The Age of Cities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

Listening to Johnny, Winston felt once again like a rube. Along with Mrs. Pierce, he had thought of Dot West as a capable woman, remarkable—an actual woman to admire—because she was able to organize herself so well that she could have the extra time—and pluck—to tell a company like Malkin’s about her recipes and household ideas, and then sign a contract with them. What a sham. It was like being dazzled by Santa Claus because he could reach all those chimneys during one night. Only children and half-wits can do so for long.

  “And you went to Hollywood after that?” Winston asked. Beneath the nervous wariness, Winston was pleased to find Johnny’s charm.

  “Oh dear, we’ve heard this soap opera before. Don’t get him started. There’ll be a river of tears here in no time,” Dickie interjected.

  Johnny said, “If you visit our fair city again, Mr. Wilson, I’ll tell you a story of powerful and glamorous men and women and of gut-wrenching despair.” Winston smiled at the radio play melodrama.

  “Count me out, fellas,” said Dickie, evidently feeling left out of the limelight.

  “Richard.” Johnny was getting angry.

  “Let’s change the topic before you two make a scene,” Ed said. Husky yet small-featured, he uneasily surveyed the room. Clearly timid, he smiled and said nothing else. He rotated his pinkie ring when he spoke.

  “With the exception of the timid tortoise here”—Dickie’s glance at Ed was not kind—“we’re born tellers of tall tales here, Winston.”

  Winston could not guess whether Dickie planned to unravel a story. After long seconds of silence, he prompted Dickie. “I see,” he said.

  “In fact, when he’s had a few too many, even Ed here will describe hair-raising scenes from some of our city’s finest establishments,” Dickie said, looking around and then leaning toward Winston. “He’s one of the inspectors for the Liquor Control Board. He makes reports, you see, and jots down what goes on behind closed doors. And it’s not only bug infestations and watered-down booze like you’d expect. It’s scandalous. Far worse than all that.”

  Winston had never before dedicated a second of thought to the secret lives of cocktail lounges and beer parlours. Were they like Dot West, something other than what they appeared? After hearing Dickie’s revelations about perversion and managerial backstabbing at the Hudson’s Bay, he guessed it was possible; nothing was impervious. Winston felt suddenly eager to hear vignettes of cocktail lounge confidential.

  But the silence hinted that now was not the time for Ed’s revelations. Winston turned to the silent Contessa. He lurched slightly, eyes still closed.

  Winston was unable to keep pace with the thoroughbred conversationalists who surrounded him. He felt tongue-tied. As always that trait worried him; but he soon discovered that while he was frequently the object of attention—“Hush now, we’ll give the farmer a bad impression,” “Listen up, Hayseed”—he needed only appear alert and engaged. It was enjoyable listening to the racy talk that cemented their strange fraternity. The experience was reminiscent of sitting in a movie theatre and watching outlandishly bad characters interact with supremely heroic ones. Part of the pleasure came from knowing that their moral extremes bore little relation to the daily life of ordinary men.

  Besides, Winston could feel that his throat was scratchy from all the cigarette smoke; speaking at their rate would render him hoarse in short order. He envisioned them transplanted to the staff room and smiled at the quiet outraged responses they’d inspire. Mrs. Pierce would be beside herself, huffing and completely outgunned.

  “Well, we’d better get you back to your hotel before they lock up this town and throw away the key.” Dickie was already sliding back his chair so that he could stand. “Okay, boys, it was enchantant as ever. I’ll be seeing you.”

  Winston followed. “It was a pleasure to meet you all. Depending on my foot, it may be that we’ll meet again soon.”

  “The pleasure was ours,” Johnny said intently, then smiled. “See you, Hayseed.”

  “Au revoir.” Pierre’s eyes remained closed as he mumbled the words, “To be divine is your task and mine.”

  Ed stood and shook Winston’s hand energetically.

  The air outside was brisk and sharp with seashore decay. The breeze had picked up. Dickie told Winston that they would never find a taxicab; had they chosen to, they could have walked along the middle of the street without a single car passing them by. After he assured his guest that the fifteen-minute walk would be over in no time, Dickie offered up no additional words.

  “Ed’s a bit of a lush, hey?” Winston said, trying on Dickie’s cattiness for size.

  “He’s a close friend,” Dickie said. “I prefer not to speak of him in that way. He can’t help himself; he’s had a tough time of it.”

  Winston waited, thinking that Dickie was soon to launch into a fresh salvo of gossip. A dead or delinquent child maybe, lost jobs, or a wife who’d cruelly abandoned him. Dickie chose to elaborate no further.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” That was all Winston could think to say.

  “It’s nothing. We go a long way back, that’s all.”

  Winston felt confused like a bounding breed of dog with a master who let him roam free and then abruptly kept him tightly leashed. He was itching for Dickie to entice him with another story of epic misdeeds, but could never guess when one might surface.

  “It’s their benediction, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Pardon me?” Winston was relieved, glad to offer encouragement.

  “The Contessa belongs to the Queen For A Day Club, and corresponds with other winners in the States. When they have their luncheons they chant, ‘To be divine is your task and mine’ before they eat.”

  “But how can he be … a Queen?” Winston imagined he was getting entangled in Dickie’s double entendres.

  “Well, that’s a funny story, actually. He had a neighbour, some frumpy tragedy named Mrs. Claribel Spivak—that was her name, honest to God—who won a few years ago, before when it was on the radio only. It was the usual miserable story: flat broke, brats and bills and a loser of a husband who drank away their money and got rough when things didn’t go his way. Maybe she had goiter and gallstones too, I can’t remember. Anyway.”

  Dickie was enjoying drawing out the details, Winston could see. He had grown animated once again as he recalled the dregs of this woman’s marriage, creating cartoon pantomimes of the feckless husband guzzling from a bottle and children bawling in feverish rages. They walked in halting steps along Hastings Street, Dickie stopping now and again to look in windows of ladies wear shops and jewellery stores or else pausing to emphasize an element of the La Contessa biography.

  “The applause-o-meter was loudest after she trotted out her disasters, and so Mrs. Spivak got the grand prize. Must have been a slow week, I suppose. A few weeks later some ancient American relic who was a Queen in 1948 or something wrote to her and said she was eligible to join their special Club. Mrs. Spivak didn’t read so well and brought the letter to the Contessa. He explained it to her and offered to write back and see what benefits Spivak might get from belonging.” Dickie slowed his pace and looked directly at Winston. “But then—and here’s the kicker—Mr.-Spivak-the-boozer sold her things and abandoned his Queen of Misery. She couldn’t even make the rent and did a midnight move herself, kids in tow. The Contessa wrote back anyway and decided to play at being Mrs. Claribel Spivak for a while, sort of a member by proxy. He was even the Club’s Treasurer for a year. He sent a photograph of his mother to them after they asked for a memento for their scrapbook. Now, I think that when she’s had a few too many, the Contessa’s living through a little Club luncheon in her mind.”

  “That’s incredible. You gentlemen have lived so much more than I.” Winston felt as though he should say so, but he wasn’t entirely convinced.

  As Winston reached familiar sights at Granville Street, he felt himself being comforted by the sight of traffic, lights, and occasional after-hours revelers. The scarlet scall
op promoting SHELL oil was radiant, a beacon that served no purpose other than announcing its being at the very centre of things. The clock faces below, glowing hotly, warned latecomers in four directions. Winston was tired out. He realized that at his advanced age his taste for adventure had diminished. Not that he’d been much of a rebel when he was young. Still, an evening spent in the company of those eccentric men would become valuable, a curio for Alberta and something he could recall fondly whenever he chose. It was like nothing he had ever done before.

  “Here you are, Mr. Wilson.” Dickie’s upturned palms meant “Voilà.”

  Winston slowly surveyed his hotel, ground floor to roofline. “Well. That was quite an experience, Dickie. I can honestly say I have never occupied an evening quite this way.”

  “I aim to please, you know.” Dickie had to speak more loudly than usual because he’d stepped back from the hotel’s main doors. “I have the feeling we’ll be seeing you soon. Ta-ta.” Dickie turned away without the flourish Winston had come to expect. Winston watched until he disappeared around a corner, and then walked inside the brightly lit lobby. With a start, Dickie’s exclamation I’ve got a sight you do not want to miss, came to mind. The Port-Land could not have been the promised sight, Winston imagined. Perhaps Dickie was waylaid by that impromptu visit with his friends and they’d never arrived at the actual destination. It didn’t matter, Winston thought. The evening had been an adventure all the same.

  Only after gathering in the staff room did the assembled teachers realize their cramped sanctuary—chock-a-block with two chesterfields of advanced years and an assortment of mismatched chairs, tables, ashtrays, and cups for tea and coffee—would not serve them well. Cameron McKay suggested his classroom with its broad plain of black-topped work stations cluttered with sinks and Bunsen burners. “Plenty of surface area, it’ll do the trick,” he said, already standing up to leave.

  They strode down the empty halls, a gaggle of professional talkers now keen to begin one of their last get-togethers before the summer vacation. Close to Winston, Delilah thanked him once again for being so obliging with her special requests. She spoke quietly: “I don’t mean to impose, and yet that is what I seem to be doing whenever I walk through your door.”

  The Curriculum Committee had been asked to produce a list of recommended books for the new Family Life Education unit that would start up in September. Delilah had explained that the committee needed to act with haste since it had left this matter until so late in the year. She reminded him that he did not have to help them to make a decision, but his expertise with the materials and overview of their merit would be thoroughly welcome.

  Winston could hear McKay’s one-way conversation with dimple-cheeked Mrs. Pratt, the chubby Guidance Counselor whose flat expression and perennial drab woollens belied her happy-go-lucky disposition. Winston turned to see Mr. Westburn talking to his wife Mary and Miss Mittchel. It was plain that the Vice-Principal was telling them a joke; the man lived for them, or so he liked to say whenever Winston stood within earshot. Like whistling and gum chewing, joking was positioned high on Winston’s list of unsavoury characteristics.

  Now McKay was grumbling about woeful parents (“They should be required to get a license”) and the School Board’s passing the buck yet again.

  “Who will teach the darned course?,” he asked. “You? Miss Mittchel in Biology? Phys Ed? Ought we to bring someone in?” The enthused voice dragged in Winston and Delilah.

  “We used to have that dour nurse lady from the Canadian Social Hygiene Council come in. Delilah, you remember Mrs. Pitt, don’t you? She was like a Sherman tank or that sour Salvation Army matron who rings her bells in front of Eaton’s over the Christmas holidays. She did fine work, I imagine. No nonsense.” While talking he had scurried ahead of the group and now walked backwards to address them.

  Delilah was agreeable. “I’m sure she did, Cameron. I think the School Board is looking for something more comprehensive and more, well, secular. Perhaps Mrs. Pitt was too admonitory.” As though buffeted by a sudden gust, she patted her blonde hairdo.

  “And by that you mean?” McKay asked, stock still. He was testy; time and again, he’d explained that two-dollar words made his hackles rise.

  “You know precisely what I mean, Cameron. We have been through this before. It’s not a Sunday school lesson.” Winston recognized her pursed expression: it was all-purpose and he’d seen it manifest when students made atrocious excuses for not handing in homework assignments and in the face of inclement weather. Once, soured milk in the staff room refrigerator had brought it on.

  At the door to the Chemistry classroom she stopped and withdrew a sheet of paper from her file folder. She cleared her throat and addressed the impromptu assembly:

  “Here are the words we underlined in the report that the School Board sent to us—

  moral standards

  delinquency

  social diseases

  prevention

  hygiene

  family science

  citizenship

  And let’s not forget that there was the request, in italics no less, that ‘girls and boys should receive scientific education about the origins of life, their responsibility for life, and social standards.’ It’s these ideas we must sift through. Do you recall now, Cameron?”

  “No hellfire, in other words,” Winston said, directing the conversation back to Mrs. Pitt’s shortcomings. He felt thankful that he had steered clear of committee work. Enmity and groups always seemed to walk hand in hand.

  Winston was familiar with the Board’s goals. Weeks before, Delilah had spoken to him about her ideals for the unit: “the introduction of proper attitudes, high standards of moral conduct, the development of a healthy, sober, and moral attitude toward matters of sex”—she had pronounced the word gingerly—“in general.”

  They sat around two lab tables near the open windows. The breeze that came in smelled of grass clippings and lilac. Delilah, the chairwoman of the committee, spoke once everyone had settled on his wooden bench seat. “We will strive to make our selection today, but before we begin my special guest Mr. Wilson will give us his summary of the materials already in our library.”

  She clapped her hands in welcome and then turned to Winston. “As you are aware, Winston, our concern is with obtaining modern books that have no undue salaciousness. We are going to be teaching teenage boys and girls who take anything the wrong way. What do you have for us?”

  “Well, the library’s locked-up material really doesn’t add up to a mountain. It’s barely a molehill. A few volumes are relics from the reign of King George V. I can assure you that they’re just curiosities.”

  He held up a tattered brown book and passed it to Delilah. “Still, there is Healthy Living: Principles of Personal and Community Hygiene. It dates from nearly four decades ago, but it’s interesting and discusses everything except the kitchen sink: from caring for baby to preventing hookworm. And it has useful homework questions at the end of each chapter: ‘Why is picking the nose a dangerous as well as an unpleasant habit?,’ for instance.” Guffaws were followed by colourful anecdotes about poor student hygiene.

  “The author is from the Yale School of Medicine. He does go on a bit, though. And it’s two volumes as well. That could get expensive. The book could be out of print, even. I rather enjoy this one particular volume because some aspiring Browning has included her verse in big loopy letters—

  Fall into the river from

  off the deck,

  Fall down stairs and break

  your neck.

  Let the glittering stars

  fall from above,

  But never, never fall

  in love.

  “Awfully cynical for one so young, I’d say, but it might be the best sort of principle for students here in the Bend. Caveat emptor.”

  “Principles of Personal and Community Hygiene. Sounds socialistic,” McKay offered. No one answered his challenge.

  “
Let’s see, what else is there? Growing Up Emotionally and Facts of Life and Love for Teen-Agers were written specifically for young people, and feature the kinds of questions a juvenile would supposedly ask. They’re pamphlets, really, and a tad basic.

  “Some things—I am not at all certain how they found their way into our high-minded library—are too detailed and racy. Published in Germany, The Key to Love and Sex (in Eight Volumes), for instance, has explicit content. It does come in eight volumes, though, some more salacious than others, and they’re thin and modestly priced. There’s They Stand Apart, which is only about perversion from a legalistic perspective.” Winston was surprised when a picture of Leo Mantha hanging from the gallows coalesced before his eyes like a dream image. It lasted for the briefest of moments. “For both, I imagine parents would complain about the permissive attitude. In addition, the details might open a can of worms for inquisitive minds.” He handed Volume 4, The Abnormal Aspects of Sex, to Delilah and Volume 2, Historical Attitudes Toward Love and Sex, to the English and Western Civ teacher, Mary Westburn.

  “Both Attaining Manhood: A Doctor Talks To Boys About Sex and the Attaining Womanhood companion volume are matter of fact and informative. There is not too much technical terminology, but it is scientific. There’s nothing salacious at all. Nor socialistic.” He smiled toward Delilah. “And they are illustrated.” He gave both slim grey books to Cameron McKay.

  “Finally, there are some movie reels: Social-Sex Attitudes in Adolescence, The Meaning of Adolescence, and Physical Aspects of Puberty. I didn’t look at them, but I’d hazard that the last is more perfunctory than the others. Obviously, they should be secondary or supplementary.”

  “Oh, yes. Mrs. Partridge must have heard about this meeting because she stopped by and gave me a copy of her Home Economics textbook.” He held up the last of the books in his stack. “This brand new Junior Homemaking is fine, but it is really just a textbook designed to help girls become good housewives—if ‘How Pretty Can You Be?’ and ‘Are You a Household Treasure?’ are chapter titles we can judge by. It ought to remain in Home Ec.”