Alison Preston - Norwood Flats 04 - Sunny Dreams

by Alison Preston

  “Violet!” said my dad.

  I swear, I don’t think he realized I was out in all that weather.

  “Go in and change your clothes, honey,” he said. “You’re soaking wet.”

  I looked down at my drenched self. My brassiere and garter belt were clearly defined beneath my flimsy summer dress and slip. All my small curves and tiny bumps showed themselves through the sodden material.

  They all stared; Helen stared the worst. My dad looked away as I started toward the steps.

  “If it was any less than two inches of rain that fell I’ll eat my hat,” he said as he piled fallen branches to one side of the yard.

  “I’ll turn on the radio and see how the rest of the city’s coping,” I said.

  “The power’s out,” Jackson and Helen said together.

  I barrelled into their spidery thread to get to the house. It didn’t stop me but it didn’t break either — just stretched and stretched.

  Upstairs, I looked in my full-length mirror and saw what the others had seen. I didn’t care. I cared that my dad saw, but not the other two. I knew that if I were compared naked to Aunt Helen in any contest, anywhere, I would win. Unless the contest was for most matronly figure or lowest hanging breasts.

  I pictured Aunt Helen at the top of the Ferris wheel at the Casey Shows. I watched her lean over to wave at someone far far below. She toppled clear out of her seat and fell end over flowery end into the complicated machinery of the rickety old ride. Maybe she had been waving at Jackson and now he was left to pull her twisted body from the wreckage. Her arm came off in his hand. And he was horrified to see that her head was no longer attached to her body. He ran screaming from the scene into the path of a pair of runaway horses and met his own bloody end.

  It was eerie how the inside of me transformed without my being aware of it, changed over short time periods like the combined liquids in my Petri dish in chemistry class. These altered feelings toward Jackson and Helen tripped me up far more than any experiment in that unfathomable laboratory.

  I put on new underwear and a clean but well-worn sundress that I wore for working around the house and yard. After throwing my wet clothes into the bathtub I towelled my hair and looked out my bedroom window at the destruction.

  Thank goodness for my dad. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have known where or who to be. His befuddlement at watching me walk out of the aftermath of the storm and his dismay at my see-through clothes were typical Dad behaviour and I savoured it. It was normal, unlike so many other things going on around there. I would have appreciated a bit more concern for my well-being as opposed to my transparent clothes, but I supposed I hadn’t been in any real danger.

  Back downstairs, I tried the radio. The power was still off. I helped my dad with branches while Helen went inside to fix supper. I didn’t know where Jackson was, but he was out of the way of my dad and me.

  The four of us ate at the kitchen table. It was a subdued supper; my dad did most of the talking — about the storm and the destruction and the state of the roads and how he was going to eat his hat. His ignorance of what had occurred between Helen and Jackson saved us. The three of us could manage it. The four of us wouldn’t have had a chance.

  After supper we ate ice cream on the front verandah in the silver afterlight of the rain. A car drove by and raised no dust. Warren, Gwen’s little brother, came along with his dog, Tippy.

  “Anything I can help you folks with?” he asked.

  He had his red Super-Streak wagon with him. He and his wagon and his dog were covered in mud from stem to stern. His slingshot stuck out of the back pocket of his trousers. At the ready.

  “Thanks a lot, Warren,” said my dad. “I think we’ve got things pretty well under control here. We didn’t get hit as badly as some.”

  “Would you like some ice cream?” asked Helen.

  “Yes, please!” said Warren. “Ma’am,” he added, a little late.

  The Walkers had to watch every penny, so ice cream didn’t turn up often at their table. They were more likely to have bread pudding or many times nothing at all.

  I went to get him a bowl of Neapolitan and he sat in his wagon to eat it so we didn’t have to tell him that he was too filthy to come inside, even as far as the verandah. When he was done he left a little in the bowl for his dog to finish up.

  Tippy was the best dog, a quiet dog. She never barked. She was so smart you’d swear there was more going on in her head than regular canine thoughts. She was a mongrel, a cross between a collie and something that didn’t have a pointed nose.

  “Thanks kindly,” Warren said and set his bowl on the top step. So long, now.”

  “So long, Warren,” we called out, one big happy family.

  “I wish Warren belonged to us,” I said and then I wished I hadn’t when I saw the look on my dad’s face.

  Sunny rarely came up, all these years later. It wasn’t like with Gwen’s dad — we were allowed to talk about her — we just didn’t. But she hung in the moist air now, hovered at about chest level for a few moments.

  “He’s a good little fella,” Dad said, breaking the silence. “I like him, too.”

  “No one deserves Gert Walker for a mum,” I said.

  “She couldn’t be all bad if Gwen and Warren have turned out as well as they have,” said my dad.

  “Gwen’s not so great,” I said.

  “Violet, she’s your best chum!” said Helen.

  “Actually, I don’t think she is,” I said. “I think I’m starting to prefer Isabelle.”

  “Honestly!” said Helen. “The fickleness of youth!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s me,” I said. “Youthful. Fickle. It could be worse. I could be a nymphomaniac.”

  I don’t know why I said it; I hadn’t realized I was going to. Maybe it was the small sense of well-being I felt in the aftermath of the storm: we had all survived, had we not?

  My dad’s mouth opened after I said it, but no words came out. Maybe he thought he misheard me. Helen stood up and ordered me to help her carry our empty dishes into the house. Major Helen. Jackson laughed out loud for just a second, an abrupt, heh! and then stopped himself.

  It turned out it was more like one and a half inches of rain that fell so we teased my dad the next day about which hat he was going to eat.

  “I think it should be your winter hat with the ear flaps,” said Helen. “Now that’s what I call a hat!”

  Even Jackson joined in. “I think your straw hat might be the easiest to digest,” he said.

  My dad laughed.

  That day was as hot as Hades after the sun came up, but after that there was a break in the heat for a few days.

  One person had been struck by lightning during the storm, a man from Ile des Chenes. We read about it in the paper.

  Norwood got off easy compared to some sections of the city. St. James and Fort Garry were the worst hit. There were roofs blown off buildings, windows smashed and power lines down all over the place. A streetcar burned on Logan Avenue when wires fell down on top of it.

  A few downed branches and a little seepage in the basement where an eave fell away from the house were hardly worth mentioning compared to having your roof blown off.

  Chapter 14

  On Friday evening I went to the Met with Fraser Foote to see Private Number starring Robert Taylor and Loretta Young. It was pretty good, but I was nervous about being on an actual date. My palms felt clammy and I was terrified that he would try to hold my hand. He didn’t. All that worry for nothing.

  Afterwards we went to Picardy’s — not the one where we’d been the day that Sunny was stolen — I had never been back there. This was another Picardy’s, further west down Portage Avenue. I had a cherry soda and Fraser had a vanilla milkshake.

  “What’s with those men hanging around your house all summer?” he asked.

  “How do you mean, what’s with them?”

  “Well, isn’t it kind of unusual?”

  “No.”


  What was this? Fraser was supposed to be nice and he was supposed to be sweet on me.

  “They helped my dad build his garage,” I said, “and one of them broke his arms and…you know all this stuff, Fraser, everybody does. And one of them is gone now. It’s just the man with the broken arms who’s still here.”

  “Why is he still here?”

  I sighed. “Because he broke both his arms so he needs help. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Sorry. It isn’t, is it? Dirk asked me to ask you about him.”

  “Dirk Botham?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dirk’s a gink.”

  “I know,” Fraser said. “Why does Gwen go out with him?”

  “Because she’s cuckoo. Why do you hang around with him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m cuckoo too, I guess.” He laughed. “Besides, I don’t really hang around with him unless I have to.”

  “Why would you have to?”

  “Well, sometimes he just won’t go away. I think he likes the fact that my dad’s a cop. He wants to talk about police stuff with him.”

  “What kind of police stuff?”

  “I don’t know. My dad won’t give him the time of day. He thinks he wears his pants pulled up too high.”

  We both laughed at that and I said that I agreed with his dad.

  Fraser finished his shake, careful not to make slurping sounds at the end.

  “Does Dirk ever hang out with the Willis brothers?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” said Fraser. “Why?”

  “Oh…nothing,” I said. I could see him eyeing my soda. There was more than half of it still left in the glass.

  “Anyway,” he said, “when my dad heard I was going to see you tonight he asked me to find out if there was any chance one of those men would still be interested in building him a new shed.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s great. I mean Benny is gone, like I said, but he’s coming back for Jackson. So I’m sure it could happen. But not for a couple of weeks at least.”

  “You’re on a first-name basis with these guys?” Fraser said.

  “Is that another Dirk-related comment?” I asked.

  He smiled. “No. Sorry. I think that was me talking.”

  “Is this shed thing happening because I went over to your house a few weeks ago and tried to talk your dad into it?”

  “Did you do that?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t he mention it?”

  “No. What he did mention was that your aunt came over and talked to my mum.”

  “What!”

  “She convinced my mum to get my dad to hire one of the men. I overheard them talking.”

  “When was this?”

  “A while back. I don’t know. It must have been before the guy broke his arms.”

  I had mentioned my visit with Mr. Foote to Helen. She must have taken the ball and run with it. I’d had no idea.

  “Why would she do that?” I knew my face was red. Did the whole world know that my elderly aunt had a crush on a seventeen-year-old boy?

  “Because times are hard,” Fraser said, “and people are starving and we’re not and she’s a good person.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I pushed my soda away. Helen couldn’t stand the thought of Jackson leaving town so she’d tried to line up more work. Then he’d broken his arms. She’d be pleased with this new development, I thought. If Benny had work, maybe Jackson would stay with him and she wouldn’t have to say goodbye for another clump of the summer. I knew I was right. Good person be darned!

  “Aren’t you going to drink that?” Fraser asked.

  “No, go ahead.” I pushed the drink closer to him and he wolfed it down in one go.

  “God, they make good stuff here,” he said.

  Fraser was pretty sure his dad wouldn’t care when work on the shed began since he hadn’t even planned on it till my aunt and I and then Mrs. Foote started pestering him. He was probably just doing it because of the promise he made to my dad all those years ago about finding Sunny. Maybe he felt guilty about his failure.

  My dad never forgot how kind Mr. Foote had been during that time and he was pleased that I had a date with Fraser.

  “He’s a fine lad,” Dad had said, even though he barely knew him.

  When the time came for Fraser to leave me at my door that night he tried to kiss me on the mouth, but I turned my head away and his lips brushed lightly against my ear. It felt pretty good to me, but I knew he was disappointed.

  Chapter 15

  Four weeks after the accident Jackson’s doctor cut off the cast on his right arm and replaced it with one that stopped below his elbow. He could bend his arm now. There was an ugly scab inside his elbow where he had scratched at it with an unwound wire hanger. I hadn’t seen him do it, but he must have done it a lot because the injury was nasty. Aunt Helen dressed it and scolded him.

  On the evening of the day the cast came off we all went to a show at the Capitol Theatre. Helen figured a celebration was warranted. Jackson got to pick the show and he chose Poppy, starring W.C. Fields, with The Case Against Mrs. Ames as the second feature. I was disappointed; Hands Across the Table was playing at the Province and I wanted to see it. It starred Carole Lombard and she was my favourite actress. I thought W.C. Fields was creepy, what I’d seen of him. I wished I could stay home but I had invited Gwen and she asked if she could bring Dirk and it was out of control.

  Dirk avoided me, but that was nothing new. Anyway, it was not the time to confront him about his Willis-related activities. I wished I had invited Fraser, but it was too late now.

  We piled into the Buick: my dad and I, Aunt Helen, Jackson, Gwen, Dirk Botham, and Mr. Larkin, who decided to come at the last minute.

  “The more the merrier,” said my dad.

  If he was using his car he liked it to be full of people. It seemed wasteful to him if every last inch of available space wasn’t taken up.

  I was long past worrying about Gwen stealing Jackson away from me. It no longer applied to the situation: Gwen was in love with Dirk and had eyes for no one else. To my mind, Helen loomed as the larger threat, unpleasant as that was to digest. Besides, I wished for Jackson to be trampled by runaway horses and my mild interest in Fraser Foote was growing.

  Gwen found the whole Jackson situation distasteful. I could feel her judgments on our family trickling down from her mother, who pretended to be very straightlaced. They would no more have had an armless transient staying in their home than a common prostitute, although I knew Gert was a fallen woman at heart; I just knew it.

  The previous Sunday I’d heard her tell Warren to stay away from our house. She didn’t know I was in their backyard. I guess she figured Gwen was old enough to keep herself from getting sucked into the vortex of evil at our place, but Warren was still a little boy. I pretended I didn’t hear. Warren saw me and didn’t answer his mum. The little guy looked like he wanted to run. I made an about-turn and went home before I had even seen Gwen. I didn’t mention it to my dad, but I told Aunt Helen.

  “Gert Walker is ignorant,” she said. “You needn’t pay any attention to what she says. Unclench your fists, Violet.”

  “Tippy doesn’t even like her,” I said.

  “Well, there you are then.”

  And we’d left it at that.

  When I’d mentioned to Gwen on a previous occasion that her mum didn’t seem all that fond of me, she denied it vehemently. The most I could get out of her was that the disappearance of my baby sister, Sunny, had hit her very hard at the time.

  “Harder than it hit us?” I asked.

  “Of course not!” said Gwen.

  “Did she even know us then?” I asked. “You didn’t move here till grade three.”

  “We lived on Tremblay Street. It’s not that far. News like that travels fast.”

  She said it in the same way her mother would have said it, as if Sunny’s disappearance was a disgrace t
o our family, like when infants die in their cribs for no apparent reason. The families of those babies are forever looked at askance.

  “You shouldn’t have told me that,” I said.

  “Well, you asked me,” said Gwen.

  “Still, you shouldn’t have.”

  Gert Walker and others like her blamed my mother for the loss of our Sunny. They thought our family didn’t know how to be, that it didn’t know how to keep itself safe, possibly even that danger emanated from us and infected those who came near.

  My lips began to tremble and my eyes filled with tears so I ran off home. I didn’t want to cry on Walker territory. Gwen called out after me but she didn’t follow.

  I decided that day not to waste any more good behaviour on Gert Walker.

  Anyway, the seven of us headed downtown squashed inside the Buick, three in the front, four in the back. Gwen sat on Dirk’s lap. Ugh.

  At the theatre we sat in a row: my dad, Mr. Larkin, Dirk, Gwen, me, Jackson, and Aunt Helen. It wasn’t the seating arrangement I would have chosen, but I got swept along. The show wasn’t my cup of tea, but it seemed to agree with all the others. It was hard for me to picture sitting there through the second feature so I tried not to think about it. I ate popcorn and tried to chew quietly so that Jackson, the punk hobo, wouldn’t hear me. I had grown to enjoy Isabelle’s description of him and I was waiting for a chance to call him that to his face. Or at least to Helen’s face.

  Every now and then when he shifted, his leg would touch mine but he would jerk it away quickly as though I were made of hot embers. His left arm with the big cast was beside me. He set it on the armrest after checking with me to make sure it was okay. His right arm, the one that he could now bend, the one with the festering sore, was on Helen’s side.

  I couldn’t get comfortable. The seating was all wrong. If I had choreographed it, Helen wouldn’t be seated next to Jackson and neither would I. I tried to concentrate on the show. The jokes seemed stupid to me.

  To my left everything felt close to normal: Gwen adoring the gink, Mr. Larkin and my dad, clean and good, laughing their fool heads off. Apparently W.C. Fields was very much to their tastes.