Jock puts Gail on the merry-go-round, stands at its rim as she circles. Both their faces, I see, are glowing. Jack and Margaret scurry off to try the Frolic and the Dodgem. When they return, I give them some more money for games: the Monkey Racer, the fish pond, the Kentucky Derby, and they take Gail with them, holding her hands on either side, and I am proud as I watch them.
The Aero Swing seems tame enough for Gail so we say to Jack and Margaret, all right, fine, you can take her with you, and I light one of my three Havanas while I stand and watch the three of them. Jock is poking about inside his shoulder bag, which he has set down on a wooden picnic table, busy at something. I can't help but focus on Jack and Margaret, my two, glorious in what little remains of their childhood, as they lift upward, then swoop down, again and again, heads thrown back, white teeth flashing.
We eat red hots, french fries in a vortex cup, choose among Honey Dew, Hires Rootbeer, Vernor's ginger ale, Frost Kist drinks. At midafternoon there is a giant corn roast taking place on the beach. We give the children some nickels, and while Margaret and Jack take Gail to watch Tiny Tim, the dancing bear who has made an appearance there, Jock reaches into his shoulder bag and takes out two thermos bot- des, hands me one, winks, and we settle back on a bench, the children visible in the distance.
"You sly dog, you." I watch Jock unscrew the top of his thermos, pour the foamy, cool brew into the lid.
"Pabst—mixed with alcoholic malt tonic as usual, direct from Sunnyside's own Tamblyn's."
I take out the two remaining Havanas, offer Jock one, and we light up, sipping our brew, kings.
The children are lined up for ears of roasted corn, patient. Tiny Tim rivets everyone on the beach.
"You seen the brick of wine you can buy?-" asks Jock.
I shake my head. "Don't know what you're talking about."
"New York state vintner is selling a solid block of grape concentrate, about the size of a pound of butter. It comes with instructions that warn that if you add water, you'll have wine, and that would be illegal." He smiles. "Fella at work showed it to me."
I snort. "That's what gave Harding the heart attack. The hypocrisy. That and the fact that all his cronies were dipping into the public till. His attorney general somehow managed to bank seventy-five thousand dollars on a salary of twelve thousand dollars a year." I send a stream of blue smoke into the air. "Mackenzie King and Coolidge. Prime minister, president, doesn't matter. They got their heads in the sand too. They say Coolidge spends from two to four hours every working day taking a nap."
Jock chuckles. "And the rest of the time he gets driven around in a Pierce-Arrow, waiting for problems to solve themselves."
"I'd like to have a nap every day."
"Isn't that what you do up there on the seventh floor?"
"And then I'd like to have a tall, cool beer and a nice supper, every night, put my feet up."
We are quiet, watching the children, the dancing bear, content.
Jock seems to know what I am thinking. "How is Maggie doing?"
I shrug. "She needed the break, the rest. The kids are looking forward to seeing her tomorrow." I add: "So am I."
"You haven't talked about it much."
I cannot talk about it, I think. Men do not talk about things they do not understand, as women seem to do, turning situations and people over verbally, parsing them, tasting them, telling each other what someone not present thinks.
"I haven't seen you enough. Busy. Families keep you busy."
"Amen." He drinks, squints into the sun.
"The fainting spells have been going on for too long. Heart palpitations. No one's sure why. Pale, no energy."
"And this doctor she's seeing?"
"In Hamilton. He's supposed to be a specialist at this sort of thing, so her sister Nellie arranged for her to stay with friends of hers there for the week. The Wilsons. They're putting her up, no charge. Very kind. We can't afford any of it as it is."
Jock listens.
"What can you do?" I ask.
He is quiet for a while. We smoke our Havanas. Then he points to the beach, to Jack and Margaret and Gail. "Watch the dancing bear," he says.
When the children come back, it is Jack who looks at the thermos, smells it, and I note the small cloud of disapproval rise behind his eyes—so like his mother—a cumulus that I have seen floating there more and more frequently. It is becoming clearer. It has always been Jack who judges me, whom I cannot win over fully, who puzzles me, and I wonder, again, what it is I am doing wrong.
2
When Jack and Margaret are finally asleep, I sit in the maroon upholstered easy chair, feet up, enjoying reading the newspaper by electric light. One of the attractions of this Berkeley Street flat is that it is electrically wired, the first that we have lived in. At forty-three, though, I cannot read without eyeglasses, which bothers me, because even they do not stop the strain, fatigue, and I dab at my eyes with my handkerchief, rub them often. Still, the light is a wonder, a marvel.
There is a wooden mantle over the stove, and beside the earphones to the crystal set I see the mix of books lined up atop it: Seventeen, The U.P. Trail, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, Penrod, Tarzan of the Apes, Tom Swift and His Motor-Cyde, This Side of Paradise, Main Street, The Scarlet Letter, The Shoes of Happiness by Edwin Markham, whom Maggie tells me is her favorite poet, others.
I have no favorite poet. Only one of the books is mine, one of the two copies of Sister Carrie that is also there.
I take my eyeglasses off, hold them by the spidery wire rims in my hands, polish the lenses with my handkerchief. We must be up early tomorrow. Forty miles is a long trip.
I dream again that night of Jack slipping off the wooden dock into the lake, beneath the surface. He does not come up. I dive into the black water, stay under for ages, lungs burning, cannot find him. Oh God, please God.
He is gone.
I wake up sweating, only Maggie is not here. I am alone. No one strokes my head, my brow.
As always, I am cold.
I stare into the darkness, calming myself.
FOURTEEN
I sit in darkness, I sit in human silence. Then I begin to hear the eloquent night, the night of wet trees, with moonlight sliding over the shoulder of the church in a haze of dampness and subsiding heat.
—Thomas Merton
The Sign of Jonas
I was not sure where we were, but the flock seemed higher than usual, the earth below more rounded, the vista more sweeping. A waving necklace of honking geese undulated in the distance, a flat ribbon of silver river coiling beneath us in the sun.
Time and space and memory unrolled into one giant net and we, black birds against the blue sky, slipped through larger holes and back through others. I imagined that I spoke to my grandmother, silent still, even now, explaining what I was seeing, what I was experiencing, wanting her to know, wondered if she was listening, knew that she was listening, inside me, outside me, somewhere, somehow, knew that she had not died, not really, because I could see her so clearly, and understood now that family is a memory that transcends words.
Time happened to the world below, froze there, forever, everything, and memory was needed to make time happen to my mind. And in my mind I heard women's voices, so many women, muffling the sharp silence of men who could not speak, who felt but could not share, could not touch. Alone.
My own family, small, lost in the numbers, in the crush of time, insignificant. Except to me. Except to me.
High, in the wind. Mother, Father. Talk to me. Oh, Maggie.
FIFTEEN
January-May 1926
1
It is 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, January 6,1926. We are in the kitchen at 10 Constance Street in the west end, near Bloor and Roncesvalles, our new flat of only two weeks.
Our first day here was the day before Christmas and Margaret and Jack got to celebrate by waking up to parcels under the tree. Mike, my brother, a widower with half his family grown and gone, now lives in a small
place out on Queen East—on Lockwood Road—with his son Carmen, eighteen, and his two grown daughters, Ann and Kathleen. Mike has left Simpson's. For the past two years he has worked for the gas company, and has managed to get Carmen hired on with him. Still enamored of his wagon though, ever reliable, it was he who helped us drag our worldly possessions across the city.
Now that I am making twenty-four dollars a week, we are moving up in the world. The new flat costs thirty dollars a month. It has four bright rooms, a bath, water heating and oak floors, a telephone. There are rosebushes that will bloom in the spring and summer, a verandah. Maggie likes it because she feels that she is closer to her roots and to the Junction. Margaret, attending St. Joseph's Convent School, and Jack at De La Salle, both find it more convenient too.
At one end of the kitchen table Margaret finishes listing out her Latin verbs, conjugating each into its four parts. Jack is reading the comics from The Toronto Star: Bringing Up Father, Gasoline Alley, Tillie the Toiler, Polly and Her Pals, Toots and Casper, Winnie Winkle—The Breadwinner.
Margaret takes a card out of her notebook as she closes it, handing it to me. "I got this Monday from Sister Josephine," she says. It is a picture of the sacred heart of Jesus. On the back is the inscription To Margaret Radey, January 4, 192.6, for fifth place on the honor roll.
I look at her. She is a marvel. Yet her innocence unsettles me. She seems so easily pleased, so naturally happy.
Margaret, her mind elsewhere, changes the topic. "Did the new radios arrive at Simpson's?"
Even Jack looks up now, interested.
It was Monday at dinner, I recall, that I mentioned the shipment that we were expecting. "We got fifty of them. They came in today."
"When can we get one?" Jack asks.
I frown through my eyeglasses and cigar smoke. It would be nice, I think. Kate and Jim have a radio. Mike and Liz talked about getting one even back at the end of the war. But, I think, they waited too long.
It could be playing right now. We could all be listening to it. "Ain't We Got Fun," "I'm Sitting on Top of the World," "When You're Smiling."
"What kind are they?" Jack persists.
"Atwater-Kent," I say.
Jack listens intently. I notice Margaret and Maggie paying attention too. "Five-tube sets. One seventy-nine fifty. That's a lot of money," I add.
Their eyes waver. They know the phrase. That's a lot of money.
But we gave ourselves a washing machine as a Christmas present, and it cost $120. Few have $120; but most, including us, can find fifteen dollars down and five dollars a month. The fact that the machine cannot equal the dirt-removing ability of the washboard and scrub brush and old-fashioned elbow grease, or that Maggie often calls on me to disentangle clothes from the sprockets, has not lessened our fascination with it. It is a marvel, and affordable. Payments are the key. Jock has bought a General Electric refrigerator on payments. Everything is available on payments.
The children wait. Even Maggie is smiling, knowing.
I have always wanted to give them everything, without having anything. I smile. Nothing is new. I am forty-five years old, living in rented rooms. I still have nothing, but I can afford the payment. Everybody makes payments nowadays. A radio, I think. Why not. I know the terms. Twenty dollars down, fifteen dollars a month. After all, I am making twenty-eight dollars a week. These are prosperous times. And there is the employee discount.
I think again of Mike, who waited too long. I think of all the things we have done without. I look at the three of them. Jack, especially, waits. This would be something for all of us. I say it aloud. "Why not?"
"Oh, Martin," says Maggie.
"Like the washing machine," I say.
Jack stands up, excited. Margaret smiles the smile that melts me.
Suddenly I am feeling magnanimous. Things are changing for the better. I can feel it. "This Saturday," I say. "We can all go together to get one, make a day of it." The idea grows, takes on its own life. I see a picture of us in my head as a family, doing something together. "We'll go in the morning, and then we'll have lunch at the Palm Room on the sixth floor. The chicken dinner is on special this week for a dollar." I have seen the signs in the cafeteria downstairs. "There's an orchestra."
Margaret gets up, surprises me by hugging me. Even Jack, his expression always wry, is nodding rare approval.
I look to Maggie, who even though pale, never fully well, is smiling. "There'll be giblet gravy, rhubarb pie," I say, waiting for her approval.
"Oh, Martin," she says, giving it, smiling. Knowing me.
2
It is a dream, a bad dream, beyond imagining.
I am out of body as I crouch down beside her where she has slumped on the bathroom floor. I must be somewhere else, I think, as I hear myself shouting her name.
Margaret is beside me, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide. Jack is standing in the doorway, face frozen in shock. The tap is still running.
Even squeezing her, holding her, I cannot make her talk to me. Maggie! I shout. What happened? What happened? Her skin beneath my fingers is white, like chalk.
She just fell, says Margaret. Call your father, she said. And she fell. She was washing my face.
Jack! I shout. Go downstairs. Tell Mrs. Birnbaum I need help. Tell her quick. Hurry!
I loosen her collar, shout her name again, again, try breathing into her mouth, shout her name again. Come back I think. Not now, not now or ever, oh, God, no, please, no.
My mouth is on hers, her lips cold. No, I think. No.
My eyes blur with water, I cannot see. I cannot think.
Margaret is crying. I am crying. I am holding her now, squeezing her, desperate. Maggie, oh Maggie.
And in my head I hear her say it as I clutch her, although her lips, that curl downward at the corners, even now, especially now, do not move, will never move again. Oh, Martin.
I'd say it was myocardial failure, a Dr. Harcourt tells me, using words I have never heard before. How old was she? he asks.
Forty-seven, I hear myself say. She would have been forty-eight in three weeks. On January 29.
It just happens, he says. Nothing could be done.
I look around me, at the faces of Margaret, Jack, Mrs. Bimbaum.
I don't know what he means, nothing could be done. I don't know what he means.
What should I do? I ask.
You'll need to call a funeral home, he says.
Margaret and Jack are both crying.
I don't know a funeral home, I say, scarcely believing that I am saying it.
He nods, takes a pen and piece of paper from his bag, writes on it. Here, he says. Lynett's, on Dundas. They'll take care of everything.
I look at him, at the piece of paper, make no move to take it. I cannot talk. He realizes this, folds it, puts it in his pocket. I'll call them he says. Do you have a phone?
Mrs. Birnbaum is crying too now.
Yes, I say. Yes. We have a phone.
I cannot just let them take her. It isn't right. I go with them without knowing why, since there is nothing that I can do. We sit in a room on opposite sides of a large desk and I am asked questions while forms are completed and I sign them. They are good enough to bring me home, and after I come home, in the middle of the night, my hands shaking, dizzy, I sit on the bed between Margaret and Jack, my arms around them, and we cry, all of us, finally, for as long as it takes.
* * *
RADEY—Suddenly on January 6, at her late residence, 10 Constance Street, Margaret
(Maggie) Curtis, dearly beloved wife of Martin J. Radey.
Funeral from above address Saturday 9th at 8:45 a.m. to St. Vincent de Paul
Church. Interment in Peacemount Cemetery, Dixie, Ont.
The Toronto Daily Star
Thursday, January 7, 1926
MR. MARTIN RADEY and FAMILY
acknowledge with grateful appreciation
your kind expression of sympathy
in their bereavement
>
10 Constance Street
Toronto
* * *
On March 1, we leave 10 Constance Street. We cannot stay here. It will never be the same. Jack, Margaret, and I, with Mike's help, move to a flat on Margueretta Street. It is not as nice or as big, but it does not matter.
My brother and I have always been close, but now the bond runs deeper. First his wife, Liz, then Maggie. Even so, something is bothering him. He is not himself. He tells me that his mouth is sore, that he thinks there might be something wrong with his teeth. He worries about gum disease, which Da always talked about, but neither of us know exactly what it is, so we drop the subject. He says that if Liz were here, she would know what the problem was, know the right medicine.
I go to work daily. Margaret and Jack go to school. On the sixteenth of the month, I pay the woman at the accounts wicket in Simpson's five dollars for the washing machine. Nobody mentions the radio again.
On Tuesday, April 6, before I can even get my coat off, Jack comes to me when I come in the door after work. "Father?"
I take off my hat, place it on the table. "What is it?"
"My arm hurts."
"Where?" I ask, trying not to seem annoyed. I am tired.
Patience, I think. Patience.
He touches his right forearm with his left hand. "Here," he says. "It hurts here."
"What did you do to it?"
"I fell."
"Where?" I ask. "When? How?" Jack tells me nothing voluntarily. I must ask for everything.
"On the way to school. I was leaping from a fence, grabbing onto a tree branch, swinging. I fell. I landed on the sidewalk. It's been hurting ever since."
"That sounds like a stupid thing to do."
He says nothing.
"You went to school though?"
A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) Page 8