More in Anger

by J. Jill Robinson

  Goldie, over eight, greying in the muzzle, stiff in the hips and cloudy in the eyes, stood beside her on the bluff. Viv closed her eyes and felt the brisk wind blowing. She was facing east, towards Saskatchewan. The dog was close against her leg. It would be so hard to leave him behind. Chas too, though he’d never believe it if she told him. He’d never believe that she still loved him, either. He’d say she had a funny way of showing it.

  Coming in from the garage, Chas had stepped around the stacks of boxes on his way to the fridge. He had cracked a beer, and paused to pat Goldie, lying beside her, and then he had headed back out. The door didn’t close properly behind him and it swung open, and she could hear Randy Travis on the portable stereo. “Diggin’ Up Bones.” Goldie got up from beside her, stretched, glanced at her, and followed Chas out.

  For their last supper she cooked the turkey from the freezer downstairs. She bought cheese buns from the Glamorgan bakery. She steamed green beans, made a Caesar salad with lots of garlic. Got out the one specially labelled bottle of wine left over from their wedding: he might as well drink it. She lit long purple tapers left over from Easter, she put on the Steve Miller Band and called Chas to the table, set with their white wedding china, cloth serviettes and two of their four crystal glasses, water for her, wine for Chas.

  The salad was good. The cheese buns were good. But she had overcooked the beans while she was making the gravy, which was lumpy and had to be strained. The turkey had been in the freezer too long and the flavour was odd and the meat such a strange texture neither of them wanted to eat it. Chas opened the wine, tasted it, grimaced. “Skunky,” he said, and their eyes met. Before he dumped it down the toilet, he proposed a toast. “To the future,” he said.

  You’re making a mistake, her mother typed onto plain white paper. You were lucky to get him and mark my words you’ll regret this.

  Viv looked out the back door at their garden, at the tomato plants, the bank of sweet peas, the bird bath. At the rows of lettuce and carrots, at the hills of potatoes. So much in a small space. She looked up at the inchworms dangling from the tree, at the spiderweb beside the gate. At Frank’s gardening shoes side by side, and at her clogs, askew. Frank. With him she had finally recognized herself; with him she had finally become who she truly was. She had shivered with joy. Her guts had been snakes. Because of him, because of her move eastward, she had been born, finally; she was fully, completely alive. Farther from home than she had ever been, she had found home. She had never realized she had the capacity to feel like this.

  They were the same height, the same build, the same colouring; their hands and feet were the same size. When they lay together, when they twined and arched, they fit. On long walks by the South Saskatchewan River he talked, they talked, she talked, their thoughts and voices tumbling together. Art. Music. Ideas. Books. Each other. They sat on the couch listening to the CBC. Home. She was home. This was her chance, she knew; her chance, quite probably her last, to get it right, her last chance to make someone happy instead of miserable. Herself included. Finally, finally she had found the right man, and she became the right woman.

  But. How wrong, how terribly wrong, she had been. And how quickly it was revealed. Less than a year. Less than six months before the truth surfaced and did not submerge again. All her faults and flaws had not taken flight. Trouble had not fallen away. No. No. Beneath her delusions of rebirth she was forced to see that she was the same as she had been. As she had always been.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Frank had said again, loudly and firmly.

  “Neither do I,” she had retorted hotly. “The problem is perfectly obvious to me, if not you: you just don’t love me.”

  “How can you believe that? If I didn’t love you, why would I put up with all this? Why would I even be talking about having a baby with you?”

  “I’m sorry. Frank, I’m really sorry.”

  “You know what, Viv? You wouldn’t know love if it came in wearing a sign.”

  And he left the room. Now he wouldn’t speak to her for days. He would pass her silently. Wouldn’t touch her. Was cold as a ghost if she touched him. As though he didn’t feel her at all. As though for him, and therefore the world, she didn’t exist. That’s how he fought. And she would lie next to him at night sobbing, and he would do nothing. His heart would not soften. “I have to get some sleep,” he said.

  This time had been one of the worst, and he probably hated her now and it served her right. He had thrown a cantaloupe; little seeds and fragments of its flesh were stuck to the kitchen wall. She felt sick with self-loathing. What a bitch she was, how wrong she was, when two hours ago she would have wagered her life she was right. How was she supposed to tell? How could she trust herself? Ever? Surely sometimes she was right, wasn’t she? Ever? She couldn’t tell. Couldn’t stand back from herself and see. Why was she like this? She had to live alone, she had sobbed, she had to keep away, she would be better dead than harming if she couldn’t stop herself.

  She lay down on the living room floor, on the worn maple hardwood beside the empty fireplace. She saw again the hurt and frustration in Frank’s face. She saw again Chas’s kind face, full of pain and sadness, shaking her hand goodbye. Saw Barry as she kissed him on the cheek and got out of his car for the last time. Cruelty and love, cruelty and love. What was at the heart of it? How sorry she was, how completely sorry for how badly she had treated them yet at the same time she had loved them, each with all her heart. Nothing had been their fault. No. It was her, her and her anger, her very own goddam anger, sliding into and out of her like ugly, strong eels. Wrapped around her ankles, twined round her body. The truth was that she was unchanged. The same cruel words flew from her lips and found their mark.

  How wrong she had been. Angry, hateful, hurtful, her goddam mother was there, living, curled up inside her like a snake. Oh God. Was she doomed? Would she never be shed of her?

  Viv rolled over on her side, felt the hardwood floor unyielding against her hip. How utterly, utterly ridiculous she was. She had spent her life defending herself, protecting herself, fighting against her mother with everything she had, determined not to become like her. What a fool. She had not inherited black hair or blue eyes the way Ruby and Amy had; she had not inherited a lilting, musical voice like Laurel’s. Instead, she had this anger. There was no denying it, no avoiding it, no turning a blinded eye or blaming anyone else. She, she was the source.

  April a year later. The garden was still dead, the icy paving stones cold under her bare feet as she ran out to the compost and back. Broken stalks poking through the remaining snow. Spring seemed a long way off. Still plenty of cold and dark to get through first.

  Over the winter, a glacier-like moving forward. Not meaning cold, or even slow—but solid, wide, affecting the entire wide terrain of her. A growing awareness that what Frank said was often not what she heard, that she twisted it, warped it, saw only the negative potential in the meaning. That people were generally kind, their intentions good, not suspect.

  She had never been more determined to change. She had to change: her life depended on it. And her baby’s life. She had to change so that she would never do to the child now growing inside her what had been done to her, and the strength of this desire forced her irrevocably forward, grinding earth and sharp stones of regret deep into her.

  That September, as labour began, and she and Frank looked out the huge hospital windows at the perfect autumn day, at the blue sky and blue river, the golds and browns along the banks, the physical memory of that first birth resurfaced in her body and sucked her back in time. This birth. That birth. The red and black pain. Back again. Identical. The fear, too. That baby, this baby. That young woman, the girl she had been; the much different woman she was now. If she could just have five minutes, she remembered thinking. If this possession, this blinding, over-whelming pain could just stop for five minutes so that she could get a grip. But it was like trying to stop swimming in a swift-moving river,
and the to her chaotic rhythms of birthing did not stop until she saw the baby emerging from her body, saw the black hair, saw the umbilical cord joining them together.

  The doctor wrapped the baby and placed her on her chest. Viv held the baby close, close. She hummed to her as she learned to nurse, kissed her sweet face, her head, her hands, any part of her she could. And felt this joy, this overwhelming joy over the gift of this particular life. She—she!—was a mother. This baby, this girl, her Messiah. A mother, and this baby, Stella, would get the best she could give her.

  “You have to take her to see her grandparents,” Frank said. “You can’t wait until she’s in university.”

  “I don’t want her to see Mum. I don’t want Mum to touch her, contaminate her. I don’t want her anywhere near her, I want to keep her safe.”

  “She’ll have to see her eventually.”

  “I don’t want her to.”

  Through the lighted window, Viv could see her mother sitting in profile at her kitchen table. She reminded her of Miss Emily Grierson in the Faulkner story, though her mother was certainly no icon. Pearl was staring into space, and she was wearing her camel hair coat, and was clearly ready to go out. Viv stood in the shadow of the house and watched through the window for a few moments. Pearl didn’t move, and Viv wondered how long she had been sitting there. She wasn’t reading; she was just staring at the surface of the table, at the cover of a closed book. She was ossified, perhaps. Or dead. But when Viv knocked on the window, Pearl readily rose to unlock the back door. Viv forced a smile and commented that her hair looked very nice. Pearl said it had been done the day before. Viv then asked her where she was getting her hair done these days. “You don’t need to know everything,” Pearl said. “Especially when you are so late. Where’s the baby? Where is Stella Louise?”

  “I left her at home. Frank is looking after her.”

  “I expressly wanted you to bring her!”

  “I’m sorry. She couldn’t come. She has a cold. Next time. Next time, I’ll bring her.”

  “What do men know about babies? I won’t be able to give her her Christmas present.”

  “I’ll take her the present for you. And I’ll send you a picture. I’m sorry.”

  Viv poured them each a Coke, spiked her mother’s with rum and carried them into the living room, which seemed particularly dark and empty in spite of the poinsettia Ruby had left on the coffee table. Viv asked where the TV and the console stereo had gone. Pearl, still wearing her coat, took the drink and said that she didn’t require those pieces of furniture anymore, and had sold them. She sat down and gestured that Viv should do the same. “Reading is now my primary extracurricular activity,” Pearl said, sipping her drink, “though perhaps the right phrase is simply ‘curricular.’” Then she asked Viv to put up her outdoor Christmas lights, adding, “I had thought I could mind the baby while you did it, but that clearly isn’t about to happen now.” Viv said that she couldn’t put up the lights in the dark in heels and a dress. Pearl wasn’t pleased with this news, and said, “Surely someone with character could overcome such obstacles if he really wanted to. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, et cetera. But apparently not in this case.”

  “Apparently not,” Viv agreed. Pearl heaved a great sigh of defeat. Might Viv be able to bring herself to help put up the Christmas tree, then, or was that beyond her too?

  “I can do that,” Viv said. “But now? I thought we were going out for supper.”

  “No, not now!” Pearl said with exasperation, putting her drink down on a coaster with a thud. “After dinner, of course! I am very hungry because you are so late, and I want to go now! Ye gods!”

  “Don’t you want to finish your drink, Mum? It has rum in it.”

  “I know it has rum in it. I’m not a moron. I don’t want it right now. Right now I am hungry. As I’ve just finished saying! Are you deaf? And I am getting hot in this coat.” She stood up.

  When Pearl removed her coat at The Manor and handed it to Evelyn, Viv saw that her mother was wearing four brooches and that they were pinned every which way onto her dress. She was wearing two very different bracelets—the one made of stainless steel rectangles that Viv’s father had given her years ago and the stretchy one with the sparkly baubles—on the same wrist. And she was wearing what must have been all of her necklaces—gold, silver, shells, stones, medallions—more than a dozen of them. All those together must be heavy around an old person’s neck, Viv thought. And then she thought about what hard work it must have been getting all that on, with the arthritis in her mother’s hands so bad. She wondered vaguely if something was the matter.

  “You’re looking festive,” Viv said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Pearl said, and, turning to the waiter Evelyn had sent over, ordered a Singapore sling. “How is Stella?” she asked next. “How is my erstwhile son-in-law?”

  “He’s more than erstwhile, Mum. And Stella is just fine. Getting very chatty. Was I chatty when I was a baby, Mum?”

  “Probably. I remember that you wanted to be held every second and what a trial that was, what with Amethyst’s allergies and asthma needing attending to. Where is Amethyst? I thought she’d be here by now.”

  There was definitely something the matter. When Viv asked if she was ready for another drink or whether she’d prefer some wine, she responded by quoting a line or two from a poem by Archibald Lampman, “Godspeed to the Snow,” which he had written in April, Pearl said, the month of her father’s birth. After twenty minutes of a virtually incomprehensible explication of this poem (which Viv didn’t know to begin with), Viv tried to butt in and change the topic. Without thinking, she inanely asked her mother how her garden was doing. In response, her mother looked at her as though she were going off the deep end and reminded her that it was Christmas and so her garden was not doing much except, ha ha, sleeping. “One short sleep past” etcetera. She asked for another drink. She continued talking, telling Viv yet again how much she had loved playing badminton at McGill and how she had once waltzed there with a fellow with red hair, and another time with a Canadian poet, Louis Dudek. As they left the restaurant, she was in good spirits and began trying to sing “I Danced with a Man Who Danced with a Girl Who Danced with the Prince of Wales.”

  Back at the house, Viv left her mother sitting in the living room with her knitting and a glass of cream sherry while she got the flashlight from her suitcase and went out to the storage shed, which was empty except for the box of Christmas tree parts, three boxes of ornaments neatly labelled, lights and garlands, and gardening tools. There was that stepladder too.

  She was less pissed off now. What was doing it? Motherhood? Geographical distance? Age? God, she missed Stella. She closed her eyes and conjured her daughter, two now, the amber eyes, the curly dark brown hair, the open, sweet smile.

  When she came back in, Pearl had resumed work on Stella’s Christmas present, which was to be a toque and mittens. The hat and one mitten were completed. The toque was huge—too large for any human being. The knitting wobbled in and out like the edge of a nasturtium, hung limp and loose around a huge shallow brim. “I want to add a pompom to the top,” said Pearl. Then she showed Viv the first mitten, which was shaped like a high-heeled shoe. She was still working on the second mitten, she said, and she held up her knitting. “See?” This mitten was much larger, about two feet long and over a hundred stitches across. “Thank you, Mum,” said Viv. “You’ve been doing a lot of work. Stella is going to love it.” Pearl answered that indeed it was a lot of work, and that she was less than satisfied with the results. When she finished, she would be writing to the people who published the pattern book to complain that their pattern was no good.

  As they put up the tree together, Pearl worked with a high seriousness that reminded Viv of the way a five-year-old child might work, and she thought of Wordsworth’s poem about the child being Father of the Man, and she didn’t welcome the role, if that was what was happening here. Being Mother of Stella
was all she was, and all she would be. Amen.

  Pearl kept putting the branches in the wrong places. Viv tried to explain the colour coding, and then gave up and rearranged the branches when Pearl was absorbed with opening the other boxes. Viv hadn’t finished testing the lights before putting them on the tree when she saw that Pearl had begun wrapping the garlands around it. She wished she was home, home with Frank and Stella, getting their Christmas under way, not her mother’s. Out with the old, in with the new.

  “I think you should wait on those until we get the other things on,” Viv said, but Pearl ignored her. Oh well. Perhaps her mother wouldn’t notice there were no lights, and Viv surreptitiously put them back in the box. There were enough garlands for several trees, but Pearl put all of them on. She concentrated very hard and it took a long time. Together they did the decorations next, and there was almost an air of fleeting camaraderie as they hooked the bells and balls onto the branches. It was nearly eleven by the time they were done.

  “There,” Pearl said with satisfaction, stepping back to admire her handiwork. “Now turn on the lights. Santa can’t come, you know, if he doesn’t see the lights.”

  At Easter it was her turn again, and when she arrived, Pearl was again at her kitchen table reading. Proust this time. She was dressed in her favourite gold shoes and red and gold dress, which badly needed cleaning. Her hair was a mess. She looked pale, and thinner. She smelled of urine; the whole house smelled of urine and something burnt. The sink was full of dishes. How long had it been since one of her sisters had been there? Viv propped the back door open to let in some air. Pearl told her to close it. She opened the sliding glass window. Pearl told her to close it. “Whose house do you think this is?” she said. Viv took the giant Easter egg she had brought her out of her shopping bag and set it in front of her mother.