They lived in a house by the sea.

            They lived in a house by the sea.

A dark house, it stood imposingly above sharp rocks and cold waves.

In summer their children would descend by rock paths worn smooth by their feet to the ocean’s edge.  There they would collect shells and throw stones, or paddle their toes in the dark water.

In winter they would watch from behind windows of time-rippled glass while the surf violently crashed. Their cat Isemena would wind round their legs rumbling a low purr, then dash without warning into deep shadows that grew from the walls. Often she would not be seen for weeks and the children think her dead.

            Isabella was thirteen; Joseph was twelve. Isabella had fair hair and pale lips with the coldest hint of blue to her grey eyes. The sea winds had turned her cheeks a pale pink. Joseph was already tall for his age and forlorn. His dark hair framed a face like a storm, dark eyes like thunderclaps, restless and sudden.

            Evelyn was their mother; Jacob was their father. Jacob was a writer and would spend long days in his study alone. Whether summer or winter he would stare from his window overlooking the waves and see creatures existent in his mind and his alone. He would then hurriedly return to his typewriter where fantastical illusions grew into pages of prose.

Outside the study his wife read.

In the summer she gardened too, and in the winter canned preserves from the plot half way between the house and the bay. Sometimes, on summer days, noon turning to dusk, a warm breeze made cool by the ocean’s spay would whisper through her curling locks. Like a sleeper awaking from a dream she would rise from her garden and stare out to sea. In her fist would hang a carrot torn from the fresh black earth.

Above her stood the house. Framed by his window Jacob would watch her, she without knowing and he too, in a way, without knowing. Alone with his thoughts it was no longer his wife he saw but a siren, luring boats to land.

Obscured to both stood Joseph, below the cliffs on wave-beaten sand. His hazel eyes watched winds whip whitecaps on the rolling tide. Isabella ran shouting after tar coloured sea birds that always escaped her grasp.

Behind the house a dark wood began.

At night while in bed the children would listen and hear dark noises rise from its edge. From his bed Joseph could see the wood, a stain under the night sky, stretching toward the horizon. In the morning, he would awake to find imagined glimpses of its deepest reaches, slipping away from consciousness with the last shreds of last night’s dreams. Isabella would feign disinterest when he tried to tell her what he saw, but she too found the wood recurrent in her dreams.

One day all of this would be left behind, though this thought not once crossed the mind of Joseph, Isabella, Evelyn, or Jacob. These times seemed as if they would stretch on forever.

copyright James Sandham

Josephine was my first love. 

Josephine was my first love.  Her hair hung in a plaited braid that tumbled ’bout her back.  Yellow flaxen tendrils that escaped its grip framed her face and caressed her delicate neck.  Her face was a flower in sunshine, her smile warm like the summer breeze at dusk.  Her skin was snow white, her eyes sky blue.  We lived in Manitoba.

Josephine’s father was a farmer.  My dad owned a shop in the village.  Our houses were nearby, and on weekdays we would meet early in the morning while the mist still hung over her father’s fields.  Together we would walk to school. 

At our school there were six grades: kindergarten, one, two, three, four, and six.  People in our town were ambivalent about the fifth grade.  My mother once told me it had passed away with Mrs. McMurty in 1973.  Mrs. McMurty had taught fifth grade for twenty-five years, at the same school and in the same room.  But no matter how long something lasts, nothing is ever permanent.  And so, like her, the fifth grade soon became a cloudy memory in that small corner of Manitoba, and people continued to go about their business.  Neither Mrs. McMurty nor the fifth grade are much missed these days, it seems.

Josephine should have been in fifth grade.  Instead, we were both in grade four.  Our teacher was Mrs. Parker.  At the end of the day she would have the class face the flag of Canada and sing the national anthem, O Canada.  The Maple Leaf hung above the door.  It was the last thing I saw before leaving school each day.

On Tuesdays Josephine took ballet.  Her father would arrive as class was being dismissed and pick her up.  From my desk beside the window I could see Josephine run to his truck, her backpack swinging from her shoulders and her blond hair swing about her neck.  She always looked very beautiful leaving.  On Tuesdays I walked home alone, always a little melancholy. 

While I walked home Josephine and her father would drive the five minutes into town.  Josephine would sit in the front seat of her father’s robin’s-egg-blue pick-up and feel very special, her mother usually occupying that position.  Josephine loved her father. She dearly cherished their weekly drive into town together.  After he died, she told me the colour of robin’s-egg-blue sometimes makes her cry.

The drive into town was short.  Five minutes is a generous estimation.  In our small Manitoban town, there simply wasn’t enough stuff for the drive to be much longer.  Between the school and St. Mathias’ church the only places you passed were a field, the post office, and the bakery – in that order.  Josephine and her father would stop at the bakery to buy Josephine a snack, and at St. Mathias’ Josephine would kiss her father goodbye and go inside.  That was where the reverend’s wife taught eight girls and her blushingly reluctant son, Terry, how to dance ballet, every Tuesday.  When he was sixteen, Terry quit the church and moved away to Toronto.

Every day except Tuesday, Josephine and I would walk home together.  We missed each other when we were apart.  That’s why we woke up early on weekday mornings, and walked incredibly slowly on weekday afternoons.  Walking home with Josephine was my favourite part of the day.  Late in the autumn, before the snow, the sun would set across the fields and on these days Josephine and I would try to walk even more slowly than usual.  Her father grew corn at that time of the year and with the last of its light the low setting sun would paint the stock tips copper.  Long corn shadows were cast across the road before us.  Ahead, that narrow strip of asphalt stretched straight out to the horizon.  Somewhere just beyond that point were mountains I had never seen.

My house was closer to the school than Jo’s, but I would walk right to her front steps anyway.  There I would sometimes reach over to hold her hand, and together we would stand awkwardly for several minutes, disappointed we would be separated until morning but confused about how long a hand should be held and what exactly this accomplished.  Josephine’s parents were rarely affectionate in front of her, but I had seen dad do this when mum died.  Since then I have learned it is often the best thing to do when you don’t want someone to leave.  Eventually though, Josephine would always leave, and I would turn to walk home alone.

copyright James Sandham

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