Natural Order by Brian Francis Read Free Book Online Page A

He comes from a good family, although I’m not sure how they feel about me. His mother and sister came for the wedding. It was the first time I’d met them. His father left Mrs. Sparks and the children at some early stage in the marriage. Charlie didn’t offer many details. Only that the last he’d heard, his father was somewhere in Manitoba.
    His sister, Irene, was tall with a twisted front tooth.
    “You can practically smell the wheat coming off her,” my mother whispered.
    His mother was older than I expected. She walked with a limp and her white hair was tightly curled against her head, revealing a grid of pink scalp. She treated her son cordially, as though he was someone she’d just met. Everything was “please” and “thank you” and she seemed to feign interest in his stories of life “out East” as he referred to it and how Balsden was an up-and-coming city on account of its refineries.
    “It’s a city of the future,” he said as we drove past the massive oil drums and tall smokestacks like smouldering cigars. “People are calling it the Yukon of the south.”
    I noticed a desperate edge in his voice, and the look Mrs. Sparks and Irene shared told me they had detected it as well. I realized for the first time what it had meant for him to come here, to leave behind the only world he knew.
    “It’s so hilly,” Irene commented later.
    “Really?” I asked. I couldn’t think of a single hill in Balsden.
    I was anxious to make a good impression on Charlie’s family. I didn’t want them to think that he’d made a mistake in moving east. And even though he assured me that they liked me, their stone Prairie faces did little to convince me.
    “Do you ever think about your father?” I asked once. I wanted to tell him that although I’d never been abandoned in that way, I knew about loss. In the eight years since I last saw Freddy, I’d never so much as breathed his name. I’m afraid that if I ever tell Charlie about him, he’ll ask me if I still have feelings for him and I won’t know how to answer. I’m not in love with Freddy. I never was. But he offered me something different, exciting. The crack of an open door.
    Charlie considered my question about his father. I knew it was the first time he’d been asked.
    “You don’t miss the things you never had.”
    “Let me get this straight,” Helen says. The three of us are sitting in my backyard, keeping one eye on the children over the horizons of our coffee cups. Helen’s eight-year-old daughter, Marianne, is playing with John in the sandbox. Mark, her five-year-old, is asleep on the lawn. “What did the teacher say again?”
    “She said that John had been a good student but that he exhibited behaviour throughout the year that concerned her.”
    “The kitchen set?” Helen’s eyes widen. She recently had her brown curls cut short and dyed red. It makes her complexion too washed out, but she says that’s the point. It’s all about alabaster skin.
    “Among other things.” I shouldn’t have said anything to her. It will come back to haunt me. I glance over at John, who is scooping sand into a bucket. He’s the spitting image of me. Brown hair, stern face, long arms. He catches me staring and waves.
    “Are you and your cousin making sandcastles?” I call out.
    “Sand houses , Mommy,” he says with irritation.
    “Don’t get too dirty.”
    “I personally don’t see what the fuss is about,” Fern says, shifting in her lawn chair. “Most of the world’s greatest chefs are men.” With her index finger and thumb, she pinches out her top. She does this all the time so that her clothing doesn’t catch in the folds of her stomach. She’s put on weight this past year and blames it on her mother’s cooking.
    “Were there other things?” Helen inquires, leaning towards me.
    “Not really. I think she’s blowing it out of proportion. She was very snooty to me.” I don’t mention Miss Robinson’s other comment.
    “Teachers can