A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2)

by Terence M. Green

  "Call me Martin."

  "Friends call me Gert." The smile.

  "I'm thinking of being a monk," I say, playfully. "I wouldn't have to change much. Clothing, perhaps. I'd get my meals prepared for me. That would solve my cooking problem. Learn to make some wine, some cheese. It's not such a bad deal."

  We both smile.

  "I'm a receiver at Simpson's."

  "Really. That sounds like a good job."

  I remember another conversation about jobs, good or otherwise: tea at a corner table, Bowles' Restaurant, Queen and Bay. I clear my head. "I guess," I say. "What about yourself?"

  "I'm a telephone operator at Swift's."

  "The meat company?"

  She nods.

  "That's just north of the tracks. Real close. Convenient."

  "We're definitely locals."

  "Who's we?"

  "I live with my mother, who's widowed. And my sister. Just the three of us. On Gilmour Avenue."

  "I don't think I know Gilmour."

  "It crosses Annette about ten blocks west of here."

  "A little farther west than I usually go. Maybe I should expand my radius."

  She smiles, takes her hat off, sets it beside her. I watch her fingers as they straighten her hair, gently shape it at the back of her neck. Watch her small mouth smile.

  On the sidewalk, outside, at noon, she offers her hand once again. I fold it into mine. Thoughts, cobwebs in a heat draft, float upward from recesses I have forgotten. Her skin, her hair, her mouth. A woman's hand, in mine.

  But I maintain outward poise. "Thanks again, Gert."

  "My pleasure."

  I look around, let her hand go. "How will you get home?"

  "I'll walk. It's a beautiful day."

  "It is."

  "And you?"

  "Streetcar will take me right along Dundas to Margueretta."

  She opens her purse, rummages briefly, takes out a piece of paper and a pencil, quickly scrawls something. "I'll see you next Sunday, I trust. But if you should need anything, if I can help in any way, don't hesitate to give me a ring." She hands me the paper. "And call me for a last consultation before entering the monastery." The smile.

  I take my eyeglasses from my jacket pocket, slip them on, hold the scrap in both hands and read what is on it: LY 6027. A code to a new world. The threads of the spiderweb brush against my nerve ends again.

  When I look up, she has already crossed Dundas and is heading down Pacific Avenue, a tiny figure. I watch her all the way to Annette before the streetcar finally slides to a halt in front of me, blocking my view.

  That afternoon, Margaret phones. She and Jack want to stay with Aunt Rose for the next few days. Rose gets on the phone, assures me that this is fine with her.

  I feel the pressure lift. Are you sure it's okay? I ask Rose.

  Don't worry, she says. You can use the time alone. They're fine with us.

  Alone, I think. But I do not want to be alone. I feel the guilt surfacing.

  Don't worry, she adds again.

  I appreciate this, Rose.

  They're good kids, she says.

  I don't know how you do it, Rose. I find them quite a handful.

  Take care of yourself, Martin.

  I ignore the cookbook, boil potatoes and fry some ham for dinner, wish that I had a bottle of beer to drink with my meal, like the old days, before the mad zeal of this prohibition. They say the Temperance Act will be repealed soon. Not soon enough for me.

  The evening is long and warm. After eating I go out for a walk, cross St. Clarens, end up on Lansdowne, staring at the house where Maggie and I lived when the children were small. Where we lived when Jack was born. Like that night on Power Street—the day I was let go by Peter Sterling, standing on the street across from St. Paul's Church, staring through the windows above the dairy—I see people that I do not know moving about in the rooms, people like myself, who cannot see their futures, who will not be here two years or three years or five years from now.

  When I come back to my flat I sit in my reading chair, but it is Sunday, there is no newspaper today, nothing to read. I light a cigar, take the piece of paper from my pocket, study it again. LY 6027. Then I fold it up, tuck it back into my pocket. Rising, I take my copy of Sister Carrie from the bookshelf, the only other book that I have ever purchased, and sit again in the chair, holding it in my lap like a talisman. I know much of it by heart. I know how it ends. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

  Lying in bed later, the sheets tossed back against the heat, staring up into the darkness of the room, I begin to see, in the still, silent shadows near the ceiling, a path down which I am headed. I hear my father's voice in the night in Elora long ago, arguing futilely against the momentum that pulled him to the city, see him eating quietly at our table on Brook- field, the heels of his shoes worn down. I see Margaret Loy, my grandmother, stunned by life into an unending silence, sipping from a silver thermos held to her lips. And I know that in a darkness deeper than this by far, in a shadow I can scarcely make out, my brother Mike, no longer able to say the name Kervin aloud, is lying on white sheets, alone, helpless against the enemy, time, not knowing, not understanding that "loy" is the Irish for shovel.

  I see three candles on a birthday cake—a white one, a red one, and a blue one. The white one is gone. The red one is puddled. Only the blue one remains.

  Monday, after work, I dial LY 6027 and ask for Gert. We talk of her job, the weather. We talk about what we had for dinner. She asks me if I called because I am heading into the monastery and I laugh.

  We do not talk of politics. That was what Maggie and I talked about. This is different. This is new. This is another chance. Maggie is gone, forever.

  Wednesday evening, the phone rings. It is Gert. Would I like to come to dinner at her place Friday night? I could come there after work.

  Yes. Why not. That sounds lovely.

  Flustered, I forget that I have children until I hang up. Then I call Rose, tell her that I'll be busy Friday, could they stay there with her a little longer.

  Busy where? You chasing the ladies already? she asks with humor.

  Something I have to do, I say, caught off guard at her insight. I cannot tell if Rose is approving or disapproving of my sudden vagueness.

  It's fine with me if it's all right with the children, she says. Here. Speak to Margaret.

  Margaret comes on the phone, listens. There is just a touch of hesitation, a rhythm that implies something unsaid. Then she asks if she will be with Aunt Rose over the weekend.

  Is that okay? I ask.

  It's fine. Everything is fine, says Margaret.

  But it is not. There is something I do not understand, something I have missed. You sure?

  I'll look after Jack. There's lots to do.

  But I hear a new tone in her voice, a resignation with which I am unfamiliar.

  Don't worry, Father. I'll help Aunt Rose.

  Margaret's terrific, Rose says, back on the line. And Jack is quick as a whip.

  I do not think of Jack in this way and am surprised to hear such a description. He's not giving you any trouble? I ask.

  We went to hear him sing in the school choir. Monday night. He sang like an angel. I almost wanted to cry, she says.

  I am quiet. I had no idea he was in the choir. For a moment I am stricken speechless. I close my eyes. I know what I am doing: I am pawning off my children on my sister. Yet I cannot stop myself. I deserve a life, I think. Rose is better with them than I am.

  Maybe I should talk to Margaret again.

  But I do nothing. I sit there, holding the phone. My life has become what I never dreamed it could become. I am becoming what I never dreamed I would become.

  Call me on the weekend. Sunday. Take care of your business, Rose says, stressing the last word wryly.
<
br />   I cannot sleep, thinking of Gert.

  Thursday, at lunch, I step out onto Queen for a haircut. I want to look my best tomorrow. In the barber chair, trying to calm myself, the scissors cleaning my neck, around my ears, I am filled with second thoughts. What am I doings- How old is she? What will people think?

  Yet I cannot stop myself. Everything has a momentum, I realize. I am swept along.

  Gert is here, Maggie is not: guilt, mixed with longing so powerful it is like a flood of madness. My mind races.

  Another chance. I want another chance at life. I want it so badly, suddenly, that it scares me. The hands touching my nape, my scalp, are not the barber's. They are hers. They are Gert's. I am not forty-six. I am eighteen again, breathless, in the loft of the bam at Boyd's farm, a girl's mouth, her tongue touching mine.

  Number 238 Gilmour Avenue is a reasonably new semidetached brick house with a wooden verandah on a pretty street. I meet Mrs. McNulty and Gert's older sister, Evelyn. I can feel it: I am back in a house among women who welcome me, would take care of me. All this after so many years of knowing that I was somehow letting everyone down.

  Gert and Evelyn have cooked a meal of meat loaf, potatoes, peas, squash. Good china is set out, frail, with small pink flowers painted on its edges, along with proper silverware and white cloth napkins. We drink tea after dinner. An apple pie is produced for dessert. Alcohol never appears, bootleg or otherwise. I learn that Gert is twenty-seven years old, that Evelyn is thirty-six, does the same job as her sister—a switchboard operator—only for Bell Telephone. I learn that Patrick Kelly was Mrs. McNulty's husband's name, and that he died four years ago, that she and Gert and Evelyn moved in here because it was something they could afford and because it was closer to the girls' jobs. I hear that Gert is the youngest of six, that the other four are married— two more sisters and two brothers, that one or another of them is now living in Detroit. When they ask me how old I am I falter, then tell them the truth. I am forty-six, I say. Forty-six.

  They are quiet. They already know, I realize. But I see something else: I have been tested and have passed. I wonder what else they know about me, wonder about the level of gossip that encircles me, about which I know nothing.

  I tell them about my job at Simpson's, about Jack and Margaret, how well they are doing in school, and how my sisters—ten of them living in the city—help me take care of them. I am, after all, a widower, a man, and what do I know about children?

  They nod. This, too, they seem to understand.

  I cannot bring myself to talk about Maggie. Or Mike.

  I ask them if I may light a cigar. They scurry, get me an ashtray, a box of matches. I glance at Gert, catch her eye, and she smiles in return, just for me. Twenty-seven, I think, not knowing what to feel besides a long-forgotten excitement. A second chance.

  I have not dated a woman for eighteen years. I do not know what to do, what is acceptable anymore. Newspapers and magazines have placed the new verbal currency at my fingertips. I have read about flappers, Oxford bags, peekaboo hats, powdering your knees, have heard "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Baby Face." But it is not my world.

  Gert is standing with me on the verandah.

  Alone with her, I say something that I did not know I was going to say. "You don't want to get involved with an old guy like me." It just comes out.

  She is quiet, then takes my hand. "Let's go for a walk."

  The kiss, the first kiss, of course I remember that. But what I remember is the fingers at the back of my neck, brushing the clean-shaven skin, the realization of how badly I needed a woman's touch, of the void in which I had been living, of the kindness of her mouth, giving me back a piece of the life I have lost.

  Forgive me, Maggie. Please forgive me. Less than eight months. I have always been so incomplete.

  Oh, Gert.

  I phone her the next day, Saturday, August 21, and we agree to go to breakfast again after mass tomorrow, then head down to High Park for the afternoon. I am like a schoolboy, dizzy.

  Then I phone Jock, tell him I am seeing a woman. I can hear the surprise in the silent pause that hovers. Then: good for you, old man, he tells me. Get right back on that bicycle and keep riding. Come on over to my place. I'll pour you a special Ross ale, and we won't tell the government. Tell me all about it.

  We sit in the backyard of Jock's home on Wallace, just off Lansdowne, in the shade of a drooping chestnut, drinking his homemade brew. He tells me that Ford is laying men off, that sales are down twenty-five percent, Chevrolet's up forty percent. GM's Acceptance Corporation, he says, has understood the importance of time payments, while old Henry has been dragging his heels, and now they're all paying the price. The Dupont and Christie plant is closing and moving out to Victoria Park and Danforth, way the hell out in the sticks, he says. How the hell am I going to get there? he says. I'll have to move, for God's sake.

  Then: how old is she?

  Twenty-seven, I say.

  He seems stricken for a moment. Good Lord, old man, he says, finally.

  I don't know what to say.

  He is quiet again. He drinks his ale. Then he looks at me, says: I envy you. He nods.

  I relax.

  Remember those birds we used to chase? he says. That was twenty years ago. Before we started to lose our hair. I can't figure out what happened to the years. What's she see in you anyway?

  I shrug. My big job. My Cadillac. My fabulous future.

  We laugh.

  I have not laughed for a long time.

  High Park is a dream. She puts her arm through mine and we stroll languorously. The pond, the zoo, the trails, the ice cream. I touch her face, her shoulders, her hair. Twenty years disappear. They never happened.

  When I come home from work on Monday and pick up the mail, I see the envelope. With a start things fall into place. It is addressed to Miss Margaret Radey and the return address is 39 Lockwood Road. It is from Mike. Every year he sends Margaret a birthday card, and even now, especially now, he has made the effort.

  Margaret's birthday was August 21. It was Saturday.

  In my head there is her voice on the phone, her hesitation: Everything is fine. I'll look after Jack. There's lots to do. I'll help Aunt Rose.

  I place the envelope on the kitchen table, sit, tilt my forehead into my fingers, close my eyes. I see myself swept along in a river, Jack and Margaret on the banks, their faces receding into the past. I do not know how any of this has happened to me, where I slipped into the current, why I cannot climb out, where I will wash up.

  SEVENTEEN

  1927

  1928

  RADEY—McNULTY

  St. Cecilia's Church was the scene of a pretty wedding on Tuesday morning, when Miss Gertrude Christine McNulty, became the bride of Mr. Martin Radey. Rev. Father Colliton officiated at the ceremony and Miss Olive Dickinson sang "O Salutaris," and "Ave Maria." The High Altar of the church was lovely with many gladioli in rose shades and tapers were burning. The bride, who was given away by her brother, Mr. Anthony McNulty, wore a gown of peach crepe romaine and a black picture hat. Her flowers were Ophelia roses and lily of the valley. Miss Evelyn McNulty was her sister's only attendant and wore a mauve georgette frock with a hat of many shades of mauve. She carried tea roses and baby's breath. Mr. Jock Ross attended the groom. After the wedding, a reception was held at the home of the bride's mother when the immediate relatives of the bride and groom joined them at wedding breakfast. Mrs. McNulty was in a gown of black georgette and wore a corsage bouquet of Richmond roses. Later in the day, Mr. and Mrs. Radey left on a wedding trip for Detroit and Cleveland. The bride traveled in a smart gown of figured georgette in tones of blue and her coat and hat were in matching shades, and her shoes of the same tone. On their return, Mr. and Mrs. Radey will reside in Toronto.

  The Toronto Daily Star

  Wednesday, August 10, 1927

  * * *

  It is September 21, the first day of autumn. In my hands I hold a crisp black-and-white photo
of Gert and I standing on the verandah at 238 Gilmour, with the wedding party of ten lined up below us at the foot of the steps, all squinting into that bright, early-morning summer sunshine. I am wearing my fedora tilted rakishly forward. There are Evelyn and Jock, Gert's mother, her brother Anthony and his wife and her sister Tess and her husband. That makes seven. Only three from my side of the family stare back at me—my sister Margaret, now in her sixties, her husband John Dickinson, and their daughter Olive, my niece, who sang for us as we walked down the aisle.

  That is who I see in the photo. There are people I do not see as well. I do not see my other sisters or their husbands. I do not see my more than forty other nephews and nieces.

  I do not see Margaret and Jack.

  My fingers squeeze the photo and I notice how the veins stand out on the back of my hands, just like Da's did.

  I give up the place on Margueretta Street and move in with Gert, Evelyn, and Mrs. McNulty. Margueretta Street is another transition point, something that belongs to the past.

  Margaret has graduated from high school and entered the Ontario College of Art on a scholarship. She lives with my sister Mary and Mary's husband Michael Rossiter—now that all their own family has grown up and married—back at 38 Brookfield. Jack has left school. He lives with his cousin Carmen, Mike's son, on Lockwood in the east end, and does part-time work at the gas company with him.

  Gert and I rarely talk about Jack and Margaret. It is a topic we cannot solve. She does not see how they fit into my life because they do not fit into hers.

  They don't need you, she says. They're almost grown up. They've got their own lives, their own friends. We need time alone. They're still upset that their mother died. I'm too young to be their mother. Time will heal the wound. They'll come around. They'll grow up and understand. What about us? What about our life?

  I will lose her over them if I persist, and I cannot face this.