Liberty Street by Dianne Warren

Author:Dianne Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2015-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

6. A Marriage Bed

WHERE FRANCES’S PARENTS live, the land is almost all cleared for farming, but north of town there are only pockets of cultivated land mixed with acres of bush.

“Bought the place from an old trapper,” Joe says. “Used to be a log house here. I lived in it for a while, me and the mice. Then I knocked it down and put this up instead.” He’s referring to the square-looking bungalow that sits in a clearing ringed with poplars, their leaves beginning to turn bright yellow.

They get out of the truck and Frances follows Joe to the house. A collie-type dog appears from somewhere and tries to jump on her.

Joe kicks it away and says, “Get, you.”

“It’s okay,” Frances says. “I like dogs. What’s his name?”

“I just call him Dog,” Joe says.

She calls the dog back, holding out her hand. He comes to her and she scratches him behind his ears. He wags his tail so hard it seems as though he’s going to fall over. He’s so excited he piddles on her shoe and she wipes it in the grass before Joe sees and chases the dog away again.

The house smells of woodsmoke. The door opens into the kitchen and Frances looks around and tries to imagine herself cooking and cleaning here. She tries to picture herself scrubbing the kitchen floor, tries to absorb domestic responsibility into the shadowy but gradually sharpening image of herself as a married woman.

The furniture in both the kitchen and the living room is sparse and old—not surprising, Frances thinks, for a bachelor. She’ll get some matching blankets and make covers for the couch and the armchair. There’s a TV on a wooden stand that looks homemade. At least there’s a TV, and it’s newer than the one her parents have.

She pokes around and discovers a small washroom, with a washstand and basin and a stainless steel tub. The tub has a drain and one tap for cold water, but there’s no hot water and no toilet.

“Biffy’s out back,” Joe says. “You have to heat water on the stove. Maybe I should put in proper plumbing. Didn’t really matter when it was just me here.”

When it was just me. He’s talking as though she’s already said yes.

She looks in the bedrooms. There are two of them. The smaller one is being used to store an old motorcycle, which is in parts all over the floor.

“I’m trying to get that thing running,” he says of the motorcycle. “So far, no luck.”

A motorcycle! Frances thinks. Will she really get to ride on the back of a motorcycle?

The other bedroom is bigger. It has a double bed and two old dressers. There’s a plaid wool blanket on the bed. Joe sees her looking at it and turns away, as though he’s ashamed by the bed, the fact that he’s shown it to Frances.

He says, “I’ll make us a pot of coffee.” Frances doesn’t much like coffee, but she doesn’t say so. She steps from the bedroom back into the living room.

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