The Wives of Bath

by Susan Swan

  HIS LORDSHIP: I’m puzzled, Dr. Torval. Are you suggesting the defendant is sick? Her responses sound intelligent enough.

  DR. TORVAL: If I may continue, I believe this will become clear, my lord.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Let us hope so, Dr. Torval.

  DR. TORVAL: TO the proverb “Wisdom is better than rubies,” the defendant replied, “Rubies look nice.” And to the proverb “Any port in a storm,” the defendant made no answer.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Thank you, Dr. Torval. Did you give her any other tests?

  DR. TORVAL: No. Because, you see, from the proverb test, my lord, it was obvious the defendant is not capable of abstract thinking. She sees things in black and white and is not able to make any of the leaps in her mind that even the most ordinary person is capable of doing.

  Paulie not capable of abstract thought? Or an act of the imagination? What else, I ask you, was her strange and frightening act if not that?

  34

  “Miss Vaughan wants to see you after the show,” Ismay the Terrible said as we ran out to take our places in the school play. She didn’t give me a chance to ask why.

  We performed in the gym, which the junior school had decorated for our Christmas party. Ugly crepe Christmas trees on sand-coloured crepe trunks snaked up the wall between the stained-glass windows, and across the huge double doors at the entrance the junior school had hung tennis nets decorated with little snow-covered houses made of construction paper and cotton batting. On one end of the fleecy mural sat a big grey house with a spire—Bath Ladies College. A replica of the Kings College clock tower had been pasted on the opposite side of the mural. In the middle dangled cutout replicas of the baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

  I could feel my hands sweating as I held Ismay’s arm to take our bows. The girls clapped and called out “Encore, encore,” which is what they imagined audiences said in the real world. But the Virgin didn’t move a muscle. Instead, she eyed me and whispered to Mrs. Peddie. What had I done this time? It was true I’d put on nail polish in study again, but I’d made sure nobody saw me. And I’d perfected the old-girls’ trick of stealing Oreos—stuffing them, in one scoop, into the sleeve of my dressing gown. These misdemeanours were too small to make the Virgin look at me so strangely. Maybe she knew about Lewis and Nick.

  All the Really Horrible, Inconvenient Feelings

  The Virgin rose from her seat the moment I exited. In the dressing room, I sat waiting before the mirror. Behind me, Ismay struggled out of her ugly nylons with the black seams that ran up the backs of her thighs like highway dividers. I wanted to signal to Paulie, who was one of the stagehands putting away the props, but I hadn’t spoken to her since the beatings. Still, if I was about to get expelled, why did the Virgin look so sad? Maybe she had a heart after all. But how dumb! I already knew she did—and so did Mrs. Peddie, because I had seen it in their letters. My own eyes had read the words that said the two biddies were capable of the most embarrassing emotions: love and anger and humiliation—all the really horrible, inconvenient feelings you could hope for swarmed in their matronly bosoms.

  The Virgin walked in first; then Mrs. Peddie entered three paces behind, like Prince Philip following Queen Elizabeth. Neither of them spoke. The Virgin held out her hand. It wasn’t a gesture that asked for me to hold out mine in return.

  “Mary, there’s been some bad news,” the Virgin said. “Could you come to my office, please.”

  Ismay hurried away, not daring to look at me, and Mrs. Peddie and I followed the Virgin’s bearlike form down the shadowy corridor behind the stage leading to her office. We passed the secret cubby hole where Miss Vaughan let Clare, the boarder captain, go to cry when helping the matrons run the boarding school became too much for her. Maybe Clare was crouched there now, crying like a fool.

  At the door, Mrs. Peddie stepped aside, smiling guiltily, as if to say, I’m sorry, Mary Beatrice, I can’t go any farther with you: each of us must travel solo into the sulphurous bowels of hell. The Virgin banged the door shut on Mrs. Peddie’s concerned face and waved me to a chair. She sat down and put her elbows on the desk in front of her. She sighed heavily. It’s all over, Mouse, I thought.

  “Mary Beatrice, your father’s dead,” the Virgin said finally. “We don’t know the details, but your stepmother wants you to phone her.”

  For one embarrassing second, I didn’t react. Then I nodded—twice, in case Miss Vaughan hadn’t understood the first time. I didn’t see why she should be upset. Everybody said Morley worked too hard. So I knew Morley would kick the bucket one of these days; that’s why I’d written Norman Vincent Peale. But nobody had listened to me. Now I wouldn’t be going out on my date with Jack O’Malley.

  The Virgin stared at me and then turned her back and dialled the phone. A moment later, she handed me the receiver. I heard Sal’s voice at the other end. It was like a weird echo of Sal, not the Sal I knew. Her voice was muffled by sobs, so I had to concentrate hard to hear her.

  “He’s left us, Mouse,” she said. There was a long silence. I didn’t say anything. Then she sobbed again. “Mouse? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I said finally.

  “He died on his way to Barry Island. A woman was having her baby there, and none of the other doctors would go.” Sal began to weep so hard I could barely hear her. “Isn’t that just typical?”

  I didn’t say anything. Barry Island was an Indian reserve near Madoc’s Landing. I handed the phone back to the Virgin. I didn’t want to talk long-distance anymore. I watched the Virgin talk to Sal. The Virgin said, “Oh, yes, very upset. Too upset to talk to you right now, Mrs. Bradford.” Then the Virgin said how terribly sorry she was and uttered phrases like, “Car got stuck in the slush, did it?” and, “Oh I see. He went for help, did he? And then a heart attack. Yes. The cold. Ah—too much for him. Yes. Wait. She’s asking me something.” I’d stood up. “Lady?” I said. “Our dog?”

  “Lost, I’m afraid,” the Virgin said to me. And then: “No., not now. Let me get her trip up to Madoc’s Landing organized.”

  The Virgin put down the phone. “I’m terribly sorry, Mary Beatrice,” she said.

  I stood up and walked out the door without waiting for her permission.

  Part Two

  35

  Down the icy hill, through an archway of snow-covered branches, I saw the doctor’s house. That’s what people in Madoc’s Landing called our large, gabled home. It was the only house on the block with a wreath on the door. At first I thought it was a Christmas decoration, and then I realized it was too early—only the first of December. The wreath was for Morley.

  Our house was of new red brick with gingerbread trim over the windows and large brick chimneys that sprouted from the roof in unlikely places. The old bay window I liked on the first floor was hidden behind a new addition with a garish California picture window that Sal had made Morley build. The other homes had been built over a hundred and fifty years before for British naval officers who came to Madoc’s Landing to stop the Americans from invading Canada. Now these three-story clapboard houses belonged to schoolteachers and shopkeepers in the Landing.

  To the east of our house, behind a grove of spruce, crouched the asylum. It was a huge brick mausoleum eight or ten times the size of our house with a screened veranda and twin cupolas. It had been built the same year. Our house had once belonged to the head of the nuthouse (Sal’s word for it), but now the staff of the asylum lived in concrete quarters built farther down the hill, toward the bay. They drove shiny new Buicks because they made so much money from overtime, and people in the Landing said they used tear gas and German shepherd dogs on the prisoners, just like guards did in real prisons. Morley said these rumours were garbage. He used to play tennis with the inmates, and he was sometimes called the nuthouse doctor because he used to visit the mental patients for free. He put up paintings in our living room by his favourite patient, an older woman who thought she was a tennis pro. These paintings—small, brooding scenes of ice-locked lakes and c
ars abandoned on old roads—were done with thick brushstrokes, as if she were imitating Van Gogh. I often thought that if I looked at these paintings hard enough, I would find she had left me a terrible message.

  The taxi crept up our drive, spinning its wheels on the slippery pavement. The snow was already high—almost up to the sill of the picture window. I paid the driver with the money the Virgin had given me and then walked slowly up the steps and knocked on my own front door. It swung open and I saw an expansive, high-ceilinged room with blazing fires. I felt as if it were the home of somebody I didn’t know and then Sal was throwing her arms around me. Behind her, two shadowy figures moved slowly toward us—Uncle Winnie and Aunt Margaret. I walked in and stood in front of the fire, warming my hands, and my uncle came over, smiling chummily.

  “There are many things I could say, Old Mouser. I think you know what they are, so there’s no point saying them now.”

  He looked at me as if he’d done me a favour. But this was a time I wanted him to talk. I needed him to make me feel better about Morley—to say something about what a good man he was. Sal seemed to be waiting, too; she stood beside me weeping and smelling of Listerine—a bad sign.

  “Why don’t you say a prayer, Winnie?” my aunt said.

  “Oh, God, give us the spiritual courage to continue day after day without our dearly beloved father and brother-in-law, Morley Bradford.” My uncle paused to resettle his hands on his stomach. “And give to this young girl among us grace and fortitude in her new life with Margaret and myself.”

  I started to say something, but the floor wobbled beneath me. When I opened my eyes, I found myself with Sal in the guest room, where she put Morley or me if we were sick. She said I shouldn’t take my uncle’s offer seriously. He said he wanted to be my guardian, but he was only doing what he thought was expected of him. His heart wasn’t in it, Sal said. I listened suspiciously and sighed my old Mouse sigh when she crawled into bed beside me and began to sob again. “Oh, Mouse,” she whispered. “I loved him the moment he walked through the hospital door and said, Sal, you’re a sight for sore eyes. He always liked me to take care of him, but I couldn’t cure him of his bad heart, could I, Mouse?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Sal,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault he worked so hard.” I stared at the ceiling. Sal was drunk, so I couldn’t tell her how much I needed her not to talk about Morley’s love for her. There just wasn’t enough Morley love to go around, and I hadn’t got my share.

  36

  Ahead of our car, the hearse skidded down the narrow road into the cemetery of St. Patrick’s banging its grille into the high, stiff banks of snow that rose on either side of us like walls of frozen shaving cream. The snow came earlier in Madoc’s Landing than it did in Toronto, and my hometown had already been through two thaws and two freeze-overs. We all held our breath and then the hearse bounced back again onto the road. My uncle breathed out in relief, his fingers still tight on the wheel. He was in charge of driving Blinky, and one of the funeral directors sat in the front beside him—a tall, red-haired man with a moustache that Sal said you saw only on Fuller Brush salesmen.

  Sal sat beside me in the back seat. My aunt was on the other side, rubbing at the frosted windows in order to make a peephole. It was below zero.

  I felt safe in Blinky. The car made me think Morley was with us, and I knew how put off he’d be by the way my uncle was braking his car on the slippery country road. If you grow up in northern Ontario, you know you have to pump the brake over ice so you don’t skid.

  Good-bye to Morley

  The funeral director helped my aunt out first. Then he took Sal’s hand, and I saw his eyes dart sideways when she staggered a little. I stumbled out as quickly as I could, grabbing her elbow in case she slipped. It was as if Morley were watching me now from the back of the hearse—smiling at me in his planting suit, as Sal said the undertaker had called the striped worsted suit he’d put on my father. I hated the word “planting.” It was a farmer’s word, and Sal had repeated it as a joke, because that’s what her people called the clothes they put on a corpse.

  Most of the people from Madoc’s Landing had come to Morley’s funeral, and now they were getting out of their cars behind us—farmers still in thigh-high rubber boots, the shop owners and their wives muffled up in winter clothes like the cartoon ad of Mr. Bib, the Michelin tire man. I noticed the other doctors and nurses from the General, and some of my old schoolmates, who looked at me sympathetically from under the pompommed peaks of wool toques. I didn’t want their pity, and I resented Morley for dying and putting us in a vulnerable position in front of the town. It felt as if his death had left me without my skin, only easy-to-bruise blood and guts.

  I looked over the mourners’ heads at the little lake at the bottom of the cemetery. It, too, lay covered with snow; skating there would be difficult. I’d only skated on the lake once, with Sal, and I’d wobbled over on my ankles until I couldn’t stop crying, and Sal had made me give it up. But I knew I had to act grown-up from now on. I had to do things that made people say Mouse Bradford has common sense, so Morley would finally be proud of me.

  We began to gather in a long line behind my uncle. He was ignoring what the funeral director said to him and was waving at small groups of people to come closer. He had draped a fringed ecclesiastical scarf outside his winter coat so there was no mistaking who he was. Sal had given him one of Morley’s Homburg hats and Morley’s fine beige kid gloves. He looked like a funhouse caricature of my father. He was half Morley’s height, with a face swollen up like a boil from overeating. I wondered what Kong would think of him and how he would do with Paulie’s tests. Men had all the luck: they got to be men by an accident of birth. My uncle frowned, as if he’d heard me and staggered ahead of the funeral director in his unzippered sheepskin-lined galoshes, whose sides flapped open right to his toes. He stopped and waved at something, and I saw Morley’s grave. About twenty feet away a cast-iron wood stove smoked in a half-dug rectangular hole. Beside it, two men whacked the frozen earth with pickaxes. My uncle waved again, and the two men scrambled up and faded into the crowd like a pair of crows. The snow near the grave was churned up into an ugly red slush. I stared at the room in the ground where Morley’s body was to go and looked away. And then—to my shock—who did I see staring at me across that strange, half-finished trench but the Virgin. The December wind was tugging at her white hair, which was smashed flat under a navy cloche hat. I smiled gratefully. I couldn’t believe she had come all the way to Madoc’s Landing for my father’s funeral. She smiled back at me across the space and pointed to somebody. Paulie, also in the school’s navy church-going hat and coat. Chewing gum and staring down into Morley’s grave, as if she were looking at the grave Sergeant and Willy had dug for the pigeons.

  In her shapeless clothes, the Virgin looked like what the boys in Madoc’s Landing call a dud—somebody you won’t take out unless you can put a bag over her head. And Paulie, whose sinewy, masculine body was hidden in our Sunday uniform—Paulie just looked shorter than I remembered and immature.

  It began to snow again on the way back to our house. My uncle said Morley’s body would be stored in the stone chapel at the front of the cemetery until the men could unthaw the earth with the stove and dig a proper grave. The delay comforted me; I couldn’t bear to think of Morley under the snowy earth. If it had been me, I’d have liked to stay in the chapel for good.

  As my uncle turned right at the cemetery gate, my aunt handed me a package of letters from the girls at the school. “That very tall, distinguished-looking woman gave these to me for you.” My aunt stared at Sal’s head on my shoulder. I said Sal was worn out from the ordeal of the funeral and my aunt smiled at me. She was the kind of woman who wanted to believe the best of people, so if you could come up with an excuse—anything that sounded halfway acceptable—she took you at your word. This meant I had insurance against my uncle’s disapproving code. One member of that family would be what Sal called biddable�
��somebody who would try to see something in my terms.

  In the car, I skimmed the perfunctory letters from class presidents on white notepaper sprinkled with embossed silver ferns asking me to let them know if there was anything they could do for me. I thought it was a stupid thing to offer. How could they do something for me when I was in Madoc’s Landing? And even if I were back at school, what could they do? I felt embarrassed for them, as if I were looking at letters sent to somebody else and I was just an intermediary in a ritual.

  There was one letter I did read—from Tory.

  December 13, 1963

  Dear Mouse,

  We are all dreadfully sorry to hear about your father. The Virgin told us the news in prayers and looked quite sad for you. Even Old Phillips seemed affected!! As you may have guessed, I am back at the dungeon. My legs are almost healed, and I whiz around like anything on my trusty crutches. By the way, I am sleeping in your bed. Don’t worry, Mouse! I won’t take your place! I can’t wait until next term, when we will all be together again!!! Ismay and Paulie hate each other’s guts, and it’s all I can do to keep the peace around here. After Christmas, Miss Vaughan is putting Ismay back in a single room. The worst thing is, Paulie’s taken to thinking I like Ismay better than her. All because Ismay brought me homework in November!! But you know how hard it is to talk Paulie out of something once she’s made her mind up. I guess that’s why we love her, huh?

  Meanwhile, the girl who took your part in the play forgets her lines and doesn’t look like an office boy at all. It was pretty upsetting to see everybody take their bows without you. We are all thinking of you and pulling for you.

  Love,