Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [98]
Quoyle called for more rolls, worried the tea bag in the saucer. Would the rolls be enough?
“Doesn’t he do the same thing to himself? Going out on the sea that claimed his father and grandfather, two brothers, the oldest son and nearly got the younger? It dulls it, the pain, I mean. It dulls it because you see your condition is not unique, that other people suffer as you suffer. There must be some kind of truth in the old saying, misery loves company. That it’s easier to die if others around you are dying.”
“Cheery thoughts, Quoyle. Have some more tea and stop [222] crushing that repulsive bag. You see what Tert Card had stuck on the back of his trousers this morning?”
But Quoyle was deciding on two pieces of partridgeberry pie with vanilla ice cream.
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At four o’clock he went to get Wavey.
The cold weather advanced from the north, rain changed to sleet, sleet to snow, fogs became clouds of needlepoint crystals and Quoyle was in an elaborate routine. In the mornings he dropped Sunshine at Beety’s, brought Bunny to school, gave Wavey a ride. At four he reversed. Man Doubles as Chauffeur. Tea in Wavey’s crazy kitchen if he was done for the day. If he had to work late, sometimes they stayed with her. She cut Quoyle’s hair. He stacked her wood on Saturday morning. Sensible to eat dinner at the same table now and then. Closer and closer. Like two ducks swimming at first on opposite sides of the water but who end in the middle, together. It was taking a long time.
“There’s no need for it,” Mrs. Mavis Bangs whispered to Dawn. “Driving back and forth and giving rides. Those children could ride on the school bus. The school bus would drop the girl at the paper. She could tidy up papers while Agnis’s nephew finished up his work. Whatever he does. Writes things down. Don’t seem too heavy a work for a man, Mrs. Herold Prowse doesn’t need to walk all that way in the weather. She’s got her hooks out for him.”
“I was thinking, he’s got his out for her. He’s that desperate for somebody to take care of those brats and do the cooking. And the other, if you know what I mean. Big as he is, he’s like he’s starving.”
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In Wavey’s kitchen there was a worktable by the window where she applied yellow paint to the miniature dories her father made. Their little stickers on each one, Woodworks of Flour Sack Cove. She sanded and painted Labrador retriever napkin holders, wooden butterflies for tourists to nail on the sides of their houses, sea gulls [223] standing on a single dowel leg. Ken took them to the gift shops up along the coast. On consignment, but they sold well enough.
“I know it’s just tourist things,” she said, “but they’re not so bad. Decent work that gives a fair living.”
Quoyle ran his finger over the meticulous joinery and glassy finish. And said he thought they were fine.
The little house was full of colors, as though inside Wavey’s dry skin an appreciation for riot seethed. Purple chairs, knotted rugs of scarlet and blue, illustrated cupboards and stripes margining the doors. So that, standing in the color she was like an erasing of the human, female form.
Sunshine liked a cabinet with glass doors. Behind the glass a white tureen, a row of plates with swimming fish around the rims, four green wineglasses. On each of the lower doors Wavey had painted a scene; her own house with its painted fence; her father’s yard of wooden figures. Sunshine opened the father’s door. It made a wheezing squeak. She had to laugh.
28
The Skater’s Chain Grip
To rescue someone who has fallen through the ice, the fingers
of the rescuer’s hand and