“That’s right, get on out of it, you little bitch,” she said, turning viciously on me. I scrambled out of the float, scraping one knee painfully in my haste. She seized my arm and stooped to bring her face frighteningly close to mine. She smelled of pepper and onions and rage. “If ever I see you again, I’ll ’ave your guts, understand? Dirty little beast, you’re old enough to know better. Now get out of it, and remember what I tell yer.”
I got out of it. I never saw Gary again. And I never knew which of them was the pervert. To the best of my recollection, he had never touched me, while she certainly had. But that was not really the point, then or now. The one thing clear was that somehow I was the guilty one. Exactly what I had done wrong was too hard to put into words. But to be alone like this was more than just my misfortune; it was my fault, for who else was there to blame for it? I scrubbed at my bleeding knee with a grubby handkerchief and went back to the hotel, where I was more careful than usual to avoid the old Christian with the whiskers. Billie was at the hairdresser’s. I never told her or anyone else about Gary.
“We go to work on Monday and Tuesday,” murmured Martha, running a small ambulance painfully over my foot; and with a start I put Trollope away. Today was surely Wednesday. And that reminded me there were at least twenty household jobs that urgently needed attention before I went into hospital. The thought of Margaret’s clear eyes – not to mention Ross’s expression – when they saw my linen-cupboard/pantry/clothes-closets/fridge/kids’ room was enough to fire me with a resolve at least to vacuum the entire downstairs before lunch. Unfortunately I hated our vacuum cleaner with the kind of personal and intense bitterness some people bring to politics or religion. It was a moral victory just to open the cupboard door under the stairs and drag the machine out, squealing, its long cord vindictively pulling forth all sorts of unrelated objects. When the phone rang during the process, I answered it in the brisk, resentful voice of one deeply engaged in important business.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Graham?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Sharon in Dr. Mohammed’s office calling. Just to remind you about your dental-hygiene appointment tomorrow at four.”
What I would like to have said was it couldn’t matter less if all my teeth fell out simultaneously like hailstones, as they might well do in the near future. Instead, I said meekly (Sharon being a very large girl, and mistress of many implements of torture), “Yes, thanks, Sharon; I’ll be there.”
I hung up brusquely. The vacuum cleaner grinned sardonically as I disentangled its cord from a collection of pull-toys and several pieces of material – unfinished nightgowns for the new baby, I discovered on inspection. Two months ago I’d run them up on the machine and begun to smock them around the neck and wrists; then I’d run out of embroidery cotton and somehow lost track of the whole project. But the fact was this baby needed clothes badly. Hugh’s and Martha’s outgrown things were too exhausted to be of any use a third time round. And though it was a bit odd to feel under an obligation to someone whose face you had yet to see, I did consider that this third error of mine deserved a wardrobe of its own, as a kind of compensation for being so randomly begun. It was this feeling that had made me buy four yards of blue flannelette printed with cheerful small birds in flight, and set to work.
There was not much left to do on the little gowns. I could finish them off in an hour or so. And suddenly this seemed like a better investment of time than any amount of vacuuming. With my foot I pushed the machine back into the closet, threw the toys after it, and called, “Come on, kids. We’re going to see the Loom Lady.”
As we approached the Craft Shop, we fell in behind two women who had been hovering at the window looking in at Jennifer’s patchwork cushions. They opened the door and were about to step in when Jen emerged from the back regions and they saw her colour. Instantly they stepped back and turned away, all but trampling my kids in their haste to escape.
“Cows,” I said to Jen by way of greeting.
“Ah well,” she said calmly. “They’re entitled. It’s a free country.”
“But it must madden you, that people like that are still around.”
“No point in getting mad. It’s just one of those things. I reckon it will always be this way – human nature. The Bible’s got it right: ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?’ No, they damn well can’t, either of them. So what can I do for you today? Come to buy a loom?”
“Funny lady.”
The kids disappeared to inspect the baby, who could be heard making faint, chirping noises in the background.
“No, I just need some blue cotton for smocking.”
“Right. Choose your blue.” She plucked a handful of little skeins out of a drawer and held them out to me. With a sigh I tried to identify which one matched my sample thread.
“Feeling low?” she asked.
“Don’t ask, Jen. Lower than a monkey’s ass.”
“Oh, come on. Life without men – think how simple. How serene. I mean, full of fringe benefits like that.”
“Sure. So’s a catatonic trance.”
Jenny laughed, her whole face breaking open. “I saw your husband yesterday, actually. Went past the window here fast. He looked mad.”
“Oh, really?” I could find no good news in this message, and Jenny didn’t try to manufacture any. Instead she said, “How about a cup of tea?”
“Thanks, but I have to get back. My neighbour’s kids are coming over for the afternoon. I wish they weren’t and I could.”
“Another time,” she said calmly. And it hurt to think how little it meant to her whether I went or stayed; how self-sufficient she was; how insulated. She seemed to need nothing from me or anyone else, whereas I … Then I caught sight of her profile, turned to glance at the door where another customer was poised. Her lips were firmly closed, her eyes hooded, and I realized for the first time at how high a price she’d come to terms with her own solitude.
“Children! We’re going. Wait, Jen; I’ve got the right change. Take you up on that tea offer soon. Come on, Hugh.”
I herded them out onto the pavement, where a thin drift of last year’s brown leaves scrabbled ahead of the wind. A woman hurried past us, head ducked low, adjusting a pair of dark glasses, and I said, surprised, “Hullo there, Marga –” but she went on without turning. Two things about this intrigued me greatly. One was that it was certainly Margaret behind those shades. The other was that before she slipped them on, I had distinctly seen that they covered a whopping black eye. My depression lifted dramatically as I tugged the kids homeward. How fascinating it was to speculate which one of her husbands had given it to her, and in the course of what kind of uncivilized debate. Did one of them want a divorce, and if so, which? Maddening to think that I might never know. On the other hand, maybe it was more fun to be kept guessing.
On our corner, someone had carelessly dropped a whole bag of baker’s cookies, and a flotilla of pigeons busily bobbed and pivoted around the split brown paper and mess of crumbs. Martha at once ran toward them, doubtless with the idea of sharing the loot, but the birds flashed up into the cold air at her approach with such a clatter of stiff, dark-feathered wings that she paused, frightened.
And without warning there came into my memory, whole and vivid, my father’s face, forgotten since my seventh year. There it was, long-boned, pale, a frown bitten between the grey-green, long-sighted eyes. Something about birds – what was it? – he was telling me about birds. The dry, academic timbre of his voice, a salt taste of tears … yes, I’d been sent to bed for some crime or other, perhaps for making a noise. Because surely he was ill then; he wore some kind of nightwear – a dressing-gown with rather grand velvet lapels. He drew open the curtains to let in a pinkish evening light.
“Anne? You’re not still crying, are you?”
“No,” I lied, trying not to sniffle.
He was a remote person, severe with himself and everyone else. His anger was rar
e, but freezing and devastating when it descended, as it had on me that afternoon. Dimly I could recall baby games and cuddling; but in the last year or two my dimples had disappeared; I grew leggy and lost all my top teeth. It was my private opinion that he was disappointed I’d grown so ugly. It was a surprise when, lowering himself stiffly, he sat down on the edge of my bed.
“Use your handkerchief,” he said.
Damply I obeyed. There was a pause, as if he wasn’t sure what to do or say next.
“Would you like me to read to you, or tell a story?”
“Tell, please.”
Again there was a silence, teased only by the birds chirping sleepily to each other in the garden.
“When I was a very young man,” he began slowly, “I had an illness, and the doctors thought it would do me good to go to a different climate – somewhere dry and warm. So I was sent across to Canada. In those days it took nearly two weeks to cross the Atlantic, even in a big ship, and when I landed in Halifax I got on a train and travelled days and days more across the country till I reached the west. It’s a very huge country, and a good deal of it in those days was still wild, covered with virgin forest and completely empty. You could go for miles and miles without seeing a single house or a living person. If it hadn’t been for the railway itself, you might think the human race hadn’t been invented yet. That huge sky and the emptiness might have disturbed some people, but I found it healing, somehow. I started to get well.” He paused here to cough.
My thumb stole furtively into my mouth. He was talking to himself rather than to me, as adults so rarely do to children, and this created a sort of person-to-person intimacy we’d never shared before.
“Then one evening,” he went on “– it was somewhere in the prairie provinces – I went for a long walk alone and came to the edge of a small lake. It was perfectly still, an evening rather like this, but with a kind of brilliant air you get in Canada – new, as it were, not soft and blurred like the air here. All the colours and shapes look brighter and harder, even at a quiet time like twilight. Anyhow, all of a sudden, I heard a great sort of rustling noise, and I looked up to find the whole sky over me dark with an enormous flock of wild geese. Huge birds migrating south for the winter. They poured across the air on their big wings, calling to each other … I’ve never forgotten them. Ever since then Canada’s meant something special to me … naturalness … a kind of wild innocence – It’s a pity I was too hidebound to stay there. My life might have been entirely different. I might have been different.” He coughed again, bending his long, thin back, and the door opened with a jerk.
“Maurice, what on earth are you doing out of bed!” cried Billie. Her voice and her face were sharp with anxiety. My father got rather laboriously to his feet, and I gave a frustrated kick under the bedclothes.
“You heard what the doctor said,” she scolded. “Sitting here in this draughty room with your temperature high as it is – you bad girl, Anne, you know how ill he is – how could you let him do it?” Still scolding, she led him away, but he stopped at the door, gripping the handle of it for support.
“Good night, Anne.”
“Good night, Daddy.”
I never spoke to him again. He grew much worse that night, and a day or two later he was dead. The house filled up with undertakers, neighbours, and my red-eyed old aunts. Billie became invisible. For a little while I thought she’d died, too. Nobody had time to explain anything to me. Otherwise I might not have formed the vague but oppressive suspicion that somehow I’d killed my father. Perhaps that was why for all these years I’d forgotten about those birds, and his voice and face when he talked about them, and about freedom.
At lunchtime we had a bowl of the soup I’d made from Sunday’s chicken, and after it, for a treat, I played an old Burl Ives tape for the kids. This made Martha feel so benign that she put a kiss into the air near Hugh’s head as he sat on the floor munching a graham cracker and rocking to the music.
Violet was scratching herself desperately, so I got out the ointment and began to spread it over her red patches, rubbing the tarry stuff well in to prevent her licking it off and then being sick. She lay belly up on the kitchen floor, groaning with satisfaction. As I worked on her, I began to feel a sort of groundless optimism steal over me; a folk belief, left over from my days of innocence, suggesting that because I was doing a good deed, somebody would in the near future surely do something nice for me. Recapping the ointment and levering myself by heavy stages back to my feet, I waited for these natural dynamics to work. The sun promptly went in and a flurry of sleet hissed against the window. The phone, though I looked at it hopefully, was mute. Outside the front door I heard a thump and scuffle announcing the arrival of June’s kids. At the same minute a powerful contraction caught me with such force I gave a gasp. Thank you, God.
The instant the Williamson kids got into the house, one went to the fridge and opened it, while the other turned on the TV. They were chronically hungry, owing to Junie’s ideas about slavery, though it probably wasn’t only malnutrition that made Darryl so flabby, or Charleen so undersized and vacant-eyed. I firmly removed her hand from the freezer where it groped for ice cream, and spread bread for them with Health Shop peanut butter. “Where’s the Coke?” demanded Darryl.
“Milk is all we’ve got,” I returned briefly.
My two eyed our guests without enthusiasm. Hugh quietly hid his favourite fire-truck under his own bottom, while Mao gave a low and eerie yowl of depression, and disappeared under the sofa. I wished with all my heart I could join him.
But the phone rang like a reward, just as I finished cleaning up the lunch mess.
“Bonnie speaking, Anne. This a good time to call, or not?”
The children had drifted off toward the TV, and now an ad for kitten-soft toilet-paper blasted out, making the house tremble.
“As good a time as any, Bon. Turn that set down, Darryl. Nice to hear your voice – now that I can.”
Bonnie’s telephone manner these days tickled me, because it had become crisp, even a bit chilly, to match her executive horn-rims and the two phones on her huge new desk. Her office, on the thirtieth floor of a glass harbourfront tower, looked down on a city full of women like me, plodding to and fro and spreading peanut butter. It wasn’t a distance easy to bridge, but we were still good enough friends to manage it. Bonnie would never, I thought, develop into the frigid career-girl stereotype; she still loved a giggle, and cried when her poodle got a cold. Many things had happened to both of us since she was the small-town undertaker’s daughter sure that the streets of Toronto teemed with white-slavers armed with hypodermic needles, and I was the Botany Department’s white hope who didn’t know how to boil an egg. We both expected her to marry and me to become the Professional Woman; but when it happened the other way around, we became closer than we were before, and interested each other more.
It gave me pleasure untainted by the slightest envy that Bonnie was now editor of the house organ for a huge chemical company, and did her work with surpassing energy and skill. It even gave me a vicarious satisfaction that she kept her long, flat figure trim in a fitness class, and dressed elegantly in the latest boutique clothes. For her part, she liked to eat my meals and admire the early Canadian furniture we collected. Sometimes she took her god-daughter to a puppet show or the Santa Claus parade, and at every opportunity she showered the kids with presents. They amused and intrigued her, and she had a strong if unsentimental affection for both of them.
“Well, how are you, me old dear?” I asked, easing my backside onto a stool to take the weight off my aching legs.
“Getting ulcers. And you?”
“Bloody awful. Delivering next week.”
Bonnie and I both had enough self-respect to allow open bitching and whining at frequent intervals. We could afford to complain to each other because our definitions of happiness were almost totally different.
“I’ve got the dumbest pair of assistants in the universe,” she
said. “And budget problems up to here. Anything new from Ross?”
“Nothing. But I have a feeling there will be soon. Don’t ask me why; I just do.”
“Well, things can’t just drag on like this forever, he must damn well know that. And so must you.”
Darryl slouched back into the kitchen and hung about, picking his nose and hoping, I suppose, to hear something about sex. To indulge him and at the same time change the subject, I said, “Bonnie, let’s talk about Margaret Trudeau instead.”
“No, actually, I can’t chat, Anne; got a full afternoon. What I called to say is there’s a job up for grabs with the Department of the Environment at Queen’s Park. It’s absolutely your thing. I just heard about it at lunchtime, and here I am – faithful dog with juicy bone.”
“A job?” I said feebly, looking at the unfinished nightgowns, the diaper basket, etc. And I thought sadly, “You too, Bonnie, trying to do missionary work on Poor Anne? Ah, you disappoint me.”
“Yes. What it is, actually, they’ve got a grant for somebody to write a handbook about all the provincial conservation areas – you know, list facilities, describe flora and fauna, and all that. Exactly your thing. I mentioned your name to Chris Wagram, he’s assistant to the big cheese down there. I mean they need somebody a bit special – not just for the natural-history part, but somebody that can write English. So why don’t you grab a pencil and take down the details. They’ll want a letter of application, references, and all that, but you’re still in touch with Professor Stein, aren’t you? The best thing is, you see, it would be sort of a part-time thing. You could go down there just two or three times a week, and the travel part would be possible, even if you had to take the kids, now that summer’s coming. If it ever does.”
I listened patiently to all this, twisting the phone cord round and round my elbow.
“Sorry, Bonnie. But it just isn’t possible, not while I’m single-parenting all this lot here. On top of all that, I’ll be breast-feeding again … no, it just wouldn’t work. Nice of you to think of me, though. One of these years … but in the meantime … it’s not that I don’t appreciate it.”
The Marriage Bed Page 17