What They Wanted by Donna Morrissey Read Free Book Online

looking at your feet.”
    “Nerves, Sis. She had bad nerves, she always got bad nerves.”
    “Right, bad nerves. Chase down a grizzly, Mother would.”
    “So she’d chase a grizzly—don’t mean she wasn’t scared of it. She was scared of something.”
    “Yeah. She read too many books. The old always said too much reading drives you mental.”
    “Oh, come on,” chided Chris, and I had the grace to flush at my own silliness. “In the hospital, after they wheeled Dad away, first person she said to call was you,” he said. “Always talking about you—how hard you works, graduating university with honours, how you’ll travel the world—she’s always saying that, you’ll travel the world someday. And— and ,” he repeated for emphasis, “when you’re coming home next! She’s always wondering when you’re coming home next.”
    “And when I’m here she never knows what to do with me.”
    “You’re always arguing with her, that’s why—the both of you, always arguing. Why don’t you come home more often? She don’t like you staying away. True,” he added as I drove in silence, “she’s always talking about you. And Dad—jeezes, Dad—he looks bad, don’t he—gawd, he looks bad …” His words trailed off.
    I steered us onto the grey, darkening highway, rubbing my brow tiredly, seeing our father’s face, all worn and ashen on his pillow. Aside from the yellow line shooting rhythmically beneath the car, that was how the whole world appeared to me this evening—the hills, the trees, all limp and grey against a pewter sky.
    Till I neared home. Till I turned off the highway and finally onto the rutted side road leading to our house on the wharf. Then the rocks themselves burst into colour, the trees and sky and all else around me dissolving into a thousand pictures of Father: walking wearily from his stage after a day’s fishing back in Cooney Arm, sitting at Gran’s supper table, falling back on the daybed after he’d eaten, cuddling me on his great, heaving chest, his snores rattling my bones, hugging me tight against his itchy, worsted sweater, hugging me tight against his wet, scaly oilskins, trundling about his stage, shouting for me to come help lay out the fish, laughing at Mother’s complaints that he had me smelling like himself, a pickled capelin.
    I didn’t care about his smell. I loved sniffing pickled capelin. I loved it that Mother, Chris, Kyle—all of them—squirmed against his itchy, worsted hugs and his scaly wet oilskins; that nobody else liked going into his stage as I did, helping him lay out his fish in the puncheons; that only I worked the flakes alongside him, laying out his fish to cure in the sun; that only I accompanied him in boat sometimes, crouching anxiously in the stern as he leaned easily over the gunnels hauling his nets, grunting and cussing if the catch was poor, whistling and singing if the fish were thick and he was piling them at my feet.
    More pictures came before me—pictures of me sitting at Mother’s table, being home-schooled along with Chris, and Dad winking at me across the room; Dad looking innocently away should Mom, all prim, proper, and teacher-like, turn her attention towards him; Dad sitting beside me at the table, learning from Mother how to read and write and laughing at his clumsiness with a pencil; Dad walking me home after lessons—staying for a while during those cold, bitter nights, running the heated flat-iron over my bedsheets before tucking me in—as Gran always did—and heating dinner plates in the oven, wrapping them in towels and placing them beneath my cold feet before bundling the blankets around me. It felt like he was mine then, when he sat on the side of my bed, his head so close to mine as I said my prayers that I could smell his sour, pickled breath and feel the scattered strands of his hair, all soapy and vinegarish, tickling my face and making me squirm through the amens.
    Abruptly the pictures changed. We were no