by Leon Rooke
Her husband said, “That sounds like a bad dream. Please know that I find all dreams boring.”
P. Henrietta Armani’s Wide Scholarship as This Relates to Her ‘Saddest’ Story.
Henrietta Armani read in a magazine that the answer resides in the heavens. In the molecules, the dust, of ancients who are in sojourn on their endless journey. A journey into nothingness, which goes on forever. There they are, she can sometimes see them, see their faces, their mouths opening, but these ancients have no answer either. They speak platitudes. “There, there, my girl, it will be over soon.” Because time for them has now become nothingness. Two o’clock, ten o’clock, the day, the month, the year, means zip to them. They say to her, these ancients do, “You are making too much of something that is essentially trivial.” By which they mean her life. Where they have arrived at, disembodied except when they speak, all existence, including their own, is without meaning. They are lucky because they no longer have to search for it.
If particles of dust contain the souls of her ancestors – where’s the joy in that?
They are people in strange form, in strange solitudinous journey, but otherwise they are as lost as she is.
St. Paul in her dreams says to his brethren, “Put to the test, all of you would say you abhor women.”
St. Paul – on both sides of what had constituted her family – was a gentleman that family had been fond of quoting.
One evening she said to her husband, “Excuse me, but to my mind your St. Paul was something of a bastard.”
She had thought he would rise from the table and strike her. What he had done instead was to say to their daughter, seated between them, “Release your fork. Put down your napkin. Rise from your chair. Now go to your mother and slap her hard as you can.”
When Henrietta Armani painted her lips during those days, she painted them outside the borders of her lips’ natural formation. She did this out of nasty intention. When she spoke, if she decided she would, she wanted people who knew no more about the issues than she did to listen to her.
Similarly, her eyes.
Sometimes her daughter would say, “Why isn’t Henrietta wearing her pearls?”
At times we were shockingly close is Henrietta Armani’s view.
Q. The Inspirational in the Unhappy Life of Henrietta Armani.
What Henrietta Armani most sought from life was the inspirational. It delighted her, its common occurrence. Always, even at her lowest ebbing, she saw things that were utterly amazing. Which is to say, inspirational. Sunsets did amaze her, although sunsets were not so much as even in the realm of what it was she was talking about when she talked to her daughter about life’s abundant marvels.
On evenings not that long ago from the back door, Henrietta Armani saw gypsy wagons on a road. She saw this where no road existed. The gypsies were so robustly singing that her daughter, upstairs in her room, shouted down, “Who is that singing?”
Henrietta Armani, one day, saw from her kitchen window a wild boar. The boar was leading one of its young up to her back door. She opened the door and the boars ate all that she dropped to the floor. Then the boars returned to the forest, where there was no forest. Her daughter, entering, had said, “What did you feed them?”
Henrietta Armani had only to open the door, to stand by a window, and the inspiring would find her.
It was not required that the inspirational be spectacular.
Hippos immersed themselves in muddy streams by the side of the house.
On a fine Sunday, Charlie Chaplin in hobo attire knocked at her door. She invited Charlie inside. She made Charlie a nice breakfast. Charlie sang and danced for her. He said to her, “Venture down the road with me. This little trick I do with my big shoes, my cane, my hat, I will teach you. Come. You will find the method useful.”
R. The End of the Henrietta Armani Story
Ended, bang, just like that.
The bartender entered, saw the form draped over the bar. An indrawn breath as he said in full surprise, “Why, there sits mother!”
Henrietta Armani had not got far in composing what was to have been her final message.
On the floor he discovered Henrietta Armani’s purse. Inside the purse a message and telephone number scribbled on an empty envelope: Here comes Henrietta Armani, Call this Number.
Over the coming days he would try this number, the telephone always ringing, no one answering.
He devised innumerable alternatives, none rewarded.
A ROUGH CUSTOMER
“My stomach is so flat,” Orillia said gaily to Mr. Wriggley – to the Mr. Wriggley, lately of the mainland but now seeking improvement of his fortunes along the island’s lonely, bemisted, strangely beautiful outer reaches – which Ucluelet certainly was – “It is so flat a person could shoot marbles on it… on my tummy,” she said, laughing all the more.
Mr. Wriggley, swaying back against the door he had, against his better wishes, just entered, could think of nothing to say to this nonsense. The room, for that matter, was dimly lit, and some seconds went by before he succeeded in locating the speaker. Even then, he had to have her help.
“Down here!” Orillia trilled. “You’re looking too high, Mr. Wriggley. I’m not up in the rafters – not up in heaven – yet!”
She lay stretched out on the living room sofa to her full awful length, merrily blowing on her fingernails and laughing up at him with her wet red mouth.
“Flat,” she said. “So flat!” And she patted her stomach, riotously giggling. “Marbles, yes you could!”
Mr. Wriggley wanted nothing to do with her red mouth. He wanted to have nothing to do with women, period – just as he had, in no uncertain terms, told this one’s husband. He shuffled his feet with what he thought of as a workman’s vigour, and briefly, resentfully, hooked his gaze on Orillia Peterson, much as if he were considering for himself personally the practicality of her insane suggestion. Yes, her stomach was remarkably flat. It was mostly uncovered, too – obscene is what it was – but so what? So what? That is what Mr. Wriggley asked himself as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, patiently awaiting his instructions.
“Now don’t deny it, Mr. Wriggley,” she said. “I have the flattest tummy in all of Ucluelet. You would have to go” – here she paused to kick up in his direction one of her naked, absurdly long legs – “to go as far as the Northwest Territories to find a woman with a stomach nearly the match of mine. The Northwest Territories, Mr. Wriggley!”
The foot was white – it was vaguely luminescent among the dim surroundings – and Mr. Wriggley wished he could break it off. He hated this. He hated having to listen to any woman, for any length of time, but to have to listen to this one rattle on about her ridiculous stomach was almost more than he could bear.
Vile, he thought. Oh, vile. She makes me want to do sump’n terrible.
“Speak up, Mr. Wriggley!” commanded Orillia, fluttering her nude, crooked little toes towards his face.
Mr. Wriggley thoughtfully regarded the fireplace – softly glowing, a bed of red embers – and let his gaze rake up over the crowded mantle, over the menacing shadows on the wall, and on down again towards the coal box, though he remained firmly fixed in place. No, he was not moving without instructions.
“The cat!” laughed Orillia. “That nasty cat, oh it has your tongue again. I have told and told that cat, Mr. Wriggley!”
Mr. Wriggley found his voice. He spoke gruffly, contemptuously, as if what he wanted to do was pelt her with rocks or drop her body down into a deep dark pit. “What do I do with this here bag of coal?” he asked.
Indeed, he had a large, lumpy bag hefted over his left shoulder. His hands, face, and neck were smeared with coal dust – in fact, he was smeared all over, for he’d taken numerous tumbles on the coal pile.
Orillia saw no reason not to continue enjoying herself. “A flat, lovely stomach!” she sang, arching her back. “I am immensely proud of myself. Aren’t you proud of me, Mr. Wriggley?”
&nb
sp; Mr. Wriggley groaned as she drew up her naked knees and lolled her head back on the crimson pillow. He hadn’t yet determined what kind of indecent garment she had on. It was wine-coloured and airy, flowing up with every movement she made. Mr. Wriggley was thoroughly disgusted.
“It is no mean accomplishment,” Orillia said, “after what I have gone through.”
Mr. Wriggley had no reply to this. He hoisted his bag higher, casting a long look at the coal box and the empty bucket on the hearth. The lumps were grinding into his back, though he didn’t mind that. He could bear physical pain, indeed was accustomed to it. He was accustomed to people making his work harder. What he minded was Orillia Peterson. She irked him. He disapproved of her. He secretly believed that all such people – people with wet, red mouths, people who shook their ugly white feet his way – those who stretched out on couches in dark rooms – ought to be rounded up and sent East! Sent somewhere, God knows, so a man could get on with his hard work and not stand around all day listening to nonsense about stomachs, for godsake.
He looked down at the small throw rug on which he stood, holding himself very still. “Where you want this coal?” he asked stolidly. “I brought you this here bag of coal.”
“Oh did you!” cried Orillia delightedly, with a fine flutter of her hands. “Well, wasn’t that sweet! Aren’t you the sweetest person!”
She smiled warmly at him. In Mr. Wriggley’s view she was the spit and image of the total imbecile. He wiped a blackened sleeve across his mouth and glared at her, at the room, and at what he took to be the presence of some aloof, immobile evil alive in the room. Women and that sense, they went hand in hand. Where there was one, there was the other. Near enough alike as to be twins, was how he thought of it. This morning he found her high-pitched, noisy, irrepressibly joyful voice particularly infuriating. Some people might call it pretty, even melodious – a pleasure! – but not Mr. Wriggley. How her husband – a nice enough fellow, if a bit slow – managed to put up with, to coddle and revere, this deranged piece was more than he could imagine. Her “sweet this” and her “sweet that” – it was plain disgusting.
He shifted the bag on his shoulder, looking wanly at the bed of red coals, and groaned loudly. Loudly, yes! Let her take note of the labourer’s mantle. He ought to put down this bag right now. On the carpet. Let her contend with it. It beat him, it surely did, how an employer could refuse to give hired help their proper natural instructions.
Something in Mr. Wriggley’s aggrieved expression must have been communicated to Orillia Peterson, for she now lifted her head from the crimson pillow, turned her body, flung both arms high, and exclaimed in a perilous, despairing, childlike tone: “Oh, don’t be so harsh with me, Mr. Wriggley. I am recuperating, you’ll remember.”
A faint moan escaped Mr. Wriggley.
“No, dear sir,” she went on, her voice more tremulous, “it isn’t every day a woman gives birth to a child!”
Mr. Wriggley’s head slumped to his chest, as if in his view she’d touched upon a topic grossly indecent – which, as it happens, was not far from the case. Mr. Wriggley felt precious little warmth for mothers; he stoutly affirmed that birth, being a mean, inconsequential affair, was no excuse for goldbricking, and that a woman should be back on the job within the hour – as his wife, and squaws he’d heard about, had done. His former wife, Mr. Wriggley meant, in as much as – to his mind – he was not currently married. He stood taciturnly dwelling on this. Babies – the baby – had been his ruination. Or marriage had. Or women. It was hard knowing where to fit the exact blame, for it was a chicken-and-egg proposition. One thing was certain: his wife’s screeching, while producing the infant, had contributed powerfully to his disappointment with her. He could have tolerated a sob or two, but her howling was totally unnecessary. Respect had gone right out the door.
Orillia Peterson, however, was a horse of another colour. Compared to her, Ula had been a saint. It had been, as he understood the matter, a full month since the vile woman had dropped anchor.
Orillia sighed, dreamily.
Mr. Wriggley contemplated the distance between himself and the coal box.
Orillia’s sighs lengthened and deepened.
“I know I am not so lovely as your divine Ula,” she now said, in mock pout, teasingly: “But I do make the effort, sir. I do endeavour!” She stretched, preening, blowing on her nails, which over the past minute or so she’d been dabbing at with a red brush. She then pitched up both arms in a movement so unexpectedly swift that Mr. Wriggley, startled, yelped and fell back clumsily against the wall, knocking over a chair that appeared out of nowhere, stumbling down in such fashion that the coal bag looped his neck and came down upon him.
Whump!
Orillia seemed not to notice. “My Peter,” she said, “claims I’m the most beautiful, gay, enchanting woman in all of North America. I’m perfect, is what he says.” She lunged back prone on the sofa, momentarily closing her eyes and smiling with so much emptiness, smiling so eerily, that Mr. Wriggley forgot his pain. He watched her puckered lips time and time again kiss the air. Her arms criss-crossed her chest; she was hugging herself. Her entire figure seemed atremble with pleasure.
It was an orgy, Mr. Wriggley thought, that’s what it was.
“Oh, I do miss my Peter,” she said in agony, her torso heaving, her eyes flaring. “Oh, Mr. Wriggley, I miss that man to the entire compass of my being. I wish he would come sailing in this very minute and fling himself down upon me! I would invite it, even if he still smelled of fish, even if we had a thousand other things we should be doing. That’s how deeply I miss him, sir. Am I not wanton?”
Mr. Wriggley did not know what wanton meant, but he too sincerely desired his employer’s return. He liked Mr. Peterson. He could get along with Mr. Peterson. Mr. Peterson understood the necessity of giving a working man the proper instructions. If he told you to prop up a fence, or put the dog in the doghouse, or to shovel manure in the barn, you knew exactly what was expected. He never told you why these chores had to be done (that would be expecting too much), but what to do was plenty clear-cut. (This ‘bring-in-the-coal-to-my-honey’ business being a rare let-down).
If you didn’t do the job the way he wanted, or not quickly enough to suit him, he would step in and take the shovel from your hands and scoop up the manure, saying, “No, no, no, Mr. Wriggley, you do it like this: you get a full shovel load, and you pivot about like this, and you throw your load over here on this pile like this.” It was that like this part that endeared him to Mr. Wriggley. Any boss man with two cents in his pocket could hire you and say “Do this,” but it was one who said “Do it like this” – and actually showed you by demonstration – who knew what the genuine employer/employee relationship was all about.
Like that time with the fence post.
“No, no, no, Mr. Wriggley! First you dig the hole. With this hole digger, like this, and down so far. Then you drop in your post like this, and pack the dirt down around it with this axe handle, like so. Then you sort of stomp the dirt level with your boot heel, like this. Got it?”
Good, clear, precise instructions, if a little vague on the hole depth.
Mr. Wriggley was thinking all this as he struggled to his feet. He had told Mr. Peterson it wasn’t going to work out. He had told him he was asking for trouble. “Me and women, we just don’t mix.”
“No, no, no, Mr. Wriggley, now calm down,” Mr. Peterson had said. “Orillia’s a wonderful, gay-spirited woman and she will not give you a hard time. You look after her. Take in a bag of coal now and then. Do whatever she requires. Make yourself available. I’m confident the two of you will get along like a pair of kittens.”
Mr. Wriggley’s hopes of improving his fortunes in bleak, god-forsaken Ucluelet had evaporated the minute he heard this.
Mr. Wriggley now had the coal bag resting on the floor between his boots. He opened the bag and extracted from it a large lump of coal. He held the lump high.
“This here coal,” he said.
“Where you want it put?”
Orillia’s abrupt, spontaneous laughter almost took the roof off. For some minutes – so it seemed to Mr. Wriggley – she lay writhing on the sofa, face buried among the pillows.
“There’s the fire, Mr. Wriggley,” she finally said. “There’s the bucket. And there’s the coal box.” Her arm moved to each item in its turn. Mr. Wriggley’s lips moved, nodding his head in recognition of each item named. This was more like it, he thought. Now he was getting somewhere.
“About five paces forward,” she said. Then her face was again down among the pillows.
Mr. Wriggley advanced heavily across the room, wondering which he should fill first. If he packed the grate full, and brimmed the bucket, he doubted he’d have enough left to fill the box. That could mean a second trip. This was to be avoided.
“Mr. Wriggley!” Orillia suddenly screeched. “My carpet!”
Stooped at the fireplace, Mr. Wriggley spun about on his heels to find the woman deliriously pointing. “My carpet! My beautiful new carpet!” This distracted Mr. Wriggley, who yet held the single lump of coal in his fist. He considered hurling it at her. But before he could avert his eyes from her nakedness she had, like a maddened sprite, swooped from the sofa to drop kneeling on the rug, there to brush. Yes, they were black, he could see that. He could see the clear imprint of his boots in the golden fabric. But it was not his fault. She had not given him the proper instructions. She had not said, “My good man, you must lay down newspapers. You must remove your boots.” But Mr. Wriggley was flustered. He knew where blame would roost. It was the working man who bore every brunt. He couldn’t see why a few footsteps mattered anyway. Ula, confound her, had been the same. One knick-knack out of place and she’d fly into a tizzy. Women and the tizzy, they were as natural to her as soap to water.
Orillia had disappeared. Now she was back, towing a howling vacuum cleaner. She stuck the pipe in his hand.
“Clean it up,” she commanded. “You vacuum every smidgen.”