Swing Low

by Miriam Toews

  It wasn’t long before Marjorie, naturally gifted when it came to music, had bought her own flute (that life insurance policy was coming in handy) and joined her mother in the band. Elvira had sewn each of them a long black dress for performances, and the two of them spent hours sashaying around the house in their regulation show gear, spontaneously performing mini-concerts on the flute for Miriam and me, after which we dutifully applauded and asked for more. And then, as if our family wasn’t making enough of a joyful noise unto the Lord, Elvira roped Miriam into learning the violin (purchased of course with the life insurance money) and joining the junior orchestra. In no time Elvira and the girls were banging out the classics on piano, flute, and violin every Sunday after roast beef, while I, now an audience of one, sat in my La-Z-Boy straining to recognize the melody beneath all the clatter. More often than not a squeak or a toot not written into the music would reduce Elvira and the girls to tears of laughter and at that point I would smile, stand up, and announce my necessary departure, either to my bedroom or to my flowers in the backyard.

  I did, as the girls improved, come to relish these Sunday afternoons. Often, I would ask them to play and sing, and they would happily indulge me. Marjorie, by now a virtuoso on the piano, could play just about anything, but Miriam preferred to sing the sad French songs of Jacques Brel. Wearing her Pioneer Girls tam as a beret and holding a chopstick for a cigarette, she would beg her sister to play them over and over and over again to the point where I began to worry about her frame of mind. Another of her favourites, oddly, was the “Notre Dame Victory March,” written by the Reverend Michael J. Shea, which she would belt out with such earnest heartfelt gusto that both Marjorie and I had to hide our laughter.

  Something about the flute incident tweaked my brain and made me realize that I too could take up a hobby, that my life of work and sleep was too narrow, that I was missing out on things, and that it was okay to have a little fun from time to time. And so I approached the possibility rather tentatively and with not a small amount of fear.

  In previous years we had enjoyed summer vacations in a town called Falcon Lake, eighty miles from town near the Manitoba-Ontario border, usually renting a cottage from a lakeside resort by the name of Big Buffalo Cabins. One summer Elvira idly mentioned that the prices of cottages in the area were down and that really if we were going to be renting a cabin at Big Buffalo every summer, it made as much sense to simply buy our own and come and go as we pleased. That very afternoon the girls and Elvira and I packed up the Ford Custom 500 (all of our married life I stubbornly insisted on driving Fords, to the chagrin of Elvira, who prefers Oldsmobiles and Lamborghinis) and headed for the South Shore to have a peek at the cottages up for sale.

  I’ll never forget that gorgeous June afternoon as we slowly wound our way along the gravel roads of cottage country, pointing out the cottages we liked (lots of windows!) and the ones we didn’t (haunted!) while the girls chattered excitedly about the things they’d do at the lake, the friends they’d have sleep over, with Elvira bemused in the front seat next to me, smiling, touching my arm, reminding me that life could be grand. This makes you happy, doesn’t it? she’d ask, her feet up on the dash, hand tapping the roof of the car.

  And it did. Oh boy, did it ever! Eventually we settled on a small, modest pink affair (always pink) on the top of a hill with a woodburning stove, an outhouse in the back, a large front yard for badminton and barbecuing, and three bedrooms, one of which had a built-in double bunk bed that could sleep six little girls at a time. It was not a lakefront property but we had our own dock in the bay just on the other side of the road and down a narrow path, a minute’s walk away. The year was 1971 and the cottage cost us $7,000. That summer I bought a red fibreglass canoe for Elvira for her birthday, and the two of us, and sometimes the four of us, would paddle around our bay after supper, listening to the loons and the motorboats and the distant voices of other cottagers and wondering, at least I was, what I had done to deserve such happiness. We still went on road (baseball) trips in the summer (stopping at every single historical marker along the way so that I could jump out of the car and copy its message word for word into my notebook, much to my daughters’ exasperation). But now, instead of simply going home afterwards, we could go to the lake. It remains one of the few places in this world, if not the only place, where I was able, truly, to relax. When you’re a schoolteacher, and especially when you’re a teacher in a small town, you are on stage nearly all the time. It is inevitable that you will, on a daily basis, run into students, former students, and parents of students, and you are expected to be a constantly cheerful, supportive, reliable pal to all of them, forever. Not that I resented having to be such a person — that was exactly the sort of man I wanted to be, the type of level-headed, upbeat individual I most respected and admired. But oh, the fatigue of it.

  twenty-two

  I have made another mistake. I have mixed up words, again. Am beginning to panic, as though I’m running out of oxygen. What have I left? Not what have I left, but what do I have left? is what I’m trying to say. Mistake re the word “confusion”: nurse enters room, checks my feet, mentions something about contusion on foot, to which I respond, Yes, it seems I can’t make head nor tails of things. I actually wonder what my foot has to do with my confusion and say so. Really, I say politely, it has to do with my head. Nurse responds: Your feet? I answer: My head. Nurse says: Mel, we are talking about your feet right now, okay? Inane conversation, non-conversation. Yes, let’s talk about my feet, why not? The nurse eventually left, and my daughter entered, with more paper, fancier than legal, but why? I know why. It is because she feels it is all I have, paper, and so she’s … Before we could greet each other conventionally, I said, in a loud, panicky voice, Good. You’re here. Now, help me with a few things. Let’s get a few things straight. Sit down. Here’s a pen. Now write it down, please. Write this down: I will be well again. I will see Elvira again. I am not ill.

  I think I have frightened her. She is looking at me strangely, but she is writing it down. I will be well again, she writes. I will see Elvira again. I am not ill.

  But then, if I am not ill, what am I? Why am I here? I ask her. Modification: she tries again. I am ill, but I will get well again. I will be fine, I will be healthy soon. She hands me the fancy sheet of paper with these words on it, and I look at it. It is not sufficient, but somehow I manage to smile and thank her. Forgive me, I say, the lights are … I nod, she knows, and she begins to cry. She leaves, telling me she is getting coffee, returns smiling. Just write down the things you remember, she asks me cheerfully. Please?

  The year was 1972. Marjorie — or Marj, as she started to be called around then — was fourteen, Miriam was eight, my siblings were living in the States and overseas, busy in their respective helping fields of social work and missionary zeal, and Elvira and I were both thirty-seven years old. The next four years, as I recall, were good ones, discounting my continuous internal struggles with manic depression compounded by my utter refusal to talk about it with any living soul.

  My efforts at school, in the public library, and in church were noticed and appreciated by the community at large. My reputation as a teacher was growing in leaps and bounds, and although I still harboured a desire to be a principal, I was more than content in the classroom.

  During the Christmas holidays of that year I travelled alone by train to Ottawa to do research in the National Archives with the hope of further educating myself and my students on the subject of Canadian history. While I was there the great Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson died, and I managed to attend his funeral and afterwards stood in the rain with thousands of others watching the procession. A man shared his umbrella with me and when he found out that I wasn’t from Ottawa and would be spending my New Year’s Eve alone invited me to his house for his family’s annual bash. (I’m continually moved, to an embarrassing degree, by the kindnesses like these committed by strangers.) I phoned home and asked Elvira if she thought it would
be a good idea to attend this man’s party and she said by all means, go, you’ll have fun!

  And so I did, and it was enjoyable, although I left before midnight which naturally Elvira and the girls later found hopelessly amusing. Yes, I told them, I do understand how a New Year’s Eve party “works.” But I’d had a lot of writing to do back at the hotel.

  At home, I was the same, and more so. I was distant, silent, and sad much of the time. Elvira was, in almost all respects, functioning in the role of a single parent, and my relationship with my daughters, what there was of it, began to falter. When they were babies I could hold them in my arms and sing to them and when they were little children we could play rather than talk, but as they grew up I lost my footing as a father. I didn’t know how to be with them, other than as a teacher, and the odd time I made an effort to interact casually and affectionately as I felt a father should, it felt forced and artificial and I knew they sensed it too, and I became self-conscious. I retreated into my bedroom, reassuring them with a few words of my love and concern, and smiling at them often like a distant relative, unsure how to proceed from there.

  I didn’t know how to respond to their joy or to their easygoing everyday banter, but when the chips were down for them I reached out. If nothing else I understood their sadness, so when they were sick in bed or disappointed, or even heart-broken, I found it so much easier to act as a father should, offering words of encouragement and sympathy, and making stabs at goofy, light-hearted repartee.

  At about that time, when she was eight or nine, Miriam bought a poster for herself and glued it (in the future Elvira and I recommended the use of scotch tape for such things) to her bedroom wall. The picture was of a kitten hanging from a wash line by its two front paws, and under it the caption Hang in There, Baby! Whenever Miriam was feeling blue or overwhelmed, I would remind her (and of course myself) of that message. Hang in there, baby! was one of the few things I actually said to her, and lately she’s been saying it quite a lot to me, trying to get me to smile, which I do. The other day we said it to each other at the very same time, and laughed.

  When she was ten years old the concept of open-area teaching came into vogue, and our school board decided to knock out the walls between the two grade five classes and the two grade six classes. I was very much opposed to the idea of blackboards on wheels being used instead of walls between the classes. What will I do? I asked Elvira after I’d been told my walls were coming down. You’ll adjust, she said, you’ll manage. (Want some ice cream?) My classroom was a noisy one, generally because I was so fond of group projects and dramatizations and hammering and sawing and just maintaining a healthy hum of ideas and opinions that I had no idea how we’d manage in an “open area.”

  One thing I discovered, however, while coping without proper walls, was the amount of trouble Miriam was getting into at school. She was in grade five, in the classroom directly next to mine, and now, thanks to the open-area concept, I could hear much of what was going on over there. From what I could tell she did a fair amount of visiting, laughing, and interrupting others, particularly the teacher, with ridiculously impertinent questions and flippant remarks obviously meant to amuse her friends. I never mentioned to her that I could hear her acting up in class, because I wasn’t supposed to have heard this in the first place and because I didn’t want to meddle in the affairs of her teacher.

  In the meantime I tried to stay away from the blackboard on wheels and closer to the front of my class, where I wouldn’t hear what was going on in hers. Once, when I had absentmindedly wandered to the back, Miriam, who had noticed my large shoes on the other side of the blackboard on wheels, leaned over, poked her head under the blackboard, and said, Hi, Dad!

  One time, however, I sensed that she had crossed over the line into bad behaviour. From what I could ascertain, through the blackboard walls, she had placed a thumbtack on a student’s chair, a boy she had clashed with several times already. He had shot out of his seat yelling and had disturbed the class, which infuriated his teacher. Who is responsible for this? said Miriam’s teacher. Nobody in her class said a word, and I moved a little closer to the blackboard, eager to know how it would all play out. Again, her teacher asked the question, Who is responsible for this? I was so nervous. I didn’t want Miriam to think she could put a tack on somebody’s seat whenever she felt like it, but I also didn’t want her to get caught. Finally, she was turned in by an honest classmate with noble intentions and marched out of the classroom into the main hallway where her teacher would be sure to give her a very stern talking-to and some type of assignment befitting the crime, not to mention a command to apologize to the boy in front of the entire class.

  After what seemed like hours, I heard her shuffle back into the classroom, sniffing, repentant, and humiliated. I felt so bad for her that I made up an excuse, on the spot, to go to the library. The only way of getting to the library with our ill-conceived open-area concept was to walk directly through Miriam’s classroom, while keeping close to the barrier so as not to be too disruptive. As I walked past Miriam’s desk, I reached out my hand and mussed her hair gently, and was gone.

  That evening during supper Elvira asked the girls how their days had gone, and Miriam, after returning my smile from across the table, answered, Good! This rare connection between the two of us sustained me for days.

  Down First, up William, across Main. Across Main, down William, up First. Day after day after day after week after week after month after month after year after year after year. I taught school. I was a schoolteacher. I believe that’s correct.

  I remember playing baseball with my students and hitting twenty-seven foul balls in a row that, if they had been straight, would surely have been spectacular home runs. There I stood at home plate, my tie tucked in between the buttons of my shirt, my sleeves rolled up, a good-natured grin on my face, primed for a grand slam, and knocking twenty-seven fouls into the stands. I hit fouls consistently. One day Mrs. I.Q. was walking past the school as the kids and I played baseball. I was at bat, and hitting fouls, and Mrs. I.Q. yelled out, Straighten ’em out, Mel, you’re waiting too long!

  My tentative approach to hitting the ball extended into my social life as well. Elvira and I were a part of a group made up of four couples. The men in this group, all of them except me, were spirited, outgoing, argumentative, and loud, and I loved to get them going on one subject or another, usually political or economic. I would casually allude to an issue, for instance the building of a new hockey arena, something I knew would fire them up, and then I would sit back with a satisfied grin as they took the bait, arguing passionately, explosively, and sometimes even eloquently, for hour after entertaining hour. If there was a lull in the debate all I had to do to get them going again was mention Trudeau’s name, and they’d be off and running like a pack of dogs to a single bone. Elvira would also take part occasionally, grateful for the opportunity to lay down her paring knife or whatever it was she was wielding in the kitchen with the other wives and enter the fray in the living room. She and I would wink conspiratorially at each other as she joined in the discussion with her left-of-centre political opinions, a surefire guarantee for getting these conservative Mennonite businessmen even more riled up than before.

  twenty-three

  In 1976, my small world turned upside down when I lost my home again and this time for good. Steinbach was growing quickly in those days and businesses were vying for space on Main Street as they expanded to accommodate the growing population. Our house on First Street sat directly behind a busy Ford dealership. Steinbach was establishing itself as “The Automobile City,” and folks came from all over the province for good deals on a new car.

  Albert Enns at this dealership needed my property to expand the business and remain a competitive force in the automobile industry. At first he approached me indirectly. Hey, Mel, have you ever given any thought to selling? Of course I hadn’t. I had built this home from scratch and nurtured the yard and flowerbeds and fruit trees
and maple trees into a veritable Garden of Eden.

  Several weeks later, Albert Enns made an offer, a low one, and I told him again that I had no intention of selling. And then Albert said he would propose a zoning amendment to town council that, if passed, would have the block in which my house stood zoned commercial as opposed to residential, which would mean we were out and he was in. Who knows if he would have done it, but it scared me, and I retreated. Elvira encouraged me to call his bluff, or to just plain ignore him, and stop worrying about it. But I was absolutely stricken, paralyzed with fear at the possibility of appearing in court, of violating a zoning code.

  I decided to move. The Realtor kept coming around, trying to get me to lower the price, and, after I relented, turned around and sold the property to Albert. He got the house and property and, over the course of the next few years, expanded his dealership according to the plan he had drawn up even before I had agreed to sell. Eventually he had my house removed entirely, carted off to the country, and had the basement filled in. I didn’t want to know where they were taking my house. On the day they finally took it away, years after it had been sold, I stood in my new yard and watched the house get smaller and smaller as it disappeared down the highway on the back of a flatbed truck. As far as I know, hockey legend Billy Mosienko’s house is still in its original location. Perhaps some day I’ll drive past it and remember the day Elvira and I eagerly knocked on the front door. Today bright shiny new cars mark the spot that had been our home, and my most important accomplishment.