Loddy-Dah

by Dolly Dennis

  “The answer to what?”

  “Life. Everything. I don’t know.” Aretha played with her mug, twirling it like a broken spinning top. Another swig and then she smacked her lips, released a loud “Ahhhh ” then let the empty mug strike the table top. She narrowed her eyes and said, “I took LSD.” She made the announcement as though it were a badge of honour, as though it would startle everyone. And it did.

  “NO! NO!” Ulu and Loddy said, in a duet.

  “So did that help you find your answer to whatever?” Ulu regained her composure.

  Aretha ignored them; fiddled with her napkin, hesitated as though she were searching for her tongue. She finally spit it out: “And, and, guess what? I think I’m pregnant.”

  “WHAT! WHAT!” Another duet as Ulu and Loddy choked over their wine.

  “Hey, and did I mention there was a baby born at Woodstock right behind the stage. Can you imagine? Don’t look at me like that guys. It’s okay. I think. I missed one period, for God’s sake. Isn’t that cool though?” Aretha swallowed the rest of her beer.

  “Should you be drinking like that if you’re pregnant?” Loddy made a move to confiscate the second mug but Aretha beat her and guzzled down the rest of her beer.

  “Hey, I’m thirsty.” Her head, unsteady, shaking like someone with Parkinson’s, Aretha rose from the table, twisted her body towards Ulu and bellowed, “Do I still have the job at the Y because nothing’s happening at The Garage and I need money?”

  “The Y closed down the hostel yesterday and Loddy here agreed to work in the office with me. Sorry but I need someone who is serious and reliable.”

  Aretha acknowledged Ulu’s decision with the peace sign, and then without another word, stumbled out of the restaurant with Loddy crying out: “Aretha! Come back! Come back! You can have the job!” Loddy turned to Ulu: “Like, I can’t believe that was Aretha. What happened?”

  “Woodstock.”

  No words between them, just the steady pour of more Beaujolais into their glasses until Ulu broke the silence: “And after the music stopped, I wonder if any of the freaks decided to grow up?”

  xxx

  Loddy had just stepped into the doorway when the phone rang. Thinking it was Fury, she made a dash for it, only to hear the familiar whining voice on the other end of the line.

  “You come for supper tonight?” And before she could answer: “Shh. Be careful what you say. FLQ listen.”

  “Oh, Maw, the phone isn’t bugged.”

  “Yah, I hear click all the time.”

  “Maybe it needs to be fixed.”

  “Yah, maybe.” Alma seemed relieved. “You come supper tonight?”

  “Maw, I have to work.” It was a lie, but sometimes lies were acts of kindness.

  “What work?”

  “The theatre.”

  “You still go to that bad place?”

  “It’s not bad.” Loddy could hear her mother’s anxiety, out of breath, panting like a dog after a run and plotting how to make her oldest daughter more miserable. “Where are you, Maw?”

  “Bettina. Bettina hurt me so much. Oh, that Bettina! You, Loddy are my best daughter.”

  Yeah, for now, Loddy thought.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She start university, but she break my heart. She say she no study social work. She be a poet now. A poet. What that? No money for a poet. She break my heart.”

  “It’ll be okay, Maw. She can always teach poetry if things don’t work out.”

  “Yah? Yah. Teacher be better.” Alma seemed relieved. “You make me feel always better, Loddy, when we talk.”

  And then without any notice, the unintended words just surfaced. “Maw, I’m moving.”

  “Moving? Where?”

  “Not far, just a couple of blocks away on St-Famille Street.”

  “Why Canadians always move? Why you move?”

  “You said my place was a dump anyway. So I’m moving to a nicer place.”

  “Ah, save your money, Loddy.”

  “Maw, I’ll come see you next Sunday. Okay?”

  “Shhhh. The phone. Hear? They listen.”

  “Okay, Maw.”

  “Bettina break my heart.”

  “I know. I’ll see you next Sunday.”

  “Shhh.”

  When she hung up, she phoned Fury and gave him her answer.

  “Yes, I’ll move in with you.”

  xxx

  She gave a month’s notice, but the next day Fury was already loading up a van with her measly possessions: books, clothes, records, shelves, portable television, bean bag and the card table with two fold-up chairs. She discarded the divan, leaving behind its stories for the next tenant.

  “I want my white walls back or I keep the deposit,” the landlord said.

  That last day, after she had scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom, and the floors wore the spotless patina of a bowling alley, she plunked herself down and waited for Fury.

  “Can’t say I’ll miss you,” she said, voice hollow in the emptiness. “Good bye walls, good bye window and peeping tom, good bye cockroaches.”

  “Saying farewell to the cockroaches, are you?” Fury stood in the doorway with cans of paint and supplies.

  “Yeah, like I’m feeling nostalgic. They were my first pets, don’t you know. I think I need a cat.”

  After the walls were washed and primed, she dipped a roller into the paint and started to erase the China Red rising sun.

  “Goodbye rising sun.”

  It took three coats of Snowball paint to conceal the red. When it was all done and the place radiated white, she locked the door to her old life and took a giant leap forward.

  SCENE 23:

  Eclipse of the Sun

  Spring 1970

  The windows bore no blinds or curtains, no hindrance to the backyard view. The apple tree, awaiting blossoms, now revealed an empty bird’s nest and the neighbour’s cat crept without fear on the veranda’s wooden railing as though it was a high-wire act. Loddy examined the backyard from her position at the sink. She drank her coffee in the healing light of the morning sun radiating into her kitchen. Six months since she had moved in with Fury and things remained solid.

  Alma and Bettina dropped by whenever they were downtown shopping. Each time, Loddy would hide Fury’s things in his basement studio. If anyone asked what was down there, Loddy would reply: “Just a storage room for my boxes.”

  “Do you like the place, Maw?”

  “Too big. Other place better. Save money.”

  That first visit, Alma had brought a housewarming gift — Tupperware containers filled with meat dumplings and cabbage rolls. Bettina presented her with a floral arrangement of ivy and miniature red carnations in a pot. They last forever, she had said. Poor Fury was always forced to flee during their stopovers. He would either stay with Dewey and Ulu, who lived across the street, or go to the Swiss Hut on Park Avenue and connect with former friends from his student days at Les Écoles des Beaux Arts. A tedious and awkward situation he was beginning to tire of.

  Loddy could hear the droning of the old bathroom vent, Fury finishing his shower. She had prepared a pot of coffee to accelerate the day. It was already noon. They had lingered under the warmth of fresh sheets much too long, but it was Saturday and Saturday was their day off. The world could wait.

  They now sensed each other’s needs almost by osmosis. A slight nod, a look, a smile was sufficient. No arguments or disagreements, except for this one irritant.

  “You don’t understand, Fury. It was bad enough when I left home without marrying. A good Catholic girl in my mother’s eyes does not do that. If she knew I was living with you ...well, I might as well be stoned to death. I told you, she’d totally disown me.”

  “So why do you care, love?”

  “I just don’t want to hurt
her or Bettina. I do have feelings, you know. Like, I just want a quiet life, no upsets. It’s not like I’m asking for the Hope Diamond.”

  He sighed. “All right, love, but it’s a bloody nuisance.”

  “I know, but they don’t come over that often.”

  “You know the solution, don’t you?”

  “I can’t marry you.”

  Loddy didn’t hear him steal behind her, his arms already encircling her waist and, his lips on the back of her neck.

  “Another beautiful day, love.”

  Her head dropped back onto his shoulder as he swayed to the music on the radio, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Waters, and she met his rhythm. He hummed the lyrics first then crooned into her ear.

  “Love that song,” she said as she disengaged herself from Fury’s amorous grasp. “But, like, we better get a move on or it’ll be dark before we know it.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “The newspaper says the sun’s supposed to eclipse today. I’ve never seen one but we’re not allowed to look directly at it.”

  “Or we disintegrate?” he swallowed his first taste of java for the day.

  The announcer interrupted to report another bombing in Westmount.

  “Yeah, Fury said. “Some of my Anglophone customers are getting a bit antsy.”

  “Like, what do you mean?”

  “Well, they’re nervous. My brother, Mario, works for a moving company and he says they’ve noticed an increase in companies leaving the province. Doing it very hush hush. One day Montreal will look around and all the Anglophones will be gone.”

  “Like really? Do you think they’ll hit the Gallery Den this time?”

  “Shh, listen!” Fury moved the radio closer.

  The phone rang. But when Loddy answered, there was nothing on the other end, just static, dead air. Loddy slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

  “Who was that?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe Alma’s right and the FLQ are bugging the phones.”

  The phone rang again. This time she waited for the caller to speak first. Someone on the other end seemed to be choking, coughing, throat clearing. And then a voice called out her name.

  “Maw? Is that you? Maw? I can’t hear you. Slow down.”

  “Loddy!”

  “I’m here.”

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “Okay. What now?”

  “Nuh. Tievas. He dying in hospital. Cancer. He in Montreal General. Bettina go.”

  Alma cried out as though she were hearing impaired: “Loddy? Loddy?”

  “I’m here. Are you going?”

  “No. Bastard, šhudas.”

  But there were stifled sobs among the curses. The tears of a young girl, seventeen, in love with the first man who noticed her, who saved her from the bombs in Germany, brought her to a new country, and made promises he couldn’t keep. Life got in her way — survival, obligations of raising two girls alone, a language she didn’t know among people she didn’t trust. This man had morphed into something despicable, and she had thrown him out like so much garbage. Now he was dying.

  Now Bettina was on the line. “Loddy, I’m going to the hospital tonight if you want to come. He’s got throat cancer and they had to cut out his tongue. Ironic, isn’t it? This man, who yelled at everyone all his life, finally silenced.”

  “I don’t want to go. He means nothing to me and I don’t care. He’s a nothing, not my father. A piece of shit. Šhudas like Alma says.”

  “You’re still in denial, aren’t you? Anyhow, suit yourself. I just want to see what he looks like dying.”

  She didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to cry. The bum didn’t deserve tears but they fell anyway as soon as she sputtered out the words to Fury: “He’s dying.”

  The radio announced the beginning of the eclipse and cautioned its listeners not to look directly at the sun without eye protection. Loddy and Fury stared out the kitchen window at the apple tree, heard the cat scratch at the back door, and no birdsong — only silence. They held each other and watched the universe move towards darkness.

  xxx

  Loddy leaned against the doorframe of his hospital room. Fury had convinced her to pay a final farewell.

  “It’ll bring closure to that part of your life,” he had said.

  So here she was, indecisive, terrified, what to say?

  “I’ll just be at the nurses’ station down the hall if you need me,” Fury said.

  A nauseating anxiety overwhelmed her as she flashed back to that day on Church Avenue when their lives had intersected without acknowledgement.

  A sudden impulse to flee overcame her and she hurried back to the safety of Fury who hugged her, brushed back her hair, kissed her forehead.

  “You don’t have to stay long. Just a peek.”

  “Yes, just a peek.”

  She left the door ajar, enough to poke her head into the room, eyes fixed on this once powerful figure, now a skeletal form, motionless. He lay there under bleached blankets, surrounded by an assembly line of beeping tubes and machines that prolonged his miserable life. She didn’t trust herself to step further, fearing a compulsion to unplug the machines, to end the life that had caused so much pain. She thought that anybody who had brought about such sorrow should not be allowed to live another day, another second. Not one second. End it!

  She closed the door behind her with a quiet thud, but stayed against it.

  “Are you my father?” she said, her voice hoarse as though she were recovering from a bout of laryngitis.

  She cleared her throat once, twice, and spoke louder. “No! Of course not! No father would do the horrible things you did. You aren’t even a man. You’re dirt. Šhudas, shit, like Alma says. Look at you. You’re not even human. Creep!”

  No movement from the bed, just the steady beep of the machines. Loddy eased forward with the measured steps of a hunter stalking its prey until she came to a standstill by his bed. She was impervious to his appearance: eyes secured in sleep, his face aged, a map of wrinkles, sunken cheeks and a shrivelled body, emaciated like an anorexic. His distorted toothless mouth formed a crooked O, a cavity, and the tubes, like long malleable fat plastic straws, seemed to protrude from every orifice.

  “I just wanted you to know that I hate you, old man, have always hated you. The pain you feel now, and I hope it’s awful, doesn’t even come close to the pain you’ve caused. How could you do that to me? I was just a child.”

  She tried to cap the swelling tears, plug a hole in the dike. But it was too strong, too heavy and so it burst, washed over her and she was blubbering now, incoherent, mourning not for this dying man, who called himself her father, but for the loss of her childhood and what could have been.

  “Die, old man, die bastard, you shit. Do everyone a favour and die right now.”

  The light in the room seemed to shift, grow darker. The clouds outside arrested the sun, and without further provocation, the head obediently rolled to the side, and he fixed his gaze on her, but the eyes were blank.

  xxx

  Fury and Loddy could see Bettina waiting for them on the balcony as they approached their flat.

  “What you doing here? You’ll catch a cold sitting on the damp steps.”

  “I had to see you, Loddy. I saw our father today.”

  “Let’s get inside and warm up first.” Fury said.

  They settled in the kitchen with hot coffee, and blew into the steaming liquid, each wondering what to do, say. And then Loddy broke the silence: “We just got back ourselves and he’s dead.”

  “What! I was there earlier and he was still alive.”

  “I think I killed him.”

  “What?”

  “He died while I was calling him every mean name from hell. Died right there. Turne
d his head, looked at me, and that was it. He must have heard everything I said, the bastard, and then the buzzer started to ring and the nurses came running, but he was already gone.”

  “You okay, Loddy?”

  “Never felt better. Glad Fury convinced me to go. I’m done.”

  “Does Alma know?” Bettina asked, holding her stomach.

  “Don’t want to be the bearer of bad news,” Loddy said.

  “Where’s your bathroom? I’m not feeling well,” Bettina said her face a study in white.

  “Hungry maybe?” Fury offered a snack.

  “Ate already. Thanks. Cramps. Can I maybe stay the night? It’s late already and I’m so tired.”

  “Of course,” and Fury pointed the way to the bathroom.

  When Bettina was out of sight, Loddy turned to Fury.

  “She’s going to find out that you live here too,” she said, lowering her voice.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing if she puts two and two together.”

  “Be prepared for fireworks.”

  It wasn’t until she had settled back in her chair that Bettina confronted them. “Are you guys living together?”

  “Fury stays sometimes for the night. Like tonight.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I noticed Fury’s stuff all over the place — in the bathroom, the bedroom, the closets.”

  “You went into our bedroom?” Fury said.

  Loddy caved in. “Yes, Bettina, we’re living together,” she said with a sigh. “And if you have a problem with that, well, then ...”

  “Wait’ll I tell Maw.”

  “Bettina, why? It would just upset her, make her crazy.”

  “You’re not telling the truth and Maw doesn’t deserve lies.”

  “Oh, you should talk. You told me not to tell her about changing your plans for school and I respected that. Wasn’t that a lie? Why do you always have to start something? Guess you take after her. Crazy.”

  “You’re so fucked up, Loddy!”

  “I think that’s enough, Bettina,” Fury said, stepping in. “No one talks to Loddy like that in my house.”