Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  “Damn right she does, she loves taking orders. She’ll paint anything your friend’s heart de-sires. But she will need what you call a de-posit.”

  “Oh? Well. I suppose so.” The woman opened her purse again, out came another couple of dollars.

  Ev put them into the tin too—it was a pittance, I’m thinking now. But Ev was as pleased as I was, so pleased he drew a humbug out of his pocket and gave it to her. “A sweet for the sweet,” he said. Never mind it was covered in pocket fuzz. The lady took out a tissue, wrapped the candy in it, and tucked it in her purse.

  As for me, my mind was already dancing with the pictures I would do for her friend, one for each shutter. Fountain and Birds, a bird bath surrounded by tulips, two birds bathing, three birds soaring upwards. Flowers with Candle Lantern, pink roses and butterflies. White Flowers with Bluebirds, just like the words said. Flowers with Yellow Bird, blue, white, red, yellow spikes of blossoms like delphiniums or lupins standing tall, taking up the top two-thirds of the shutter, shorter, thicker ones filling the bottom third, and one fine feathered yellow friend bursting upwards above the tallest flower.

  I had guessed up all four in my head by the time she arranged to drop off the bare shutters. And I made up my mind then and there that no matter what, no man would steal the happiness I felt, least of all my husband.

  After the lady left, Ev took the money out of the tin and slipped it into his pocket. He patted his pocket, feeling the bills. Some bread dough from his hands clung to the front of his pants. “Well, I guess you are good for something after all, ain’t you.” And he came over and elbowed me, as playful as could be.

  “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’” Aunt Ida used to recite, “‘they shall inherit the earth.’” Well, I don’t know about that. If you are rich in spirit, what then, die empty-handed? Maybe the world where you people are just wasn’t for me—not to sound smug, or fudge the fact that the bodily part of me lies handily under its dirt, gone from ashes to ashes like everyone else who leaves the world as you know it.

  Up on the ridge the wind rattles the trees. Clouds scoot by. Murders of crows rag at each other from the branches, each caw like one of Ev’s tirades against folks he didn’t trust. “If you are not for me, you’re agin me,” he used to say. To tell you the truth, the memory of his voice goads me. It plucks at my guilt. This might surprise you, or it might not, but, pontificating, he could sound a bit like the Bible Aunt sent for a present and I flipped through just the once. Maybe Ev thought he was the Lord bearing with me. Like he told those TV people who came that time, saying how I tied him down: “T’ain’t like someone else. You can’t go out all night with your friends. She can’t get around like she used to. She can cook some. She does all right what she can do. I don’t expect much of her.”

  Friends? Ev would have been friendless if not for me. But he filled those folks’ ears with stuff about his own life, as if those men were his chums. “I got partway through grade one. When I went to school they made fun of me. I was only on the ABC book. I told the woman I was workin’ for they teased me. I got the prize, writing on a slate. One cent. Didn’t they cry! I bought me a big stick of candy. Went out to work when I was ten years old. Five cows to milk night and morning. All kids had to work. No pension in them days.”

  Don’t know how or where I figured in this chatter. But he shored himself up against losing any way he could, and many a person will say he used me to feather his nest and pay his way. He had his reasons for taking charge—“It’s a man’s job to manage fi-nances”—making no bones about telling those strangers what he thought.

  Maybe there was good reason women like Aunt Ida and Carmelita Twohig never got hitched?

  Lo and behold, it wasn’t long before Bradley Colpitts came to investigate, not the appearance of the would-be molester sent by the Twohig woman but the circumstances surrounding my fall, never mind my fall had happened many months ago. Once again it was autumn. I guess the constable had an exceptional memory of things pertaining to my stairs. Bradley Colpitts quickly laid to rest the mystery of the perve at the door, a male nurse Darlene had suggested Carmelita Twohig might contact to help me out. The constable gave the whole business short shrift. “I’d react the same way you did, assuming the guy had no ID.”

  Then his voice grew serious: “Darlene says you lay there a good long time before Ev got help.”

  All these months I had done my best to put this out of my mind. I saw no point in raising it, as long as I kept living under Ev’s roof.

  “Don’t know. Don’t remember.” It wasn’t against the law to sleep through an accident, was it?

  “It’s true, though, isn’t it, Ev never visited all that time you were laid up. You must’ve wondered where he was, what was keeping him from coming to see you? Or didn’t you miss him?” He gave a smart-arsed laugh that I did not much appreciate.

  For Bradley Colpitts had me on my toes, so to speak. He made me wary. I thought of that muddy roll of bills Ev had used to pay the Digby hospital people with, for my medicine and stuff, I guess. If Colpitts had gotten a wind of Ev having all that cash, next he’d be asking about where it came from, knowing banks didn’t bury your money for safekeeping. Why would Colpitts care if Ev visited me or not. What was it to him? If the constable had been harder to look at, rest assured, I’d have sent him packing. But he was handsome as ever, as handsome as all heck, bent over, looking down at me. And I couldn’t forget his kind interest in my stairs.

  “Officer. You would have to ask Ev about that. Talking to me, maybe you’d best mind your own beeswax.” I chuckled into my chest so he wouldn’t think I was being too forthright, though I surely was, as forthright as I dared without being rude. Rolling my eyes up as far as I could, the sideward look I gave him was sweet and coy. Never mind my eyes ached from being strained so. “You remind me of somebody.”

  “Not Miss Twohig.” He smirked. At least the man had a sense of humour. Thanks to his looks, I was thinking of Emery Allen—until trouble of a more recent kind lit my memory.

  “Officer. Can I ask you something?” He had his jacket open. I looked at his belt, its shiny buckle. “Did anything ever come of that family, you know, a couple years ago, that mother or whoever, complaining about Ev? Bothering her kids, I mean.”

  The constable sighed through his teeth. I knew from the times I’d caught a better look at him, for all their straightness, his two front ones were spaced with a generous spit-hole. Maybe it was that toothy sigh that made him sound boyish. “Like I told you before, if no one presses charges, these things tend to disappear.”

  It wasn’t fully what I had hoped to hear, but it was good enough.

  “So there, you see? Ev did nothing to merit that woman’s badmouthing.” I kept right on looking at his buckle, didn’t let my gaze drift down. “Oughtn’t you to consider the true source of trouble when you go seeking the culprit? When the trouble is hearsay and no more, I mean.”

  Bradley Colpitts squatted right down before me, fixed his unwavering hazel eyes the best he could on mine tilted there. They had a surly, dogged look I had not noticed before. “You didn’t have help, did you, falling down those stairs?”

  His question caught me short, it took me full aback. The brush I’d been gripping onto rolled from my fist onto my table-tray, knocking a can with black paint enough that some spilled over. My mouth went dry. All I could do was gawp at him. How dare he think such a thing, let alone say it?

  For all your niceness, I wanted to cry out, how knuckle-brained are you? I wondered how Darlene stood his blind doggedness, this blindsiding refusal of his to let sleeping babies lie.

  He hardly noticed the spill. I grabbed a rag, dabbed at it—paint blotted out Reddy Kilowatt in the Courier ad on the tray, the little cartoon man for the Light & Power. I swallowed hard, flailing around in my head for words.

  Maybe realizing how bad he’d overstepped himself, Colpitt
s blurted out some fool question, about what had become of the crows.

  “Crows?” Uttering it calmed me enough to murmur about them finding “greener pastures.” Not the best explanation, I realized, stringing a better one together, picking the words real carefully. “While I was gone Ev had no scraps to throw ’em—” Considering Colpitts’s nerve, my voice’s steadiness surprised me. “You know, the extras off my plate I never had room for, that’s what he usually fed them.”

  “Ah.” The constable gave a breezy laugh, sounding relieved. Like he was off the hook for asking that hateful question!

  Be wise, I told myself. Serpent wise. I had something to ask him, wanting only to move the talk along. Being canny meant being gentle, kindly, even when it wasn’t deserved. And this was on my mind, albeit a minor botheration. “You and Darlene—don’t suppose you two are thinking of tying the knot, are youse?” I glanced at my hand as I spoke. Smudged with paint, it was so swollen and balled up into itself, my fingers were nearly welded together. I could not have held my wedding band, even if Ev were to unearth that pickle jar, take out the ring, and give it to me. His mother’s band of gold.

  Constable Colpitts acted like his blunder hadn’t happened. Still squatting there, he grinned to himself, brought one of his hands to the back of his neck and rubbed it. He put his hands on his thighs, rocked back on his heels, and stretched his head back. I imagined his neck’s pink shaved skin folded over his collar, like a puppy’s—I suppose he’d got a crick in it from hunching over. The stripe on the shin of his pant leg made me think of a line on a road, a line not so easily crossed.

  “Darlene’s a fine lady.” His voice was full of pride and he flushed, easing himself forwards. His face was only inches from mine now, and I thought, Tit for tat. Get nosy with me, I’ll get nosy with you. But, eyeballing me, he went right back to beating his same ugly old drum, trying to catch me out. Catch us out. “So Ev’s looking after you, is he? There’s nothing you need?”

  I gave him my best slanted grin. “A roast chicken dinner would be nice, like they give you in the hospital. Just joking.” The last thing the fella needed was ammunition, seeing how he had it in for Ev, was bent on showing Ev up any way he could. I knew this all too well now, there was no backpedalling, glossing over, or covering it up. “Can’t complain.”

  Then he dealt a less sneaky blow. “Now you are sure Ev didn’t have anything to do with your fall?”

  This was as good as a swift, wild crack to the head. It made me mad, real mad, like all at once a swarm of bees had got under my hairnet, all buzzing, buzzing mad. I’d had it with his wheedling and digging, with having his two-faced mug in mine. I fastened my gaze to my chest. I tried to keep my voice even but still it came out in a thin, raspy huff. “It’s my husband you are talking about. Ev may be bossy and he might like money, but he ain’t vicious.”

  This sent Colpitts into a flap, for his voice was hot and defensive. “I didn’t say he was, I never meant—”

  “But that is what you’re getting at.” I was at the end of my patience and I trusted he was at the end of his, too.

  Then he came right out with this: “Okay, Missus Lewis. I’m asking if he pushed you.”

  I believe I sucked up what air was left in the room, pulling in my breath. When I spoke, my voice was sharp as a needle in my own ear, as the voice inside me counselled the folly of mixing up serpent smarts and being dove-gentle. “Officer Colpitts, I am saying Ev ain’t that kind of man. I am telling you, he would never do that.”

  Yet Colpitts kept at me. I didn’t need to look at his eyes to know they were those of a dog after a fat, whittled stick. “But it’s true, isn’t it, Ev’s got money. Hasn’t spent much, though, to make the place”—he looked around, I felt him give my pretty stairs a final once-over—“comfortable for you.”

  My sigh made a shrill, whistling sound as I let it out. “Well there’s a big difference between a fella liking his money and trying to kill his wife.”

  Colpitts breathed in, an inhale so deep I saw his chest puff out like Willard’s. I fixed my sideward gaze on his badge. We were close enough that I could read the numbers on it. He hesitated, but only for a bit. “And, yes, you’d be absolutely right.”

  A little bead of silence fell upon us then.

  “Say hi to Darlene when you see her.” Goodbye, git, and don’t you come snooping round here again, was what I meant. When he still didn’t straighten up, I said to myself, No more beating around this bush, you. And to him? “Now Constable Colpitts, unless you got something important to talk about, it’d be nice if you hit the road now and didn’t come back.”

  It wasn’t how you talked to the law. But I had thought of Bradley Colpitts as a friend, and now I knew different. A lot different. A friend would see, like Secretary did, that I was at Ev’s mercy, that if not for Ev I would be well and truly done for. What had always been true had only got truer. Colpitts reminded me of someone, all right. For this was not the first time I had been disappointed by a man masquerading as Prince Charming, making like I mattered to him, making like he cared. I hoped Darlene knew what she was getting herself into, I would have hated to see what had happened to me happen to her. Falling for someone who wasn’t as he seemed.

  16.

  I Saw the Light

  “‘There’s no remembrance of men of old nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them,’” Aunt would recite. Horseshit! I remember men, all right: four in all if you count my brother and Father. From what I have seen of folks down where you are, men remember me, a few do, strangers. Helps when someone puts your picture in a magazine and the house you lived in tells your story: four walls as steeped with your presence as socks dried in air thick with wood smoke, the way the four walls I shared with Ev were.

  If not for those walls, my paintings would be but tinder now, I dare say, my name no more than dust lifted by the breeze from the stone carver’s chisel.

  For all the paintings Ev had me do, after I left for good there wasn’t a finished one in the house for him to admire or copy, though he had his stencils to work with. As for my work, there was just that half-done portrait of Matilda that I had abandoned. I don’t suppose he thought of finishing it? It grieved me to leave it behind, never to see the light of day. Looking down one night, I caught the full view of him burning it in the fire, the smoke rising from the chimney. I guess that was the only thing a half-done picture of a crow was good for. I trust Matilda wasn’t watching. Ev sold pretty much anything I’d put my hand to that wasn’t nailed down like the stairs were.

  To his credit, after that night out back when I confessed my “sin,” he never raised his hand to me again. Perhaps I should have told Constable Colpitts about it, said it was in the long-ago past and had never happened again. But I didn’t want to explain about Emery Allen and that—the more people who know your trouble, the bigger that trouble grows till there’s no hiding it anymore. None of this was Colpitts’s or anyone’s business. When Ev heard about my baby boy, I don’t know why he didn’t kick me out right then. I suppose he was biding his time. My guess is it was that lady and her friend’s willingness to pay good money for my paintings that saved my hide.

  Otherwise, Ev would’ve shown me the door. A useless cripple-arsed mouth to feed: I could imagine these words on his lips as he gave me the boot.

  But he didn’t give me the boot. And I never brought up my past again. Although when that Catherine woman came knocking, claiming to be my daughter, well, you can imagine how scared I was of Ev getting riled up, of him believing her and going off the deep end, sure I had been lying to him from the day I had walked into his life, that my whole married life was a lie. If he had gone off the deep end so crazy with rage that he had kicked me out, I would have kicked the bucket then, plain and simple. No roof over my head, no food. I’d have starved before I would’ve gone next door seeking a bed, kind as Olive was to me. I had a
voided the almshouse once; there would have been no going back there as an inmate, especially after having dined as an invited guest. I had my pride. I’d have rather lived in a hollow tree.

  “Love is patient, love is kind, love is slow to anger, love is quick to forgive.” So I read in that Bible, cracking and skimming through it just the once. I reckon you could add to this, Love is jealous, love is greedy, love is taking what you need and making off with it, assuming you are lucky enough not to get caught. I don’t doubt that such thoughts nursed Ev through to the end of his days. But you could say this about a few people, I imagine.

  It was a Saturday afternoon at the tail end of December, eight and a half years after my arrival up here, when a visitor dropped by Ev’s. Ev was warming his hands by the range, the jar on his lap. The jar with my wedding ring in it and a bit of change. He was having quite a time trying to open it. Before the ground froze that fall, he’d dug it up and hid it under the floor—I guess he thought if his heart got real bad and he needed money and had one last thing to pawn, it was best the ring stayed close at hand.

  He had seen the doctor about the pains in his chest, had parted with a pretty penny buying the green and yellow pills the doctor wanted him to take. For the first time ever, Ev did what he was told. Why, he had enough pills in the house to stock a drugstore, I heard a cop, not Constable Colpitts but another one, say. So it was hard to say why he was so anxious to have my ring in his palm. The jar’s lid was welded on with rust. Even with warmed hands, no amount of wrestling with it made it budge.

  His visitor’s knock came as Ev cursed, prying at the lid with a knife.