Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  And thank heavens I had given her the boot. Ev came in minutes later with an armload of fresh split wood. “Sufferin’ God! You look like a frigging ghost. It’s them cigarettes, I’m telling you, full of poison—that old smoke thins your blood. If you would chew your tobacco like I said, you wouldn’t have the same troubles. If you had a lick of sense, you would listen and quit being so goddamn pigheaded.”

  “You’re right.” I let him think what he wanted. “Now, if you’d help me outside and bring that chair I’ll sit for a spell and watch the birds and clear my lungs.”

  “About time you learnt the man knows best.”

  Not an awful lot later a letter had come in the mail. I didn’t recognize the handwriting on the envelope, though that didn’t mean much. But its look gave me a sick feeling. I just knew, even before opening it, the letter would be about something bad.

  Sure enough, it was from that same one who had come by for no reason but to upset me. As though she hadn’t left me shaken enough already. She was the one Ev could’ve called pigheaded.

  She was on a mission to shake me like an apple from a tree.

  The letter said she knew who I was, that I should know she had grown up in Yarmouth, raised by people that knew my father. They were a good family, a nice family, she said. They had taken her in when I gave her up. She was just a tiny baby at the time, and they had raised her up till she went off to get married, when she’d wanted a life of her own, and blah blah blah.

  We all wanted a life of our own, I said to the page with its spineless handwriting. I balled up the letter and threw it in the fire, but not quick enough, for Ev caught me going at it with the poker. “You are acting some queer—what’s that, a love letter from a boyfriend?” I caught his funny leer but didn’t laugh. “The hell is eatin’ you? Christ knows what you get up to when I ain’t here. So where is it, the money? If there was cash in with that you’d best have took it out.”

  As if I would burn up cash money! “You think I’m that stunned?” I laughed in spite of everything. Yet, not quite trusting me, he grabbed the poker and thrust it in to turn and prod the envelope. As he did so it curled under a flame, return address and all. I forced another laugh and sighed, wondering to myself, What if I had forgot and accidentally tossed in a dollar bill, would you stick your hand in, Ev, to save it?

  “It wasn’t about an order, don’t worry,” I said. Which he wouldn’t have found too surprising, as acquaintances from here and there often wrote, keeping in touch with news of the weather and whatnot.

  Like I said, this happened back when Ev and me still dwelt on fame’s dim side, the days on the far side of the curtain that marked where life turned suddenly shiny and bright.

  Things weren’t the same after the photographer came from Yarmouth to take my picture, and he and his writer friend had it and my story splashed across the Star Weekly.

  If I had been famous when that woman came knocking, who knows the trouble she’d have brought, no doubt demanding a share of our money. Ev was right: people can be like that, opportunists figuring you owed them, just because. So I learned to beware, for the pictures that man took of Ev and me turned our life inside out—even if it was in a good way. Those pictures showed the world my smiling mug as I posed with my paintings for all to see while Ev played housekeeper. Ev posed by the range making my dinner, so the man and, later, his friend who asked us questions and wrote stuff down in a notebook could see how we lived, how our routines fit together neat as two halves of a walnut.

  It was a good thing I had sent that one packing before she could become a thorn in our sides. Of course, living on fame’s sunny side, Ev never outgrew his suspicions about the letters I got, letters that came from far and wide. They were all Greek to him. So I understood why they might rile him up—wouldn’t you get riled up, too, fearing people were saying stuff behind your back, especially when you could see them talking but not hear them? It would be like that, being hardly able to read; the same, maybe, as being unable to look straight up into a person’s face while hearing their every guffaw and sigh. The way the both of us would have felt, sure, if Ev and me had landed in Saulnierville, say, where they only speak French. I would be suspicious of people too.

  Still, I tried to help him learn. Tried to pass on to him things I’d learned at Mama’s knee. “Have a seat and I will read you this. Here, set for bit and I will learn you to read it yourself, it ain’t so hard, Ev. If I learned, you can too.”

  So I would tell him, in the brightness of many a noon hour, that day’s mail before us. I meant to encourage him, as a wife encourages her husband, that reading opened doors that otherwise stayed shut. Reading was something that never gave me trouble—well, except for that letter I burnt. But maybe there are two kinds of people: those who take to reading as easy as downing a cool glass of water, and those who choke and splutter and cannot seem to swallow it, no matter how they thirst.

  But when that one’s letter came that day I counted my blessings Ev could not read. Else I’d have dug the ashes out of the range and scattered them out the door. Lies, she was full of lies, that one. The worst of it was realizing all over again that you couldn’t always trust a man to do right by you.

  This was a bitter pill to swallow, so bitter I had no choice but to tell myself, as a person does: Put it behind you, it never happened, sticks and stones only hurt if you let them hit you, etcetera. If I was good at one thing besides painting, I reckon it was ducking.

  Duck, and before you know it the ones throwing stones get tired and bored and go away. The fact that eventually they make themselves scarce tells you all you need to know about them.

  One afternoon that fall, mild for the first of November, I helped Mama put the garden to bed. It took up our whole backyard, plus she had plots out front between the veranda and the fence. In summer these were a burst of peonies, iris, foxglove, and phlox pushing out between the fence pickets, greedy for whatever sun wasn’t blocked by the Thompsons’ big barn right across the street. My job was cutting and gathering dead stalks before Mama raked leaves from the maples onto her beds. She happened to go inside to get a drink of water. Stooping behind the fence, I worked the shears. Fluffy the Third stalked a blue jay. He ducked past the snowball bush then darted under the hydrangea, and the next I knew he had the bird in his mouth. I dropped the shears to chase him out of there just as someone ambled by on the sidewalk. I peered up through the hydrangea’s dried, lacy blooms in time to catch a glimpse of the fella. I was close enough to see his blue eyes. He paused to light a cigarette. It was him. My heart near pitter-pattered out of my chest.

  Emery Allen was just as much of a looker in full daylight, as handsome as I remembered. I wiped dirt from my hands on my skirt, tried to speak but nothing would come out. I watched him disappear around the corner past Thibeau’s. I hurried down to the very back of our yard, in time to see him stop outside Sweeney’s store. Then he turned and headed next door to the Belvue. I watched him go inside.

  Mama came around back waving the rake. She had found the jay. Its neck was broken, its gizzard left spilling out. “Fluffy’s been at it again.” She was upset, like I ought to have been. Any other time I would have given Fluffy a talking to—though it was, and always will be, a waste of breath chastising a cat. “I don’t know a thing about it,” I told Mama, watching her dig a hole under the viburnum deep enough that Fluffy wouldn’t come back for seconds.

  I had fallen for Emery Allen, oh yes, hook, line, and sinker. He was a man I could look up to without having to look up too painfully far.

  I spotted him a day later up by Main Street. He was standing on the sidewalk kitty-corner to Stirrett’s store, where I had gone to buy tapioca flour for the dessert Mama was making. Somehow he did not see me, even when I followed him down the hill towards home. Halfway down Forest he lit a cigarette, passed the Belvue, and went into Sweeney’s. I knew from going in there once with Father buying ha
rdware that Sweeney’s was dim as a cavern inside. It smelled of tar and hemp rope, was crammed to its tin ceiling with bright-coloured buoys, bobs, gaff hooks, sinkers, nets, lines, and pulleys. It was no Peter Nichol’s store, no place where ladies shopped. But I had half a mind to go in and pretend to look for something amongst its mess of hooks and blocks and tackles.

  I stood outside instead and peered at the window display of foghorns, anchors, and buoys. There was a big sewing machine for stitching sails. Through a drapery of fishing nets, I spied the bottom half of Emery at the counter paying for something. Funny, from what I saw he didn’t look a bit like a fisherman, being slight and short of stature.

  Scurrying home, afraid he’d catch me spying on him, I did wonder, how ought a fisherman to look?

  The next night Don Juan opened at the Majestic. Mama and I had earned an evening out, having spent the livelong day painting cards. She wanted to go early and keep Father company while he took tickets at the seven o’clock show.

  “You go on ahead,” I said. “I’ll wait for the nine o’clock.”

  Mama looked hurt, eyeing Father. Who knew what her look meant? I was tired of us two acting like the Bobbsey Twins. Couldn’t I have a life of my own? I wasn’t a kid, I was twenty-five years old!

  Father shrugged, fixing his tie. “Well sure, no harm in you minding the fort, is there, sweet pea. Got your pass for later? Charlie gave you one, didn’t he?” The Majestic Dowleys, that was us, always a Dowley either working or seeing a show. With a few minutes to spare, Mama went upstairs to primp.

  Before she and Father left, I modelled my dress. Brand new from the Eaton’s catalogue, it was cozy brown wool with green and yellow flowers embroidered on it.

  “Now where will you be going in a dress like that? Unless you and your mother take up church.” Father winked, but his gaze fell on Mama, his eyebrow lifted. “What did that cost?”

  “A decent new dress each season is a must, Jack.”

  “And money grows on trees, does it, my darling?” Father’s smile was jolly but his voice was not.

  “No reason our girl shouldn’t be dressed as pretty as any other.”

  Girl, girl, girl. Would I never grow out of being a girl, their girl? I would be twenty-six next March but felt doomed to be a permanent child. This is what got under my skin; if I felt gloomy all of a sudden it wasn’t due to a fooforah over a dress.

  “I’ll send it back, then. Got no real call for it anyways.” Swallowing my disappointment, I bit back a pout.

  But neither Mama nor Father was listening.

  “Now look what you’ve done.”

  “It’s just a dress, Agnes.”

  “You ought to know it’s more than that, Jack Dowley.”

  “A dress.”

  “If you have worries over finances, tell me. Don’t be taking it out on your daughter.”

  “Taking it out? You know I’d give our girl the moon. Eh, sweet pea, you know that, don’t you.” But Father forgot to wink as he said it, he didn’t seem himself. “You should know things aren’t the best at the shop. You can count on one hand the folks in town who still go by horse and buggy.”

  Mama went silent. She checked the tilt of her hat in the hall mirror. “Well then you ought to be glad you’ve got a wife and daughter bringing in extra. You should be proud of us ‘hobbyists.’” The sharpness of her voice made me a little nervous.

  “You two are something. I’m proud, all right.” Except he didn’t sound like he was.

  Mama laughed and grinned at me. “Charlie’ll have my new pass waiting, won’t he, Jack? A penny saved is a penny earned, that’s what they say. Though we’re hardly in the poorhouse, are we. Not yet.”

  Father kissed my cheek goodbye. “Keep the dress, Maudie. Don’t let me hear another word about returning it.” And off he and Mama went.

  Pretty as it was, the dress felt a bit tainted now. I started up the stairs to change out of it when the doorbell rang. I didn’t want to answer it, as I had planned to spend the time to myself playing piano. Hoping whoever it was would go away, I slunk into the parlour, sat before the keys. By now, my hands were no piano player’s hands but I could still pick out tunes. The bell rang again, then came a knock too loud to ignore. I rose and peeked out from behind the lacy parlour curtains.

  Of all people, who was out there on the veranda? My land. I nearly fell backwards.

  To think I mightn’t have let him in, might have let him get away!

  Emery Allen filled the doorway with his smile. “So I got the right place, then.”

  He peeled off his jacket as he stepped into the hall. His gaze flitted about. Pinch me, I thought, I must be dreaming! But I wasn’t. It was him and he was standing there looking at me with those blue, blue eyes.

  “Nice place you’ve got here. Your folks do all right, do they?”

  I barely heard a word he said, I was so busy devouring all of him that I could with my eyes, breathing in his smell: hair tonic, tobacco, a hint of tar. As I watched his lips move I caught a whiff of Juicy Fruit gum.

  After a while my own lips came unstuck from themselves enough to ask, “Cuppa tea?”

  “Something stronger, maybe?” He sat himself down on the horsehair sofa by the piano. He squinted at Mama’s sheet music propped there. “‘Danny Boy.’ You play?” He sounded surprised.

  “When I’m not butchering whatever the piece is.” I was careful not to boast, though I wanted to. My fingers sometimes had a mind of their own. What if he asked me to play? I remembered Aunt’s advice: “Don’t hide your light under a bushel barrel.”

  “‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’?” I thought out loud of the nursery tune composed by that famous man, Mozart. Unsure of what else to do, I went over and picked out the notes.

  Emery Allen held up his hand, grinning. “It’s okay, you don’t have to. How about that tea?”

  He made himself right at home, with his legs stretched out, his feet in their polished boots on Mama’s turkey rug. In the kitchen I fumbled with tea leaves, nearly broke one of Mama’s bone china cups. I threw some coconut cookies onto a plate, brought it, the teapot, cups, saucers, and Mama’s silver teaspoons on a silver tray into the parlour. As I set it down on the whatnot table, I realized I’d forgot milk and sugar. Emery’s hand closed round my wrist.

  “No trouble, I’ll take it plain.”

  A sweeter fella I could not imagine. A man who didn’t expect the least of what other fellas expected, fellas like my brother, I mean. You could teach Charlie a thing or two, I wanted to say.

  Emery Allen patted the place beside him. “Come and sit. Take a load off.” It was something Father would say. So I sat, happy as all get-out, taking care not to crowd him. A man like this must be as rare as a cuckoo, I told myself. You don’t want to get too close too soon and scare him off. Never mind I practically wanted to paint myself to him. Like Mary Pickford painted onto Douglas Fairbanks. Feel our arms press together side by side, the warmth of our skin mingling through our sleeves. He didn’t touch the tea I poured for him.

  I could not think of a thing to say; it was like Fluffy had got my tongue and Emery Allen’s tongue too. But it was enough just sitting together in the lamplight, watching our shadows barely moving on the rose-patterned wallpaper. If Mama and Father had been there we might have played shadow show, guess the animal, our hands for puppets, or charades.

  By and by Emery spoke. “Don’t talk much, do you. Not like some women.”

  When I didn’t answer right away he elbowed me, playful enough to loosen my tongue.

  “Reckon a person can speak without talking.” I took a sip of tea.

  “Is that right? I like a woman who doesn’t say a lot. Not the type always flapping their lips.” He poked his finger into my ribs. It tickled and made me jump. Now he really was like Father, teasing me.

  I looked down into my teacup. “Th
ere’s them that think I don’t talk at all.”

  “Never met any woman like that.” Then Emery Allen leaned closer. Before I could say boo, he put his lips to my ear. “I know how to make you jump. I could make you talk, how about that?”

  My heart pounded. The warm, funny throb that felt so good and bad, sweet yet alarming, stirred low in my belly. “How? How would you do that?” I did not need to ask, for he moved closer, slid his arm around me, pulled me to him. It felt like being doused by an ocean wave that was warm instead of cold, that odd. He kissed me on the mouth. His lips were parted. After a bit, I parted my lips too. The tips of our tongues played tag. The parlour faded to near-black. Somewhere the mantel clock chimed, chimed again. The seven o’clock show would just be letting out, Mama would be home soon. She would have a conniption fit if she found a strange man in the house with me. Emery Allen must have guessed something was amiss when I stiffened and sat up. He seemed in a bit of a stir, not quite agitated or fretful, but eager, wanting. His arm tightened round my shoulder.

  “Whoa, pardon me, ma’am, see what you went and made me do? Kissing on you like that. You have this effect on all the fellas?”

  “What fellas?” I let out a jittery laugh, terrified of Mama coming in and finding us like this. But I could not tear myself away.

  “Oh, someone as pretty as you? Must have fellas beating down that front door.” He clasped my hand in his, moved it to the front of his pants. Oh my land, it felt like he had a tree root there, a hardness like wood.

  “Wish that were true.” The second these words popped out I wished I could stuff them back. My face felt pink as my teacup. I edged my hand away. “I mean, oh yes. Sure do. A beau on every block.” I asked if he knew my brother, who had lots of friends, handsome fellas who played in a band with him after hours.