a better happiness
“Mary, I think if I have one more day of this I’m going to scream. I really don’t see how I can go on,” Rilla said, knowing she sounded as melodramatic as she had at nearly fifteen, on the eve of the Great War. Those long-gone days when she cared most about whether the clear weather would hold for a dance over-Harbour, whether Mother would let her lower her hems and put up her hair. Just as before, she was convinced her tone was entirely appropriate, the situation meriting operatic degrees of distress; Mary, who had softened somehow while the world became harder, married to Jem in an elopement that had shocked Miss Cornelia into a full day of such unrelieved silence Rilla’s father had worried she’d had a stroke, was the only person Rilla felt might be willing to listen to Rilla’s reasoning instead of merely patting her on the shoulder, offering a cup of tea and a biscuit, and telling her to count her blessings.
“Drink your tea,” Mary said, patting Rilla gently on the shoulder as she set the well-sugared cup before Rilla before sitting down at the scrubbed kitchen table. She nudged over a plate with several slices of her gingerbread, rich with spice and molasses, taking a broken piece for herself. “You’re too thin—”
“You sound like Susan,” Rilla said. “She’s always after me to have a bite and a sup and I daren’t tell her I don’t care much for pie. She thinks it’s part of my heritage as a Blythe.”
Mary laughed.
“Jem says the same. Though he likes pie more than you do,” Mary replied.
“He’ll eat anything, he always has,” Rilla said.
“Ken won’t, eh?” Mary said. She was like that, sharp, unerring. Forthright. Di liked it about her and Nan didn’t and Rilla knew that scalpel-precise insight was sometimes more necessary than any tonic her father kept in his surgery. She knew Jem wouldn’t have survived his return home without it.
“He doesn’t complain, exactly, but he’s particular and I’m afraid I’m not a very good cook. His mother would pay for a housekeeper, she’s written to me about it, but Ken won’t have that either and there’s no reason we ought to need one. I’m the dunce of the family but I’m bright enough to master a cookery book, even if I didn’t take household science with Una,” Rilla said. Rilla knew she was best at making what Ken called nursery food, simple meals Jims would eat without any encouragement, healthy and hearty enough for a little boy but not tempting to a man who’d grown up in Toronto, whose moods and memories might make him push around the dish of chicken and dumplings leaving them untasted.
“Una took the household science course to get out of the manse and give herself a chance to be something other than your brother’s unofficial widow. She’s an excellent cook, makes a better loaf of bread than I do and her soup can’t be improved on,” Mary said. Once, Rilla would have taken umbrage, but she’d learned better, knew how fond Mary was of Una Meredith and how she, more than the rest of them, had understood the changes the War had wrought in their circle. What grief could do, how it pulled some closer and pushed others away. Who held it in their arms like a child crying in the night and who turned their back, an old-fashioned cut direct out of storybooks.
“Perhaps Ken should have married her,” Rilla said. She twisted her wedding ring around on her finger. “He’d have a good, hot dinner every night and no child underfoot—”
“I knew you’d get around to the meat of it in your own time,” Mary said, nodding and taking up some mending from a basket on the chair next to her.Â
“I thought it would be fine, Ken said he didn’t mind and really, I’m all the mother Jims knows, I couldn’t bear to send him away to his father’s second cousin in Manitoba and Rosemary married Reverend Meredith with four children and they were so terribly behaved back then, everyone says…Jims is only one small boy and I do think he’s got very good manners though I don’t take all the credit for that, Susan did a lot for him,” Rilla said. She’d had a letter shortly after they’d heard Jem was alive and coming home from the prison camp, a letter from the second cousin of Jims’s father, informing her that Jims was an orphan, his father dead in one of the last pushes. There’d been an offer for Jims to come out West but it was made clear it was an offer made from duty only, and Rilla’s parents had both agreed it was better for Jims to stay where he was loved, even if they weren’t his blood relations.
“He’s a good kiddy,” Mary said. “Not an angel but who wants one? He gets into as much trouble as your brothers did, maybe more than Shirley, less than Jerry or Carl or Miller Douglas in his day. The stories Jem tells, when he feels like it—Cornelia would have had my hide or put me on bread and water rations if I’d been like any of those scamps.”
“And I didn’t even have to ask, Aunt Leslie said Ken was a perfect terror at the same age. She said she didn’t know how naughty a boy could be until she had Ken and even then, she didn’t know how he got into half the trouble he did and Uncle Owen had to tell her not to worry, Ken wouldn’t become a criminal mastermind.”
“Ken Ford, a criminal mastermind,” Mary chuckled. “Maybe if the crime was sulking—”
“It’s not sulking,” Rilla interrupted.
“Good, that’s good. You shouldn’t want me tearing your man down, making light of this,” Mary said. She’d finished the first of whatever she was mending, maybe one of Jem’s shirts, and had taken up something else, her hands deft. Rilla had heard Jem say Mary’s skills were wasted in sewing, that she could have been the finest surgeon on the Island, and it was hard to see that he was boasting overmuch.
“It’s only, Mary, they’re at each other’s throats, if a grown man and a little boy can be, and they’re both so awfully stubborn. They both want all my attention and begrudge the other any bit of it,” Rilla exclaimed.Â
“It’s hard for a man, raising another man’s child and Ken wasn’t there much when Jims was that scrawny little scrap. There’s nothing to pity in Jims anymore, which I do think a great success of yours, Rilla,” Mary remarked.
“Thank you but I can’t think I deserve very much praise when I’ve a husband who can hardly bear the sight of my child and a child who won’t give his father a bit of respect, let alone affection,” Rilla said. Jims was willing enough to call her Mummy but had kicked up such a fuss when she suggested he call Ken Papa Ken had shrugged coolly and said Jims might call him whatever he wanted as long as he stopped making a racket.
“You’ve always been a fool when it came to Ken Ford, so it’s not surprising,” Mary said.Â
“What?”
“This isn’t your problem to solve, though I think you can probably help them along. They’re both so fond of you and Jims is bright, but he’s a little boy. You can outsmart him, however much a dunce you think you are. Ken’s a tougher nut, but he’ll come around and mind, he ought, he’s a grown man and you told him that marrying you meant raising Jims and he agreed to it,” Mary said.
“I think he rather wishes he could take it back,” Rilla said.
“Cornelia would say, Just like a man, but I think he’s only a bit slow to accept it. And given his injuries, that’s not unexpected,” Mary said.
“His ankle only hurts when it’s rainy,” Rilla said.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Rilla peered into her cup, wishing that the sugary dregs would reveal some secrets. Ken wouldn’t speak about the scar on his cheek, nor the headaches that plagued him. He’d wake her some night, clutching her in his arms, burying his face against her throat, gasping, wordless; she comforted him as best she could, crooning old lullabies, reciting scraps of verse, encouraging whatever intimacies he began. She’d be tired in the mornings but she didn’t see the expression of blank dread in his dark eyes.
“You and Ken need more time alone. It takes a knack getting used to married life and I think it’s harder for us who married men back from the War. Jims should have a holiday with your parents and Susan and Jem and I will have him some time at the weekend,” Mary said. Rilla recognized her tone, the same one she’d once offered a pot of goose grease in, her these problems aren’t are difficult as you make them out to be tone, and Rilla couldn’t even bristle at it, since she’d come seeking Mary’s guidance along with the gingerbread.
“You and Jem wouldn’t mind?”
“No. Jem can get a bit fretful without work to occupy him but he can’t see patients every waking moment. Jims will keep him busy and it’s good practice,” Mary said, resting her hand very briefly against the slight curve the mending had mostly concealed. “And you should leave Ken and Jims alone for a while. Go visit Di or Gertrude Grant. Bring back some extravagant presents. Tell Ken not to burn the house down. Susan and I will make sure the larder is properly stocked but your husband should be able to scramble an egg and make toast.”
“He can make toast,” Rilla said.
“Do you have to scrape off the burnt bits half the time?” Mary asked and Rilla nodded.
“He needs to learn to make toast for his son. He can take Jims fishing. Read him a bedtime story,” Mary said.
“Do you think this will work?” Rilla asked.
“Your parents left you largely to your own devices and you’re Jims’s mother now. It’ll work for Ken and he’ll be Jims’s father or he and Jims will become friends. Either would be better than what’s happening now. You’ve got a pinched look about you far too often,” Mary said.
“I suppose,” Rilla said.
“I’m right,” Mary replied. “Now finish off your gingerbread and tell me all the news of Faith Drew. Susan’s looking after Jims until four you said so we’ve time. I don’t like to bring Faith up around Jem, he feels bad still, says he jilted her when anyone could see what a bad match they’d be and he was doing her a favor by walking away. I heard some talk about New York?”
“Chicago what was I heard,” Rilla said, taking a bite of the gingerbread and settling in for a good gossip. “You know right after the wedding, she bobbed her hair…”
