by Anne Degrace
“Mum, I —” she said, then: “Albert —”
Whatever it was she wanted to say, I’ll never know. Albert came in, then, and the temperature dropped noticeably, and then she was up and getting him his tea and he was looking at me and saying: “So you’re here, now, Mother, are you?” and all I could do was nod. Because even then it was clear where things were going. Within six months I had moved from cane to chair. Now, when Winnie helps me up, every cell of my old body wants to stay put.
At first, I used to dream I would get better. That one day I would pull the slim folder from beneath the mattress I lie on and take out the notes I have stored there, saved from the sale of my rooming house. I gave most to Albert, of course, to keep me, but not all. I kept enough to escape.
Now, here comes Winnie across the yard, her head down as she walks, shoulders hunched, her pretty eyes downcast. In a moment she will be in with my breakfast, and she will sit on my bed while I try to warm her with my words, wishing that I could draw her to me and wrap my arms around her the way I had with my Ruth, when she was small, the future large with possibility.
Winnie
I S’POSE I always knew. I s’pose I knew but I thought that surely Auntie Ruth would say something. I’d look at her, sometimes, and I’d open my mouth, the words almost there, and then she’d catch my eye and see the words there and turn away.
It was this morning, I was coming into the barn, and I could hear Bella shuffling from hoof to hoof the way she does when her udder is full. I’d overslept, and I knew that if Mr. Brust saw me starting the milk so late he’d have something to say. I had a wrap around my shoulders and I was in a hurry and it slipped and fell as I pulled the barn door closed.
When Mr. Brust appeared from the shadows my heart near jumped right out of my chest. I hadn’t expected him there. He picked up my wrap and put it around my shoulders, but kept his hands there too long. I held my breath. Even Bella hardly moved, there was just Mr. Brust and me, his face so close I could see the pores in his nose, all red from the cold air, and smell his sour breath.
A bang against the barn door, and Auntie Ruth burst through in a fury, almost crashing into the two of us as Mr. Brust let go. Her eyes met his, and then she turned on me, angry.
“Winnie! Mrs. Calloway has fallen trying to get out of bed. Why didn’t you check on her before you came out? What were you thinking, girl?” And she slapped me — hard — across the cheek.
The tears sprang up and Mr. Brust slipped out the side door of the barn. “I thought —” Of course, I’d thought if I was very fast with the chickens and Bella, I could get back before Granny Olive woke up, because already I was so late. But Auntie Ruth pushed me out the door, back towards the house, and all I could do was go.
Later, Mr. Brust complained he’d had to milk Bella himself, but he didn’t complain very hard, and he was quiet at tea. And Granny Olive was kind, too, even though I had not been there to help her to the commode, and she fell, and now she has terrible bruises. Her skin is like paper, and there’s no meat on her bones. I must have told her a dozen times I was sorry until she told me I wasn’t to say it again. She said there were bigger things to be sorry for.
Olive
AFTER THE MORNING’S kerfuffle I went back to sleep for an hour, so exhausted was I, but when I awoke at noon, just before dinner, I insisted I eat at the table, even though I’ve been taking my meals in my room with Winnie for some time. I had something I needed to say. Albert had come in from the last of the raking, and Ruth was setting chicken and potatoes and green beans in front of him. Winnie was at the counter mashing turnip, and Ruth snapped at her to hurry up.
“I want Winnie to sleep with me, in my room,” I said, loud enough to be heard. “I need her, in case I should fall again.”
Winnie turned and looked at me. Ruth looked at Albert. Albert looked at his chicken, his fork gripped like an axe.
“No,” he said.
“What?” I was not expecting such a blunt response.
“No,” he said. “She’s to stay put.” He nodded toward Winnie’s room behind the kitchen.
“But —” I am not usually at a loss for words.
“You’re enough of a burden as it is,” he said.
“Albert — !” But Ruth didn’t have the words, either.
Albert banged his fork down with such force, the glassware jumped. There was a moment of thick silence, and then he resumed eating, stabbing at the meat on his plate. Ruth dropped the dishcloth she was holding and rushed from the room. I’d have thought she’d have rushed to me — I was the one insulted, after all — but she ran to their bedroom and closed the door, leaving Winnie and me in the kitchen with Albert.
“Winnie,” I said. “I’m going back to my room. Please bring me my meal there.” I looked at Albert, and thought better of it. Winnie would have to gather together my tray. “Never mind,” I said. “I’m not hungry after all. Please just push my chair.”
When the sound of the kitchen door indicated Albert had left the house, I sent her back for some food, two plates on the tray. Ruth, shut in her room, could hardly object.
Winnie
AUNTIE RUTH STAYED in her room until supper, and when she came out she made a stew from the rest of the chicken and vegetables. She made hard chopping sounds with the knife, and I tried to make myself small as I did the things she told me to. Other than that, she didn’t speak to me at all.
I ate with Granny Olive and got her settled into bed, and when I said goodnight she held my hand until I squirmed in spite of myself. She let me go.
“You take care, my dear,” she said, finally. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
When I came out Auntie Ruth had already gone to bed, and Mr. Brust was sitting in the parlor, trying to get the radio to come through on the old set, and swearing at it. He looked up as I came out of Granny Olive’s room, but I slipped into my own wee room and shut the door. I took the spindle chair from beside my bed and wedged the back under the doorknob. My room with its mirror and dresser all my own looked different, now. I thought about Emmie, and wished she were here to curl around me the way she had that night in the Home. Where was Emmie now? I got undressed and slipped under the covers, shivering. I couldn’t seem to get warm.
Olive
AFTER WINNIE LEFT I lay awake and fretted for a long time. If things were different — but oh, there was no wishing for things to be different. Never in my life had I had so little influence. Never had I felt so small, or so old.
The next day it was as if nothing had changed. Winnie came in, not late this time, and got me up and got me breakfast, the two of us eating our porridge, neither of us talking. Finally, I asked if she had slept well, searching her face, and she nodded, and from her expression I was reassured. A few times I thought to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Finally, “I better get to the chickens, then,” she said, and began to set the tray to rights to take it back to the kitchen. I stopped her, my hand on her wrist. My papery, wrinkled skin against that freckled youthful flesh.
“You’re a good girl, Winnie,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.
Winnie
AFTER I GOT Granny Olive up I hurried to the barn. I didn’t see Mr. Brust anywhere, which was fine with me. The chickens made their hungry clucking noises as I hurried past, but Bella would have to come first. I wanted to get her milked while Mr. Brust was out working.
I had just settled on my stool and was washing Bella’s udder, feeling her flinch against the cool water and wishing I could warm it. As I finished, she turned her big head with its soft eyes, and I thought she was looking at me in a friendly way — it had taken some time, but we’d come to like each other, Bella and I — but she had heard a noise, and there was Mr. Brust, a horse blanket in his hand. At first I thought that maybe Snow, the workhorse, had taken ill, but he made no move towards the
horse’s stall.
I didn’t look as I heard him set the blanket down.
I didn’t look, but kept my attention on Bella’s teat as I pulled, the warm milk squirting into the bucket.
I didn’t look, but I could feel the heat of him behind me, smell him, felt his breath at my neck.
When his hand touched my breast I jumped up, knocking aside the milking stool. His body blocked the door to the stall as he grabbed me roughly, both hands where they shouldn’t have been, hurting me. I could not seem to force a breath or make a noise, but I could see the vein that twitched under his eye. Bella lurched, alarmed, and kicked out at nothing, but it was enough for me to twist my way free and run.
Olive
I SAW THE girl running from the barn. I saw Winnie, her hair come loose, her face wet with tears and her dress in disarray running towards the kitchen door, and I cursed my legs and this chair. My voice, when I tried to cry out, was a small, weak animal in the room.
Winnie
AUNTIE RUTH WAS in the kitchen, when I pushed through the door. She had just turned from the stove with the big pot of water she’d boiled for the laundry tub on the floor. When she saw me, the pot fell, the scalding water flew, and Auntie Ruth’s scream filled the room.
Olive
RUTH HAS BEEN taken to the hospital in Hamilton. Albert took her in the wagon, which is as fast as an ambulance coming from the city anyway, but I’m worried for the moans I could hear as Albert carried her to the bed he’d made up in the wagon, and I can imagine her discomfort over the twenty miles they must cover.
When Albert heard Ruth’s scream and discovered what had happened, he sent Sam running for Mrs. Plaskett on the next farm, who came quickly to bathe the burns on Ruth’s legs and chest with cider vinegar, and wrap what she could in strips of clean sheet. Winnie pushed my chair into the living room to be near my daughter as she whimpered under Mrs. Plaskett’s ministrations, and I imagined my own hands applying the cool, vinegar-soaked cloths to Ruth’s damaged skin, if only they could.
Now, Albert will be back in a few hours, maybe less, and as I fret about my daughter I look over at Winnie, who sits in the chair beside me, clearly troubled, both of us watching through the window of my room for Albert’s return. The girl sits, and there are no words between us. An odd silence has settled across the house, so that we can hear the clock where it ticks in the next room. She has made tea, but it grows cold in our cups.
“Wheel me to the bed,” I tell Winnie, my voice as gentle as I can make it.
She looks up from her hands, where they twist in her lap. “You want to go back to bed?” Her surprise is reasonable. It is, after all, not yet noon.
Winnie
SHE PULLED A thin leather book from under the mattress, but when she opened it I saw it wasn’t a book at all but a folder, with pockets inside its covers. I didn’t know what to say when she took out the banknotes. She began to divide them, then changed her mind and pushed them all into my hands.
“Go,” she said. I thought she’d gone daft, but her blue eyes were clear. I pulled my eyes away and looked down at the notes in my hand. So much money!
“It’s not that much,” she said, as if she read my thoughts. “It’s enough to get you a train ticket to Guelph, to help you make a start. It’s enough for tuition. There’s a school there, begun by a dear friend of mine. Go to this address.”
She was holding a piece of paper. “But —”
“Go before he comes back.”
She said to go now, her voice firmer than I’ve ever heard it. She said to pack quickly, although there isn’t much to pack. She told me she would be fine alone until Mr. Brust returned, and that he would arrange for Mrs. Plaskett to come in. When I told her I’d pay her back, she waved her hand in the air.
AND NOW I am at the doors of the Ontario Normal School of Domestic Science and Art. It says so on a brass sign beside the big wooden doors. The woman who opens them has a strong face, but her eyes are kind.
“Can I help you?” she asks. I pick up my suitcase and step inside.
FOUR
ANGEL
·1929·
MURPHY CALDWELL LIGHTS another cigarette, his right hand manoeuvering match against box with a single-handed practice that might astonish the young woman passing the bench on which he sits, should she glance his way. She doesn’t; most don’t look at a one-armed man, but rather avert their gaze. He’s a reminder, after all, of a war more than a decade past. If you didn’t look too closely, it’s almost as if it never happened.
He watches as the woman greets a friend, kissing both cheeks European-style. She’s dressed in the new fashion among well-dressed Montrealers of the feminine persuasion: shorter skirts, bobbed hair, and that low waist. He waits for it, and then hears her speak, that deeper voice Francophone women seem to have. Sultry.
Helen dresses like this, fashionably. She says the new fashions are freer, no constricting corsets or stays. They make life feel fun, she tells him. It’s easier to put the bad economy, never mind the war, behind them. Murphy can’t imagine putting the war behind him. It’s there all the time, if not in his waking moments, then certainly in his sleep. Sometimes, he can’t remember the dreams, only the dread. Other times, he’s back there: the death, the rats, even the smell. Who knew you could smell in dreams? He’d roll over, wishing someone was there, but it’s easier to imagine himself back in the war than imagine Helen beside him as his wife, much as he wishes he could. He can’t bring himself to ask her, because who would want a one-armed man?
But a one-armed employed man, and that is something, at least, in his favour. It was the radio job that brought him to Helen, and it’s the money he’s saving from the job that will give him the nest egg that might make such a question possible, eventually. He worries that it won’t come soon enough, or just won’t be enough. The things Helen wants are bigger than he can provide.
Murphy sits, an island in the busy street. Ste Catherine feels like the centre of everything, with the to and fro of people and streetcars, the occasional, impatient honk of a horn. When Helen approaches, Murphy rises to meet her. He is always surprised by her beauty, the way you might be surprised by the blue of the sky, and then surprised at your own surprise. It’s just the sky; it’s just Helen. But Helen is not just anything. Her eyes dance as she approaches, and her colour rises. Across her mouth skips a silent tune of good humour, slightly bemused. Her expression seems older than her twenty-one years.
“Murphy!” she says, turning her cheek to accept his kiss. “You look more like a rumpled suit than ever!” This, although he’s taken care to dress well today, knowing she would be meeting him after his early-morning broadcast. “You sounded wonderful this morning, though. I swear, nobody else delivers news so you really want to know.”
“I don’t think most people want to know,” he tells her, feeling the warmth of her return kiss, still, on his own cheek. “Not really. But I’m glad you were listening.”
They start to walk towards Parc Mont-Royal, a nice place to stroll on a late-summer morning. She’s taken his arm, the one that’s there, and although this puts her on the outside by the street, it’s a compromise he’s learned to accept. The air has a golden cast to it, Murphy thinks, as they walk. It brings out reddish highlights in Helen’s hair, and plays across her nose, where he can see the slightest hint of freckles. He watches her mouth move as she talks, and it takes him a moment to catch up to her words.
“. . . it’s been nine years, and she’s still having to put up with that kind of thing. You’d think, in this day and age . . . ”
Murphy knows, even out of context, that Helen is warming to her favourite subject: her father’s cousin Agnes Macphail, the only woman sitting in the House of Commons. She is furious that her beloved relative is frequently belittled on the floor, whether she’s talking about women’s equality or prison ref
orm. Murphy nods. Best to just let her talk. He’s a little baffled by her, a little awed. She talks like no woman he has ever met, and he is intoxicated. He met girls like Helen in Europe, city girls who seemed to know so much more than he did. But Helen isn’t hard, as they had been. As they approach McGill campus she lengthens her stride, fluid as chocolate.
“. . . she wants me to come to Ottawa. Daddy would disapprove, of course — even if she is his cousin. But I don’t care. I could live with her, she says, and she could find me work, perhaps in the Parliamentary Library.”
“Ottawa?”
“Yes. It’s exciting, isn’t it? If Daddy won’t let me go to McGill, then I might as well go to Ottawa and learn something. I’m not going to sit around waiting to get married, to be somebody’s housewife. I still can’t believe Cynthia settled for that, marrying Charlie and moving way up there in Manitoba to wait out the war. Murphy, this could be a chance for me to really do something.”
Murphy has never met Helen’s sister, ten years her senior, but he hears about her often enough, the Strattons’ disapproval of that marriage clear, but for different reasons than Helen’s disapproval. Now strolling in the midst of the campus, they are surrounded by the purposeful movement of students — the majority of them male, as far as Murphy can see. An earnest student comes jogging down the library steps at a clip, and Helen watches with unconcealed envy.
“How I’d love to study law. But my father would never pay for that, of course. He’d have me married off and comfortable. For now, Ottawa is my best option.”
“But if you were married,” Murphy ventures. He means if we were married, but he can’t make his lips form the word. Helen won’t be anyone’s housewife, not if it means giving up dreams of being more than that. He doesn’t care what George Landry at the station says, about women who go for gimps: first, they want to mother you, then afterwards, walk all over you. What does George know? He certainly doesn’t know Helen.