Bram, trapped, hugged surliness like a winter coat around him.
“I don’t know nothing about it,” he said. “And what’s more, I don’t give a good goddamn.”
A gasp, a gloved hand to a rounded mouth, a titter, and off went Charlotte, her chestnut hair bannering behind her. It would be all over town by morning, and the first ears it would reach would be my father’s.
It was so clear to me then who was in the wrong. Now I’m no longer certain. She baited him, after all. But he didn’t need to say it that way, did he?
In Simlow’s Ladies’ Wear, the oiled floor boards smelled of dust and linseed, and the racks of hung garments were odorous with the sizing used in inexpensive cloth. To these scents were added the rubber soles of canvas shoes stacked in unsorted bundles on a counter. I’d done my utmost to persuade Bram not to come with me, but he couldn’t see what I was making such a fuss about. Mrs. McVitie was there, and we bowed and nodded to one another. Bram fingered female undergarments, and I, mortified, looked away.
“Look, Hagar—this here is half the price of that there one. If there’s any difference, you couldn’t hardly tell.”
“Sh—sh—”
“What the hell’s the matter with you? Judas priest, woman, why do you look like that?”
Mrs. McVitie had sailed out, galleon-like, having gained her gold. I turned on Bram.
“This here! That there! Don’t you know anything?”
“So that’s what’s eating you, eh?” he said. “Well listen here, Hagar, let’s get one thing straight. I talk the way I talk, and I ain’t likely to change now. If it’s not good enough, that’s too damn bad.”
“You don’t even try,” I said.
“I don’t care to,” he said. “I don’t give a Christly curse how I talk, so get that through your head. It don’t matter to me what your friends or your old man think.”
He believed his words implicitly. But what a green girl I must have been, to believe them equally. After the first year of our marriage, I let Bram go to town alone, and I stayed home. He raised no objection. It left him more free to seek out his old cronies in the beer parlor, and if he came home drunk, the horses found their way with no difficulty.
I hear the footsteps on the carpeted stair. They sound muted and velvety, as though it were a smotherer. I do not like those footsteps. I don’t trust them. Who is it? Who is it? I want to shout, but my voice emerges punily, a little squawk. A suspicion comes to mind. Have Doris and Marvin gone out after all, leaving me here? That is what they have done. I am certain of it. Oh, without even telling me, so I could bolt the doors. They have gone, flown like heedless children. I can just see the pair of them, giggling together as they sneak off, across the front porch, down the steps and away. And someone else is here, now. Doris read me from the papers not long ago, all about a molester who broke into women’s apartments. The newspapers said he had small soft hands—how disgusting in a man. When the intruder opens the door, I won’t be able to rise from my chair. How simple to strangle. A flick of a necktie and I’m done for. Well, he won’t find me as helpless as he thinks, not by a long shot. Doris hasn’t given me a manicure for a fortnight. I’ll claw him.
A knock. “Can I come in, Mother?”
Marvin. Why should I have thought otherwise? I must not let him see my agitation or hell think me daft. Or if he doesn’t, Doris will, trotting behind him.
“What’s the matter, Marvin? What is it, for mercy’s sake? What’s the matter now?”
He stands there awkwardly, his hands held out. Doris sidles up to him, nudges his ribs with a brown rayon elbow.
“Go on now, Marv. You promised.”
Marvin clears his throat, swallows, but fails to speak.
“Stop fidgeting, Marvin, for heaven’s sake. I can’t bear people who fidget. What is it?”
“Doris and me, we’ve been thinking—” His voice peters out, goes thin as shadows, vanishes. Then, in a gunfire burst of words, “She can’t look after you any longer, Mother. She’s not been well herself. The lifting—it’s too much. She just can’t do it—”
“Not to mention the disturbed nights—” Doris prompts.
“Yes, the nights. She’s up and down a dozen times and never gets a decent sleep. You need professional care, Mother—a nurse who’ll see to everything. You’d be much happier, yourself, as well—”
“More comfortable,” Doris says. “We’ve been to Silverthreads Home, Mother, and it’s really cozy. You’d love it, once you got used to it.”
I can only gaze as though hypnotized. My fingers pleat my dress.
“A nurse—why should I need a nurse?”
Doris darts forward, her face not soft and flabby now, but peering earnestly. She gesticulates, as though she could convince me by this trembling of her hands.
“They’re young and strong, and it’s their business. They know how to lift a person. And all the other things—the beds—”
“What of the beds?” My voice is austere, but for some reason my hands are unsteady on the squeezed silk of the dress. Doris reddens, glances at Marvin. He shrugs, abandoning her to her own judgment.
“You’ve wet your sheets,” she says, “nearly every night these past few months. It makes a lot of laundry, and we haven’t been able to afford the automatic washer yet.”
Appalled, I search her face.
“That’s a lie. I never did any such thing. You’re making it up. I know your ways. Just so you’ll have some reason for putting me away.”
She grimaces, an unappealing look, and I see that she is nearly in tears.
“I guess maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” she says. “It’s not a nice thing to be told. But we’re not blaming you. We never said it was your fault. You can’t help—”
“Please!”
My head is lowered, as I flee their scrutiny, but I cannot move, and now I see that in this entire house, mine, there is no concealment. How is it that all these years I fancied violation meant an attack upon the flesh?
How is it that I never knew about the sheets? How could I not have noticed?
“I’m sorry,” Doris mumbles, perhaps wanting to make it totally unendurable, or perhaps only blundering, having to wait another thirty years or so before she can know.
“Mother—” Marvin’s voice is deep and determined. “All this is beside the point. The point is—at the nursing home you’d get the care you need, and the company of others your own age—”
He is repeating the advertisement. Despite myself, I have to smile. So unoriginal. And all at once the printed words are given back to me, as well, like a revelation.
“Yes—give Mother the care she deserves. Remember the loving care she lavished upon you.”
I throw back my head and laugh. Then I stop suddenly, wheeze, and come to a halt, and see his face. Does it express a vulnerability, or do I only imagine it?
“You’re making it very hard for me,” Marvin says. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so queer about it. I’ve seen the place. It’s just as Doris says. It’s comfortable and nice. It would be all for the best, believe me.”
“It’s certainly not cheap,” Doris says. “But you’ve got the money yourself, luckily, and it’s only right it should be spent on you.”
“It’s in the country,” Marvin says. “Cedars and alders all around, and the garden’s well kept.”
“Full of petunias, I suppose.”
“What?”
“Petunias. I said petunias.”
“We’d visit you every weekend,” Marvin says.
I gather myself, my strength, my forces. I intend to speak with dignity. No reproaches, only a firm clear word. But that’s not what I find myself saying.
“If it were John, he’d not consign his mother to the poorhouse.”
“Poorhouse!” Doris cries. “If you had the slightest notion what it costs—”
“You’re thinking of years ago,” Marvin says. “Those places aren’t like that now. They’re inspected
, for heaven’s sake. They’re—more like hotels, I guess. And as for John—”
He stops speaking abruptly, biting off the words.
“What of him? What were you going to say?”
“I won’t discuss it,” Marvin says. “It’s not the time.”
“No? Well, he wouldn’t have done what you’re trying to do, you can be sure of that.”
“You think not? He was marvelous with Dad, I suppose?”
“At least he was there,” I say. At least he went to him.”
“Oh God, yes,” Marvin says heavily. “He went, all right.”
“Marv—” Doris puts in. “Let’s stick to the point, eh? It’s hard enough, without bringing up all that ancient history.”
Ancient history indeed. “You make me sick and tired. I won’t go. I won’t go to that place. You’ll not get me to agree.”
“You’ve got an appointment with the doctor next week,” Marvin says. “We don’t want to force the issue, Mother, but if Doctor Corby thinks you should go—”
Can they force me? I glance from one to the other, and see they are united against me. Their faces are set, unyielding. I am no longer certain of my rights. What is right and what rights have I? Can I obtain legal advice against a son? How would I go about it? A name from the telephone directory? It has been so long since I dealt with that kind of thing.
“If you make me go there, you’re only signing my death warrant, I hope that’s clear to you. I’d not last a month, not a week, I tell you—”
They stand transfixed by my thundering voice. And then, just when I’ve gained this ground, I falter. My whole hulk shakes, the blubber prancing up and down upon my rib cage, and I betray myself in shameful tears.
“How can I leave my house, my things? It’s mean—it’s mean of you—oh, what a thing to do.”
“Hush, hush,” says Marvin.
“There, there,” says Doris. “Don’t take on.”
I see, recovering myself a little and peeking through the fingers fanned before my face, that I have frightened them. Good. It serves them right. I hope they’re scared to death.
“We won’t say any more right now,” Marvin says. “We’ll see. Later on, well see. Now, don’t get all upset, Mother.”
“I’d hoped to settle it,” Doris bleats.
“It’s damn near midnight,” Marvin says. “I gotta go to work tomorrow.”
She sees the moment has passed, so she makes the best of it, becomes attentive, plumps the pillows on my bed.
“You get a good sleep, then,” she says to me. “We’ll discuss it when we’re none of us worked up.”
Marvin goes. She helps me into my nightdress. How it irks me to have to take her hand, allow her to pull my dress over my head, undo my corsets and strip them off me, and have her see my blue-veined swollen flesh and the hairy triangle that still proclaims with lunatic insistence a non-existent womanhood.
“Good night,” she says. “Sleep well.”
Sleep well. Sleep at all, after this evening? I turn from one side to the other. Nowhere is right, and my eyes remain open wide. Finally I sink as though into layers and deeper layers of mist or delirium, into a half awakeness. Then I am jerked alert by one of the strutting shadows inhabiting the gray region where I lie drearily begging the mercy of sleep. The soaking smelly sheets, the shadow insinuates, in Doris’s voice.
Then, just when I am afraid to sleep, for what may possibly occur, sleep wants to overcome me. I tussle with it, bid it begone, fidget and fuss so I may not yield. The result—my feet get cramps, and my toes are drawn up into knots. I must get out of bed. I cannot find the bedside lamp. I explore cautiously with my fingers in the air beside my bed, but discover nothing. Frantic, I wave my hands in the dark, and then the lamp goes over and shatters like a dropped icicle.
Doris comes running. She switches on the hall light, and I see, propped on an elbow, that she’s put her hair up in curlers and looks hideous.
“What on earth’s the matter?”
“Nothing. For mercy’s sake, don’t shriek so, Doris. You hurt my eardrums. That voice goes through me like a knife. It’s only the lamp.”
“You’ve broken it,” she moans.
“Well, buy another. Buy ten, for all I care. I’ll pay, I’ll pay—you needn’t fret. Here—I must stand—I’ve got cramped feet. Give me a hand up, for pity’s sake, can’t you? Can’t you see how it hurts? Oh—oh—there. That’s better.”
We stand on the bedside mat like two portly wrestling ghosts, pink satin nightdresses shivering, as I stamp up and down to work the muscles straight. She tries to bundle me back to bed, and I resist, lurching against her in the gloom.
“Good glory, what’s the matter now?” she sighs.
“Go back to bed, for goodness’ sake. I’m only going to the bathroom.”
“I’ll take you.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Get away. Get away now. Leave me be,”
In a huff she goes, ostentatiously turning on all the upstairs lights, as though I didn’t even know the way to the bathroom in my own house.
When I return, I do not go to bed immediately. I leave the ceiling light on, and sit down at my dressing-table. Black walnut, it is, not solid, of course, but a good thick veneer, not like the plywood things they turn out these days. I reach for my cologne, dab a little on wrists and throat. I light a cigarette. I must take care to put it out properly.
I give a sideways glance at the mirror, and see a puffed face purpled with veins as though someone had scribbled over the skin with an indelible pencil. The skin itself is the silverish white of the creatures one fancies must live under the sea where the sun never reaches. Below the eyes the shadows bloom as though two soft black petals had been stuck there. The hair which should by rights be black is yellowed white, like damask stored too long in a damp basement.
Well, Hagar Shipley, you are a sight for sore eyes all right.
I remember a quarrel I had with Bram, once. Sometimes he used to blow his nose with his fingers, a not unskilled performance. He’d grasp the bridge between thumb and forefinger, lean over, snort heftily, and there it’d be, bubbling down the couchgrass like snake spit, and he’d wipe his fingers on his overalls, just above the rump, the same spot always, as I saw when I did the week’s wash. I spoke my disgust in no uncertain terms, not for the first time. It had gone on for years, but my words never altered him. He’d only say “Quit yapping, Hagar—what makes me want to puke is a nagging woman.” He couldn’t string two words together without some crudity, that man. He knew it riled me. That’s why he kept it up so.
And yet—here’s the joker in the pack—we’d each married for those qualities we later found we couldn’t bear, he for my manners and speech, I for his flouting of them. This one time, though, he didn’t speak as usual. He only shrugged, wiping his mucoused hand, and grinned.
“You know something, Hagar? There’s men in Manawaka call their wives ‘Mother’ all the time. That’s one thing I never done.”
It was true. He never did, not once. I was Hagar to him, and if he were alive, I’d be Hagar to him yet. And now I think he was the only person close to me who ever thought of me by my name, not daughter, nor sister, nor mother, nor even wife, but Hagar, always.
His banner over me was love. Where that line comes from, I can’t now rightly say, or else for some reason it hurts me to remember. He had a banner over me for many years. I never thought it love, though, after we wed. Love, I fancied, must consist of words and deeds delicate as lavender sachets, not like the things he did sprawled on the high white bedstead that rattled like a train. That bed was covered with a lambswool comforter quilted by his first wife, the cotton flowered with pink gladioli, the sort of thing Clara would have considered quite elegant, no doubt. In one corner of the room was my black leather traveling trunk, my former name on it in neat white paint, Miss H. Currie. In another corner stood the washstand, a shaky metal frame with a china bowl on top and a thick white china jug below. The bedroo
m was uncarpeted until finally Bram bought a piece of worn linoleum secondhand at an auction sale, and then the floor was shiny and beige, patterned in parrots, of all things, and every time you stepped across it, you had to tread on those stiff unnatural feathers of paddy green, those sharp-beaked grins. The upstairs smelled of dust, however much I cleaned. In winter it was cold as charity, in summer hot as hades. Outside the bedroom window a maple grew, the leaves a golden green as the sunlight seeped through them, and in the early mornings the sparrows congregated there to argue, splattering their insults in voices brassy as Mammon, and I’d hear them and laugh, liking their spit and fire.
His banner over me was only his own skin, and now I no longer know why it should have shamed me. People thought of things differently in those days. Perhaps some people didn’t. I wouldn’t know. I never spoke of it to anyone.
It was not so very long after we wed, when first I felt my blood and vitals rise to meet his. He never knew. I never let him know. I never spoke aloud, and I made certain that the trembling was all inner. He had an innocence about him, I guess, or he’d have known. How could he not have known? Didn’t I betray myself in rising sap, like a heedless and compelled maple after a winter? But no. He never expected any such a thing, and so he never perceived it. I prided myself upon keeping my pride intact, like some maidenhead.
Now there is no one to speak to. It is late, late in the night. Carefully, I put out the cigarette. Doris has the room littered with ash trays. I rise, turn off the light, grope for my sheets.
My bed is cold as winter, and now it seems to me that I am lying as the children used to do, on fields of snow, and they would spread their arms and sweep them down to their sides, and when they rose, there would be the outline of an angel with spread wings. The icy whiteness covers me, drifts over me, and I could drift to sleep in it, like someone caught in a blizzard, and freeze.
Three
THE WALLS in Doctor Corby’s waiting-room certainly are bare. A pallid gray, they are, and he only has two pictures. They are large, but still and all, two isn’t very many. One is a lake and thin poplar trees, the blues and greens merging and blending so the sky and water and leaves all appear to be parts of one another. It reminds me of the spring around home, everything wearing a washed and water-color look, and the first leaves opening sometimes before the ice was quite gone from the river.
The Stone Angel Page 7