Garden of Eden by Sharon Butala Read Free Book Online Page B

thick new rugs her father had installed, all the hot air from the ugly propane heaters rising straight to the ceiling or out the apparently unfixable, rattling window frames. She’d grown tired of its uncertain water supply, its inadequate electrical wiring,its crampedness. She’d balked then, demanded a better place to live, but although she was waiting with less and less patience for her parents to retire so she and Barney could have the big house, she knew better than to say so directly. Hadn’t been above planting a few hints, though, she remembers, which her parents studiously ignored.
    And yet, as she stands here in the bustling hall knifing the stems out of the berries, discarding the occasional one Mavis missed that’s bruised or not ripe enough, she finds that shabby old house appears now in her memory suffused in a soft golden light; how in love she and Barney had been, their tender and joyful nights together in the tiny bedroom with its rough plaster walls and the ice forming on the windowsill, lying under the warm feather quilt her grandmother had made when she was a bride.
    “I’d like to stay on the farm,” Joanne says, wistfully, “but Jerry says Daddy’s right. If things on the farm don’t work out — “she pauses, but Iris knows what she’s thinking:
If we lose the farm …
“We couldn’t even sell the house, but a house in town will sell eventually …” The coffee urn is full now, the tap turned off, and the women have finished filling the trays with cutlery. Now the kitchen is peaceful, the voices of the women as they go about their work harmonious, even musical.
    “First we moved into an old farmhouse when we got married,” Iris says. “Then we lived in my parents’ basement for two years.”
    “What a drag that must have been,” Joanne exclaims.
    Then, without any warning to Iris and Barney, the day of his fifty-second birthday, the same age Iris is now, Iris’s father announced that he and Lily were moving to town.
    “Not to retire,” he’d said, a touch of grimness breaking through the joviality he’d found for the occasion, “but to leave you two on your own here.” Delight flooding over her —
at last
— Iris had glanced at her mother. Lily didn’t speak, but Iris can’t forget how at that moment she wouldn’t meet her eyes, or even look at her. Her mother never did reproach her or even express any regret. Iris no longer tries to squelch the pang of guilt she feels at the memory. Youth! she thinks wryly, you’d think there could have been a less painful solution, although she doesn’t know what that might havebeen. And anyway, isn’t it a given that the younger generation will always try to push out the older?
    “Iris! Can you come here?” Mavis’s imperious voice breaks her reverie. She swishes her hands quickly through the chilly water, wipes her fingers on a soggy tea towel, hands her paring knife to Joanne, and hurries away into the hall.
    “We thought you and Irma could pour over here. We’ll put the coffee urns over there.” Iris nods comfortably, as if being asked to pour isn’t an honour going only to the women of the community’s first families. She’s used to such tributes; nonetheless, she feels a twinge of pride. The tables are arranged throughout the hall now, the chairs set in place around them, the white tablecloths have been laid, and two of the women are setting small yellow baskets of pink cloth flowers and stacks of pink paper napkins on each table. An elaborate silver tea service has been placed on each of the two tables Mavis is indicating.
    “I could have brought my grandmother’s set,” Iris says. “It’s just sitting there in the dining room getting tarnished. I never use it.” She remembers how, when Lannie was a little girl and home from school with a cold or flu, Iris would carry it upstairs to her bedroom, and Lannie would spend the morning carefully cleaning and polishing it, her pale little face solemn as she worked,