The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan Read Free Book Online

began, it is the second time I have spotted him on River Road. The first time, he tipped his cap when he was just opposite the house and I gingerly lifted my palm to him, all the while continuing to read in a steady voice. Isabel’s eyes remained downcast, on her fingers tracing the velvet piping of the chaise, and I thought I had fooled her.
    But just now as I peek over the top of the book, her gaze meets mine. “Go ahead,” she says. “Wave to your drudge.”
    I slam the book closed and stand, waving boldly overhead, more so once I remember that Mother has gone to Toronto and that Father left the house in a frock coat, the wrinkled one he was wearing the day before. A while back Mother would have told him he looked unkempt and pressed the coat. She said nothing this morning, and it made me think she does not care to impress the company he keeps. Still, I have seen the thin line her lips become when he appears at the breakfast table only after she has had to call up the stairs a half dozen times. I bet she listens late at night, same as I do, for his key in the lock, for the subsequent stumble up the stairs.
    To my dismay and delight, my wave is returned, and he crosses River Road and heads toward the slope leading to the high ground of our property. When he stops at the front walk of a small house along the way, my spirits sink. A squat mistress rises from the vegetable patch and shuffles over to him. She waits there, folding her arms, shaking her head, gesticulating her refusal, until she reaches into the pocket of her apron and exchanges a handful of coins for a fish he unties from his line. As he turns to continue up the slope, Isabel says, “He’s a fishmonger, for God’s sake.”
    When he cannot possibly be headed anywhere but Glenview, I walk to the front gate and open it.
    “She wanted the pike,” he says, jutting his chin toward the woman below, “but it’s for you.” He holds out a long, spotted fish, and I reach for it, hesitantly. I have never held a fish. “Do you know how to gut it?”
    “You could show me,” I say.
    Because it seems I should already know his name, I do not ask it and introduce him to Isabel as the fellow who helped Mother and me with the trunk. She says, “Hello,” but does not offer her hand. It is awkwardly silent for a moment, until he says to me, “Where’s the water pump?”
    We leave her on the veranda and walk around to the back of the house. He selects a flat piece of wood from the woodpile as we go. At the pump he lays the fish on the wood and says, “First, it needs to be scaled. Hang on to it by the tail.”
    I grasp the fish. “Like this?”
    He nods and holds out a knife with a bone handle. I take it, my fingertips grazing his knuckles. “The blade needs to snag the free edge of the scales.”
    “Tail to head, then?” I say.
    “Right.”
    My eyes on the pike, I try to make short work of the task. “In dressmaking we call it against the nap.”
    From his silence, I take it he has not understood.
    “Think of velvet,” I say. “Run a hand over its surface, with the nap and it’s silky smooth, against the nap and it’s less so.”
    “Can’t say I’ve had a whole lot of experience with velvet.”
    “Well, your fingers would leave a trail,” I say, thinking about the ordinariness of velvet in my life. I clear the scales collected on the knife blade on the edge of the wood.
    While I pump, he rinses the fish, his forearms extending beyond his turned-up shirtsleeves. I have always considered myself somewhat squeamish, maybe because I was expected to be. But once he shows me where to insert the knife, I slit open the belly and pull the innards from the fish easily enough. As instructed, I lift the gill covers and pull them away, and cut along each side of the dorsal fin and lift it upward along with the root bones. My cheeks grow hot under his gaze.
    “Can you cook?” he says.
    Until recently my experience in the kitchen was limited to the pie and bread