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

fortnight since the end of the term at a cousin’s cottage on Stoney Lake. I notice the subtle changes—the lightly bronzed skin, the insect bites on her wrist, the fingernails not quite so chewed to the quick as they were during final exams, the splashes of near white in her flaxen hair—and wonder if she sees how different I am. I badly want to tell her, but what can I say? I have learned to gut a fish and to flawlessly pleat a blouse. I have become adept at ignoring the crumbs left on the windowsill and putting Father from my mind, though, like Isabel, he is utterly changed. No longer does he prattle on about the chemistry of aluminum or the ease with which falling water is made into electricity. There is no talk of a future in which Niagara Falls spearheads Canada’s economy. And gone are the claps on the back, the eyes welled with pride for even the smallest feats: an unremarkable square of needlepoint, a mediocre pie, a middling bit of prose. Instead he is absent, hiding from Mother, Isabel, and me.
    After the requisite chitchat on the veranda, I say to Kit, “Come help me with the tea,” and we go inside, leaving Edward in my rocking chair and Isabel on the chaise. In the privacy of the kitchen, my mind stumbles from Father’s late nights to Isabel’s poor appetite to Mother’s dressmaking, and then to Tom and my trunk and the pike. Yet I am unable to begin. “How was Stoney Lake?” I finally say.
    “Restful. Quiet. Boring, in a pleasant way. All the days were the same, nothing to make one different from the next. Edward was good company, though. He always is. The time flew by.”
    What if Dickens is right? What if I can exist only inside my own head? Spurred on by the bleakness of the thought, I say, “These two weeks have been the longest of my life.”
    Her shoulders slump. “Is everything still awful?”
    “So much has happened.”
    “For instance?”
    “For instance, this morning, I picked raspberries, made biscuits, finished twenty-three buttonholes—there are still seven more—combed Isabel’s hair, pleaded with her to eat a handful of raspberries, read to her, and gutted a fish.”
    “She’s so thin. Too thin.”
    “She doesn’t eat,” I say, throwing up my palms.
    “Boyce Cruickshank?”
    I shake my head. “I don’t know. She’s hardly mentioned him.”
    “So much has gone wrong and all at once.”
    “There’s something she isn’t telling me,” I say. “Mother says it’s only that she’s used to having her own way. But you’ve seen her. She’s half-starved. She isn’t the same. She never laughs.” I feel a lump rise in my throat, and I know I must stop. Another word and my voice will break, setting loose a flood. Kit must know it, too, because she stoops to fiddle with the hem of her skirt, and she is not the sort to care whether it has come fully loose, let alone whether there is a stray thread.
    When I return from fetching a handkerchief and blowing my nose, she says, “I can’t believe you gutted a fish.”
    It is my chance to tell her about Tom, but is there anything to say? He and I have spoken politely, only about practical things—scaling a fish, westerly winds pushing water over the falls. I learned his name just this morning. And I know little other than that he spends a great deal of time on the river and can easily shoulder the weight of a trunk. We have simply exchanged a fish for some berries as neighbors might, and only after I stood and waved from the veranda, giving him little choice other than to make the climb to Glenview. But I come back to one thought, as I have all afternoon: He said he would bring me a second fish. “I met a fellow on the trolley,” I say. “He brought me a pike.”
    “What?”
    “He helped Mother and me with my trunk when I left the academy. He was heading to his camp at the whirlpool.”
    “You’re interested?”
    I do my best to hide a smile. “I don’t know.”
    “And the pike?” I had anticipated excitement,