Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [59]
Just to see the way she walked, a tall woman who walked miles. And Petal had never walked if she could ride. Or lie down.
15
The Upholstery Shop
The knots of the upholsterer are the half-hitch, the slip-knot,
the double half-hitch, and the tuft knot.
THE AUNT’S shop was in the lane behind Wharf Road. An ochre frame building with wooden flourishes and black shutters. Quoyle liked the row of shops, snug from the wind, yet almost on the wharf. The windows wavery with old glass. A bell jingled as he opened the door. The aunt, working a finger-roll edge on a stuffed pad, looked up. Curved needle halted in midmuslin.
“Here you are,” she said. Looked around as though seeing the shop herself for the first time.
A woman with Emily Dickinson hair looped over her ears and symmetrically divided by a wide part sat at a sewing machine. The chattering needle slowed, the muslin slid over the table. The woman smiled at Quoyle, showing perfect teeth between violet lips, then [131] her smile faded, a sadness flowed down her face from brow to mouth. A jabot foamed at her throat.
“Mrs. Mavis Bangs,” said the aunt like a master of ceremonies.
At another table, a young woman with a helmet of tight brown curls, scissoring expensively into leather.
“And Dawn Budgel,” said the aunt. The woman tense with concentration, did not look up or stop cutting. There was a smell of leather, dye, size and perfume. The perfume came from Mrs. Bangs whose hands were folded now into each other, who stared at Quoyle. His hand went up to his chin.
“Well, this is it,” said the aunt. “There’s only the two sewing stations and one cutting table set up now, but as I build up business I hope to have six sewing and two cutting. That’s what I had back in Long Island. I’ve got a sailing fishing boat that’s like a yacht below decks coming up next week—she was built in the States on the West Coast as a salmon-trolling ketch, but now she belongs to a fellow in St. John’s. I’ve seen a few commercial fishing sailboats in the last year or two. Cheap to run, they say. Working sail might be coming back. Don’t I wish.”
“Dawn here cutting out the chair backs for the dining salon on the Melvilles’ yacht. That color blue matches Mrs. Melville’s eyes. She had it specially dyed down in New York. And Mavis is sewing up the liners that go over the foam rubber. Dawn, this is my nephew I told you about. Works for the paper. We’re just going to run over across the way to Skipper Will’s and get some dinner. Dawn, when you get done cutting you might thread up the other machine with that blue. She had the thread dyed, too.”
The aunt clicked out the door on her black heels, and Quoyle, slow in closing it behind her, heard Mrs. Bangs say to Dawn, “Not what you thought, is he?”
¯
A blast of hot oil and scorch came from Skipper Will’s exhaust fan. Inside the fug was worse, fishermen still in bloody oilskins and boots hunched over fries and cod, swigged from cups with dangling strings. Cigarette smoke dissolved in the cloud from the fryer. The [132] waitress bawled to the kitchen. Quoyle could see Skipper Will’s filthy apron surging back and forth like ice in the landwash.
“Well, Agnis girl, what’ll you ‘ave today?” The waitress beamed at the aunt.
“I’ll have the stewed cod, Pearl. Cuppa tea, of course. This here is my nephew, works for the paper.”
“Oh yis, I sees him afore. In ‘ere the odder day wit’ Billy. ‘Ad the squidburger.”
“That I did,” said Quoyle. “Delicious.”
“Skipper Will, y’know, ‘e invented the squidburger. Y’ll ‘ave it today, m’dear?”
“Yes,” said Quoyle. “Why not? And tea. With cream.” He had learned about the Skipper’s coffee, a weak but acrid brew with undertones of cod.
Quoyle folded his napkin into a fan, unfolded it and made triangles of decreasing size. He looked at the aunt.
“Want to ask you something, Aunt. About Bunny.” Steeled for this conversation.