by Tom Moore
“Yes, I heard him mention it to someone at White’s shop. Is it still open?” I asked, to change the subject.
“White’s shop? That old witch, Clara, is still alive, after all that’s happened. She runs it with a hired girl from town, Drusilla something or other.” She switched gears. “How long you two been dating?”
“It’s over a year now,” I said.
“Is it really that long? Seems only yesterday when she was hitched to . . .”
“Mommy, we have something to tell you,” Ellen interrupted, her voice inflected with the trebles of Tara, but no Tara here.
“What is it?” Maud asked.
“Felix and I plan to be married this summer.”
“This summer?” I said in surprise.
“Yes, we’re in love and we’ll soon be two years together.”
“Well, this is really something.” Maud struggled to get up. “This is really something! Gerald! Gerald, get up and come out here,” she shouted toward a door that must have led into the bedroom. “This is real news.”
She came toward me and encircled me with her arms, her beer bottle arched around my head, and she hugged me firmly. The same for Ellen. She pushed Ellen back at arm’s length and looked at her admiringly. “She’s getting hitched. She’s getting hitched.” Then, with the moment-destroying sense of comedy that alcohol sometimes inspires, she added, “Again!” and buckled over in laughter.
Ellen’s face turned red.
“Hope it works out for you, Felix, better than . . .” But she realized the fault of her joke and swung toward the bedroom. “Gerald! Get out here. She’s getting hitch . . . eh . . . married. Ellen’s getting married.”
“Who to?” came a sleepy voice from the little bedroom.
“Young Felix Ryan!”
“Oh,” was the only answer the bedroom made. No Gerald emerged to greet the happy couple.
We soon left Maud’s trailer and headed back onto the highway toward St. John’s. It took Ellen about ten minutes to shake it off. Then she quickly became her loving, happy self again, as if by magic. I drove the borrowed car into my future with Ellen Monteau seated beside me. I could hardly believe my good fortune.
11
Getting Hitched
Ellen wanted to be a June bride. “But June is still cold in Newfoundland. The ice is off shore, and July is warmer,” I said.
“A June bride sounds so wonderful.” By her dreamy tone I could tell she was into a vision of magnolias and mint juleps at her reception south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
But the thing was a grand success. Went off without a hitch that June. We rented the Avalon Lounge in Petley for the reception because it was bigger than the one in Curlew. It was much like her first wedding, to Dick White. In fact, Ellen wore the very same dress. I couldn’t decide who to have for my best man, until Monk insisted that I pick Malacat. Both were full of dire predictions about the match.
Malacat said, “If you had any money, I’d be sure she was out to rob you. She’s a keener, and you’re a dreamer. I don’t know what it is yet, but there’s a game going on here.”
Comfort from my friends! We didn’t invite Gib and Victoria, and certainly not Tammy Fagan. I thought of Billy Crotty at the last minute, but Ellen didn’t seem fussy about inviting him.
“You’d have to arrange a ride for him,” she said.
“He could come out with Monk or Malacat.”
“He wouldn’t know a soul, and he’d have a terrible time.” So, I agreed.
It was much like Dick White’s wedding, but without Dick. He was out in the graveyard marking the occasion on his own.
Old Clara White attended with her new girl, Drusilla, a tall, gangly wench who looked after Clara solicitously. Midway through the reception, Ellen was dancing with someone else and I was looking around for Father. I saw Drusilla walking across the floor toward me. With little or no expression she said, “Mrs. White would like to have a dance with you.”
“Is she able to dance?”
“She’s able.” She turned and walked back to Clara.
I went over to Clara for the next slow dance. “I’m glad you’re here, Mrs. White.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she said.
“Would you like to have a waltz?”
“Yes.” She struggled out of her chair with Drusilla’s help.
It wasn’t much of a dance, really. She got one arm up over my elbow and pushed her head into my chest. In this manner, we made faltering steps with no regard for the music. If I looked straight ahead, I couldn’t see her, but I could see the other couples nodding and making approving clucks as they waltzed around us.
“She’s no good, you know,” Clara said.
“Pardon me?”
“Ellen. She’s up to no good. I want you to know that.”
“No good? We’re married already.”
“She’s a viper.”
I could have argued or even protested politely, but I determined to suffer out the dance and then try to forget it.
However, Clara was not finished. “I tried to tell Dick, and look what happened to him. Now I’m telling you.”
I looked down into her hard, red eyes. “I can’t help myself,” I said. “I love her.”
“Dick said that, too.” The dance mercifully ended, and I brought her back to her seat. “Thank you for the dance and the advice,” I said.
“You don’t believe me.” She shook her head. “Just like Dick.”
I headed back across the floor. I saw my Helen of Troy being returned to her table by one of the men. If she were Helen, who was I? Paris or Menelaus?
Father was wearing a tie, which I knew he hated. He was probably hoping for a fight so he could rip it off. I was watching Malacat, too, because no one liked a fight more than he did. Shirley came over and kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s have a dance,” she said.
“Great wedding,” she said as we twirled around.
“Best one I ever had,” I joked.
“Hope it’ll be your last one.”
“I think so.”
“Ellen should make you very happy.”
“How are you and Father?” I asked.
She brushed hair out of her eye. “We’re fine,” she said, too quickly.
“Father can be difficult,” I said.
“Your father is a very unusual man.”
“You know what I think, Shirley?”
“What?”
“I think everyone is unusual. Look around this room for someone normal. There’s no one here from Good Housekeeping. We try to present ourselves that way, but really, what are we? We’re all life’s mutants. We’re mutants from a secret planet, God knows where.”
She looked at me the way I have seen her look at Father. Ever get the feeling you’ve said too much? To the wrong person?
After the dance, I went to the bar.
“Big day for you,” my father said. We were standing at the bar, much like the one where he got the smack at Dick White’s wedding. In my mind I could see Constable Higgins walking him back to our table.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“Want a drink? I’ve still got drink tickets left,” he said.
“Sure, I’ll have a beer. Cold.” He had a Coke, and leaned ahead with his forearms on the bar. I did the same.
“How do you feel about it all?” he asked.
“I feel lucky.”
“Yes, you are lucky to have married such a special woman. In certain Arab kingdoms, men would trade their whole flock of goats for the likes of her.”
“What?”
“She would be considered such a rarity,” he tried to explain.
“Goats?”
“That’s the currency they
deal in. But some things have no price.”
“That’s true,” I said, and sipped on my beer as I looked around the hall. “Everyone seems to be having a good time.”
“That’s certainly part of it,” he said.
“What’s the other part?”
“You know, the usual stuff about starting a new life with the woman you love.” He looked down at his Coke.
Then I realized he was not enjoying this conversation any more than I was. He was trying his best to fulfill his parental role. I was touched. I put my arm around his neck and gave him a squeeze. We were about the same height now. Short. It would take a few years, but I would bulk out in the same manner as he and eventually look quite like him. He was not a hugger, but he did not reject my embrace. I left my arm across his shoulders, and we stood there for a minute like two drunks at a bar.
I thought the wedding was a success until I got the bills from the caterers, the club, the band, and the photographers. I was flabbergasted. How were we going to pay for it?
Ellen was not worried in the least. “It’ll all work out,” she said. I think she meant I should work it out on my own. I did. Father came up with a thousand dollars, which saved me from borrowing it from the bank. “Pay me back when you can,” he said.
Summer passed into eternity like the others.
That fall, we were living in a tidy basement apartment on Elizabeth Avenue within walking distance of MUN. Residence life was over for me because no conjugal accommodations existed. I slogged to class through a world of sleet and snow that winter. Our budget was pretty slim, but our tastes were modest. Or rather, they should have been.
“Shared difficulties can cement a relationship,” I told Monk as we ate lunch together in the dining hall one day.
Monk, reading a book as he ate, mumbled something.
I continued, “We’ve got the furniture, kitchen gear—you know, pots and pans, cups and saucers, knives and forks, things like that.”
“Got a broom and dustpan?” He had been listening.
“Shirley gave us a broom and dustpan.”
“Then you’re all set. You and the little woman.”
“She’s missing a lot of classes, just home cleaning and doing up the place.”
“Isn’t she in her final year?”
“She’s supposed to graduate this spring.”
“Supposed to?”
“She needs these last few credits. Four lousy months of work to complete her degree, but . . .”
“But what? Is she losing interest?”
“I can’t understand her anymore. She runs around the apartment planning drapes and coordinating furniture. Now she’s painting the whole thing.”
“When she should be in class?”
“Exactly. Even if she doesn’t want a job, at least she’d have a degree.”
“What does she say?”
“Nothing. She just reads the American women’s magazines and tries to transform our apartment into the White House.”
I slogged home from class one day and found Ellen hanging a set of framed artistic prints on the living room wall.
“Felix, look. Aren’t they precious?” She was wearing pink sweatpants and one of my white T-shirts.
“They’re great! Where’d you get them?”
“Don’t ask, because then you’ll want to know the price, and then you’ll be upset.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Who wants to be upset? Not me.” I went rummaging through the fridge for something to eat. “Want some Kraft Dinner and wieners?” I asked.
“Sure. Whatever you’re having.”
My own courses were going well. I had one more year for my first degree, a B.A. in English. Then I could apply for law school, or do a degree in education.
“You’d be silly to turn down law school,” Ellen often told me.
“Why?”
“A lawyer earns ten times a teacher.”
“There are unhappy lawyers, too,” I said.
“Yes, but they are rich and unhappy, instead of poor and unhappy. Guess which is better.”
“Shirley is a teacher, and she loves it,” I said.
“Sure she does, as long as Walter is bringing in some real money.”
There was a confident ring of truth in her statements.
But one day, a phone call came from home that put all our plans on hold. It was Shirley. “Felix, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Mrs. Clara White has died.”
Contrary old Clara had finally met an opponent she couldn’t tell off and scare away. Cancer.
“The wake is tomorrow, and her funeral is Wednesday. Will you be in?”
“Yes, Ellen and I will be home tomorrow morning. Where’s Father?”
“He’s gone to the post office to mail some diatribe against the Church. Oh, Felix, he’s at it again. He’ll have us all excommunicated, exiled, or burned at the stake.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Then we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Who was it?” Ellen asked.
“It was Shirley. Clara White died, and the wake is tomorrow. Want to go?”
She stopped in her tracks. No answer, her eyes fixed on a wall as her mind whirled. Finally, she said, “Yes, oh yes, I want to go.” She headed for her closet.
“Want some ham and eggs?” I asked.
She spent the night getting ready for her return to Curlew as Mrs. Felix Ryan. The outfit she chose was a smart-looking dark blue skirt and jacket I had not seen before. A white blouse and a small tie completed a most attractive funeral outfit. I wore my suit with a white shirt and an almost-matching tie. You only need one suit, Father used to say.
I loved Clara, and I was sad she was dead. Standing before her coffin at the funeral home, I was amazed to see that Mullins had created a smile on her wrinkled face. A smile for whom? There was no family. Wayne and Dick were both in their graves. Drusilla sat beside the coffin, looking sad, perhaps because her job was gone to the grave with Clara. I looked at Clara’s wizened old body. She’d been through it all. Kept her council and hated silently. Loved? Not that I knew about. Maybe she loved her dead husband and son? She was faithful to them, that was for sure.
“Doesn’t she look lovely?” Ellen observed. Lovely? I thought. She’s dead!
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m really sorry, Drusilla,” I said. Ellen and I shook her hand, which she offered like a cold egg sandwich.
That being done, I looked around the room for familiar faces. Father and Shirley sat away from the crowd. Across the room I saw Victoria, Gib, and Tammy, all three seated on a couch as if posing for a photograph. I saw George Williams, Doctor Phil Janes, Wilma Bartlett. The whole town was there, sitting silently around the room like Dick’s village of wooden dolls. There were no tanned merchants from town at this funeral. Some of them were probably in their own private plots already, no longer on Circular Road but high on Riverside Cemetery Hill, looking down on St. John’s, as they had in life.
I glanced at Tammy and saw a delicate pain in her face that caught me off guard. It was the vulnerability I had seen the night we danced in the Thompson Centre when I changed her from Fagan into Tammy.
“There’s your mom and dad,” Ellen said. But I didn’t see hers.
“Hi,” Shirley greeted us warmly. Father looked distracted, probably plotting his attack on the Church. We sat with them and settled into the occasion.
The next day was the funeral, and after a church service, we brought Clara to the graveyard and put her in the ground beside her husband and son.
They had rejoined the geology of the island they loved.
We didn’t go straight back to town but went to Father and Shirley’s for a meal. Amid many pleasantries, Ellen announced, “I would so love to tour the Wh
ite premises.”
“Why?” Father asked. “You should know the place well enough.”
“It’s just such an important part of our history as a town. The merchant premises. So much tradition.” She dipped up a forkful of mashed potatoes and smiled at the thought.
“I don’t think there’d be a problem,” Shirley said.
“Who’s in charge of it now? Drusilla?” I asked.
“No, I think the executor is the family lawyer, Gibbons, in St. John’s,” Father said.
“Let’s just go over, open the gate, and walk in,” Ellen suggested.
“Sure, we can do that,” Father said.
So, that afternoon we parked Father’s Dodge by the old shop, now closed but not yet boarded up. Father and Shirley walked up the drive from the road to the flour store. Ellen stood on the road and looked at the front facade of the shop, White’s General Store. She read the words aloud from the sign over the door.
“That sign was their statement to the world, Felix.” She was looking at me with a little smile on her face.
“I want us to live here. I want that to be my sign.” She pointed up at the shop.
“Why would we want to live here?”
“It’d be like going back in time. Like being able to change the past, and do it right this time.”
“Change the past? Why?” I asked.
“We’ve both worked here, and we know how to operate a shop. I could work behind the counter, and you could deliver the groceries and do the heavy lifting. I could dress up like a modern grocer and greet my customers every morning, just like the Whites did for two generations. They were the richest family in Curlew, and everyone knew it. They were an institution, a family you could be proud of. They achieved something, Felix! They were somebodies!”
“You need to think this over, Ellen. The day of the family grocer is over. Now people go to the bigger centres like Petley or Raleigh to shop. It’s less than an hour for them to drive to the new supermarkets in St. John’s.”
“No, Felix, the Whites made a fortune here, and people will buy most everything from us if we keep our prices competitive. We’ll do things the Whites didn’t think of, like a beer licence, ice cream coolers. There must be other things we haven’t even considered.”