Wide World In Celebration and Sorrow

by Leon Rooke

  Such busy times around here, ye gads, I’m having trouble keeping up. Yes, Queenie’s Little Sister is alive, she’s definitely alive, she has been released from the tower. As I understand the matter, this minute fitters are in the drawing room with her, she’s had a wash; put your nose to the keyhole and you’ll sniff a heaven of exotic scents, some all the way from Arabia, I’m told. Hair groomers, cloth merchants, shoemakers, vocabulary experts, they’ve been run off their feet. In seven days the wedding, that’s the news, a good old-fashioned God-fearing interval, that’s what the king said he wanted. Oh, little sister had been well-fed, no need for concern about her being a bag of bones, toothless, the doctor looked her over, she’s sound and solid, so he said, alert and all of that.

  Not yet thirteen, yes, as you say, not yet thirteen, not yet, April the 26th, they tell me, the same birthday as our Lord, the same hour, in fact, many tell me, seeing as how she’s our Messiah’s very own twin sister, though Mum Mary denies it, unless you get her alone on a gloomy night, then the full story unfolds like hard rain.

  Bless me, in this day and age, the world set to end soon, surely thirteen is old enough, half a lifetime, for crying out loud. Mind you, don’t know what her old Pa will say, the tower business, that will come as a big shock to him the same as it did to me. I recall years back the state funeral we had for the poor girl, the processions, games and such, theatricals and the like that went on for the whole of seventeen days, a thousand poems scripted in her honour, those word boys never had it so good as they had it then. Bit by an asper, that was the word give out, the word told her Pa. He’ll wonder now whose body it is has been rotting in what we’ve been calling her tomb, he may have a few thoughts about this rhubarb business, her Pa has got to be pretty big in the king world himself, hell, I hear he’s just taken over Meshach and points west, not to mention Shadrach and Abednego. What I figure is we might soon be in for the war to end all wars, old Joe being a globetrotter who Loves Jesus and his own way of thinking, none of it nice, if you’re asking me.

  OH, NO, I HAVE NOT SEEN MOLLY

  Place: Downtown Victoria, a Saturday morning in 1980

  Open to: A storefront space, filled with

  some fifty children. The word has gone

  out. “Take a break from parenthood, hear

  ye, hear ye! Drop your kid off for an hour

  or all day and let Kaleidoscope Theatre’s

  actors, costumers, make-up artists,

  together with a handful of the town’s

  writers, entertain your children with

  storytelling, games, skits, dress-up, and

  other forms of merrymaking, all under

  Kaleidoscope’s reliable eye.”

  Yes, open just so. The curtain, please. It is

  nine o’clock in the morning and already

  fifty kids aged crawling to seven or eight are

  assembled, some crawling this very minute,

  some shrieking, more than a few at tussle,

  others steeling themselves for the dreaded

  overture – silent, guarded, distrustful,

  morose, you would think, taking careful

  gauge of these forty-nine other orphans for

  the day.

  Liz Gorrie, Kaleidoscope impresario,

  emerges from the hubbub: “Now children,

  now, clap-clap, don’t let me stop you from

  what you are doing, no, no, we are here to

  have fun and we are having it, and those

  of you Polly is working with in make-up and

  costumes, you just go ahead with that if you

  want to – oh but hello! hello! here are more

  children coming through the door, say

  ‘hello,’ children, and aren’t those boys and

  girls just in time because this nice man you

  see here is going to read you a wonderful

  story, so let’s draw up in a circle, move it

  now, hip-hip! shake a butt!”

  So the curtain, let us say, opens to this

  scene: pandemonium, shrieks, sniffles, a

  few wa-waaas, even, and watchful eyes as

  the nice man drops to the floor, opens a

  book, a triple-tiered ring of maybe thirty

  guarded or eager boys and girls, others off

  in the background painting their faces,

  trying on false noses, parading in boots,

  hats, sashes, veils, wigs, gowns of olden

  times, feather boas that cascade as in

  foaming seas – as, outside, cars, trucks,

  buses, and bicycles swoosh up and down,

  now and again a raised voice from that

  world, the blare of a horn, the whine of a

  siren.

  But in here all is relatively calm, serene:

  “The sky is falling, the sky is falling, look,

  look, children, the sky is falling! Oh, cover

  your heads, oh, cover your heart, the sky

  is…!!!”

  The tale goes on: oohs, ahhs, exclamation

  and the drawn breath, the peal of laughter,

  plops of pudding on the gay children’s

  text. Snatches of floating song from the

  costumed revel of others in the background,

  woeful cries from the faint at heart, a

  pirouette of the small child here, there, the

  tinkle of bells, the cluck-cluck of child

  dressed as chicken, the click-clack of

  bewigged child in high heels, hats a yard

  wide and high: all is going as it should

  here at the Saturday morning kids’ call.

  “Look up, look out! Oooch! Owtch! The

  sky, the sky is…!!!”

  But what’s this? For some minutes now, a

  woman with drawn expression has been

  circling the room, peering into every kid’s

  face, and you can see this person’s alarm

  mounting – she’s thirty, thirty-five,

  wearing a simple suit and trousers, her hair

  tied in quick-tie, scarf waving from her

  throat – but we have children to attend

  to, no time to ponder this anxious,

  brooding parent in obvious search for her

  missing child.

  —“Oooch, owtch! Oooo, that smarts!”

  Half an hour passes, more… let’s draw

  this tale to a close, lest we fidget, lest we

  moan. And indeed there are moans, and

  much fidgeting now, because now it is

  clear: a child is lost. This mother, after

  probing every face, questioning every

  child, cannot find her own.

  “Where’s Molly? Have you seen my Molly?

  About this high, this lean, and very shy, oh

  the quietest little girl you ever saw!”

  We are all into it now, looking under

  tables, inside broom closets and boxes,

  under long gowns and wide hats –

  looking everywhere – and Molly can’t be

  found.

  “Have you seen Molly?” we ask. The mother

  asks, everyone asks: “Have you seen…?”

  “Oh nooooo,” the one child says. “Oh

  nooooo, I have not seen Molly.”

  And Liz Gorrie is seeing lawsuits, she’s

  seeing her theatre go belly-up, ruination

  afloat, and a lifetime of guilt and pain.

  “Oh nooooo,” this one child says over and

  over, under her wig, sashaying about in

  pumps and long gown, leading a train of

  others with her in their game. “Oh nooooo,

  we have not seen Molly! Who is Molly?”

  Police cars arrive in whining clutch at the

  curb – two, three, now a fourth.

  “My daughter’s been abducted, do something.

  Oh I
can’t face this!… Molleeeeee!”

  The father arrives, more cops: none of us

  can face this.

  “Have you seen…?”

  “Oh nooooo,” the same little girl says. “I

  have not seen…”

  It is ten o’clock now, now eleven, and

  Molly has been missing for three hours.

  Fear grips the heart, the chest strings

  tighten… when our eyes fall yet again on

  this little girl in a surround of others

  similarly garbed: the wigs, the lipstick and

  rouge, the long gowns, and this one our

  eyes light on now saying: “Oh nooooo, Molly

  is a bad girl, Molly is. I have not seen Molly

  all day!” And the distraught mother is

  suddenly lunging at this cherub, screaming

  “Molly, Molly!” – and ripping away the wig,

  probing the little girl’s sorrowful face,

  which face now erupts into brightest smile,

  the girl saying, “Hi Mommy! Do we have

  to go home now?”

  GO FISH

  “The children are playing Go Fish,” Edwina said.

  Her boyfriend Edwards examined her the way he sometimes did. But his manner was otherwise acceptable.

  “I love fishing,” Edwards said. “Once I caught a blue trout this long.” Edwina waited to see how far apart his hands would go. She waited and waited. Edwards’ hands were busy holding his Scotch. He had both hands wrapped securely around the glass. Maybe he lost a lot of drinks. Maybe someone removed the drinks from his hands or said you have had too much to drink or maybe they put a pillow over his head and smothered every ounce of life out of his staggeringly handsome body. “Now would you like another drink?” the murderer would say.

  Edwina only went out with good-looking men who dressed superbly and possessed a sophisticated worldly attitude about matters essential to the realm. Cash flow was rarely an issue. It was true, however, that these handsome boyfriends tended sometimes to be arrogant beasts. They were selfish beyond contemplation. They never called their mothers to say, Happy Birthday to you, my beautiful beloved mother. Those mothers waited and waited. These men liked saying to waiters, “This wine has gone off.” Somehow they always found a way of telling you their shoes cost in excess of five hundred dollars. “My humble slippers cost twice that,” Edwina might find herself replying. Actually it took very little to impress these flaunting bastards.

  “That blue trout was a ten pounder,” Edwards said. He had deposited his drink on the blue table top, surely a Scamozzi, ca. 1580. His hands went out, and out, until they could extend no more. “I gave that fish to an old beggar-woman going by the name of Tripe. She was deeply smitten. She said I was a good man. She said I was a better son than her own sons. I was better than a whole pile of sons. She said I deserved the Iron Cross.” Edwina preened. “Before my addiction to immaculately groomed devastatingly handsome men, I flagrantly consorted with beggars of besotted uniformity. I was downwind of smelly disinheritance. I countersued. Who in my league had not done worse? You likely read of my escapades in the tabloids.” Edwards stiffened. “Madame, I do not peruse the tabloids. Tabloids exist as therapy for simple folk.”

  Edwina folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes took on the glazed look of one who has stared too long at the endless toss of seawater. Minutes passed. Finally she heaved a sigh, saying: “You twitch, you know. When speaking sentences interminable or brief, you twitch terribly. Cadence is disrupted. Is its cause the ageing process of which my phalanx of rogue doctors speak so indulgently? Good-looking people ought not to twitch. Unless they are striving to formulate an all-encompassing point about something touching the very brink of incredulity.” Edwards’ back went straight; his very façade brightened. “That blue trout twitched like the very devil,” he said. “Bette Davis twitched. Yvonne de Carlo twitched. Even Myrna Loy did.”

  “Those were their hips twitching. Hip-twitching is allowed among the female corp.”

  “Myrna Loy’s lips twitched. When she drank martinis, called her dog, or pointed out a gangster to her boozy Thin Man husband.”

  “Yes. Even the most witless savant should know to bless Miss Loy.”

  Both sat for a long time thinking about a wide world of subjects – Edwards, for instance, wondering… Was it Scarfi… ca. 1780?… That blue table?… That scrolled, gilded sidepiece? Queen Hetepheres, ca. 3rd millennium?… And why is that damnable Blue Boy hung so devilishly high? – until Edwina planted her slippered feet securely on the marble floor, saying in a rather maniacal voice, “Pertinacity is my favourite word in the entire universe of words. All those other p.e.r. words dissolve into a rotted heap of hogwash when humiliated by pertinacity’s glory. I cite you notable examples: Perch. Peregrination. Perfidy. Periphrastic. Peripatetic.”

  Edwards hummed. “Pestiferous,” he said. “Pestiferous is rumoured to be poetic.”

  “Balderdash!” exploded Edwina.

  It took her some few minutes to settle down. “I will grant you this,” she at last said. “Although one never notes its presence in the Halls of Justice, ‘poem’ is a sweet word which slumbers and slides and slips and tilts gracefully on the tongue. It readily summons, like a gentle narcotic or cooling breeze. It induces in me the dream of sleepy, heavenly afternoons in softly lit rooms scented with lilac, when one is curled up beside the dreamy other after one’s every fluid has drained.”

  “I will thank you not to be so grossly specific,” mumbled Edwards, staring at his glossy shoe-tips, which outrivalled the marble flooring.

  “Whereas,” continued Edwina, “the word ‘poetic’ is harsh, vindictive, and not the least bit conducive to reflection.”

  Edwards snorted, without intending to, because a gentleman wouldn’t.

  “Be that as it may,” began Edwina – but then she too fell silent. She was remembering that her father, in a pique, had declared her an unsalvageable twit, during that troubled time when he – “to the full resources of my being” – sought her disinheritance. Clasp her in irons, he had said.

  A heap of rotted hogwash, he had called his fellow railroad tycoons and manufacturers.

  My dear sainted father.

  Conversation stalled, the two sat on, under subdued lighting, neither aware of the room’s widening shadows. Scamozzi’s blue tabletop deepened to a rare russet hue, as it always did at about this hour. Small lamps lighting the many family portraits adorning the four walls in tuneful progression clicked on, the Blue Boy among them. In the view of some who ought to know, and of Edwina most particularly, the Gainsborough Blue Boy out in California is a copy.

  She had been dressed in smart blue boy suits as a baby.

  In her youth she had often dallied with those rather nice Hunt boys.

  Madame and sir, dinner is served. Be so agreeable as to tackle your chairs at table. The work force, a duo dressed in brilliant white, has put in an appearance. Edwina and Edwards bestir themselves.

  “After you.”

  “No, after you.”

  “Take my arm.”

  “You are a princely man.”

  Several children now also sweep in. Edwards loses count after three. He does not know the proprietorship of these children, and Edwina gives no indication that she does. Aromas arising from dishes being settled upon the beautiful table suggest a French objective. Edwards approves, as apparently does Edwina, who, smiling warmly, is at the moment musically tinkling a glass with a silver rod designed for that sole purpose.

  Victorian, Edwards supposes. Possibly once the Queen’s.

  “Do you children recognize the tune?” Edwina asks. “Do you not detect hints of Bach’s Goldberg Variations? Did you children have a lovely time? Did you play Fish? I heard rapturous voices crying out Go fish! during my every sterling moment with Edwards.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” sing the children. “We all cheated admirably!”

  “Excellent. Will the cham
pion-cheater now regale us with prayer?”

  LAP, A DOG

  A dog, Lap by name, trotting upstream along a narrow creek, snapping now and then at swarming gnats ever in glide above him, yet never of a frame of mind so focused as to suggest he found the gnats annoying, suddenly felt a sting in his ear. In the next second Lap was flopping tail-first into the cold water because another sting had got him there as well. The dog lay stunned, quite astonished, his mind reeling, since these stings did not vanish, as might a bee’s, but indeed seemed to deepen in intensity until the pain embraced his entire body. It came to him that his body was dripping blood at both ends, and now, reconsidering the matter, he thought he remembered hearing two gunshots before he tumbled over. But how could gunshots, if such existed, involve him? He snorted water from his nose. Looked blandly at the water streaming over his fur.

  Above the bramble and tall trees pale clouds floated through a blue sky. Awful high up there. Awful empty. A few birds gliding along. A hawk giving him careful study. Forget it, hawk, he thought.

  He must have watched the sky, the clouds, the hawk and other birds for some while, unaware he was doing so, thinking a good amount of time must have passed, because now he was shaking water from his dripping head and the sky had gone very grey.