The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [117]
– The coast of Denmark, she explained. You're welcome to roll up your sleeves. Just dip the strips of paper into the glue and cover the form. She pointed to a pile of wire shapes. Then she looked into Jean's face.
– Or maybe, she said quietly, it's time for a cup of tea.
Ewa put the kettle on the stove and they sat at the kitchen table.
– You love him, said Ewa.
– Yes, said Jean. Not as my husband, but – for who he is.
Ewa nodded.
– I knew Lucjan before I met Paweł. When I met Paweł, well, it was hard. But even Lucjan saw that Paweł was the man for me.
She looked at Jean.
– How can I explain it to you? she said quietly. We're – uwikłani – entangled; – Paweł, Lucjan, and me. So many times we've saved each other over the years; perhaps it's as simple as that. When Lucjan met you, Paweł and I thought, If it could be anyone, it would be you. Lucjan's brought home women over the years, but none like you. He talks to you. It's your compassion, it's everywhere in you – in your beautiful face, in the way you carry yourself. It's your sadness. And perhaps the fact that you love your husband has a little to do with it.
Sometimes Paweł goes to sit with him, but it's me he needs. It's my hands he needs. I stay with him until he falls asleep … Do I have to have a name for it? It's not a love affair, not a romance we're having, not something psychological, not an arrangement – it's more like … a disaster at sea.
– You're a family, said Jean.
The two women sat with their hands around the fragile, old-fashioned teacups.
– I love Paweł, said Ewa. What would I be without him? And Lucjan belongs with us. How can I explain what bread means to us, what making things means? Those years can't be measured like other years.
Ewa paused.
– We've lived many lifetimes together.
Jean saw past Ewa's costumes, the hairstyles, the feathers and fake fur, to the most adult face.
– Of all of us, Lucjan feels everything the worst. Sometimes he can't bear his loneliness; soul loneliness. I think you understand, said Ewa. She spoke with such contrition, Jean could hardly hear her: We teach each other how to live.
III
Petrichor
Jean took the train to Montreal, the route of the Moccasin of her childhood. It felt right to make the journey by train. Then she changed lines and rode another stop farther, to the town of St. Jerome, and walked the short distance to the cemetery her mother had chosen so many years before.
It was a cold April day. A high wind beat down the long grass between the church and the graveyard. Jean stood in front of the three stones, for the first time looking upon the marker for her daughter: the few words, the single date.
She put down her satchel and kneeled in the mud. How could she have left off talking at the precise moment her daughter had needed most to hear her voice? She began to chastise herself, but then let this misgiving fall away; for it was a true peace to feel the knees of her tights growing sodden with the damp earth. She had so often tried to imagine who had made the first garden; the first person to plant flowers for the pleasure of them, the first time flowers were deliberately set aside – with a wall or a ditch, or a fence – from the wilderness. But now she felt, with an almost primordial knowledge, that the first garden must have been a grave.
In the late morning, when Avery reached the cemetery at St. Jerome, he saw Jean's flowers. She had come, their daughter's first birthday, his instinct had been right. But he had missed her. He had driven half the night and come too late. He stood there for some time, unbelieving.
He descended the small hill to the vault, in a corner of the graveyard, just as Jean had described it, so long before. Along the rough stone building was a wooden bench. He sat, leaning back, his head against the wall. He looked out to the adjacent field, empty, without even the single black horse from Jean's childhood. He