I never knew his last name, I said.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, said Harriet.
We were eating lunch at a little restaurant on Bloor, around the corner from the museum. Harriet was letting the switchboard hold her calls and I was letting a hopeless young man look after my shop for a couple of hours. Hopeless in the business sense, not anything You’d be interested in. He was a long way from despair but he wouldn’t add on the sales tax no matter how often I told him. It’s only a few percent, I’d say, but it makes a difference. Yes, Ms. Rolyoke, he’d say, brushing the hair away from his face. His hair was longer than mine.
I owe Mr. Sherman some loyalty, said Harriet. I’ve worked there for a long time, and he did try to help me with my stupid law exams. But the firm downtown is offering a lot more money. And I’d have my own office. Law clerks don’t usually get their own office, she said.
Is Mr. Sherman’s wife still bothering you? I asked.
She made a face. Yes.
I chewed carefully. Tuna, it would have been. We were in an old-style diner that still served sandwiches with a side of slaw and a pickle. Harriet had a western sandwich, with ketchup. The sun shining through the big dusty restaurant window made a corner of the ketchup bottle sparkle like a diamond.
She calls my apartment at least once a week, wanting to know if Mr. Sherman is there, said Harriet. I don’t know how she got my number. It’s unlisted. I’ll have to change it again, I guess. Last night she called, and Brian answered the phone. Mrs. Sherman told him to get out of the place now, and come home.
Who’s Brian? I asked.
Oh, he’s a friend.
That’s nice, I said.
Forgive me, I was interested. At Harriet’s age — what would she have been then, thirty-six? Not exactly a spring lamb. At her age I had a daughter in a wind band.
What do you think I should do, Mother?
I don’t know, I said. I’ve never met Brian. What does he do for a living?
Oh, Mother! I wasn’t talking about Brian. I’m not going to do anything about Brian. We’re just friends.
She never paid any attention to me. No point in my saying, Leave Sherman and his crazy wife and go downtown and have an office of your own. Harriet would have done what she wanted to anyway. What can any mother do about her child’s destiny? What did Your mother do? She worried, right? And suffered. And she cried over Your dead body. That’s what mothers do.
The fire bells are still ringing. Ding ding ding, ding ding ding. If you close your eyes you can almost mistake them for the bell the streetcar rings instead of a horn. Or the sound of an old playground bell, swung by the teacher who wanted everyone to know that recess was over, and it was time to go back to the nine times table. Grinning farmboys with their chapped hands and oversized caps, nudging each other and joking about girls. And Jack, little dark intense Jack Dupree who looked at me out of the corner of his downwards-slanting eyes and paid compliments. I loved school, didn’t I. Maybe that’s why I resented Harriet’s education, wanting what she had. I was so mad when she started practising over at Geoff’s place. But you don’t like me practising at home, she said, frowning. You called it an unholy racket.
And I did too. Mea culpa. What are You smiling at now? Ruby used to say that all the time. It means sorry, doesn’t it? Sorry, Harriet. It was an unholy racket but I shouldn’t have said anything. My daughter, I should have let you make your unholy racket.
I was angry because you made the racket at Geoff’s place, amid the smell of fresh dough and cinnamon and butter and nuts and raisins. You went to the bakery after school to practise, while I worried about making a living and being lonely.
Would I have been lonely with Geoff? With his hairy floury arms folded across his broad front. A good player, this Harriet, he told me. She and her friends are welcome here any time. The bread rises better when they play.
Do you like Mr. Zimmerman? I asked Harriet, washing dishes together after dinner. She dried with lots of energy, as if she could polish the pattern right off the plates and cups.
Sure, he’s nice. And he gives us cookies when we’re finished practising.
Do you think he’s nice looking?
Mother!
Sorry.
Hello, I say, startled out of the past into the distant past. Hello, Daddy!
There there, says a monster.
Daddy put on his gas mask for me, once, just after he got back from The War. I giggled. I asked him to put it on again, but he never did, and after a while I stopped asking him.
What’s going on? I say. What are you doing?
There there, Mother.
The monster has Harriet’s voice. Two more monsters are bending over me, holding a monster face out towards me. I smile and reach for it.
Well, says the muffled voice of the nurse. That was easy, wasn’t it?
I start to cough.
So we don’t go on a cruise — we should still go someplace, Ruby said. How about a motor trip? Hey? We could drive down to the Adirondacks.
She leaned over the counter at my flower shop, waving a brochure in my face. I can see the brochure now, as brightly coloured as the autumn itself.
I don’t think so, Ruby, I said. The people in the picture were sailing across one of the Finger Lakes. My hands sweated so hard I had to keep on wiping them on the side of my dress.
Come on, what are you afraid of?
I don’t know, I said.
Leaving Harriet? Forget it! She’ll be away at university. She’ll be fine.
I don’t know what I’m afraid of, I said.
Well, I’m damned if I’m going to stay in Toronto and sell hats to old ladies while Monty goes off somewhere and has a great time.
Okay, I said.
Okay? Okay what?
We’ll go someplace. We’ll go to New York, I said.
A customer came in then, a balding man who smelled like whisky and aftershave and, faintly, of mothballs. His glasses trembled on the end of his nose.
We’re going to New York, Ruby told him, grinning from ear to ear. Rose and I are going to New York City. I can hardly wait to see the look on Monty’s face, she cried, slapping the poor man on the back so hard he staggered forward and had to catch hold of the counter.
Do you have any … gardenias? he said quietly, leaning over the counter.
Secret love.
Of course, I told him.
Something on my face. A mask. So you can breathe, the monster nurse tells me — I don’t know why. I can breathe without it. Okay, I say. My voice sounds muffled. Like hers. She lifts a sheet to make a hammock for me to be carried away in. I look past her and there You are, wearing a mask like the nurse’s. The bells are fainter.
I hear the other doctor talking to Harriet. Don’t worry, Miss Rolyoke, he says. Triage is not part of Warden Grace Villa’s institutional policy.
Harriet asks about contingency plans.
In the event of an emergency, the doctor says, our contingency plan is: Everyone gets out. Save everyone.
I hear birds and traffic noise, and the sun flashes in and out of my eyes as my hammock sways around. Harriet! I call. My voice sounds odd in my ears.
There there, says the nurse. Her voice sounds different too.
Outside. That’s where I am.
Harriet, are you there? I call.
No answer. I start to cough.
I’m inside again, under a window. The bed throbs under me, so that I panic. I don’t like the feel of a motor underneath where I’m sleeping. I don’t like it. There’s something about being in a bed, and staring out at the world through a moving window, that sends chills up and down my spine. I want help. Something’s wrong. Mama! I call. Mama, Mama!
I dreamed; I don’t know when this would have been, but I remember dreaming it more than once, waking up to tear-soaked lonely pillows.
In the dream Harriet, the little girl who scrambled and played and banged on pots and learned her ABCs, Harriet had gone off t
o play in the river — I wonder which river that would have been, there was no running water near the house on Waverley. The Cobourg Creek ran past the big house on the lake, maybe that’s what I was thinking about. Anyway, she and a girlfirend went down to the river to play one afternoon, and the girlfriend comes back and tells me Harriet’s dead. I run down to the water’s edge and there she is, lying on the pebbles with her hair streaming around her. Dead all right. And I feel, in the dream I feel, such sadness. And the sadness continues as time passes in the dream. Pages torn off the calendar, leaves growing, turning, falling. I live in shadows, move slow, talk low, do the sad things. I don’t think I can take it but I do, day by day. And then I go down to the water’s edge — this would be the eastern beaches of Toronto, colourful but nearly empty in autumn — and I begin, very slowly, but perceptibly, to feel better. The colours are brighter, the boats are crisper, the breeze smells better — everything about the scene becomes more clear. I am getting back my life. Getting it back slowly. And I look up and down the practically deserted beach, and I pray.
We packed, Harriet for the term and me for the weekend. My suitcase and her trunk waited together in the shadows of the front hall. Harriet and I were in the living room, looking out at the street. We made the conversation you make when you’re expecting someone any minute: Looking forward to your first — or would it have been her second year at university? Looking forward to it? I said. She nodded. A little scared? I said. She nodded. We waited and waited, departure times drawing closer and closer, and finally I called Ruby’s place.
Who’s this? said a strange voice.
Sorry, I must have the wrong number, I said, but before I could hang up I heard Ruby in the background.
Hey! Give me that phone, she said, and then, Rose? That you? Sorry I’m late — I overslept. What time is it? Is it really? Shit! Be right over.
Mother, did you remember to pack my music stand? Harriet called.
Uh huh, I said.
The man’s voice on the phone hadn’t belonged to Monty. Monty had a high nasal voice, and this one had been gruffer, deeper.
Am I pretty? I used to think I was. The boys at school told me I was. Girls used to envy me — sounds crazy, but they did. I could tell. And You want to know something even crazier? I liked it. Not just the boys’ attention, but the girls’ envy. It made me feel better about myself, as if they knew me better than I did. I didn’t think I was worth envying. Robbie told me how beautiful I was. Mr. Davey did too, but in a gentlemanly way without words, just the way he looked after me, and smiled extra wide and got to his feet when I came in the room. It was part of my life, being pretty. And then, not suddenly, but in a kind of irreversible downward way, I stopped being pretty. Something I’d taken for granted, part of myself, wasn’t true any more. No more compliments from strange men, no more whistles in the street, fewer and fewer envious glances from pretty women. It was like the gradual loss of use of a limb, there’s a word for it, I know, because the next time anyone told me I was pretty, the next time after New York, would have been my very first month at the Villa, and he told me the word. He had lost the use of one of his legs.
Aren’t you beautiful, he whispered, after lunch, in the room where they played cards and did jigsaw puzzles and stared into corners. Aren’t you something, he whispered, wheeling himself over to where I stood, alone and faintly wistful, leaning on my walker. I knew what he was talking about and immediately — and I mean immediately — felt pretty again. As soon as the compliment was out of his mouth, I found myself turn with the same grace and charm I’d always had, to smile down at him with gratitude but not surprise. I’m Rose, I said. And this is my daughter, Harriet.
She didn’t want to go, but I insisted. It’ll do me good, I said.
How about if we go outside today, she said. It’s warm and sunny.
I didn’t want to go outside. I had something planned. The Community Room, I said. They have tea there. You like tea, Harriet. And the milk comes in a silver jug, I said.
I know, she said with a sigh.
How does she know? I wonder.
There was an argument going on at the table nearest us, four crabby card players fighting about what they were going to play. I said clubs, I know I did, sobbed a man with a golfing cap and a hearing aid laid out on the table in front of him.
That was last deal, the others were saying.
Lead a card! said a fat lady with glittering eyes.
I’m Rose, I said to the man in the wheelchair, who had complimented me. And this is my daughter, Harriet.
Are you? he said.
I think so, I said.
You look like Mavis, he said to me.
What’s your name? I asked him.
I’m Albert Morgan, he said. Don’t you know me? I’m Albert.
I’m new here, I told him.
You sure look like Mavis, he said. You’re so beautiful. If I wasn’t in a wheelchair, I’d take you dancing.
And I smiled down at him, a not ill-looking man in a bathrobe and slippers. He had lots of hair, brushed all over the place so it might have been a forest on top of his head, or a field of dry wheat stalks blown by conflicting winds. His eyebrows were untrimmed, and hung down shaggily like Uganda — no, not Uganda, that’s a place. Like ivory. No, that’s not it either, but it’s something like that. So much like it that I’ll never get the right word. Bushy eyebrows he had, and hair on the backs of thin pale wrists. His legs were thin too. One of them moved around nervously, light, dancing movements.
Lead a card! commanded the fat lady at the card table.
The man in the cap was sitting next to her. He thumbed nervously through his cards. What’s trump? he asked, in a loud voice. Is it clubs? Are clubs trump?
That was last deal, said the others.
If I wasn’t in a wheelchair I’d take you dancing, Albert told me.
Isn’t that nice, I said.
I used to be a pretty good dancer. I won cups. Then I lost the use of my leg.
Oh, I said.
The muscles atrophied. Now I can’t hardly move it.
I never danced much, I said.
Sure you did.
I smiled. Not really.
Sure you did, he insisted.
Harriet was standing beside me, hand on my arm. Never opened her mouth. Poor Harriet, no social sense.
How come you have more cards than I do? complained the man in dark glasses. It’s not fair, you all have four cards and I only have three.
Attention, everyone, I said, in my loudest voice. Attention everyone in the room. That means you too, I said to the card players.
Oh, Mother, said Harriet.
Ruby was a funny companion, commandeering a porter with a little metal whistle, giving Harriet an exaggerated teary send-off on her train to Kingston. Harriet actually smiled for the first time that morning. Then she asked if I’d packed her toothpaste. Goodbye, I said. You’re a big girl now. That means no, doesn’t it? she called over her shoulder, climbing the steps into the coach. Smart kid, my daughter.
Come on, now, Rose, you slowpoke, we’ve got to get to our train, Ruby called, sprinting off. I followed her wiggling hips as fast as I could.
A beautiful September day it would have been, far from rare, but precious all the same. Things don’t have to be rare to be precious. Beauty and goodness are more common than you think; just look in any garden plot.
In our seats with our magazines and cups of Buffalo and Erie coffee, I asked Ruby flat out, Who answered the phone this morning?
She chuckled, unembarrassed. That was Clark, she said. My piano tuner.
But Ruby, you don’t have a piano.
Who needs a piano if you have a good tuner, she said, hunting through her purse. Very sensitive fingers, she said. He needs them on his job.
Ruby! I felt obliged to act shocked. It made Ruby happier if she was shocking people.
Got a match? she asked. I don’t seem to have any left.
You can have my attent
ion any day, said Albert, smiling up at me, tapping his unwithered foot. You can have my attention and some more too.
Please, Mother, said Harriet.
I had their eyes now, all of them, the whole room looking at me the way you look at the television when there’s only one channel. Nothing better on than me right now, so they were watching. Even the card players.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Rose and I’m new here. I have a short but important announcement to make.
Harriet stood beside me, head bowed, face locked in an expression of suffering. She hates to be made a fuss of.
I would like to present my daughter, Harriet, I said, turning slowly to starboard, like a … well, like one of them. A big one. This young lady here, I said. She’ll be coming by to visit me, and I want you to know her. Look well, I told them all, though the card players had gone back to their game. Albert was frowning up at me.
But you’re not Rose, he said.
Come along, Mother, said Harriet. Tears in her eyes, she wiped them away.
You’re Mavis, he insisted. You know, he wasn’t that bad looking. For a skinny cripple.
Harriet and I found a table to ourselves. A stain on the cloth, but I didn’t mind. Oh, Mother, Mother, she said. Where are you? She looked so sad, staring at me as if my eyes were windows with the curtains drawn, and she was trying to see past them into my living room.
Hi, there, said a lady in a sky-blue coat. A doormat — no. Haven’t seen you two in a while, she said.
Do you know my daughter, Harriet? I asked her.
She smiled. Course I know Harriet, she said. Don’t you present her to everyone whenever you come in here?
Harriet smiled sadly. Hello, Fern, she said. A volunteer. That’s what Fern was.
Do you want a cup of tea, Mother? With milk from the silver jug.
I hate tea, I said.
4
Annunciation
The sound at the door was fainter than breath on a window. I knew it more than I heard it. Come in, I said, my own whispered voice ringing like a great bell. I strained my eyes in the pitch dark of the third-floor bedroom, wanting to see his face, his hand on the door, wanting to see the door opening. But I saw nothing, heard nothing but my own lungs pushing the wind away. Next thing I knew I was gloriously overwhelmed, as if by a huge and affectionate mythical beast. Or maybe I was a shivering bather, plunging my cold loveless body into water so steaming hot that pain and pleasure were one. I could not, cannot now, say what happened. Did we speak? I have neither sound nor picture in my mind, only a glorious series of sensations, a kind of sense-movie. How long it took I do not know, but the smell afterwards was very strong. Smoke.
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