The Gift of Women

by George McWhirter

  The big guy just shakes his head and looks me in the face like we all got a permanent hole in our satchels at the Letter Carrier’s U and CUP-W.

  It’s Saturday, and the speedboats are dragging the parachute riders round Aka-puko bay. Like kids flying their own dumb fucking kites. What am I mad at? Mexico City has emptied its sewers and the shit has finally reached Aka-puko for Christmas. The joint is jumping with crowds of high-class and low-class Mexicans – nobody told me all kinds of Mexicans got the money to make it to Acapulco.

  Now, on the pool deck, there’s major movement. That lambada, man, like having stand-up sex in a roller coaster. No contest I want a part of, but the big guy and Cecile got it right. Finish your tanning at the pool by eight-thirty, then hit the beach and leave the young Mexicans the lumbago.

  I make sure to watch Gonzague and Cecile take their first dip of the day in the ocean. Him on his back, Cecile on top. She paddles into the waves, her chin tucked into his tits, paddling him, her buns bumping up and down, her legs and bare parts of her body floating like brown silk over the top of him.

  Now Gonzague decides to up, up and away on a parachute tow. Cecile’s mad at him because he took off when she fell asleep and the lambada competition blasting out behind just won’t quit because they’ve had hundreds of entries. Latin geriatrics are in, fakin’ it with the samba. Two hours of heats for the lambada, and know what? I realize that Mexico City smog is just a cloud of brown B.O.

  It’s not that I’m prejudiced, there are just too many of them for me to put up with. I talk to Mexicans, say “Hi” and “Buen aprovecho,” even ask them the age of their kids that go roaring around, and when I say there’s no end to them, this one guy from D.F. – that’s Mexico City – informs me, “Ju Quebec people, we know ju peoples. Ju think ju have the problems becoas the rest of the Canada doan like ju. Ju know they got bumper sticker say HAGA ALGO PATRIÓTICO, MÁTATE UN CHILANGO – Do patriotic thing, kill a chilango.” I ask, like, are these Chilangos some vermin? “Correcto, we the vermins from Mexico City. We Chilangos for we eat very much chile.”

  Anyways, I tell the Mexican, I’m on holiday from all that Quebec and Canada problem, and he tells me he’s on holiday too, from their Mexico City problem.

  Too much! There’s the big guy going by again already, waving at Cecile from his jolly jumper in the sky. He’s easier to see up there than most, and after a while he’s heading in for his landing when there’s this jerk. Some gust of wind– or the seams in the chute give and down he goes like a gannet. One of those dive-bomber birds, trailing the red chute like his blood and guts behind him.

  While he’s been up there, I bin down here, nodding at Cecile, making signs, pointing up at him, making like he’s a big toy we can both enjoy. I’m getting it worked out how to tell the Chilango shit in French, maybe I’ll get a laugh out of her. Maybe enlist some sympathy from a fellow Quebecker on the discrimination issue. We got committees and investigations on that in CUP-W. With Parrault you bet CUP-W workers got respect for Quebeckers. That guy’d wrestled a bear to get the membership a fur coat for the winter. Straight as a die even though he spat French and English out the side of his mouth, like both languages tasted terrible.

  Anyway, Cecile’s a Parrault type. Cutting like a knife for el Gonzo, ready to disembowel a Great White for him. Under she goes, then his head is on her shoulder, and she’s dragging him and the parachute.

  Mighta been his shroud if she hadn’t gone down and got a hold of him, for the Mexican guys in the boat haven’t got a grip on it. Their hands are all up in the air and by the time they put them in the right place, she’s ashore.

  Lays him up on the beach, parachute still dragged out behind him in the water, but she has to spend more time beating at the curious crowd than on Gonzo.

  Finally, I’m into it. It’s my scene – mob control in the strikes. I can turn ’em on, lead ’em away. I jump in and spread my arms over him like he’s a bomb and I’m shielding the silly fuckers behind me from certain death. I move back, getting the old arms wider, taking these Chilangos with me, and sure as usual, they fall for it, they move back.

  Cecile has her two fingers down Gonzague’s throat to get his tongue out, then she blows at his hairy mouth, and pretty soon he barfs and sits up, bigger than ever. Cecile falls back on her butt beside him and Gonzague stares at me, with this mob of Mexicans leaning over behind me. His body must have washed up and left his brains behind for he asks me, not seeing right – like, “Qui m’a sauvé? ” which sounds very much like Tonto’s “Quiemo sabe’”in the Lone Ranger. But when she nods at me, he hits the sand so hard with his fist, he buries his arm up to the elbow.

  The crowd at the backs of my arms gasps – glad I saved them from a dose of knuckles. Me, I haven’t uttered a word.

  For four days after that, Gonzague Gendron doesn’t say a word, just glares at my jugular in a way that makes my Adam’s apple jump. “He’s a gentleman,” Cecile keeps telling me every day, “who always pays his debts.”

  “Pay? What for?”

  She doesn’t answer that one, just says Gonzague will take me out on the town, and she delivers him to my door, dressed up in his grey suit, white shirt and pale puke tie. She’s in her wrap, telling him to look after me, even giving my blazer a tug.

  So, I like blazers, I tell the Gendrons. You can wear them anywhere, any time of the year. It’s got a CUP-W crest, which gives Gonzo a giggle. “The Capitain CUP-W,” he starts, “we have the table at Los Hongos. My wife, Cecile, she make the reservation, an’ over the telephon’ she choose the menu for the man who save me.” Cecile smiles and next off, puts us in a taxi at the Copacabana ramp. Then, we’re away – silver gorilla and CUP-W.

  He’s polite and his English improves as he goes, my French gets all junked up. Turns out he’s a partner in an advertising agency. Would have been a copywriter till the cows come home, he says, ’cept for Cecile. She’s thirty-eight, he’s forty. They have two kids still in school, staying with her parents in Montréal. The parents and them will be down later.

  I’m forty-one and a bachelor. He’s just the son of a farmer, did this degree in letters, too shy ever to say a word in his class. I’m noddin’ and listenin’, scared I’ll make an ass out of myself about her when he talks about his Cecile. Gonzague reaches over and grips my shoulder.

  “You save me?” he asks me, but it’s a question I haven’t the guts to answer. “How you feel? Capitain CUP-W save a farmer’s boy, or a big business executive – which you prefer, Capitain CUP-W? I use to be real rough. Her family…” he kisses his fingertips, “Cordon bleu.”

  The day’s special is mushroom stuffed with shrimp on Witchey-nango… Witchey-nango, chiley-nango – I’m thinking the fish is a relative of Mexico City folks that somebody killed. So, I go for a portion of fresh tuna steak and haricots verts. I am going back over everything I eat because it might be coming up again. Gonzo’s fingers are drumming away, agitated as hell, like he wants to play a Jerry Lee Lewis number on my throat.

  “You save me?” he says this all over again.

  This restaurant, Los Hongos, is real ritzy, but the patrons all look like prime rib and lobster eaters, if you get the picture. Plain sorts sitting down to fancy food on their holidays. Then, Gonzo raises his glass, sticks out his hand and hauls me up with him, points me at all the people in the place and he gives them a bit of his Spanish. None of them looks too pleased. A couple of guys have got up and for no round of applause either.

  “What did you tell these people?” I ask.

  “That you save me. You pick me up out of the sea with one hand and save my useless life. You are an Anglo and have balls twice the size of their brains, or their wallets.”

  “That’s one good speech,” I say. “You should have saved it for my gravestone.”

  “You are one tough guy, you save me from drowning and a fate worse than death.”

  “From what – the bad breath of all those Mexico City guys gawkin’ at you on the beach?”
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  That’s when I tell him I never saved him. I’ve only gone along with it because she’s told me to.

  “And why she do that?” says he. “So I not feel helpless and beholden to a woman who save him from drowning in a ditch already, back on the farm, in Kweebec.”

  But the bugger kisses me, laughs and talks in Spanish, telling everybody in Los Hongos one more thing about me, one more for the road to hell I’m thinking. “I tell them I make mistake,” he says. “You wish your brains and balls were half the size of theirs, and that you could spend the contents of your wallet on them.”

  For sure the bugger’s in advertising. Work them up, work them down.

  “I love her,” he says, and his gush gets more embarrassing and hurtful than his public speaking. “Without her I would be a farm boy or a copywriter all my grown life.” Tears are in his eyes, and he’s kissing my cheeks like I was her. “CUP-W,” he says. “She made me talk good French.” And as soon as that comes out, his English goes strange. “It is the Noel,” he says. “It is not good for a man to say he is more lucky than little Jesus in his Madonna’s arms. You know, CUP-W. This woman she is my saviour.”

  Well, did I join him in this bit of lovesick heresy? No way. I’m gonna stick to old reliable. It’ll be CUP-W that saves me, and no French Canadian Madonna, no matter how well made she is, or her C-cup bikinis.

  Or little black dress she’s stands in behind the door after Gonzo hauls me up for “le nightcap.” (Only nightcap I want pulls over my eyes when I hit the sack in Hull.) But, Hi-Ho, Silver! It’s up to the penthouse with Gonzague Gagnon. One floor higher and God’d be sharing a slug of champagne with us. That’s what Cecile holds out for her heroes – two flutes full of it.

  Boy, do I glug and gag on my four ounces of bubbly. The jump to the 18th floor left my throat and stomach stranded on the 2nd, then, this roasting on Cecile’s toast. “To our saviour…” Fine, since it’s Christmas, right? Next, like the blast of a Mack truck’s brakes, she lets out an oath, “Sacre bleu, ça c’est sacrilèges! Ah…” she looks at me… “Le mot juste en Anglais? Oui, our life saver!” I know ’n’uf French to yell, ‘ Moi, j’ai besoin d’un salvateur!’ But do I – no, though I bin burnin’ at the stake all night for bein’ a fake, and I’m wobble-headed, watchin’ him winkin’ and her drinkin’; then him drinkin’ and her winkin’. The our-secret stuff between me and Cecile taps all the pep out of me, keepin’ my trap shut, never mind the Gonzo and Cecile lovey-dovies. In front of yours truly, who’s never seen a love letter cross the flap of his mailbox. I tell you that hole in my hall got so bad, I held other folks’ hearts and flowers mail up to those big lights in cages that hang over the sorting-room. Love gush inside read as faint as my hopes of gettin’ any love myself. Penthouse balcony scene with Gonzo and Cecile don’t help either – all view and no prospect of me sharin’ in the kissin’. Still, grace under pressure, that’s me. I steal a line from “The Lady Is a Tramp” for my get-away. “Oh, what a night, such a beautiful night,” says I, “but I bettah call it a notte.”

  Moon up there’s on high beam for Gonzo and his girl. On the big dimmer for me.

  I give my blazer a tug, salute, and leave them to it.

  SISTERS IN SPADES

  Sister Felicitas scolds me. Usually, it is my bad calculus or lab book that gets it; this time, it’s taking a spade from where it leans against what was the gardener’s lodge, but which now serves as the school chemistry lab. The men who do the garden don’t live-in anymore.

  I can’t believe Sister Felicitas took the spade from me so daintily. Outdoors, the gym-and-chem teacher grabs everything like a bat, but inside she is otherwise. This is the inside Sister, who handles the spade as she does tetrameters, beakers and slender vials to be stored in the lab fridges.

  After resting the spade back against the wall, Sister Felicitas brushes her grey cardigan and pleated grey skirt.

  “But why does he leave it here?” I ask.

  “Who’s he?”

  “The gardener.”

  “Have you been watching one of the labourers… Have you some arrangement attached to this spade?”

  The wood on the grip has a leathery glaze from the hands that use it.

  “Sister Felicitas, would I ask you why the gardener leaves it here, if I had anything to do with him?”

  I pose the point, logically, like the nuns teach us to. I get no answer.

  “Should it not be away in the tool shed – out of the weather?” I wallow in saying weather, the Irish way, meaning rain.

  “I caught sight of him,” I say, choosing my words. “He wears leggings made out of old sacks, tied round his shins.” Like a poor man’s puttees, I think, but don’t say.

  “You are…if I remember rightly…a Waterston?”

  All St. Ursa’s girls are addressed by surnames, but I’m stumped at once by her “a,” which puts me in my place through the Waterston collective.

  “You know fine well I am, Sister Felicitas.”

  “And sent back.”

  I think Sister Felicitas refers to placement, my being put back a year into Fifth Form when I came from Mississauga to St. Ursa’s in Ireland.

  “What’s your meaning, Sister?”

  “Sent back to your old home,” Sister Felicitas frowns. “The Waterstons are not supposed to touch anything to do with the property. Keep in touch, and your family has, but the property is to be left alone. Everything in the garden has its place, and it’s not for you to choose where they go any more. How did you happen to see this…gardener?”

  I point up to the window that looks down from our attic dorm.

  “From our room.”

  “Then, you must be moved. We can’t have our girls watching young men going about their work. Especially, a Waterston.”

  Once again, my curse of being a Waterston in the town of Waterston, in what was Waterston Hall. As bad as being the head teacher’s daughter. Extra severity seeps into the Sisters’ voices when they mention any deficit in my studies or appearance. Like some form of fat, I feel debilitated by Waterston money. My father did tell me to dig into my schoolwork, not our history. But said as if Dad insinuated I should.

  In bed I often do a rewind mind-run on the toboggan down the slope from the back of our Mississauga house to the Credit River. In Mississauga, Ontario, I fill the slope with school friends to crowd out whatever my father, grandmother and great-grandmother stare at there, on the slope from our house down to the Credit River.

  I have had this luxury of Waterston women to advise and the family business to prepare me. Rosheen Waterston, my great-grandmother, filed the first records and searched for guests at the Toronto hub. The Waterstons have always run Lineage Hotels, which operate not unlike the Mormon Center in Salt Lake City with its worldwide family information and database. This feature keeps Waterston Hotels running as continuous conference and research centres. But my father still speaks to my grandmothers and my mother about me as if I’m not there – even before I’m not there.

  “Can she bear to be on her own with only memories of us to keep her company?”

  “Memories are a man’s distraction, but woman’s daily bread. In any case, it’s our trade,” my grandmother harrumphs at him, and my mother won’t even look up at my father from the chair where she sits, reading Chatelaine.

  I quote her. “She abhors his absurd mix of sentimentality and trepidation at his decision to return his daughter to the fold, but then she only married into the Waterstons.”

  They gather in the kitchen, like it’s their debating chamber. Kessie, the cook, uses a wooden spoon, a pot or a pan like a gavel when discussion gets in the way of their eating or her cooking.

  They settle my switching schools over a seafood sauce and pasta-draining session. “The Grey Nuns will take care of her.”

  “The Grey Nuns?” I ask.

  “Charity begins at home, in our case, our old home,” I am informed.

  I learn Waterston Hall was a gift to the Grey Nuns in Irel
and, and Waterston Hall is now St. Ursa’s School, where the nuns shall pass the benefit of their wisdom and instruction on to me. Amen.

  “Okay, I agree to a good Catholic education, and to live without a friend in the world.” Neither relieved nor pleased, they peer at me like I am one of Kessie’s pots and colanders she has struck with her wooden spoon.

  In Mississauga I would be going into Grade 12 after the summer break; at St. Ursa’s I’m in Fifth Form. Put back and prickly as a pincushion about it, I badger to Sister Felicitas in chemistry over my top mark for my lab book. “Shows I should be in the Sixth Form,” I tell her.

  “Don’t feel that you are behind, Jean. The Irish are always ahead of themselves in their educational standards because of their reputation for being backward, but then, the Irish always see their way forward by looking back.”

  “Sounds like everything slips into reverse, here! Even common sense,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “You are only going back a year, one of the hundreds.”

  From Waterston, a view of the Boyne lies in the distance. The lawned slope from the school leads into squared fields, clusters of trees and towns, a misty grid and something else of mystery and muddle haunts my heritage: this spade.

  “Well, it’s back for him when he comes to get it, later.”

  I startle Sister Felicitas with this reply.

  “How much later?” she snaps.

  If the young man props the spade opposite the girl’s dorm, he does so for attention, but I don’t disclose that I wait at the dorm window till he picks up his spade and takes it into the dark with him. Like a gaffer I keep a time sheet in an exercise book for him: his hours of departure and return. After a night’s labour, shaking with exertion and steaming with sweat or dew, he leans on his spade, wraps his fist around the handle, which digs in under his breastbone, like it’s giving him a paralyzing punch to the pelvis.

  When I gently open the window, I hear the same thing every night: “’Taint no way enuf. Nine hours solid, and bad as ever, when I’ve done. Not’in’ where it shud be.”