But this was her husband Jack she was thinking of. She needn’t worry about him; he was faithful and loyal. Unlike her own father, apparently. She remembered her mother telling her the story of how her father Tom stormed out of her grandmother’s house when Lillian had told him she was pregnant, how he had avoided her for the full nine months of pregnancy, how Lillian had watched him date, break hearts, go through almost every available girl in town, even when Angela’s oldest sister Cynthia had arrived. Lillian had wheeled her proudly around town in her four-wheel navy blue, silver-rimmed carriage, her curly blonde hair springing out from under her baby bonnet, agreed upon by the female old guard to be the cutest baby they ever saw born in Brighton.
Lillian had resigned herself to Tom’s withdrawal and absence, gradually forgetting about marrying him, growing more content, alone in her routine with her newborn daughter, comfortable with just her mother’s help, until one day Tom Harrington passed her on the sidewalk, looked straight at the baby, stopped the stroller, and reached in for the baby, and when she grabbed at his nose and kicked at his chest, Tom told Lillian that he wanted to marry her and raise their child together.
Lillian’s mother had protested, mumbled obscenities at the wedding reception, cursing that “stun-arse” of a man her youngest would marry and bear more children with. He was no good, not for her or anyone else. There was a distinct lack of female presence at the wedding; all of the young women in town were too hurt to watch Tom Harrington walk down the aisle.
Lillian had loosened up somewhat over the years and for the most part was as well-behaved as could be expected for a feisty old woman who had raised three daughters, for the most part on her own after Tom died in an underground mine fire.
On the morning that Jack had left for his interview Angela put the box of salt away, screwed the cap on the shaker tightly, crossed to the stove, lifted the lid off a boiling pot, and sprinkled in salt, round the pot of potatoes in circles, over and over again. She heard Lily wail as she woke from her nap. Maggie put down her crayons at the kitchen table behind Angela and asked, “Can I go see her, Momma?”
“Yes, my love, here,” Angela said, put the lid on the pot, and grabbed Lily’s juice bottle. “Give her this.”
The next morning Angela awoke to the incessant shrill of the telephone. She stumbled out of bed, snaked her way through the jumble of toys on the living room floor, entered the sun-filled kitchen, and picked up the phone. “Jack?”
“I got a job offer. We’ll be in Foxville by the end of the month.”
Joy welled up in Angela’s chest and her eyes watered. “Oh, thank god.”
“We’ll have an income and a new home in no time. There’s a nice new school there and people from all over Canada, I hear.”
“Thank you, my love. You’ll see how much fun we can all have together again, Wanda, Pete, you, and me. It’ll be just like home,” she said.
“I’m sure it will. Go back to sleep before the girls run you ragged.”
“I love you,” Angela whispered.
The evening Jack returned from St. John’s, Angela asked him to go get milk from the corner store. The autumn air was crisp and stars crowded the sky. Brighton lay tucked between a slight Appalachian mountain range. The wind was stunted by rock. The main road curled around town and connected the handful of necessary businesses: the cinema, the hockey arena, the grocery store, and a bargain department store. The corner store stood behind the library and school, close to Fung’s, the Chinese food restaurant. A car passed. Jack smiled at the driver but avoided his eyes.
Jack shuffled along, head down, hands crammed into his jeans pockets. The heaviness in his belly made up for the loss of appetite. His big blue eyes were cloudy, his lips downcast. His wide face pinched the skin on his long, thin nose. He stared at his boots, dusty and heavy, and kicked rocks sharply as he walked, looking to vent his anger on the smooth bodies of the pebbles.
In the smoky, scented store, as Jack made his way to the milk cooler, Mr. Pinsent, the owner, a cigarette clamped between his stubby lips, waved and nodded. As Jack reached for a carton he bumped into Doctor Nelson and dropped his milk carton. They watched the liquid inch slowly, directionlessly, across the linoleum.
“No use cryin’ is there?” Doctor Nelson said and raised the toes of his leather shoes away from the spilled milk.
Jack lowered his head and rested his fist on the glass. He took a step forward and lost his balance on the wet floor.
“You alright?” Nelson asked and hauled him forward, centimetres from his thick salt-and-pepper beard. Doctor Nelson’s beige raglan crinkled against Jack’s dirty denim jacket.
“Come for a drink,” Nelson said.
Jack’s leg twitched. He gulped as if he’d swallowed netting that had siphoned off his breath. He could barely speak and could hardly hear what Doctor Nelson had said, but he found himself nodding, agreeing to go to the doctor’s to talk privately. All the while, Mr. Pinsent, the cherry-nosed, stout and balding grocer, discreetly passed his mop underneath the feet of the two men.
Purity tea stepped in the long giraffe-neck silver carafe. Hot buttered scones steamed on a silver tray. Nelson passed one to Jack, who sat fidgeting in his jeans and navy cotton T-shirt. He felt naked without his denim jacket; it had been politely taken at the door and promptly hung by the prim young nursing student.
“I don’t want to leave,” Jack said softly to the man who had delivered him and all three of his babies, the man whose house he used to egg on Halloween night and laugh about later on with Peter.
“I know,” Doctor Nelson answered and stirred his tea in the herringbone china cup, his pinky extended and crooked gracefully. “How do you think I felt, falling in love with Sheila’s mother, Jane, with no background, family, or money, living in post-war London?” He laughed. “I knew I’d have to leave home too. So I worked hard. I had one shot at rising up, and I went for it, took the scholarship to Oxford and went for gold.”
“It worked out? I mean, of course —”
“Well, yes and no. I won the woman I loved, that’s for sure. A brat like Jane wouldn’t have married a commoner like me otherwise. Don’t get me wrong,” he said and slurpped his tea loudly, “she loved me the minute we met. I was serving hors d’oeurves at one of her mother’s arts philanthropy parties. I told her I was going to marry her and that I was going to be a doctor like her father.”
“Do you enjoy medicine?”
“I don’t love it, but it comes fairly easy to me, and it serves society, so I did what I thought was best, knowing full well it would take me to different parts of the world, far from home in London. Jane knew that too, but she accepted it.”
“Did you ever want to go home?”
“Yes, of course. But I chose to support my wife and family, and I was rewarded, and I’m not talking about the contents of my over-stuffed house, or the frames on my wall declaring to the world my worth. I’m talking about spending my life with my wife and child. I wouldn’t have changed that for anything.”
Jack finished his tea. He rubbed his palms on his thighs, jiggled his feet, and sat with arms clamped under his armpits. As Doctor Nelson talked about the miners’ strikes in England and Thatcher’s latest response, Jack silently decided he would prove to Angela that he could take care of her. He wanted to be like Doctor Nelson.