Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed

by Terence M. Green

I watch as she stretches to take one down from a shelf on the men’s side, see her laced shoe with the almond-shaped toe peek from beneath her skirt.

  “If you’re thinking of something informal, you’d be wanting a boater. Straw. Summer’s coming.” She looks at me, intrigued. “Either’d suit you.”

  “I have a boater,” I say. Everybody has a boater. I do not add that it, too, is rather old.

  She smiles quizzically. “Then the Homburg.”

  “Hmm.” I consider. Then I see that her fingers are touching the brim, and my mind is set. I must have it.

  I take it from her, watch as her fingers slip off. Turning it over, I run a hand within its white silk interior, along the richness of the leather sweatband. I try it on. It is a perfect fit. How did she know?

  “I’ll take it.”

  “You look smashing.” And she smiles. Smiles the radiant smile.

  In a mood of exuberance, my new hat boxed beneath my arm, just before I exit the store, on an impulse I stop and pick up a stainless steel thermos bottle. I am not sure why I am holding it. No one I know owns a thermos bottle, with its promise of hot or cold drinks anytime one wishes.

  I roll it in my fingers, surely a sign of good things to come.

  One dollar and ninety-five cents. Another celebration.

  It seems a splendid thing. I pull two ones from my wallet, buy it, stroll grandly through brass and wood and glass doors, feel the warmth of June on my hands and face, seeping through my suit.

  I pour the hot tea from the thermos into the cup that serves as its lid and hold it to Gramma’s mouth. Her lips grope at its rim, drink noisily. I wipe her chin as I take it away.

  “It’s called a thermos,” I tell her.

  She looks at me, head trembling ever so slightly, unsteady on her thin neck. The skin hanging loosely from her jawline is like talcum powder, a soft corduroy that might melt at the touch. Her mouth forms the o.

  I take her hand, place it on the side of the steel container, let her feel its smoothness, its strength.

  “Now you can have hot tea anytime you want.”

  She looks from it to me and back again.

  “I spoke to her today.”

  She stares at me, a bird trembling.

  “She sells hats in Simpson’s. I can’t get her out of my mind.”

  Gramma reaches for the cup cradled in my hand, a finger slipping into the warm liquid. I hold it to her mouth, watch as her eyes roll back in her head, as she swallows in gulps.

  Steadying her as she drinks, I think, suddenly: Margaret. Margaret Loy. I picture her screaming in the kitchen of a thatched cottage, a baby in a box, while a small boy cries on the dirt floor beside her.

  In Simpson’s the next day, I watch her again, working up my nerve. But I do nothing about it. I cannot think of a believable ploy to approach her. I need an excuse, but can think of none.

  Life stalls, eddies.

  Her face, her eyes, her mouth.

  “I don’t know what to do, Gramma.”

  In a surprising move, she reaches across and touches my face, my lips, running her fingers along my cheek.

  I let her touch me. I let her probe for the source of the person sitting beside her. Then I take her hand in mine, hold it, feel the fingers curl about mine, feel it relax.

  How, I wonder, did this happen? How did it become Margaret Loy and me? It has come out of nowhere. And it occurs to me, just as abruptly, a sudden insight, that perhaps everything comes out of nowhere.

  “Help me,” I say to her.

  The fingers tighten. I sit there. Together, wordlessly, we plot.

  I wait until Friday, until the end of the workday, guessing that she will be working Friday evening, as she was last week, as I now imagine she does every week as a matter of course. She sees me coming across the floor, smiles that curious smile, waits.

  “Good evening.”

  “And good evening to you.” Her eyes glance at my head. “And how is the hat?”

  I am sporting the new Homburg, feeling resplendent. “Couldn’t be better. One of my finer purchases.” I touch the brim. Her hands, fine boned, rest on the glass counter.

  I ask it. “Would you enjoy a cup of tea? Some coffee? A drink after work?”

  A beat. Several beats. What I have sensed before is true. She is older than me. I feel it fully now. This has been part of the mystique, I realize slowly—my inability to be more worldly than her. Something I perceive dimly as her experience. Her hesitation is the interval of assessment, of intuition, of decision.

  But her answer is kind. And warm. “What a pleasant idea,” she says.

  My spirits soar.

  “And how would we go about this? I don’t finish until nine.” She waits.

  “Does someone come to pick you up?”

  “No.” She is smiling broadly now, understanding the game, the necessary moves, but the smile is still laced with reserve. I am being studied carefully.

  “Have you had dinner?” I ask suddenly. Maybe there are more possibilities.

  “Yes. An early one. At five.”

  I shrug, return to my original idea. “I could have a bite to eat. Do some shopping. I’d be back at nine to meet you here.”

  The corners of her mouth uplift into a grace. “Why not?”

  And I am happy. It is that simple. “My name is Martin Radey.”

  She nods, continues to smile, bemusement and recognition crossing her features like a cloud’s ground shadow on a sunny day.

  “Margaret Curtis.” The eyes staring into mine are hazel, and with her name I now know what she knows. We have indeed met before, at my sister Teresa’s wedding. We danced, once, the day her brother Peter married my big sister Teresa. I have not seen nor thought of her since. “Call me Maggie,” she says, carefully, imparting an intimacy, bonding us to that vanished moment. The word is both shadow and sunshine, hope and loss, and infinite possibility.

  “And what is it that you do now, Martin Radey?” She has appropriated the pouring of the tea. I watch her hands, one holding the curved handle, the other pinning the lid to the teapot so that it does not tumble off. We are at a table in Bowles’ Restaurant, at the corner of Queen and Bay.

  “I work in the receiving department at Don Valley Pressed Bricks and Terra Cotta.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Adelaide Street East. Not too far from here.”

  “Is it a good job?”

  I shrug. “It’s a job.”

  “But is it a good job?” She places the teapot carefully at the side of the table, wipes the spout with a napkin.

  “It’s the only job I’ve ever had. The only real, full-time one. I’ve been there for almost nine years.”

  “Then how do you know if it’s a good job or not?”

  I sip my tea, consider. “What do you mean?”

  “To know if it’s a good job or not, it seems to me that you’d need to have something to compare it to.”

  I listen to her, but I am mostly staring at her mouth. “I see what you mean.”

  “Do you?” The odd smile again.

  “I think so,” I say. Even her voice, its cadence, has my attention.

  She sips her tea. I watch how her lips, lightly flushed, glisten as she sets her cup back into the saucer. “Did you know,” she says, “that the National Council of Women called for equal pay for equal work at its assembly earlier this year?”

  This catches me off guard. I am uncertain what she is talking about. “No,” I say. “I didn’t know that.”

  She smiles. “Have you heard of the National Council of Women?”

  I watch her. “I confess. I haven’t.” I feel suddenly foolish. How could I not have heard of it? What have I been doing?

  “Most men haven’t,” she says.

  I do not want to be most men. I am not sure if we have made a strong start together. I still see the unshaped girl in my mind. This is unsettling, in complete opposition to what I would have hoped, even dreamed of. I ask: “And how
long have you worked at Simpson’s?” And then, boldly, I add, “Is it a good job?”

  “Those are two questions, Martin Radey—”

  My name. From her lips.

  “—and I’ll have to give you two answers.”

  “I’m in no hurry.” It is true. I will listen to her for hours, if she will let me.

  “I have worked for Robert Simpson’s since the end of the Boer War. Since nineteen oh two. Five years now. Just shortly before Emmeline Pankhurst founded the National Women’s Social and Political Union.” She watches me. “You do not know of Mrs. Pankhurst, do you?”

  Her skin is truly soft, and she is really quite tiny. “No,” I admit. “I don’t.”

  “She’s determined to have the women’s right to vote.”

  “A suffragette.”

  Her face lights. “Yes. I’m glad to know that you are familiar with the term.”

  Finally, I think. Finally. I have pleased her.

  “Bills on women’s suffrage have passed second readings in the Commons five times since eighteen eighty-six but have never proceeded beyond that stage. Someday, it will happen. Already, there are five states in America that have achieved suffrage for women. Wyoming has had it since eighteen sixty-nine. In eighteen ninety-three Colorado followed suit. And now Utah, Idaho, and Washington have fallen in line. Our day will come, even here.”

  I am speechless. I stare at her in wonder. Slowly, I raise my cup to my lips, savor its abundant warmth.

  “I’ve scared you, haven’t I, Martin Radey?”

  “Not at all.” I hold the cup aloft. “You fascinate me. You don’t scare me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite.”

  “I have a habit,” she says, “of mounting an occasional soapbox. It scares men off.”

  “I must be tougher than most.”

  “Glad,” she says, “to hear it.” The smile, still tinged with the hint of irony, relents, seems to accept. We have apparently crossed a bridge.

  She pours herself a second cup of tea. “To answer your other question: yes, it is a good job. I know this because I have had much with which to compare it. Before I was at Simpson’s, I worked at Townsend Steam Laundry and at the Princess Laundry. I also worked briefly at Reedow Caterers, out in the west end. We catered weddings, dances, banquets, conventions, and the like. I even worked for the Davidson & Hay, Limited, importers and packers of Kurma Tea. We sold it to grocers in pounds and half pounds, black or mixed. Do you know Kurma Tea?”

  “No.”

  “British. Very nice. This,” she says, indicating what is on the table, “is not Kurma.”

  “Mm.”

  “And then, just before joining Simpson’s, I worked for Creelman Brothers Typewriter Company.”

  “Really? I’ve seen it. It’s on Adelaide, right near where I work.”

  “You’re absolutely right. It is.” She smiles. “You should’ve come in to see my typewriter demonstration.”

  “I should’ve.”

  “Men cannot handle them. Perhaps it is their fingers. I think it is more basic than that. Women and typewriters were made for each other.”

  “I guess I haven’t given it enough thought.”

  “I learned quickly. I was their demonstrator. Did you know that there are probably over one hundred fifty thousand lady typewriters in America and Canada today?”

  “I had no idea.”

  “And an office girl can make ten dollars a week. More than twice what she could earn in a laundry or kitchen.”

  The salary shocks me. It is more than I make.

  “So you see, Mr. Radey—”

  “Martin.”

  She stops, smiles. “So you see, Martin, I have a very good idea of whether my job is a good one or not.”

  “I’m glad you have found a good job.”

  “But it isn’t that good.” She sips.

  “I thought you said—”

  “That I could tell a good job from a bad one.”

  “Ah.”

  “My job is acceptable. That’s a long way from good.”

  What she says rings true for me. Much of my life has been acceptable. Yet it, too, has been a long way from good.

  Through the restaurant window, I watch a string of black birds—feathery, puffed pearls beaded along the roofline of a storetop across the street.

  Maggie Curtis follows my gaze. “They’re European starlings,” she says. “There were a hundred of them released in New York’s Central Park back in the 1890s. Now they’re everywhere.” She looks at me. “Immigrants,” she says. “Like us.”

  I stare at her, into her assuredness, wanting, against hope, for this to be the crossroads we all await.

  “Do you like to read?”

  “Newspapers. I like to read the newspapers,” I say.

  “Books. Do you read books?”

  “Not many.” I think. “A biography of Napoleon, when I was in school. Mother had a Booth Tarkington novel at home that was given to her. I started it. It didn’t interest me. I read some of House of the Seven Gables. It was around the house. Quite imaginative, but not quite my cup of tea.” A pause. “I guess I’m not much of a reader.”

  “I’m reading one now called Sister Carrie. It’s about a girl who goes to Chicago and becomes a man’s mistress. When it first came out it was deemed immoral.” She smiles.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Eaton’s. I bought it.”

  I have never bought a book, and have trouble digesting the idea.

  “It’s like a breath of fresh air,” she says.

  “Why did you want to meet with me, Martini Did you recognize me?”

  “Only when I heard your name.” Why, indeed. I cannot articulate it. I am not sure myself. I am driven. “You’re a lovely woman,” I say. “Who wouldn’t want to meet with you?”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I am not a lovely woman. In point of fact, I am somewhat unlovely. I have to watch my waist, especially since I refuse to wear a corset, and I am astute enough to be fully aware that I am unremarkable in most other ways as well. I have no money, I come from a common, workaday family as you well know, and I am far past my prime.”

  “Maggie—”

  “It is true.” A pause. “Do you know where I was born?” She does not wait for an answer, and I do not know the answer anyway. “Burnhamthorpe. A village of one hundred people, at Dixie Road. It has a blacksmith shop, wagon shops, a shoemaker shop, a general store, and a post office. Farmers from the north stay overnight at the Puggy Huddle Hotel at the Second Line east on their way to market in the city. I come,” she says conclusively, “from nowhere.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And for a moment, I do not. This strange self-assessment has derailed me.

  She waits a few seconds. “How old are you, Martin Radey?”

  “I’m twenty-seven.” Close enough, I think.

  “I am twenty-nine. Most women my age have been married for a decade, and have a brood of children. Do you know that life expectancy for a woman is fifty-one? For a man, forty-eight?”

  I am stunned. She is moving too fast, cutting away layers of the game. “I did not.”

  “I read it in the newspaper. But because you are a man, you can father children until you die, while I, on the other hand, have seen my prime years disappear. So don’t tell me that I am lovely. Or that I am desirable. Or any other of that romantic claptrap.”

  “But,” I say, I implore, “it is true.”

  She tilts her head on an angle, places her fingers against her cheekbone, purses her lips, contemplates me anew, as if another layer of skin has been peeled away, exposing a rawer, simpler truth.

  “It is true,” I say. Again.

  And then we are silent. We sip our tea.

  Maggie pours me a second cup. I let it warm me, do not want it to end.

  She lets me see her home. We ride comfortably on the Queen car, pointing out stores, lan
dmarks, making small talk, listening to the clop of hooves. I point out Brookfield Street, where I live, as we pass, before realizing that she must know of it from Teresa and Peter. At Dufferin, we transfer to a northbound car that wends its way onto Dundas, where she lives, she has explained, with her parents and remaining unmarried brother and sister.

  It is far past where I have to go, but I do not mind. In fact, I want to delay returning home.

  At her front door, I doff my Homburg, hold it in my hand, ask it. “Are you working tomorrow?”

  Her eyes meet mine. Hazel. Older than mine. Already, she has shown me that she is much more than I have ever known in a woman. “As a matter of fact, no. I have one Saturday a month off, and tomorrow is the one.”

  “Do you have plans?”

  “One always has plans.”

  I am disheartened.

  “But nothing that cannot be adjusted.”

  The space between us seems immense. I have not touched her.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  A beat. A decision. “What would we do?” she asks.

  I don’t know. I don’t care. “Have you seen The Great Train Robbery at the nickelodeon?”

  “I have. Yes.”

  “So,” I admit, “have I.”

  She smiles.

  “We could go for a picnic. It is June.” She does not appear unlovely to me, especially the smile, the corners of her mouth turned up with promise, with hope. When she does not protest, I forge ahead. “To the Island, perhaps. The sky looks clear. It should be a nice day.”

  I cannot believe that I have done this. I cannot believe that I have set myself up so blatantly for disappointment. I am standing here with this woman who has drawn me like a magnet to a far corner of the city, for whom, at this moment in time, I would do anything, and do not know why.

  I hear only the night crickets.

  She reaches, takes my hand in both of hers. I feel the small bones, see, even in the faint lamplight from the street, the fine veins on their backs.

  She knows, I think. Knows me. Maggie.

  “That sounds very nice.”

  When I get home, Gramma is asleep. But I stop by her room, step inside, and tell her anyway.