Nights Below Station Street

by David Adams Richards

  In the mornings people would come to his house to be treated. And Clare would take their Medicare numbers and make appointments. They would sit along two benches in his office, and he would come in through the other door, peer at them, and wave his hand to someone to follow him in.

  “Don’t be shy with me,” he would be heard telling an Indian woman from down river. “I mean I’m just feeling for the baby’s head. It’s dropped down but it’s not in position yet – so don’t go driving about bumpy roads so you’ll go into labour – no it’s not for a while yet. …”

  Then he would wash his large red hands, and come out again, his eyes piercing through his thick glasses:

  “Make her another appointment for next Thursday,” he would say.

  Every now and then Gloria Basterache would come in about some complaint. Everyone could tell that she made the cross old man nervous; because whenever he gave her a check-up he would call Clare in with him.

  After supper he would go to the hospital.

  Some nights he would go in and out of the hospital three or four times. No one ever knew what floor he was on, where he was going to. If Dr. Armand Savard was in the hospital, Doctor Hennessey would go in and out glumly. If Dr. Savard or Dr. McCeachern got together – both youthful, both in high spirits – the doctor would become more and more glum.

  Savard and McCeachern thought the old man was like this for a variety of reasons. They supposed he was like this most of all because no one paid any attention to him anymore – not like they paid attention to themselves. The treatments he prescribed a lot of times were no longer valid. And their lives were so much better organized than his. Besides, Armand felt the old man was prejudiced against the French, and often waited for him to show his hand in that regard. Savard would look over at McCeachern, or someone else, and say: “The war – the war.” And amid muffled laughter, he would tap his forehead.

  When he went home to his sister-in-law Clare, whom he could never tell he loved so she’d ended up marrying his brother, he complained to her that everything was different and he may as well retire. And then in the same breath, as if holding it against himself, he would berate all people who retired, and he would say also that retirement was only the mandate of the young, which she, sitting in her plaid skirt and bobby socks, did not understand. Since his brother had died, they lived together in the same gigantic old house, built like many of the other old farmhouses, below Madgill’s garage. It sat back off the road, on the left of the power-line, with green shutters, and an old porch that had three or four faded wicker chairs. There was a barn. There was some wood. There was a nailed-down coal chute, with metal stripes crossing it. The doctor’s office was on the right-hand side facing the road. He had treated the whole roadway for thirty years.

  Nothing was the same now, he would tell her, and yet he would say everything was the same and not one thing was different. Was it not the same thing with his nephew Ralphie as with him, and was it not the same with Vera, his niece, as it was with everyone else. Ha. Then almost spitefully he would shake his head so you could see the space between his grey hair and the collar of his shirt, and the light casting off from the snowbanks relegated to the evening air. He would take some chewing tobacco and clamp it down between his back teeth, and then he would spit.

  “How do you mean?” Clare would ask.

  “I mean, everything is the same and always has been and always will be,” he would say, walking away.

  Adele had begun to dye her hair and wear the tight jeans and shirts she had seen her friends wear. Yet she was never happy with how she tried to look. She felt she didn’t look as good as other kids, and she was continually trying different fashions and then abandoning them. She would walk about in tight jeans showing her skinny bum, and then just as suddenly she would go a week or two without wearing jeans at all, but only dresses or skirts.

  One of the memories she had of her family was that her mother picked blueberries, standing in her skirt against the background of trees that had been seared by a forest fire, and one of the men said her father couldn’t lift a boulder out of the ground. Joe stood in his blue suit, coming from church, his shoes hidden, his shoulders catching the shadows of the tree’s waving motion on his back and hair. Joe lifted the boulder, put it on his shoulder, and then with the other hand picked up her mother, and Rita started crying.

  She often criticized her mother for being foolish enough to live with him. It seemed to her that if her mother wanted to be a fool now, and wanted to keep kids for other people – this to Adele was an insult – and wanted to make her life like she did, then that was fine, but she herself would not have any part in it, and when she grew up she would be quite different from her mother, and by being quite different, she assumed she would be better.

  Therefore at home everything depressed her. The idea of Rita and the children depressed her. That Milly was off the wall, and needed to be tied to the mattress so she wouldn’t run outside at night, depressed her. That her father had three tattoos on him, depressed her. That told you everything.

  They once took her father to jail. It was in the evening and she went up to the window and looked in at him. And when he looked at her she yelled: “So – will they hang you or what?” Then she got giddy, stepped on a nail which punctured her sneaker, and fell flat on her face.

  Adele’s nerves were bad. She would not sit at the table if Milly ate beside her. She could not eat her food unless she had Kleenex piled all about her plate, to keep off Milly’s breath.

  When she got a bottle of pop, she would take a sip or two of it and put it in the fridge, with a note on it that read: “MILLY – I SPIT IN THIS!”

  Sometimes she would complain about having nothing to wear, and Joe would say: “When’s yer birthday, Delly?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “You know’s well as I do – April Fool’s is my numbskull birthday as I’m always getting teased bout it one way or the other from all sides of the world.”

  “Well, that’s not too far off, is it?”

  “Pardon me once more?”

  “That’s not too too far away?”

  “Million zillion years, there about.”

  “Well we’ll see what happens April Fool’s.”

  “Salt gets changed for sugar and something foolishly stupid is written about in the paper about something foolish and stupid,” Adele said, taking a Scotch cookie and popping it into her mouth.

  Then she would walk about the house shrugging at what her mother said, or floating in and out of rooms like a ghost with her history or math books in her hands, or sitting on the window-sill waiting for Ralphie to telephone her.

  In early March, Joe had gone into the hospital for a week and had come out, and was recuperating from the tests he’d had. These tests seemed to always come to nothing; and there was never anything they could really put their finger on.

  Adele would end up arguing with him, and it could start over anything.

  “How are you today?”

  “Not so bad.”

  “Well why do you not go outside or something?” “I doubt if I could walk real well right at this moment, Delly.”

  “Well, let me rub your back for you.”

  “No – go on – it’s alright.”

  “Don’t be so goddamn stubborn, Joe – let me rub your goddamn back like I used to!”

  Then she would sit across from him and brood in a sort of silent, judgmental fashion. The house was filled with the scent of cigarettes. And she would tell him, with her cold face in the damp spring light, that she knew he didn’t like Ralphie – she could tell, and that was the one thing about him that she could tell.

  “I like Ralphie a lot,” Joe would answer.

  “Ralphie and I aren’t getting married – we are just going to live together in common law way out in the woods or something like that there.”

  He wouldn’t answer.

  “Well, what do you think of that
?”

  “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “Sure it does!”

  Joe would look over at her quietly.

  “My parents were never married.”

  “That’s because, Joe, as everyone in the whole world knows, you had no real parents at all,” she would snip.

  Rita would then come in and say something to her and Adele would smirk, yawn, and look out the window. Often, she would go to the fridge and get her pop, with the note on it saying: “I SPIT IN THIS.” One afternoon Milly sat in the kitchen while Adele took her pop out of the fridge piously, and went to take a drink. Just as she got the pop to her mouth, Milly sniffed and said: “So did I.”

  Adele had other problems. One of them was that she had nightmares and couldn’t sleep very well at all. Then she had a nervous stomach. Then a teacher looked at her in a funny way. Then something happened to her fries at Zellers – she went to sit in a booth with her allowance and they gave her cold gravy and she wouldn’t eat them, and they wouldn’t give her her money back. Then, because of this, she said she wasn’t going to go back to school.

  “I’m no one’s fool,” she screeched. “And I’m not going to do the dishes tonight!”

  And saying this, and brightening up as if she had quite mysteriously solved everything, she ran upstairs and slammed the door.

  “What have we done to you?” Rita yelled.

  “Well, Rita, if you want to know the big facts of life – let me teachcha in yer dumb brain – you got married to Joe, who was a alcoholical bastard, so there!”

  “So there,” Rita said. “If I go up with a spatula, little lady – you aren’t that big – and if I go up those stairs –”

  “Come way up,” Adele squeaked. “I’m not afraid of you or anyone like you – not one little Jesus bit.”

  “I will if you don’t grow up.”

  “Ha, ha ha, ha haha, ha ha ha ha ha!” Adele roared.

  Pause.

  Rita started to climb the stairs.

  “And I have nothing in this house, and am sick to my stomach all the time – don’t you know that Mom – you know that Mom – I’m sick to my stomach all the time and have nervous feelings.”

  Rita stood halfway up the stairs looking over the top of the banister.

  Pause.

  Rita started to go back down the stairs.

  “Like the time, ha, Dad leaves me in the woods so I mayswell have been fried by an Indian or something like that there, it’d not be impossible, or the trip we went on that Christmas – remember that, Dad, I spose you don’t remember that. Or the time you took us to the circus to see the tallest man in the German army, who isn’t as tall as he’s made out to be – and got into a fight with Cecil, and Mom and us had to go home alone because you were locked up, and then the next day you and Cecil went out for a drink together, and if you don’t remember, Dad, many thanks.”

  Through these arguments, Joe sat in his chair with his makins in his pocket, and his shirt half opened, listening as the day got dark, his eyes focused on the tile at the end of the rug.

  One night, Milly broke out crying when Adele came downstairs with her overnight bag packed, with her scuffed buckled shoes sticking out of the top of the bag, saying she was going to run away with Ralphie Pillar. It was at this time for some reason that Adele wanted everyone to know how much she knew about sex – and now because she was angry, she told them all she knew, and all that she understood:

  “I know all about it,” she said, “I KNOW THE FACTS!”

  Adele stood at the door, while Milly tried to grab onto her, to force her back into the house. The windows were frosted over and there was a smell of ice in the porch. Joe had gone out to get them a treat, but he hadn’t come back yet. His hockey skates were tied to a nail. Milly’s eyes were closed and red, and her nose was running, and her hands kept grabbing at Adele’s black plastic belt, while Adele tried to pry her fingers loose. Milly was roaring at her mother to come and help, but Rita sat at the metallic kitchen table under the light bulb.

  Adele turned her somewhat cold little face toward Milly and said: “When I was yer age Milly, I was in a hospital bed, and Joe was out drunk, roaring about in a goddamn fish-tailin car and slappin our mother’s cheeks off every second night. So why do you think, Milly, that this place is so wonderful – h’m?”

  And, with that, she walked out and slammed the door, and headed toward the centre of town, perfume on her jeans.

  The winter and then the summer months passed, and fall came.

  Myhrra called Joe at six o’clock one morning, when it was still dark, and told him that she knew he was asleep but that something was broken in her car. The air smelled cool again. The street outside was broken up. The sky was still filled with pulp and smoke and down below on the river a buoy light winked, saying I am not just any light but a light from a pont-shaped river buoy.

  Joe, pulling on his pants and shirt, and fastening his large belt, coughed and lit a cigarette. Through his upstairs window he could smell frost, and he could see the kitchen light on in Myhrra’s trailer above the dark gravel lot which he could not see in the summer but now the leaves were going again. Rita slept. He stepped over her clothes and closed the bedroom door.

  When Joe arrived at the trailer, Myhrra was outside and snow fell against the pulp-field in back of them. She wore her heavy coat over her housecoat. She sneezed and rubbed her eyes.

  “Joe,” she asked him, “you’ve been in jail, haven’t you?”

  “A few times,” Joe said.

  “What’s this jail business like?”

  “Well, I was in jail for a while for breaking a window,” Joe said. “After the cops came to the house – I hit one.”

  “Oh,” Myhrra said. “What happened there, Joe?”

  “Nothing,” Joe said. “Rita was going to leave me. I was in a big scrape at the house. The cops took me to jail for my own good, I guess. I didn’t mind er except when Delly came to see me.”

  Joe remembered that whole incident. It was the time he threw a chair, and it stuck into the wall at the back of the kitchen. The cops came, and after he hit one, they put the cuffs on him, and he snapped them off. The young female cop, Judy Dennifer, took her cuffs and put them on him, and he snapped them off also. The whole time he kept thinking: If Rita wants me to go with them, I’ll go.

  It was in summer, There were bags of garbage in the porch, and a lot of the house was being redone. There was paint on his hands and in his hair. He had tried not to get drunk the night before but hadn’t managed to stay sober.

  Then all the cops gathered about him and took him out. Everyone was on the street. Rita was crying. He saw a vindictive look on Judy Dennifer’s face. He smiled at her, and then looked at the ground.

  “Oh,” Myhrra was saying, “pretty bad way to go, Joe, with Rita and the kids there. …”

  Joe nodded. He smiled, and blinked. And suddenly his big face looked confused.

  Myhrra sniffed and looked about and there was wind against her eyes.

  “Are we all crazy?”

  “Who?”

  “The whole kit-and-caboodle of us.”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said quietly, and lifted up the hood.

  Far away a mill whistle blew in the air, and far away a dog barked – and there was the faint rattle of a truck as it passed by.

  Joe looked at her and smiled. He could see her bra under her open coat, and when she smiled he could see the scar above her top Up.

  “Cub Master said that Byron robbed the money from the troops.”

  “The troops,” Joe said.

  “The cub troops’ money. They were raising money, had a hundred dollars, but now –” here she stammered – “money is missing, and Byron was blamed.”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” Joe said.

  “Sure, because he needs someone to blame it on – and it mayswell be Byron, because I’m a woman alone!” Myhrra said. She looked in at the engine as she spoke.

  “Ya, that’s always
the way,” Joe said.

  “Are you drinking yet, Joe?” Myhrra said intently, inspecting the carburetor.

  “No,” Joe said.

  “Oh no you’re not – of course you aren’t – I wish I could quit.”

  “Oh,” Joe said, surprised. He knew Myhrra didn’t drink.

  “Yes,” Myhrra said. “I’m a drunk,” she said, yawning. Myhrra seemed to be everything anyone else was. A snow-flake came down in the cold air and landed somewhere. One of her thumbs was blistered and had a Band-Aid around it. The dog barked again.

  “Byron is smart,” Myhrra said. “As ambidextrous as hell, too. Is Milly passing? Or is she flunking out like she did in kindergarten?”

  Joe slapped her hand so she would take it out of the way.

  “She’s doing fine,” Joe said. Actually he didn’t know. After this he became embarrassed, and there was a long silence while he tried to think of something to say.

  “You should take care of Rita, Joe,” Myhrra said, as if she had worked herself up into being sad suddenly, just as she worked herself up to be concerned when she carried those month-old magazines down the corridors of the hospital.

  Joe nodded. His old canvas coat seemed to crinkle as he worked. The ice in the ditch had the same look as curdled milk, with some weeds sticking up out of it.

  “Yes. She’s had a hell of a time. When she was young she did floors for people,” Myhrra said. “I mean, she still does, too. But this was down river. I used to have to stop people from stepping over her while she worked. I can vouch for that.”

  Then Myhrra told the story about how she protected Rita, and how Rita always looked up to her. It was always the same story, and she always seemed to tell no one else but Joe this story.

  “Anyways,” Myhrra said, “it would have been just terrible if she left you, Joe – when you were at your worst Like a maniac.”

  Joe said nothing to this but nodded again.

  He cleaned the battery posts off and reattached the cables and tightened them.

  “Were you in the navy or army, Joe?”