by Lynn Coady
I looked up from my maraschino paste to see if Lydia appreciated any of this. Then I saw red.
Not like anger. Like a bright burst of pain in the centre of my face, blinding me.
“Nonsense!” I heard from somewhere.
When the red lifted, she’d gone back to rolling out the dough. She’d flicked me. She’d flicked me on the nose so quick I didn’t even see it.
“Wha—” I said. It was a noise that was a question. It was the closest sound I could make to an actual question mark, because the pain, and what’s more, the surprise of the pain, left me incoherent. Tears were streaming down my face.
“You’re not to be reading such stuff at your age,” Lydia said, flipping the blank canvas of dough over and rolling and flattening it into a yellowed wafer-thinness that matched the set of her Presbyterian lips.
That is my memory of Grandma Lydia. That is the only memory I need.
This is all a long-winded way of saying, Poor Janet, at Thanksgiving dinner. Words I doodle into my notebook while talking on the phone with my parents. I’m expected to call her now. And go see her. Bring her food. Rub her feet. Who knows what. I am the only member of the family close by.
“They let her come back to school?” I say, surprised.
“Well, Grammie and Uncle Stan didn’t want her to,” concedes my mother.
“I’d say the damage is pretty much done,” says Dad. “You don’t put a girl through school for four years so she can throw it all away.”
“Even though that’s what she done anyhow,” completes my mother.
“Who’s the father?” I ask.
“She says nobody.”
Nobodaddy. Like with Blake.
“Some arsehole,” extrapolates Dad. “One of them hippie professors is my guess.”
“Oh, no,” I say, wanting to guide my father away from his “hippie professor” theories in general. I should show him Bryant Dekker and his clean-shaven neck some time.
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised,” grunts Dad. “All them draft-dodger Yankees coming over here with the free love and what have you.”
“Dad,” I say, “these people are scholars.”
“Well la-de-fuck,” says Dad.
The F-word always sends my mother into pained and scandalized titters—the legacy of a repressive Humphries upbringing. “Stop it, Dad,” she giggles.
“But is she going to finish?” I say, trying to get the two of them back on track.
“Who?” giggles Mom.
“Janet.”
“Yes!” says Mom.
“She’ll be ready to drop come final exams,” remarks my father.
“How many months is she now?”
“Around three.”
I count on my fingers. “She’ll just make it, maybe.”
Mom says, “I’m sure they’ll give her an exemption or something if she can’t.”
Dad says, “Oh, they will not. Let a girl out of exams to go have a baby!”
“Well, if they’re reasonable.”
“Reasonable!” Dad yelps in a spasm of hilarity. “Oh, excuse me, I can’t write my final exams because I have to go have this here illegitimate baby. Oh, that’s fine now, dear, you just go right ahead and give us a call when you’re finished up.”
“Hey!” I say. “Janet was home working at the museum last summer, wasn’t she?”
My parents rumble noises like yes.
“Well, there you go, it didn’t happen here at all. It was someone from back home.”
The two of them are silenced, so happily assured were they that such a calamity could only take place in the Sodom that exists off-island.
“Hippie professors!” I start to gloat.
“No, no, no,” says Dad. “I remember she did go back for a week in early August to set up her apartment, now, so there ya go.”
“No, no, no,” I sing back at him. “Aunt Maud came with her, it couldn’t have happened then.”
“She coulda snuck out.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dad, there were just as many opportunities for Janet to get pregnant hanging out on the beach all summer at home.”
“Bullshit,” mutters Dad.
“Nonsense,” echoes my mother.
“Could’ve been a tourist, I suppose,” Dad amends after a moment.
“Anyway,” I say, “what am I supposed to do for her?”
“Just be around,” says my mother. “Make yourself available.”
“Keep an eye on her for Stan and Maudie,” says Dad.
“Get her things,” adds Mom.
“I’m not going to spy on her.”
“Nobody’s telling you to spy on her,” says Dad. “But if that little bastard shows his face, you file a report.”
“The little bastard is over there somewhere with you guys,” I sigh.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” says Dad. “Meanwhile, you keep an eye out.”
“I’m very busy with school right now, you know.”
At this point I’ve dragged the phone over to my closet, started pulling out shirts and pants. I wonder how I’m supposed to look for supper at Jim’s.
“Larry,” calls my mother, like she can sense my attention wandering, “Janet has ruined her life forever.”
I freeze in the middle of fingering a hand-knit sweater I got for high-school graduation.
“Do you understand that?” my mother interrogates.
“Mom,” I say, “Janet will be okay. She’ll have a degree—”
Dad snorts, and via that snort, I suddenly see the future as they do. Janet passing the rest of her life at home with Stan and Maud. Taking tickets—ticket after ticket—just as she’s done every summer since junior high at the Hollywood Horrors Wax Museum. Endless hellfire dinners, with Lydia ablaze at the end of the table.
7.
THE WHOLE TIME I was on the phone with my parents, I kept having to stop myself from asking them what to wear and how to behave tonight at Jim’s. I can only assume that if they knew, they would have imparted such knowledge to me long ago—it would be an instinct by now. As it stands, I’m on my own.
Remember that this is university, and this is 1975, and this is poetry, first and foremost. It’s not like going to Aunt Maud’s for Thanksgiving. Jim himself never dresses up. If anything, he dresses down—the more auspicious the occasion, the mustier Jim’s attire. Last year at the department Christmas party he showed up caked in ice. I don’t think it was deliberate—apparently his car had broken down a little over halfway between Rock Point and the university, and, it being an ice storm, there was no one on the road to give him a lift. So Jim trudged for an hour or so and showed up looking like Jack Frost, right down to the icicle hanging from his nose. I remember how Doctor Sparrow looked. Doctor Sparrow was wearing a blazer and a festive red turtleneck and kept sucking the ice cubes out of his drink and crunching them to bits in his mouth. (“He’s keeping them cool in there,” I overheard somebody say.) Jim had one of those parkas you can buy at Canadian Tire, with fake fur trimming the hood. The fake fur was completely matted with ice, and he dripped wherever he went—you could map his movements by the splats on the carpet. I remember I had hoped to speak to Jim that night, but he took forever to show up and had a boisterous crowd around him the moment he did, wanting to know what had turned him into the abominable snowman. So I just sat by the food table eating clumps of cheese off of toothpicks until I started to feel disgusting. What did Joyce call cheese? Corpse of milk. That’s how the cheese started to taste after a while. The next day, I hopped the ferry home for the holidays, thinking I might as well stay there for all I was getting out of my university years.
Now my patience has paid off. Another thing to remember is that I’ll be meeting Jim’s wife. I can’t dress like a total slob. The fact is, Jim’s Jim and I’m not. I can’t get away with work pants and a Stanfield’s T-shirt, like Jim had on underneath his parka the night of the party. I’ll wear the hand-knit graduation sweater and comb my hair. I’ll brin
g my notebook with the new poems just in case. I see the three of us—Jim and me and Moira—sitting around by the fire drinking hot toddies late into the night, Jim and me reading our poetry to one another as Moira sits listening, her face one of pensive contentment. Just as Jim describes her in his poem “Erato.”
“Hey, man,” greets Todd Smiley. “Like, your hair is parted and everything.”
Todd is wearing work pants and a Stanfield’s T-shirt. A grubby old man’s cardigan completes the ensemble. He looks every inch the poet.
“Hey, Todd,” I say, taking a seat in Jim’s sitting room. “Hi, Professor Dekker,” I add, leaning over to shake Dekker’s hand. “Hi, Chuck,” I say to my old dorm-mate Charles Slaughter, who is sprawled on the other side of the room in an enormous armchair. “How’ve you been?” I ask in a loud voice, trying to drown out my surprise.
Chuck waves his beer at me by way of response.
“You look like you’re going to communion,” cracks Todd.
“Please. I’m Presbyterian,” I crack back, very cool. “Out, heathen.”
“Ah,” smiles Dekker. “Sectarian conflict. How old-world.”
Todd flashes a look at Dekker. He takes this stuff seriously.
“You guys talking about religion over there?” Chuck drawls from his throne across the room. “Jesus, Campbell. You sure know how to get a party going.”
We all laugh, for some reason. Maybe relief—Todd seems to be throwing sparks tonight. Then again, Slaughter—whatever the hell he’s doing here—has a strange way about him. He brings his own kind of electricity to a room. I couldn’t figure it out when we lived together in Hadwin and I can’t figure it out now—but he’s immensely, inexplicably, likeable as well. He is huge and frightening and has called me “fuckwit” since the day I met him. He is not particularly interesting aside from his horrific size and his ability to maim on the football field. Yet Chuck can do no wrong. Guys love him, girls love him, profs love him—he’s just one of those guys. That must be how he got himself invited this evening. Even Jim loves him.
“Hey, Chuck,” I say, leaning forward. “I didn’t know you knew Jim.”
Slaughter waves his beer around some more. “Oh yeah, we go way back.”
Enter Jim from the kitchen, where he disappeared after leading me here and inserting a bottle of Ten-Penny Ale into my fist. He looks for the most part like he always does—grizzled, slightly grimy. His face has a misty sheen from peering into some bubbling pot.
“How’s everybody doing? Drinks okay?”
We all smile and grunt.
“Larry! You didn’t meet my wife yet!”
Blink, and Jim disappears back into the kitchen. I hear the barky voice—short, clipped syllables. Listen, I’m too fuckin’ busy. And, blink, Jim reappears again, his arm around a woman.
Tiny. Like a branch off a crabapple tree. Not overripe at all.
“Moira,” says Jim.
I stand up, wondering if I should clamber over Todd, who’s crouched on the floor, to shake her hand. Instead I sort of lean toward her slightly. Almost a bow.
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Moira, scratching her scalp and looking around. “I didn’t meet any of these other ones yet neither,” she remarks to Jim.
Starting with me, Jim introduces us all by name. No one else stands, and so I sit. Slaughter does the beer-wave again.
“Good, then,” says Moira. “I gotta get back and keep an eye on that stew.”
Blink. So that’s Erato. I can’t get over how skinny and—and gnarly she is. Her speech is pure backwoods—a bit like Brenda L.’s.
When Jim returns, Todd starts digging around in his satchel and I instinctively clutch my own, thinking that perhaps some poetry will be read after all. But he pulls out a bottle of wine.
“Jim,” he says, holding it out. “Before I forget.”
Jim takes the wine, scrutinizing the label in appreciation. “Oh, very nice, there, Smiley, very good indeed. You didn’t have to do that, now.”
Jim told me not to bring anything. Suddenly I grow sultry in my graduation sweater—should I have brought something? Did Chuck Slaughter bring anything? Did Dekker bring anything? Are you supposed to bring something even when people tell you not to? And if so, how did Smiley, with his touted working-class background, happen to school himself in such social graces? Jim places the wine on the table alongside two other bottles. Two. One provided by Jim himself, the other perhaps by Dekker. But Slaughter is with me. He must be. Charles Slaughter wouldn’t be caught dead toting a bottle of wine around.
“Anyone want some of this now?” it occurs to Jim to ask, gesturing to the wine.
“I’ll stick with my beer,” says Slaughter. I peer at him. He’s drinking a different brand than everyone else. Kill myself.
Jim keeps blinking in and out of the kitchen, materializing to put on an album and light the fireplace and then ducking back through the swinging door to get more beer and check on Moira. It’s nerve-wracking for me, the erratic jolts of Jimadrenalin hitting my system every few minutes. I can scarcely concentrate on whatever conversation we manage to start while he’s in the kitchen.
“How’s the letter coming?” asks Dekker.
“It—” I begin.
“It’s finished,” says Todd. “We’re ready to start collecting signatures Monday.”
I look at Todd. “We should figure out some kind of strategy for that.”
“Should be easy,” shrugs Todd.
“Well, no, not easy,” Dekker starts to say, but Jim descends on us with a clinking armful of Ten-Pennys.
“Beers all around!”
None of us are finished our original beers yet, but Jim is undeterred. “Just take it now,” he says, shoving them at us, “and that way you’re all looked after at once. Larry!” He clamps a hand down on my shoulder and I feel myself sink about an inch into his chesterfield. It feels like he’s trying to push me between the cushions.
“Yes, Jim?” Thinking of the cushions remind me of the phone call where Jim was crying. It’s hard to believe, looking at him now. He is all smiles and swinging gorilla arms.
“How ya doing?” He shakes me by the shoulder. “Ya good?”
“I’m great!” I beam up at him.
“How ya like that record? Ya like that record?”
It’s an old-time country-and-western album twirling around on Jim’s lopsided turntable. To my ears it sounds like a series of squeaks and whimpers. “I love it,” I tell him.
“Goddamn right,” says Jim. “That’s Hank Snow right there.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Why don’t you play some fuckin’ music from this century?” Slaughter shouts from his throne. He’s sitting so far away, I don’t see how he can keep track of the conversation.
Jim waves one of his fanlike hands in Chuck’s direction. “The philistine in our midst will not be acknowledged.”
“You call me Phyllis?” demands Chuck, jerking forward in mock anger. Jim guffaws; his overbite could eat the world. I’ve never seen him guffaw. He’s very different overall than how he usually seems. For one thing, he’s got an accent like Moira’s.
“We were just talking about the petition,” says Todd, practically jumping up and down in his spot on the floor for Jim’s attention.
Jim whirls around in the centre of the room—the circle of us—like we’re all playing some kind of kid’s birthday game. Button, button, who’s got the button? I haven’t seen him sit since I arrived.
“Oh, the petition,” he drawls. “God love you fellas. How’s it going?”
“We start collecting signatures Monday,” I say.
“Well, God love you. All typed up and everything?”
“Yep,” says Todd, before I can utter Sherrie.
Jim is looking restless from just standing engaging in conversation. I can see his long limbs starting to twitch with the desire to wander around and poke and arrange things. He makes a move toward the record playe
r.
“Oh, I just gotta play this one. You fellas gotta hear this. I bought this down in the states—Kentucky,” he says, thumbing through a series of albums stacked beneath the turntable. Then his accent shifts. “Not that I necessarily approve of American cultural infiltration, in fact I’ve pretty much had it up to here, everywhere you turn in this country you run up against Yankee garbage, but this kind of stuff, now—this took place long before the nation as a whole sold itself to the highest bidder. This could cauterize the wounds of that particular transaction if anyone gave a shit anymore, which no one does …” He finds what he’s looking for, shuffles it out of its jacket, and holds the record out to check for scratches and dust. Then, with the delicacy of a surgeon, he places it onto the turntable and lowers the needle.
More whimpers and squeaks. We all sit and listen for a moment, Jim with his eyes closed. Keeping them closed, he says, “I just want to thank you boys again for everything you’re doing. Except for you, Slaughter—as usual you’ve done dick-all.” His eyes pop open, twinkling, to see that Slaughter is showing him a listless middle finger. “Anyhow,” Jim resumes following a short, toothy guffaw, “I want you all to know how much I appreciate it. But tonight’s not the night for worrying about any of that bullshit. Tonight’s just a night for friends, all right? Friends and poetry.”
He smiles down on us like Jesus in a painting. The next moment, he’s tornadoing into the kitchen, shouting merry orders at his wife.
Three hours later and dinner is yet to be served and I am starving and have guzzled three beers and am having a wonderful time. Jim designated the evening a night of friends and poetry, so Todd and I got right to it—the poetry part, at least. We poked around the bookshelves together at Jim’s invitation, me feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff I hadn’t read and knew I should—George Herbert! I haven’t even gotten to George Herbert yet!—and Todd throwing out commentary about everything, as if he’d devoured every single volume by junior high. (“Oh, Jacques Prévert—God it’s been such a long time …”) At some point we started discussing Rimbaud, who I think was a prophet and who Todd keeps saying was a fruit. I wave my arms and tell him that’s no kind of argument, but Todd says he doesn’t care, he thinks Rimbaud stank and was a fruit.