columbia, population 500 and very historical, would be an interesting place to live for a year. It had a lake nearby to swim in, famous Barkerville just up the road, and all the stores and things that Mom and I would need to keep us busy and happy.
Dear Dad. You were so wrong! This place is the absolute end of the world! It is hot and dusty, (so dusty that they water down the roads every morning) and dull! There is only one general store and a bunch of tourist places across the highway, and the movie theatre, the Sunset, is only open once in a while. No drugstore. No supermarket. No record store. The Jack of Clubs Lake is close but it’s cold (even in this heat!) and has a soggy, muddy bottom. I haven’t met anyone my own age yet and I haven’t even seen Barkerville in the two weeks we’ve been here.
Our trailer is small, but it will do for the two of us. It gets awfully hot, though. Also, because it’s right behind the hotel, it’s really noisy on Friday and Saturday nights when the pub is full. (Should I even bother to tell you that there is only one pub in Wells and the Jack O’ Clubs is it?) Late last Friday night someone came staggering around here, looking for his car or something, and threw up right outside the front door. Gross!
Mom is finding that being the cook for the restaurant in the Jack O’ Clubs isn’t quite the exciting job she thought it would be. She goes to work at noon and is tired and irritable when she gets home at nine.
Oh, Dad, please can I come back to Vancouver and live with you and Brian? I hate it in Wells!
Elizabeth shook her head and slowly began erasing the last paragraph. It wouldn’t help her father to know how miserable she was or how unhappy her mother was. Joan Connell had signed a contract to work for a year, and Elizabeth had to stay with her mother in dusty, hot, boring Wells.
She finished erasing and stood up. As she opened the fridge door, reaching for the last can of Coke, her hair swung out against her cheek and stuck to her damp skin. Angrily, she pushed it back behind her ears. Her hair, always straight, seemed more limp than ever in this heat. Her mother and brother, Brian, both had dark black hair that curled slightly, making it easy to handle. Why did she have to get the mousy-red, perfectly straight and often greasy hair that came from her father’s side of the family?
To make matters worse, she’d left Vancouver needing a haircut and found, to her dismay, that Wells didn’t even have a barber shop, much less a beauty salon. Perhaps her mother would take her into Quesnel on her next day off. Quesnel was about an hour’s drive down the highway. It was much larger than Wells and had some decent stores — and beauty salons! Well, if worst came to worst and she couldn’t stand it any longer, she’d cut her hair herself!
Back at the table she shoved the letter aside. She’d finish writing to her father this evening when it cooled down a bit. Right now she’d sit and enjoy the cold Coke and try not to think of anything. If she went on with the letter, she knew she’d end up crying, which wouldn’t help at all.
A whole year in Wells! And it was all her mother’s fault. Her mother, at the age of thirty-six, had decided that she wasn’t happy, wasn’t being ‘fulfilled’ by her life in Vancouver. The past year had been miserable. Her parents had fought continually, her mother had cried a great deal, and one week-end her father hadn’t come home at all. Then, a month ago, Joan Connell announced that she was moving out for a year, a trial separation before they went ahead with a divorce. She had found the job in the Jack O’ Clubs — and she was taking Elizabeth with her.
Elizabeth slammed the empty Coke can down on the table. Her parents had discussed the move and had decided that Elizabeth should go with her mother, like it or not. Elizabeth spent a week trying to change their minds, but they remained firm. “Teen-aged girls need their mothers, especially because fifteen is such a difficult stage.” The decision was final.
Great, Elizabeth had thought at the time. That means there will be two of us going through a difficult time together. Just what we both need!
She was even more upset when she realized that there was no question of Brian, her twelve year-old brother, going with them. “He can’t lose a whole year of hockey,” her mother had said. “And you know how badly he gets bronchitis, even in Vancouver’s mild winters. He couldn’t possibly move to such a cold climate. There isn’t even a doctor in Wells!”
There wasn’t a doctor in Wells — and not much else, either. After only two weeks in the town, Elizabeth began to realize how difficult the year would be. Her mother was busy, working late hours, and she was tired and irritable when she came home. The small trailer was furnished with cheap chrome and plastic furniture; their mattresses were lumpy and stained. Elizabeth missed the big, gracious