By the Rivers of Brooklyn

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  CLAIRE

  TORONTO, MAY 1984

  THE DAYTHOU GAVEST, Lord, is ended

  The darkness falls at Thy behest

  Claire stood with head bowed in the spare funeral chapel where artificial light glowed through artificial stained-glass windows. Uncle Harold, at the front of the room, looked artificial too, with his hands folded over his chest. “My but he looks lovely, doesn’t he,” the women around the casket at the wake had crooned. Lovely, except of course, dead.

  All the women in the family were weeping: the daughters-in-law discreetly, dabbing Kleenex around their eyes. Aunt Frances fought it, screwing up her face. Only Valerie gave way to grief, tears pouring down her face, her great shoulders heaving. Valerie had become a big woman who looked ten years older than Claire. Valerie had let her hair go grey but didn’t have a short sensible cut or a perm. Long grey hair draggled down her back, or was pinned in haphazard loops and coils atop her head. She wore a flowing black dress like a tent, accented by silver bangle bracelets and a jangly silver necklace. Claire shook her head. Valerie wasn’t stupid. She knew she was outlandish and didn’t even care; she did it by choice.

  “I wasn’t prepared for it, not a bit,” Aunt Frances said as the coffin was lowered. “I always thought Harold would live to be ninety, he was so healthy, so spry for his age. Seventy-five years old…sure, he had years and years ahead of him. I was never prepared for him to go so sudden.”

  A massive heart attack had killed Uncle Harold instantly. “Better to go sudden than like poor Uncle Jim,” Claire reminded Frances, who was immediately cheered by the comparison. Uncle Jim had lasted seven years after his stroke.

  Claire patted Aunt Frances’ hand and said, “There was a nice turnout at the funeral.”

  Aunt Frances reached in her purse for a Kleenex. “Yes, wasn’t there? Of course Harold was very well liked.”

  There weren’t really many people at the funeral. Thirty or forty at the most. Claire knew that people used funerals as a way to measure how successful a life had been. She was sure Uncle Harold was well-liked and well-respected, but he and Frances lived in a small world – a tiny circle of expatriate Newfoundlanders, old people like themselves. A handful of these had shown up, and the family, and some men who had worked for Harold in the shop. One of Ken’s fellow teachers had come, and a row of women in gauzy dresses and improbable hats who turned out to be Valerie’s writers’ group. Claire had not envisioned writers as creatures who roamed in packs, but references to “the group” peppered Valerie’s conversation.

  Aunt Frances’ little house was cozy and shabby; the furniture and decor hadn’t been updated since she and Harold bought the place in the mid-50s. There was the old chrome kitchen set, the chintz chesterfield and matching wing chair covered with hand-knitted afghans, the set of framed Scenes of Newfoundland put out by one of the oil companies a few years ago. Photos of the grandchildren dominated the living room wall, and the gigantic TV set loomed in the room. Frances stood in the middle of her own living room as though she were in a foreign country, shaking her head. “Poor Harold, poor Harold,” she said. “I can see him sitting there in his chair, as plain as if he was there.”

  Once Aunt Frances was asleep, Valerie said to Claire, “Come upstairs to my place. Mom and Dad’s living room gives me the creeps.”

  Claire was not particularly fond of the living room decor and she understood Valerie’s need to decorate her own space in her own taste. But to tell the truth, it was Valerie’s bedsitting room upstairs that gave Claire the creeps, with dark foreboding pictures and African ceremonial masks hung on the walls. One whole wall was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, crammed full, and even then there were piles and boxes of books all over the place. Claire would have loved to get hold of this place and organize it. But, she thought, even if you sorted the books properly, by author or subject, and had them all on shelves, the room would still be weird. Valerie had beads instead of curtains hanging over her windows. She was like some kind of fifty-year-old hippie.

  Valerie poured herself a glass of wine and offered one to Claire. “No thanks. I’ll have ginger ale or something if you’ve got it,” Claire said.

  “Oh, that’s right, you don’t drink. Good Salvation Army girl,” Valerie said with a chuckle.

  Claire sighed. “I haven’t gone to the Army in years, Val. I go to the United Church, where you can have all the wine you want. But I never got in the habit. Not raised up to it, I guess.”

  “Yes, it’s hard to shake off the shackles of how we were reared,” Val said, curling up on a cushion on the floor. Claire, perched on a spectacularly uncomfortable wicker chair, thought that even if Valerie looked sixty with that dishevelled grey hair, she must have the joints of a much younger woman, to be able to sit on the floor so easily. “I wouldn’t call myself a Christian anymore,” Valerie went on, “but I do feel there’s something – a deep spiritual something at the core of our being, at the core of all life, wouldn’t you say?”

  As was often the case with Valerie, Claire felt completely at a loss, as though she and her cousin were the print and the negative, opposite in every way. Claire went to church and considered herself a Christian but had no opinion on the deep spiritual something at the core of everything.

  “I’ve been reading a great deal, visiting with some friends who worship in…well, different ways,” Valerie went on. “More in touch with nature, with the Spirit in us all. I’m interested in finding more woman-centred expressions of spirituality, unleashing my inner goddess, if you will.”

  Unleashing my inner goddess, if you will. Claire was storing moments from this conversation, little gems to bring back to Doug.

  “…and what I really feel, after all these years, is that I’m finally beginning to find my voice, my feminine voice,” said Valerie, ironically, because her voice was actually quite low, even gruff. “I look back now at my work over the past several years, and you know, I struggled so with that, struggled to get it published, and now I just feel such relief. The universe was so kind to me, not allowing any of that to be published, because none of that was truly me. Here, this is my latest story.”

  Valerie thrust into Claire’s hands what appeared to be a paperback book but was actually some kind of book-like magazine called A Room of One’s Own. “Women’s writing,” Valerie said. The title rang a bell with Claire, though she couldn’t recall from where. Anyway, she figured, a room of one’s own was what Val had here, in every possible sense.

  The story was called “A Peace of My Mind” and at first Claire thought it was a misprint, then realized it must be a clever pun, the point of which she would get if she read the story. It started with a woman sitting in an empty house on a cliff while the wind howled around her and the grey sea was churned into white-topped waves below. Claire read two paragraphs in which nothing happened except the woman sat there. She knew with absolute certainty that she would rather take a good solid kick in the teeth than finish reading this story. She looked up. “This is set in Newfoundland.”

  “Yes, it’s about a woman who returns to her roots and lives in an isolated house in Conception Bay. Just as I’ve done…returned to my roots, spiritually, that is. I feel Newfoundland in my blood so strongly these days, drawing me home.”

  Claire looked up sharply. Valerie had made three visits home in her life and each one had been an ordeal for Claire, with whom she always stayed. “You’re thinking of coming home again?”

  “Well, perhaps. You know, life may imitate art. I may just find myself a little property somewhere in the outports–”

  Claire actually snorted. “Why on earth would you do that? Look at everything you have access to here in Toronto: your writing group, your book club, art, theatre, museums, fine restaurants, all the things you enjoy. Living in some remote rural cabin through a nine-month winter sounds romantic enough, but you’d go crazy within a week.”

  The idea of Valerie reclaiming these supposed Newfoundland roots, after all this time, was actually
an affront to Claire. It was offensive, and in poor taste, and totally unrealistic, since even when she was a child Valerie didn’t exactly live in a fishing village and spend her days gutting and splitting fish on the flakes. “I can see travelling, but you’d be nuts to move away from here permanently. Honestly, Val, I don’t know what more you could want.”

  “No,” Valerie said, staring out the window. “No, you never did see what more I could want, did you?” Rain splattered against the window. “And what about you? Are you content with the way you’ve lived your life?”

  “What a way to put it, Valerie. I’m hardly dead yet.” At fifty-three, Claire felt it was as good a time as any for taking stock, but only Valerie would be willing to put such a bizarre question so bluntly.

  Content? Claire did not think of her life in those terms. She thought of her marriage, good and stable, if lacking in excitement – which suited her fine; excitement was overrated. She thought of Annie, still hanging in there twenty-seven years after her cancer, stubbornly independent but needing someone to look out for her. She thought of Stephen, her firstborn, immersed in studying obscure computer languages. And Anne – her bright, wonderful, frustrating daughter – studying English in university, sounding dangerously like Valerie sometimes. She thought of her own job, which, with all the raises and new responsibilities, still added up to managing the office for the men who did the real work, making their days smoother and their jobs easier.

  Claire looked around again at Valerie’s room, which in one way was cluttered but was, in another sense, painfully simple. Nothing in this room – no picture, no book, no stick of furniture – reflected anyone else’s needs or priorities other than Valerie’s own. It’s my life that’s cluttered, Claire thought. My life is all about other people. Valerie’s life is only about Valerie. And this revelation irritated her even more, made her want to say, What the hell kind of a question is that? although she never swore, considering it a sign of poor taste and limited education. She took a deep breath instead.

  “So tell me all about your nieces and nephews, Valerie…Ken’s and Dan’s young ones. What are they like?”

  Valerie smiled, poured herself another glass of wine, leaned back against the wall. She raised a glass to Claire, as if they’d just finished playing a game together and she was toasting Claire’s success. “Yes,” she said in that husky voice, still smiling as if she had a secret joke. “Yes, let’s catch up on all the family news.”

  ANNE

  NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1986

  ANNE GRADUATES WITH A degree in English from Memorial University. She wants to be a writer, but her mother, who finds this ambition alarming, leans heavily on Doug’s newspaper career to suggest that Anne study journalism. Anne goes to Columbia University to do this, as well as to immerse herself in New York, and, of course, to fall in love. She knows the kind of person she is going to fall in love with: he will be tall, with dark unruly hair and long, thin hands that are in constant motion. He will be an artist trying to make a name for himself in New York, tortured by his inner demons and teetering on the brink of madness, from which she will pull him back.

  She meets Brian in the sculpture garden outside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Brian sits at the edge of the fountain, staring at the bronze giraffes. He is tall, with unruly dark hair and long, thin hands; his thumbs twiddle as they rest in his lap. He wears acid-wash jeans, a white shirt with a collar, and a brown leather jacket that looks like it cost a mint. Anne sits down next to him, looks at the giraffes and says, “Do you think they’re screwing?”

  He looks at her, then back at the giraffes. “I think it’s more metaphysical than that.” Anne remembers she intended to fall in love with someone who used the word metaphysical in sentences.

  “Maybe they’re composing metaphysical poetry,” she suggests. “Like John Donne.”

  “License my roving–hooves–and let them go, before, between, beneath, behind, below,” he says, still staring at the giraffes, and Anne feels as if her whole body has been dipped in hot water.

  “That’s my favourite poem,” she says. “It has the name of the place I come from in it. ‘Oh my America, my New Found Land.’” When he doesn’t respond, she adds, “I’m from Newfoundland. It’s…you know, east of Nova Scotia.”

  He nods. “I know where it is. My parents took me there once on vacation. But I can’t remember much about it. I was really young.”

  “Oh.” After a minute’s silence she says, “So, are you studying English?” Then she remembers that she doesn’t even know for sure if he’s a student.

  “I was. I had a double major in English and biochemistry. Now I’m in med school. I’m thinking of cardiology.”

  “Really? And you read John Donne?”

  “Well, I have read John Donne. I wouldn’t say I have him on my bookstand and read him every night before I go to bed.” For the first time he looks at her full on, with the light switches on behind his eyes.

  “What is on your bookstand?”

  “Right now? An anatomy textbook, a Penthouse magazine, and The Catcher in the Rye.”

  “That’s quite an eclectic assortment,” Anne says, thinking she ought to be able to draw some conclusion, to pull something together out of these pieces of information.

  “So, what’s on yours?”

  “On my…”

  “Your bookstand. I told you what’s on mine; now what’s on yours?”

  “Oh…mine?” Her experience of college dating has prepared Anne for asking men interesting, leading questions about themselves. It has not prepared her as well for answering questions about herself.

  “A biography of George Eliot, my journal, the New Yorker, and The Fellowship of the Ring,” she says after a quick visual recall.

  “Aha! Reading or re-reading?”

  “Tolkein? Re-reading, of course.”

  “In undergrad, I used to re-read the entire Lord of the Rings every exam week.”

  Anne tells nobody in her family about Brian for a month. The first person she tells is not her mother or even Aunt Annie, in her frequent calls home. Instead, she sits in Aunt Diane’s kitchen in Brooklyn Heights, at the small Formica table, drinking coffee on a Sunday afternoon while Diane clears away the debris from Sunday dinner, and describes Brian Hayworth. Aunt Diane chatters as she clatters. In the adjacent living room, Mike watches the football game.

  “So why didn’t you go to his place for Sunday dinner, if he asked you?” says Aunt Diane, swishing water over the dinner plates.

  “It’s a big thing with them. They’re rich…sort of, I guess. They have this apartment a few blocks from Central Park.”

  “Oh yeah, they’re rich.”

  “Right. And the whole family comes for Sunday dinner.”

  “And you’re scared to go?” Diane asks.

  Anne turns her coffee cup round and round on the tabletop. “No, it’s not really…I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m scared, exactly.”

  “Not scared? Geez, I’d be shitbaked,” Aunt Diane says. Anne laughs so hard it’s a minute before she can stand up. She picks up the dishtowel, which is a souvenir of the Cayman Islands.

  “So, you coming out with us to see Mom, or do you want us to drop you back to your place?” Aunt Diane wants to know as they finish the dishes.

  “I’ll come with you. I guess.”

  Three quiet steps, and Mike’s in the kitchen. “We better get going if we’re driving out to Jimmy’s,” he says. He comes up behind Aunt Diane, puts his arms around her from behind, and kisses the back of her neck.

  For a moment the kitchen is so still Anne almost forgets to breathe. Then Diane says, “I’ll finish up here, you go get the car.”

  A Sunday afternoon trip to see Aunt Ethel involves first driving to Jimmy and Joyce’s, then all setting off together on pilgrimage. Jimmy and Joyce’s older two, Junior and the infamous Katie, don’t live at home, but Jimmy’s youngest boy, Dennis, is still there. He’s Anne’s age and this Sunday afternoon he decides to come
along to visit his grandmother. “Do something with your hair, Dennis,” Joyce says in despair as she scurries about the house collecting magazines and fruit to bring to her mother-in-law. Dennis makes a face at Anne.

  “I could shave you bald,” Anne whispers as he pulls on his jacket. Dennis’ hair is a dead-white mohawk, leaving the tattoos on either side of his skull visible. For a punk, he’s mild-mannered and funny. He hangs drywall for a living.

  “So, d’you go home for Christmas?” he asks Anne as they squeeze together in the back of the station wagon.

  “Yeah,” Anne says.

  “I’d like to go home sometime. For a visit, you know. Guess I’d scare them all up there, though.”

  “No, we’ve got punks in St. John’s too. They wouldn’t look twice at you,” Anne assures him. It’s important to her to keep updating Dennis’ ideas about “home” – the place his grandparents came from, a place he’s never been.

  Aunt Ethel lives at a place called Shady Acres, a long one-storey complex of seniors’ apartments and nursing-home rooms. The trees are narrow and spindly, recently planted, so Anne assumes the name is more an act of faith than description. Aunt Ethel has a roommate, Mrs. Clarke, who glares suspiciously at Ethel’s family as they gather around her armchair. When Anne walks past, Mrs. Clarke beckons her over. Anne goes to the woman’s bedside and stoops to listen.

  “That woman…she’s watching me,” Mrs. Clarke says, pointing at Aunt Ethel. “Last night…I saw her. I was lying in my bed, and she had…a flashlight. Pointed right at me. She watches me while I sleep.”

  Anne joins the family group to find that Aunt Ethel is complaining, fairly loudly, about Mrs. Clarke. “That one there, I don’t know why they got me in here with her. Can’t you speak to them, Joyce? Don’t you think they’d put people in with others of…of like interests? I don’t think she should be on this wing at all. There’s a wing, you know, for people who are bed-rid and mental.”