Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

“Plays sax, does he? Don’t know him.”

  Mama would be home any second. I knew how upset she would be, and I can’t say I would have blamed her. I got to my feet, gathered up the tea things. Here’s how sweet Emery was: he was good at taking the hint. He threw on his jacket. He kissed my cheek and, oddly enough, only in the closeness of the hall did I notice the faintest whiff of fish.

  “Will I see you again?” I called out after him.

  “Sure will, you’ll see me real soon.”

  The instant he was down the front steps, I raced to tidy the kitchen. I was busy practising scales in the parlour when Mama came in.

  I was in my corner working away one afternoon that April, waiting for my secretary to pick up more orders, when another car pulled in. As Ev wasn’t around, I’d dug out Matilda’s painting, thinking I’d give it another shot. Peeking out between the curtains, I glimpsed a black-and-white vehicle with a cherry-red light atop its roof. It looked awfully new and shiny for a Digby police car—but back then they only had one or two officers, so the town could afford to have its cops ride in style. “What now?” I said to myself, like our place had become Saint John’s Union Station!

  I slid Matilda’s board beneath my table-tray, turned it to face the wall. I had no idea where Ev was, he’d gone off on his bike after the mail truck passed without making its usual stop. The way the truck just kept going had left Ev flummoxed. “What gives there? I’ll bet that postman’s up to no good, those mail folks are up to no good, they’re onto us now, momm-itoring the mail for cash, I would not be surprised. He’ping themselves to ours.” He had crossed the road twice to check and re-check the box, his fretting had all but devoured the morning’s cheer. Before setting out he had thrown me a funny look, like I might have beat him to the post. Or Matilda had, I’d put her up to it—as if she would abandon a nest of eggs just to irk him.

  Either way, I sincerely wished Ev were home to field this visit. I watched the officer unfold himself from the car, which had what looked like chicken wire separating the front seat from the back. I’d heard from Secretary that the town police did double duty driving the mayor around. Well, there was no mayor in tow; this husky young man in blue was by his lonesome—oh, one quick glimpse of him and I could see he was one tall, cool drink of water. Yet when he knocked on the door I jumped, nearly overturned paint tins rising to answer it.

  I knew better than to yell “Come in” to any old stranger, even if he was the law.

  As I pushed the inside door open, he stuck his head in, nodded hello, and touched his cap. Aside from his height and the way it made him stoop, what I noticed most were the sharp creases in his pant legs. As he stepped inside I knocked my hip against Ev’s chair and lurched towards the woodbox, all but landed in it. I could already feel the bruising. The officer helped steady me, then he stayed bent over. Even so, I suspect his cap brushed the ceiling. His eyes flitted to and fro, finally lit on me, peering down. They had a bemused look. Was this a kid who had forgot his manners, agog at my home improvements?

  “Good God.” His voice seemed to crack. He whistled under his breath, and only then did he remember proper behaviour. “I should’ve told you not to get up, Missus Lewis—you are Missus Lewis, correct? Jesus Murphy, did you paint all this yourself?”

  Who else would have? I stifled a little snort, it wouldn’t be good to mock a man of the law. “Pleased to meet you—I guess.”

  The visitor half straightened up, removed his cap. Though I couldn’t look up that far, I fancied his bristly hair grazing the silver ceiling paint. I thought of Ev applying the paint not just for prettification but to reflect and keep the fire’s heat from rising too fast to the attic and out through the roof. “A science experience,” as Ev said.

  “Does Everett Lewis live here?”

  The cop’s voice was friendly enough, never mind its raw edge and the fact this was an awful dumb question. Do crows like shiny things? I almost said, smiling though I was shaking inside. Why does the sight of a policeman strike fear into an innocent heart? Mine did a flip-flop, the tightness in my lungs made it hard to catch my breath. “Who’s asking, again?”

  He cleared his throat and gave me his name, said he was from the town police and not to worry, he was just out doing some patrolling. That’s a first, I thought. I thought of the jar and other things Ev had put in the ground—who knew how many jars of money he had buried?—and things he’d left in plain sight, like two old pocket watches. Every item he brought home was free for the taking, or the asking, that’s what he said, nothing was gained by wrongful means—as God was my witness, Aunt would have said. Then an icy chill ran through me.

  “Has something happened to Ev? Is something wrong?”

  “Ah, no, nothing serious. Just hoping to have a word with him, is all. Issue a little warning. He’s been hanging around the NSLC—not quite vagrancy. Loitering, you could call it. Mischief.”

  Despite his height, from what I saw of his face the man barely looked old enough to drive that car. His cheeks were pink. The badge on his jacket reminded me of the silver dollar I had received a few days back, inside a piece of mail Ev had forgot to open. Payment for an ashtray.

  I spoke to the badge. “Didn’t know visiting the liquor store was a crime.”

  But the officer did not seem to hear, stepping closer to admire the board I’d laid aside in order to work on Matilda’s. A picture like all the others I had done of Fluffy times three, a row of small medium and large angora cats sitting pretty. Except black, not white as Fluffy really was. Black as crows.

  “Cute. Any idea where your husband might be now, Missus Lewis? Or when you expect him back?” His breathing sounded like he had a cold.

  I sucked my teeth, let it be known I was thinking on his question. “He keeps his own time, Ev does. Marches to his own drum. Comes and goes.” Then it occurred to me, it was on the tip of my tongue to say, It’s Carmelita Twohig who sent you, isn’t it, telling bad lies about my husband. “The last I heard,” I said, “it ain’t against the law to take a drink.”

  He sniffed and swallowed. “When did you last see him?”

  I coughed. “You oughtn’t to believe a word that Twohig woman says.” I breathed in a plug of soft air, smothered another cough. “Few hours ago. This morning.”

  “Approximately what time?”

  I threw a glance at the cuckoo clock above the daybed, its cuckoo bird permanently stuck outside its hidey-hole. “Don’t reckon I was watching the time, officer. Time kind of gets away on me, see.” Through the corner of my eye, I saw his gaze slide from my table-tray to the empty cans taking up my windowsill to the stack of paintings ready for Secretary to mail, then back to the basket by the sill, where my ring should have been. I had accidentally smeared some green paint on its ash-wood, checking for the ring, which only added to my grief. The cop coughed into his hand, gazed at the basket like it held a secret treasure. Don’t worry yourself, I wanted to say, it doesn’t. Not anymore. But he had me that rattled I could hardly speak.

  If Ev is in some kind of trouble, I thought, I will make it right. I can smooth things over, whatever the trouble is. I would give the cop a picture, get him to forget about whatever he figured Ev had done. Whatever Carmelita Twohig had said he’d done. “Take your pick.” Without looking at him, I pointed to the finished boards, just hoped he didn’t choose the one meant for a customer who had written all the way from Washington, DC, a man who wanted it for his summer cottage down the shore—when I’d read the man’s order out to Ev, Ev had said, “Goddamn, maybe he lives in that White House?”

  The officer went quiet, maybe he was puzzled. I cleared my throat, fought my sudden, desperate urge for a smoke. “As you can see, there’s no trouble here.” I lifted my gaze the best I could to meet his. “Go ahead, take a painting—it’ll take your mind off your troubles.”

  “That’s not how the law works, ma’am.”

/>   “Oh yes, the law.” And I thought of men in suits, lawyers, taking people’s money for services rendered or not, and how when Mama died the lawyer told my brother there was nothing left after paying debts. Though he was a good lawyer, an honest one, as far as I knew, not the swindling kind that picks clients’ pockets—you heard about such swindlers. No wonder Ev was wary of people.

  Then I had the terrible thought that this visit had nothing to do with Ev and liquor, or Carmelita Twohig’s idle gossip. Instead, the cop, or someone, had seen Ev carting off boards cut for us at the hardware store and had jumped the gun, figuring the boards were stolen property, not given to us out of the owner’s goodness. Donated, in other words. But before I could explain this, the officer let out a sigh and asked if I had heard the rumours.

  “You are aware of them, maybe? A complaint came in from a lady who stopped by here.”

  Oh, here we go, I thought. But before I could fill him in about that Twohig woman, he got ahead of me.

  “It was a family, actually—a woman with her husband and kids. You remember them?” His voice sounded tired for a fella his age.

  Well, I was tired too—we’re all tired, dear, I wanted to say. “Officer. Folks stopping by come a dime a dozen, if you will pardon me saying. Nice as most of ’em are. Whatever you need to talk to Ev about, I can’t help you. I am sorry for your trouble coming all the way out here. Wish I could offer you a cup of tea, but—” Something made me blurt it out, even as I waved at the bone-dry bucket with its empty dipper. I didn’t suppose I could ask him to run down to the well and fill it. With any luck Ev would soon return—but not too soon, I hoped, not until our visitor shoved off. What has that fool woman done now? I imagined Ev thinking out loud, pedalling up to see the black-and-white car parked there.

  “Don’t worry yourself.” The officer’s smile came to rest on the tea bags hanging to dry. A tin of corned beef sat open on the range top, the meat inside pink as Joe’s tongue. The first fly of the season hummed nearby. I suppose I could have offered him a sliver of meat, to be hospitable. But I caught the movement of him tipping his cap as he stood over me, then he handed me a card. “You get in touch now, if there’s anything you would like to talk to me about. If anything comes to mind.”

  Holding it up close, I saw the card had his name and some numbers on it.

  “I sure will.” I made it sound like a promise. Of course, he could not have known that even if I had wanted to call on him, short of making it across the road and up the hill to get a spot on the neighbours’ party line, I couldn’t—it was either that or send him a note. I thought, what would Secretary think of yours truly writing a letter to the Digby police and her being asked to mail it, with no explanation? I would sooner lance a boil or write a crooked lawyer a love letter than write to a cop.

  “So long,” I said, anxious to have him gone. “Nice meeting you.”

  He breathed in, the kind of breath you might take with a sore throat. I don’t know if he was looking at me or not when he said, “And you too, Missus Lewis. You take care now. Call any time.”

  I watched him drive off. Poor fella hadn’t a clue. Aside from sounding slightly under the weather, it was like he had only just crawled out of his mama’s hoo-hoo. Still, his visit left me feeling queasy, thinking maybe I’d best have a talk with Ev, let him know he was the subject of some foolish rumours going around.

  6.

  Where We’ll Never Grow Old

  “For now we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

  That’s the full line Aunt would quote from her Good Book. Notice it never said “ear to ear.” In Bible days no one thought of phones. Maybe me and Ev should’ve lived back then? Regardless, the now and then in that line remind me that you’re no doubt wondering how I came to be here, in glory’s otherworld. The way many do, it was through a slow dispatching. Ev’s dispatching was more sudden, the nature of it, I mean, though his heart had been giving him trouble for a while. There are folks down your way, like Carmelita Twohig, who believe he had it coming, what happened. I would hate to think they were right. Everyone deserves their comeuppance, sure, but no one deserves to get here the way Ev did.

  What those same folks don’t know, or what they forget, is how when Ev was in a good mood his smile had a twinkle. How, when he wasn’t drinking or burying things or being tight with a penny, he could be downright playful, a little kid in a grown man’s body. Some would call his scraping together a life “resourceful.” I would. I did. More’s the pity, then, that he could turn on a person and act like a son of a bitch, that mean. But, like you and me and most of us, he had a side to him few if any folks knew or cared to know.

  I suppose, like Fundy’s tides, a person can push and pull—it’s water under the bridge now.

  Or is it?

  My path to glory was a different kind of slog from Ev’s, the passage from my mama’s womb to our plot in the ridge’s stony soil. It involved a couple of small meanders, like bends in a brook, before taking a route as straight, and rough, as Hardscratch Road in my hometown. Rough and straight, smooth and winding, every path eventually leads you-know-where. Looking back on mine means gazing in both directions down upon the highway that hugs sixty-odd miles of coast, from the crossroads below me right now—near where that odd monument stands, with a chimney inside that glows red at night like some kind of coronary vessel, as Ev’s doctor would say—to back to where I started from. The closer you get to Marshalltown, the more that potholed road appears to be swallowed by woods.

  Be careful what you wish for, both Mama and Aunt used to say. Turning famous brought true the wish I’d always had, to do nothing but paint—painting being the very thing that ended up wearing me out and hastening my arrival in this candy- and tobacco-less zone. Dying frees you from misery and all fleshly desires: I’ll bet you’ve heard this before, even if you aren’t a believer like Aunt was. I’ll leave you to decide for yourself once you get here if it’s true.

  I left your world for good one whole year and ten days after the Yanks landed on the moon. A Thursday evening at the tail end of July 1970. Your world is a hard thing to leave in summer, wouldn’t be half as hard to leave it, say, during a New Year’s blizzard or on a March day painted with Sheila’s brush. I got planted the Monday next. You might know that I had withered and shrunk so small by then that Ev had the people from the funeral home bury me, ring-less, in a casket you would bury a youngster in. Like a virgin bride, my dowry buried elsewhere in a pickle jar? Ev would have been mindful of the money saved, choosing that little coffin.

  Between the hospital and the graveyard I barely recall a thing—a flickering, that’s all, like the flame of a kerosene lamp in a draft. A feeling of hovering, like I was an invisible bee buzzing just close enough to people’s heads to make them prickle a little. Feel the tingle of a presence that was neither here nor there. A chill, maybe.

  The calendar on the undertaker’s wall was from Shortliffe’s Riteway and had a picture of kittens frolicking in a basket of yarn. It was a lot newer than the ones Ev and I had pinned up on the walls at home. Beside himself with grief, Ev was being a bit of an arse. “No goddamn way I’m waking her in a church,” he told the undertaker at the viewing. I knew Ev was upset, but I wished he would mind his tongue. He had been on a bit of a bender since I’d landed in hospital for good—what husband wouldn’t be?

  The undertaker bit his tongue. “Now, think what your loved one would want. Nothing wrong with a nice little service, nice little country church like one in Maud’s pictures. The Baptist church in Barton, how about there?”

  This still makes me chuckle. I had not darkened the door of any church since Mama’s funeral. Despite what you hear about churchgoing being a ticket to heaven, here I am.

  Ev dug his heels in, hard. “They charge for that, don’t they? Churches and hoity-toity churchy stuck-ups—fuck ’em.”

  His cussing mussed up the
air in that stuffy room where my body lay. The steady glow of electric lamps warmed its dusty rose carpet and wallpaper. The fronds of a big lacy fern riffled ever so gently in my hovering wake. It was far from the first time I had felt on display, you might say. People whispered sweet nothings next to my dead ears. Constable Bradley Colpitts, Carmelita Twohig, and that nameless couple with the three kids could have been there, for all I knew. I had a hard time picking out faces, had no urge to seek out any particular ones. The best part of me, this airy part, hovered in the wings whistling, “Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.”

  “There’s a lady minister out your way might do it as a favour, if you ask nicely,” the undertaker told Ev.

  That’s when the flickers went from grey to black, and everything before me blew apart and scattered like dandelion seeds. It was a bit like having a song’s yodelling cut out when the radio died.

  Everything went silent and still and dark as your arse until the following Monday afternoon on the ridge. All at once, sound and light came rushing back. It started with the wind shuffling leaves. Soon the sun and clouds were dancing do-si-do, and I was no more a body jammed inside that narrow pine box than I was my old self sitting pretty in my corner painting cats. Before a person could cry “uncle” I was shimmying and shifting, sprouting leaves then feathers—feathers you couldn’t see, mind you, but I could feel—and floating above people’s heads, looking down at fancy hairdos, and bald spots turning pink in the sun. It was quite a scene. Men and women, most of them old, peered down over the lip of a fresh-dug hole in the earth. Worms wiggled free of the sunlight. I spotted Secretary. She and a few other women I had not seen in a dog’s age wept into crumpled tissues. Gazing closer, I perused the rest of the crowd. From this height, it was hard to tell friend from foe. Then I spotted Carmelita Twohig, the purse over her arm like a lunchbox. My memory flew right back to the very first time Carmelita had come by the house and introduced herself.