Domestic Arts by Annie M. Ballard

Author:Annie M. Ballard [Annie M. Ballard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Devon Station Books
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

She woke again in the middle of the night. The journal was there, lying in a puddle of light from her bedside lamp. Papers spilled out of it, and Evie felt faintly guilty for letting a family artifact sit on the floor that way. She rolled out of bed and gathered up the loose sheets, stuffing them back into the book. Carrying it, she creaked open her door and tiptoed down the stairs. Yes, after midnight. The big dogs groaned in their sleep but otherwise took no notice of her perambulating.

She turned on the little lamp on the sideboard, boiled the kettle, and settled down to decipher Hannah O'Neill's diary.

Mum came when she was only twenty-two, had almost no english and Dad barely any french. But he told the story about how they met and I knew it from my earliest days. Daddy was a sailor, like a lot of fellers in the Maritimes, and when the War happened, he wanted to help. So he joined the Merchant Marines out of Halifax and after his time was over (he never said a lot about that time, that war time) he went with his friend Samuel LeBlanc to Sydney, Cape Breton. They were dropped off the ship in Sydney, and Samuel took Daddy home with him to Cheticamp. They were just boys, really, Daddy would say, but when he and Samuel got to Samuel's family home, the first person Daddy laid eyes on was his little sister Leonie.

Oh, that Leonie! Daddy's eyes would gleam when he talked about Mum like that. Now she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. Mum would laugh and remind him that he'd been at sea and at war, and he hadn't been seeing a lot of girls, but he stuck to his story. She was the prettiest girl in the world, and I couldn't take my eyes off her. But her father, he wasn't having his daughter to do anything with any english, and so there we were.

But Samuel was my friend, and we'd been through a lot together. So we boys bedded down in the barn, and your grandfather, Marcel, he could always use some strong arms, so I set about to make myself into another son for him. I worked the fields, and when it was fishing time, Samuel and I worked on the boat, and I kept my eye on that pretty Leonie. Marcel, him, he wasn't easily impressed, especially if you were english, but I kept at it. I had decided that I wasn't going home unless Leonie was going with me, and I knew her father was the obstacle.

Mum would say something here like, what about me? You sure thought a lot of yourself, mister. And Daddy would laugh. Oh, I saw how you looked at me, Leonie LeBlanc. I saw you looking when you didn't know I was watching. When you brought us our dinner out in the fields, I noticed how you held my gaze.

Ha, Mum would say. That's because you couldn't stop staring at me.

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