Loddy-Dah

by Dolly Dennis

  Loddy couldn’t reconcile the hypocrisy so she no longer believed in God. But, just in case, she implored to Mary: “Can you talk to Jesus and ask him to help me? I don’t know what to do without Fury.” Linksma Giesma (Hymn of Praise), the final carol, propelled the worshippers out the door with good will towards all mankind.

  For Loddy, like Easter, the best part of midnight Mass was the church social in the basement where the nuns and volunteers had prepared scrumptious hors d’oeuvres and desserts. After the service, she and Bettina were to connect with Alma downstairs at one of the tables. Bettina slid through the bottleneck of men, women and children in the foyer, but Loddy held back, cautious and anxious, on the verge of a panic attack. She caught Bettina’s distant voice calling her as the crowd bulldozed their way, pushed her aside, and dispersed into the basement hall. Once the path cleared, Loddy resumed breathing and hurried down the stairs to join her sister.

  “Do you see her anywhere?” Bettina hunted the hall for a glimpse of Alma’s green knit fedora but she was nowhere in sight. Loddy, after committing to memory the locations of all the exits, planted herself in front of the buffet table and heaped her plate with an assortment of Lithuanian Christmas pastries and cakes.

  She was so enthralled with every bite of her Kuciukai, she didn’t notice him until he said: “Ah, Loddy, you still eat too much.”

  Her eyes snapped at the ruddy-faced man across the table from her. A mass of hair and a beard the colour of the magnetic red sands on the south shore of Prince Edward Island, he bore a close resemblance to a young Santa Claus.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, her dessert fork stabbing air.

  “You don’t remember me? Rudolph Sukey. Everyone calls me Sukey.”

  “Ah yes, I’ve heard that name before.”

  He spoke in careful English with a hint of a European accent.

  “I used to own a restaurant on de l’église. You’d come there with your father for a coke and hot dog when you were this high” — and he measured with his hand, three feet from the floor. He did possess a sinister familiarity about him which troubled her.

  “I don’t remember,” she said. Loddy began to rummage through her purse. “Alma told me you saved her from getting beat up by the creep.”

  “Yes, your father can be a violent man when he doesn’t get his way.”

  “My father? That creep is not my father.” She whipped out the creased photo from her wallet. “There. Who is this?”

  Loddy eyeballed this portly man, Sukey, who now removed his frameless glasses for an astigmatic close up, his laboured breathing intensifying until he exploded into a series of chuckles, followed with hearty Ho, Ho, Ho’s. Just like Santa.

  “This man in the photo is Josef, Alma’s brother. He died in the war.” He handed the photo back to Loddy.

  “Alma’s brother?”

  “Disappointed?”

  She was on the verge of tears but suppressed the emotion. He tilted back his chair, let it thump forward, then cleared his throat as though preparing to give a lecture.

  “I met your parents in a camp for displaced persons after the war. I came to Montreal first and then sponsored your family. We didn’t speak the language. Very hard after the war.” Sukey devoured a Žagareiliai in two bites, a spray of powdered sugar landing on his beard. He smacked his lips then patted his chin clean with a napkin. “You know your father comes from a wealthy, elite family, no?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. What were they? Black marketeers?”

  “Professors, doctors, dentists.” He finished his coffee with such gratification that a nun straight away refilled his cup. “Before the war, your father was a medicus studentus, studying to be a doctor. Didn’t like school, wanted his liquor, women and crayons; wanted to be the next Picasso. Big shot. Ha, I say to him, forget such nonsense; you have a family to feed.” Sukey slapped the air. “He was good with the paints your father, yes, but when he came to Canada, no language, no money, to start from scratch like we all did, he failed. I found the duplex for your family on Briand and a job in construction but, no, he was too good for that, too good to shovel ditches, too good to learn a trade. Finally, I fix him with a job as security guard working the waterfront. Your father, he took bribes. A lazy bastard. A crook. Poor Alma. She worked until her knuckles bled; all that packing on the assembly line at Richstone Bakery and then cleaning the houses of those rich Westmount and Outremont bitches.”

  “I remember the bread and donuts she used to bring home,” Loddy said.

  Both stirred their coffees with an aimlessness that came from a loss of words.

  “Like, why did he beat up me and Alma? He molested me. I was only a kid. He sent me to other men. Did you know that?”

  Sukey dropped his spoon on the saucer. “The war, the war makes a man crazy.”

  “So, like, blame it on the war now, huh,” Loddy said knocking over the chair as she rose. All eyes from neighbouring tables were on her.

  Sukey bit into another Žagareliai. “Mmmm. Nice pastry, not doughy, but your mother’s is better.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  It was easier to pretend that the man who had erased her childhood was not her real father. Easier to live a delusional life like Alma’s to salve the pain. Now here was the reality. Somewhere in her heart, she had always suspected that the plain-looking man with the crooked teeth was not her father.

  As she folded the photo back into her bag, she heard Sukey say: “Maybe you come by my new restaurant on Jolicoeur for a hot dog. I have all sizes.” He winked, and saluted the last portion of his pastry into the air.

  “Fuck off!” She tore out of there and found Bettina in the church foyer. “Hurry, Loddy. Alma is waiting outside. Who was that man you were talking to?”

  “Santa’s brother.”

  “Huh?”

  They stepped into the fresh-scented chill of December. The two pine trees framing the church steps, adorned with blue Christmas lights, and the sky, an indigo blue studded with stars, summoned choruses of O Holy Night. A steady slant of snow drifted past the street lights.

  Bettina stuck out her tongue to trap a flake or two. “Loddy, have you ever noticed how it always snows after midnight Mass?”

  “No. But, like, I’ve noticed how it’s always freezing cold.”

  From afar, under a street light, they could make out Alma’s silhouette: the bulkiness of the cast-off mink coat she had purchased from a consignment shop; the smart fedora tilted over one eye; the brown leather gloves she saved for special occasions.

  Once home, they opened their presents, a family tradition following Midnight Mass.The gifts were mostly a repetition from the previous Christmas: from Alma, a knitted scarf for Loddy and a sweater for Bettina; from Bettina, 1971 calendars for Loddy and Alma. But Loddy surprised them with two fifty-dollar bills in a Birks box, one for each of them.

  “My God, Loddy, you sure?”

  “Yes, Maw, no big deal. Go spend it on whatever.”

  Alma, her face flush with joy, threw an arm around Loddy’s neck, drew her near in a chokehold, and kissed her smack on the side of her forehead.

  Bettina shoved hers in a pocket and mumbled: “Thanks.”

  Alma brought out a tray of more Christmas pastries and offered a toast with the brandy she kept for special occasions.

  “Well, Linksma Kaledos!” Alma ripped into the liquor in one swoop.

  “Merry Christmas!” Bettina and Loddy took a modest sip.

  “Ah, good!” Alma shuddered with satisfaction as she banged her shot glass on the kitchen table.

  They sat satiated with Christmas cheer when Loddy reached into her bag and threw the photo at Alma.

  “Here,” she said. “I’m going to bed.” She moved into the living room. “Any blankets? Pillows here?”

  “Where you get this?” Alma said, following her. “
Where you get this?”

  “I took it from your purse, okay. I thought he was my father.”

  “You stole it? Jesus! He not your father.”

  “I know that now. Sukey told me tonight. Look, I’m tired, Maw, and I just want to sleep. It’s okay.”

  “Sukey? You talk to that šhudas tonight?”

  “Yes. Now, good night, Maw.”

  She heard Alma sniffle; blow her nose, shut down for the night. Loddy collapsed on the couch and counted the cracks in the ceiling until sleep took over.

  SCENE 31:

  Life as Improv

  She tumbled off the narrow couch in a welter of blankets and hallelujahs and the warm aromas of Christmas Day. Alma and Bettina, engrossed in the televised Christmas services from the Vatican, ignored her as though she didn’t exist.

  “There, so beautiful,” Alma praised the televised Mass.

  “Didn’t you get enough of that shit last night?” Loddy mumbled, as she made her way to the bathroom.

  “How you say that? He the Pope,” Alma said.

  “We’re waiting for the Queen’s message,” Bettina chimed in. “Then after dinner, we’re watching It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. It’s my favourite Christmas movie.”

  Loddy finished her first morning coffee and leaned over the sink with her empty mug drawn towards her lips, contemplating winter outside the kitchen window, and considered her life. She traced a finger tip around the wooden frame, felt the draft seeping through, and scraped the frost with her nails.

  Alma seemed edgy as she fidgeted with setting the Christmas table, adding an extra place. Loddy was about to comment when they heard a hard pounding on the front door.

  “Ah, he come,” Alma said and bounded down the steps. There was a muffled inflection of Lithuanian words, and then up the stairs again, Alma carrying a poinsettia plant and a box of chocolates.

  “Nu, see what I get?”

  It was the tenor from Alma’s church choir.

  In the subdued hallway light, Adolphus removed his tweed overcoat and presented himself as a lean, tall wrangle of a man with shots of grey at the temples, well-defined cheek bones and a thin-lipped smile that displayed a smack of teeth that caused Alma to titter every time he laughed.

  He extended his hand to Loddy, a personable greeting in their mother tongue.

  “Do you speak Lithuanian?”

  “My daughter no good with Lietuviu kalba,” Alma said.

  “A bit. I understand it though,” Loddy said, countering with her own handshake. “I’m Canadian.”

  Alma turned the TV off and announced: “Come, we eat.”

  Dinner was a clot of personalities vying for attention, a lexicon of overlapping words in two languages around a Lithuanian Christmas table dressed in red linen. Loddy slouched deeper into her chair and tried to become invisible until the ordeal was over. She expected Adolphus to take his leave after dessert and before everyone settled in front of the television again. But he stationed himself for the night, it seemed, and Loddy could no longer bear the noise of nothingness around her. She vaulted from the couch and turned off the volume. It’s a Wonderful Life flickered without sound, James Stewart examining his misspent life, hanging onto the lip of a bridge, his angel convincing him otherwise.

  “I have to tell you something, Maw.”

  “After,” she said, her eyes touching the tenor as though he alone occupied the room, her life.

  “I’m going, Maw.”

  “What. So soon?”

  “No, Maw, I mean, like, I’m leaving Montreal.”

  “Ackk. What you say?”

  Loddy faced Bettina. “I’ll keep in touch. You know if you need anything ...”

  “You really going?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fine, Loddy. Go. You always know how to spoil everything.”

  “What do you all want from me? I have to go to keep sane.”

  “I be alone,” Alma said, blowing her nose on an already damp tissue.

  “You have Bettina, Maw. She was always your favourite anyway, and now you have ... you have your choir ...”

  “But I never see you again.”

  “I’ll write and visit. I will.” Loddy looped Alma’s long knit scarf twice around her neck, pulled up her boots. “Promise.”

  No display of affection, just an awkward situation. Loddy felt compelled to hug them both. After all, they were her mother and sister.

  Adolphus, instead, stepped forward, wished her luck. “When are you going?”

  “New Year’s Eve. It was to be my wedding day. It’s a good day to go.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Ack, that no good artist. God tell you something and still you no listen to your mother.”

  Loddy tore into the living room, boots caked with grime, scratched the old hardwood floor. She ripped into Alma’s knitting basket, released the stitches until the blanket Alma was knitting for the poor children in Africa was an unravelled mess of yarn and Loddy’s rage. She pitched the entire thing at Alma, charged down the stairs, two steps at a time, past the soundless bell, her chest heaving until she slipped on the snow-covered pavement and landed on her back.

  The exterior door left open, she could hear Alma’s tirade against a daughter she never had and Adolphus’ tenor voice stroking her with candy-coated Lithuanian assurances. There followed a sudden shift in priorities: “But the turkey. Leftovers. She not take.”

  Loddy rolled onto her stomach and into a snow bank to avoid the patches of hidden ice. She pushed herself up on all fours then got into an upright position and began to run. She kept running until there was only the sound of snow falling on snow and the squish of boots tracking her path. She prayed that, at this late hour on Christmas Day, there would be a cab at the taxi stand around the corner and, when it came into view, she almost collapsed in gratitude. It was as though someone had ordered it especially for her.

  “Where to?” the driver said, swivelled around for a closer look at his flushed-faced, panting passenger.

  “New York City.”

  xxx

  Loddy arrived home to find a note taped to her door from Dewey and Ulu:

  Come to the party. Everyone will be there. Our place.

  With nothing to lose except another night of solitude, she crossed the street and followed the music dinning from every drafty orifice of the flat. The door was unlocked. She tapped with the tips of her fingers, and it cracked open.

  Ulu saw her first. “Hey, everyone, Loddy’s here.”

  Merry Christmases abounded, thrown like party streamers, culminating into a mound of affection from The Garage Theatre troupe — Aretha, Percy, Jacob, Danny, Stanley, Ulu and Dewey.

  “Merry Christmas everyone,” she said with true sincerity.

  This was family. Real family.

  Ulu handed her a glass of bourbon as Let It Be spun on the record player. Percy was on a marathon of wine tasting while Danny could be heard in the background shouting: “Turn that shit off.”

  And Aretha counterattacked: “But it’s The Beatles. And it’s appropriate.”

  “Did I interrupt something?” Loddy said, noticing an unmistakable melancholy among the group.

  “Hon, you haven’t been around so you don’t know,” Dewey said. “Some of us are moving out. Moving on. This last crisis with the army in the streets and what happened to Fury. I’m sorry, Loddy, I don’t want to bring it up, but we think it’s going to get worse.”

  To keep from breaking down, Loddy stared at the floor — as though nothing else could be more important than the oriental pattern in the carpet.

  “Where’re you going, Dewey?”

  “I’m heading for B.C. in the spring after my contract is up with The Star. Some guys, these draft dodgers I met at the Hut, told me about this place near Nelson. Nakusp. Though
t I’d check it out.”

  “And you, Ulu, you going too?”

  “Didn’t get a chance to tell you, what with everything that’s happened. I’ve been offered a position at Sir George Williams teaching Women’s Studies. Dewey and I, well, he’s like a little brother to me so I’ll be hounding him forever. Eh, big boy?” The old playful Ulu resurfaced for a moment, ruffling his already unruly hair into a mop of kink.

  “Really?” Loddy said. “That’s fab.”

  “And I’m going to Paris to study mime and masks,” Percy said. “And Aretha here is going to Toronto. The big time.”

  “I’m just thinking about it,” Aretha said. “Nothing definite.”

  “At least you’ll get work,” Dewey said. “The way things are going, there won’t be anything here for English artists anymore, and learning another language is not something a lot of us can do. Especially for an American like me.”

  “Maybe I’ll go to California,” Danny said, just for something to say. “It’s warm there. No more bloody cold winters.”

  “You don’t want to go there,” Dewey said, filling his shot glass with the last bit of bourbon. “People go there to die. If they can’t make it anywhere else, they go to California.”

  Then everyone dived in; a babble of discordant, overlapping voices, blood pressures rising, a constant drone: If only the Quebec government had just released the imprisoned FLQ terrorists, none of this would have happened. They were convicted criminals, not political prisoners. They had to be brought to justice. Well, they didn’t have to arrest everyone just to find them. They let Marcel go. Where is that bastard anyway? Did you see the For Sale signs in Westmount?

  Loddy had a headache. “Shut up, everyone!” They all turned to her. She whispered: “I have to go. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  The room went dead and Ulu brought her a platter of cookies.

  “Oh, Loddy-Dah, you must be tired. Here take this with you and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay.”

  “No, you don’t get it. I came over to tell you I’m leaving Montreal too. I’m going to New York City.”

  “You too?” Stanley said. “Shit!”