More in Anger

by J. Jill Robinson

  Daddy will enclose twelve dollars, your June allowance. Heaps of love to you both,

  XXXXxxxx Mama

  Pearl didn’t like the ring, though she hadn’t said so to anyone except Tom. In the years ahead, whenever she looked at it, she would think of Eleanor Mayfield’s bossy, smiling face and hear her saying, “Because we are paying for it.”

  Then, in November, Eleanor suddenly decided that Pearl and Tom should marry early in 1941. In January, in fact. What, Pearl wondered, was the big rush? Why not wait for spring or summer, for sunshine and warmth? Well, that was easy enough to figure out after a very little bit of thought. Right after his October birthday, Eleanor Mayfield’s good boy Tom had broken one of the rules at McGill, and his parents had been officially informed. Tom had taken one of the maids who worked in his residence out for coffee, and someone had seen and reported them. Ye gods! You would have thought they’d been discovered in sexual flagrante delicto given the uproar that ensued.

  There were maids all over the place at McGill in those days, and they weren’t all of them good girls, certainly. It was common knowledge that some of the maids who worked in the residences, attending to the men’s housekeeping and laundry needs, went out on the sly with the men. It was rare for anyone to be caught, however, and rarer still to receive a reprimand, formal or otherwise. But Tom, who swore up and down that he had been on an innocent mission related to laundry, had been both caught and reprimanded.

  Of course Pearl herself had known all about it well ahead of time, as his fiancée, and hadn’t been concerned for a minute: the girl was homely and not bright, and whatever his interest in her, it most definitely wasn’t of a sexual nature. And anyway, Pearl had that part of him cornered. Pearl figured that Eleanor Mayfield, for whom social propriety and reputation were paramount, had been thrown into a perfect tizzy by the reprimand. Eleanor had become so worried that her precious elder son was going to end up compelled to marry one of the maids instead of someone of his own station, i.e., Pearl, that she had yet again taken matters into her own hands. Without bringing the matter up as she should have with Tom’s affianced, Eleanor decided to solve the matter by pushing the wedding plans ahead, under some invented guise of a wedding present—a honeymoon ski trip in the Laurentians. Wouldn’t that be fun? Ha, thought Pearl. For whom? She did not ski.

  Then Eleanor Mayfield topped it all by writing Pearl another of her sweet little notes, this time about the importance of making oneself available to one’s husband, “every night.” Eleanor needn’t have bothered writing that. That was unlikely to be a problem. Pearl had never felt anything like the charged physical pull she and Tom felt towards each other. It would be enough to sustain them when they did not see eye to eye in other regards. Eleanor might as well have minded her own business. Yet again.

  In the end, Tom’s parents hadn’t been able to attend the wedding anyway, though her parents and sister were there, and Tom’s brother, and one sister. The Mayfields couldn’t come, they wired, because of the war; the fear was that the Banff Springs Hotel would be needed for some war-related purpose, and the doctor had better be around. And so Tom and Pearl were married, in January of 1941, in Montreal, and after the wedding they travelled to the Laurentians for their honeymoon ski trip.

  Four years later, Pearl sat at her dressing table assessing herself, and her state, in the mirror. “You are trapped,” she said. “How do you like that?” Gloomily, she picked up the silver-backed brush from her set. (Twelve pieces. Engraved. Sterling silver from Birks. A wedding present from her parents.) Immediately, her hands began warming the metal.

  It was barely a month since she and Ruby had moved in with her parents, and things couldn’t be going worse. On New Year’s Day 1945, the day before Tom flew off to England with the RCAF, she and Ruby, two years old and devoid of sense, had taken the train from Regina to Calgary. Ruby had behaved badly the entire time and Pearl, who had so been looking forward to the trip, could have pitched her out the window without remorse. Her parents had met them at the station and brought them home. From the second her mother knelt down in front of Ruby and Ruby put her arms around her grandmother’s neck and they cooed at each other and exchanged Eskimo kisses, Pearl knew that the arrangement was a bad idea. Her mother would try to take over and spoil the child.

  But by then it was too late—she was a prisoner—and worse, she was in a prison of her own making. There would be no escape until Tom returned from England. It would be months. Could be years. Pearl heaved a great sigh. And to think she had done this to herself. Her mother would drive her around the bend before then, because she wouldn’t stop meddling, and all too soon Pearl saw that her prediction was accurate: Opal was going to ruin Ruby. If Pearl announced a new policy she wanted implemented re child-rearing, her mother instantly met it with an argument as to its inefficacy.

  Pearl brushed her hair. What right did her mother think she had to question her, the child’s own mother, as to her tactics? Ten strokes. Just what did Opal think she could teach Pearl about being a mother? Twenty. It wasn’t as if Opal had been an extraordinary mother herself. Look at her elder daughter—here, in the mirror. Was she on top of the world in any regard? Not likely. Thirty. Abandoned by her husband, saddled with a child. She bent over and dropped her head. Forty. Well, she would persevere in spite of her misgivings. What choice was there, really? Fifty. She sat up, tossed her head back, and put her silver-backed hairbrush down in its place with the rest of her boudoir set, patted it affectionately, and took up her nail file.

  Being back here, in this house, in this room, she found herself responding and reacting to her parents as though she were twelve, or seventeen, not almost twenty-eight and a mother with a two-year-old. Speaking of which, Pearl could hear Ruby’s juicy cough and her snorting and snuffling next door, along with the murmur of a voice that was either the maid’s or Opal’s. At least Ruby wasn’t cranky with her cold: she liked taking her pink cough syrup, and she liked watching the steam coming out of the kettle in her room. No doubt her Gramma Opal was waiting on her hand and foot. Spoiling her even further.

  (A week later, Pearl would come down with Ruby’s cold, and she became much sicker with it than Ruby had been. She didn’t leave her bed for a week. It didn’t help matters that her mother’s sickroom technique was deplorable: Pearl would ask for a glass of water and it might be half an hour before her mother would return. Or a handkerchief—once she’d ended up using a corner of the sheet, so then of course the bed had to be changed, and Pearl had to get out of bed and sit in a chair.)

  Vigorously, Pearl filed her nails, creating a point on each one. To top off her misery, Tom’s latest letter was a complete dud. It contained not one word of affection until he signed it “Love, Tom.” And this, this one reference to love, was all he had to offer in a wedding-anniversary letter? Sure, greeting cards might be hard to come by in wartime, but words were free for the choosing. Why on earth did he think she would be interested in hearing what the editorial in the Yorkshire Post was about in the stead of endearments and words of love? Did he have rocks in his head? Or was their marriage old already, only three years on? Perhaps he had forgotten about her; perhaps he just didn’t care, or surely to God he could use his imagination and visualize what her life looked like right now. Couldn’t he tell that she had nothing to look forward to, to keep her spirits up, the way he did?

  And the icing on the cake was that throughout her entire sickness and for three days beyond, not one single word from her husband. Not one, while she had managed to write once a day even when she could barely fill the pen. Ten days! How she hated having to depend upon him for her happiness. It wasn’t fair. Or right. She couldn’t make him write to her. She couldn’t make him want to. When she thought about her helplessness, anger rose in her like lava, burning her heart, her throat, her words.

  Valentine’s Day came and went.

  What was the matter with him, anyway? Here she was, a pitiable object, surely, to any feeling person. The postman cam
e and went, came and went without anything for her day after day after day, until she couldn’t bear the rejection any longer. She wrote the letter with the molten words that, given some of the things she said, he would construe as angry. She had written in a passionate fury, when she knew if she didn’t do something she’d explode, at either Ruby or her mother. She’d slammed the door to her room and picked up a pen instead. Heat and power surged through her veins as she found her stride. How wonderful it felt to let the words gush from her completely unrestrained! She’d written an entire aerogram of tiny writing in half an hour. She had held nothing back, wrote direct from her heart and her head, and the two together reinforced her.

  Her wretched situation was all his fault, she told him, for not writing her more often and for making such feeble attempts when he did. Was he afraid the censor might think he loved his wife if he wrote more than one special term of endearment in the salutation? She had begged him and begged him to write more often, and he had not. Why didn’t she matter to him? Had he stopped loving her? If he had done what he was supposed to do, none of this would ever have happened and she would be happy for a change and all her letters to him would be sweet. She did matter, for his information.

  She shouldn’t have mailed it and she knew she shouldn’t have mailed it. She’d ignored the cautioning voice in her head and made herself drop the letter in the box. Maybe she should have torn it up. But no: it was important to let him know what she was going through, because it at least gave him the opportunity to respond. And she did not hold with the notion some people had that when man and wife are far apart, some pieces of news would be better withheld, including, she supposed, the mental state of that wife. (Sometimes she wondered if she needed a psychiatrist. Should her husband know that? Yes. Especially when he was a doctor.) There was nothing to be gained by pretending that things were different than they actually were. It wasn’t honest or useful, while even the exercise of pouring out misery in a few thousand words on paper could be of help, both to the person writing and to the intended recipient. She had felt so much better after writing. No, Tom would always get the straight goods from her. He might be in the war, but she wasn’t going to deny the difficulties she was facing.

  She looked sadly at herself in the mirror. She was angry yesterday, not today. Today she missed her darling husband with all her heart; loved him; longed for him. The only annoyance today so far was that she’d woken up with her period. Well, at least she wasn’t pregnant. Odd, but with the onset of her menses she felt herself returning to a kind of calm, stability, after what she only now recognized as an emotional rather than rational state. It had happened before.

  After Ruby was in bed that night, she wrote him again.

  My Dearest Love,

  I miss you so much tonight. I literally ache to have you near. I am infinitely wretched for every mile that separates us, and yet I am happy too, because I recognize myself tonight. The volcano has subsided and I am serene in the one thought, that I love you. I love you dear—ad infinitum. I want you to know that I am weeping mental tears of anguish when I recall the awful letter which will have reached you recently. I don’t know what I can say except that I couldn’t help my unhappiness, and I needed to share it with you, as you are my husband. I am sorry. Your letters (when you write) are so warm and nice and I deserve them so little.

  I suppose I am just a poor weak female after all, with even less than the prescribed quota of spunk. I make a poor wife and mother. You can’t say I didn’t warn you, though, can you? You will remember my telling you quite clearly that I was never much interested in being married, because it did not look to me like a pleasant state. (I figured even then that I was probably poor material besides, though I never actually expressed this idea, even to myself.)

  Let me share something with you, which might help explain things a little. From my earliest childhood my parents caused me a great deal of unhappiness one way and another, and permanently scarred me in some regards. When I left home for university and lived at McGill, I was able to rise above the warped sort of person I had been, and I felt a genuine personal triumph. Life seemed pretty good through those years—pretty straightforward, and comparatively carefree. I had escaped that unpleasant person I had been! And I swore a silent oath to myself that I would never again fall victim to the thousands of personality problems that ye gods now beset me again. Here I am, a married woman with a child, living with my parents, up to my neck in memories of the unpleasant past. My one consolation—it almost makes it worth it—is my love for you.

  Tom, I wish, I must say, that we’d been more far-sighted when this plan to have me live here with my parents was hatched. I wish someone had told me that it would not work, because it won’t. I have other regrets as well, and since I am in a confessional frame of mind, I will add that I wish we had waited to get married until after this war. I don’t like your not being with me. With us. But you wouldn’t have waited, I know. Or rather, your mother wouldn’t have waited. But what can be done about it now? Nothing, as far as I can see.

  I fear sometimes that I am vanishing. That my identity as an individual is almost gone. It’s being taken from me at every turn. Let me quote you something I was reading recently, from The New Book of Etiquette by Lillian Eichler. She says: “All women are addressed either as ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss.’ Mrs. Guy Scott is ‘Mrs. Guy Scott,’ not ‘Mrs. Ellen Scott.’ A widow remains ‘Mrs. Guy Scott’ and is addressed as such—never as ‘Mrs. Ellen Scott.’ A woman who has divorced her husband is still ‘Mrs. Guy Scott’ unless she prefers to call herself ‘Mrs. Graf Scott,’ her own name having been ‘Ellen Graf.’” So you see, beloved husband, I lose my identity altogether by these rules no matter what the circumstances. Ask me not why.

  To be frank, Tom, I am in hell here. This is how bad things have become in only two months: My wretched mother says that I am obstinate and that you will certainly have to be some kind of a spineless nonentity to ever get along with someone so self-willed and inconsiderate as I upon your return. And she says that she hopes (this is the black curse) that Ruby will deal with me as heartlessly as I now do with my mother, and that I will suffer cruelly, as she now does.

  I hope, if I am ever half as bad as she, you will promptly give me an overdose of something.

  Love from your

  Pearl

  P.S. I am not an evil-minded person naturally.

  Pearl placed her pen on the bedside table and slid down under the covers. She turned over her feather pillows and punched them, rolled over on her side and pulled the eiderdown quilt up around her ears. The pale green satin was cool against her cheek. After a few minutes she propped herself up on one elbow, reached for her mug and took a sip. The hot chocolate was cold. Irritation tightened her jaw. What next?!

  One of Tom’s sisters was getting married. Pearl and Ruby would go out to the wedding in Banff alone, on the train, while her parents drove out ahead in her father’s latest car. May couldn’t go—she was at university in Edmonton. Pearl would wear her navy suit and her pearls and last year’s hat, while Ruby would be dressed like a miniature queen. Gramma Opal had bought her a pink coat with flowers embroidered on the collar, and a matching bonnet with a big satin bow to tie under her chin. Tom’s mother had paid for new white shoes and stockings. Ruby would also have the first opportunity to wear the rabbit fur muff she had received for Christmas, even though it was March and it would be a miracle if there was still snow in Banff. Pearl hoped Ruby would evince some intelligence about the muff’s use and not get it dirty. White was a ridiculous colour to put on a child. Well, if her hands were stuck in her muff, she couldn’t very well suck her thumb, now, could she. All she did these days was suck one thumb and then the other.

  Tom’s father was at the station to meet them, and transported them to the Mayfield house on Buffalo Street, by the river. Her own parents were not there. The place was buzzing with excitement and activity. Eleanor Mayfield was in her element, bustling and bossing from here to ther
e, some opinion to offer on everything. But she was gracious. The phone kept ringing—the church, the florist, the caterer from Calgary. Ruby trotted around happily, showing everyone her muff and her new white shoes, of which she was overly fond. Fortunately, everyone found her less annoying than sweet. Pearl settled in with a cup of tea, and heard the telephone ring again. Tom’s sister Marjorie beckoned to her.

  Pearl crossed the room and took the receiver. The call was from her father, at the Mount Royal Hotel. He blew right up. “Where are you?” he demanded. He knew when the train got in, he said, and he and her mother had expected her to show up with Ruby, and so they had waited. Why hadn’t she gone straight to the hotel? Here he had made all the arrangements, he had paid for the room, and as a special treat he had engaged a suite for her and the child, and had she the common decency to show up? No, she had not. Had she the courtesy to telephone and say what had become of her? No, selfish wretch that she was, that she had always been, did she never think of anyone but herself? No, she did not, and now her mother was in a terrible state and that was Pearl’s fault too, and since his own daughter was so utterly useless he would be left to deal with that as well, he supposed.

  It was dreadful—standing there in the Mayfields’ parlour, a smile pasted on her face, listening to him yelling on the telephone, trying to pretend there was nothing going on while he ripped her to shreds and no doubt everyone in the house could hear him. She tried to interrupt, tried to say that the telephone had been tied up, so she couldn’t have called. But he was beyond reason. Finally, after he was finished with her, he hung up. She said, “Goodbye, Dad,” into the dead receiver and went quickly to the bathroom. She sat down on a pale blue chair and held her face in her hands. How unstrung her father’s anger had made her surprised her; heaven knew she ought to be used to it by now. What was the matter with her? It was just that he had been so even-tempered and amicable lately that she had let her guard down. That would teach her. As she sat there, safe now if horribly embarrassed, memories of the way she had felt as a child when he had assaulted her like that made her whole body begin to shake. Then came tears.