Almost a Great Escape

by Tyler Trafford

  XXX OOO

  Love Mum

  Sometimes I would write for J.E.D. the way you were teaching me and he would note Interesting. On the school term’s one creative writing class topic of What You Did This Summer, I wrote in no going back style an essay that I titled How To Teach English. It came back without a comment. The mark on the top left in black: 55%. I looked across the aisle to see the mark on the nailbiter’s: 88%. It was about what he did that summer. I asked J.E.D. about the why of this. His three words of mystery described my destiny as a writer.

  Go sit down.

  I came home that Christmas and things were okay until I said something wrong and you started drinking and Dad said what did I come home for — to cause this trouble? All the money spent on school and these are your marks? It is time for you to be a man. Say sorry to your mother. You’re upsetting her. Don’t ruin this Christmas for her.

  At the dinner table I face surrounding disapproval of my siblings. He controls them now. But not me. I am the outcast. Not in this story anymore.

  One June morning the headmaster asked me after chapel if I would like to stay back a year to be in a class with boys more my own age. I wasn’t doing well he said. He was Ned the two-faced Nickle with Ted’s untrustworthy hair. I had this figured out already. I asked why would I stay in school an extra year. The back of his headmaster gown whirled his answer down the chapel hill. The next semester I had a desk in the dumb class. The only time he talked to me after that was when he caned me six for being even dumber and not trying in my studies. He had just announced that university entrance requirements were going up and from now we at SLS would set 60 percent as our standard. Public school 50 percent wouldn’t be acceptable for leaders of tomorrow. Bend over for six more checking my full of sloth underpants for extra layers.

  I was 16 when I graduated. The bus took me out the gates and I never went back. It was lucky for Canada I wasn’t a leader of tomorrow. I knew how to conjugate love in Latin. Amo. Amas. Amat. I love. He loves. You love. But I had forgotten what love was.

  Dad said the family was moving to Australia and my mother wasn’t well and it would be best for everybody if I stayed in Calgary that fall and continued my studies.

  I turned 17 that summer and I saw you the next summer in Sydney and you were passed out on your bed. I didn’t know you. Dad said I had made things worse. Again. I’ll always be an aggravating son of a bitch and he can tell I’m going to turn out just like her.

  TWO PARAGRAPHS TO A FRIEND

  HE JUST LAUGHS

  Undated

  People always seem to want to take things. . . . My biggest mistake was giving my money to Ted . . . Men use money as power. Power at work, power socially and most awful power over women — particularly their wives. I don’t want Ted’s meanness to rub off on me. When two people live together they grow alike.

  If I could just cope with keeping our home running and a part time job, it would be great. When Ted — no, when I allow Ted to upset me I am very disorganized. That is the real answer. Just don’t react to his ever changing moods. He just laughs when he sees how much he can disturb me. For him it is all a joke because I cannot, no one can, hurt him. He has learned or taught himself that he can do no wrong and he is very content with that belief.

  AN EDEN BROOK STORY

  ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

  On your birthday your Memorial Inscription still looks wrong to me.

  TRAFFORD

  EDWARD LE M ALICE TYLER

  1917 - 1924 - 2004

  I have a copy of the form you signed as purchaser of Plot 1920 Space A, with a Wheat Bronze Memorial, and Latin Cross Emblem and Inscription. There was no mistaking your rolling signature. Whether I liked it or not, this is what you wanted.

  I have kept that form on my desk for two years. I glance at it every day wondering why it looks wrong to me. I study it with an Emily “tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

  After I went to Montreal and Uncle John showed me your mother’s grave, I understood why you chose to use your maiden name, Alice Tyler, for the Memorial Inscription. Because that is the way your mother’s inscription reads: Marjorie Flanagan Tyler 1901-1948. Her maiden name was Flanagan and her married name Tyler.

  But today I looked at the Eden Brook form closely and for the first time I noticed the date you signed it: February 14, 1997. St. Valentine’s Day.

  What a buried message!

  You never did anything thoughtlessly. You always had a reason. You inten­tionally chose St. Valentine’s Day to select a burial plot and Memorial Inscription for you and Dad.

  I know, too, that you wanted to make sure I got this no going back bronze message. You didn’t leave it to me in a note or a letter that might have been lost or overlooked. This is the no anaesthetic treatment you gave Geoff holding his hand tight against the table while Dr. Anderson stitched his thumb. This message is in the unflinching set of your jaw. Take the pain. Charge the Cavalry of Woe.

  Dad’s eyesight is going. He’s almost deaf. His hands shake. He’s forgetful. I expect he won’t last much longer. And I’m not looking forward to that. Because the day his ashes are buried beside yours will be the hardest day of my life.

  But I will accept this plot and this inscription because I accept there isn’t anything too painful or anybody too wrong that I can’t survive with love in my heart. Because I am learning there is much of you in me. With love, we endure.

  A TYLER STORY

  YOUR FUNERAL

  Alice:

  This is how I felt the day of your funeral.

  I wonder how you felt the day Big Marjorie died. You never said.

  XXX OOO

  Tyler

  A TYLER AND ALICE STORY

  MY HAZEL-EYED INHERITANCE

  I have explored the Alice Suitcase hundreds of times. In the reading now, wondering and remembering, I can fit the slants that tell one new truth: an answer to a question I’d had about myself. It begins in the June 1941, letter Jens wrote Alice as he left Canada to join the aircrews in England: “I wonder if you have ever spoken to her about our plans for the future?”

  That was when I first recognized how far apart Big Marjorie and Alice lived. The mistrust must have been terrible.

  Why wouldn’t a daughter tell her mother about her engagement? Because Alice didn’t have a mother. She had Big Marjorie.

  And in her heart, Alice recognized that Jens was showing her a new pos­sibility, a different role for herself — a life she chose. And she knew Big Marjorie would stop at nothing to destroy her relationship with Jens because it threatened her own ambitions. Big Marjorie had a plan and Alice knew she wasn’t going to be allowed to ruin it.

  Alice seldom spoke to me about her family. When she did, she always said how much she loved her father, Bert, and how handsome and athletic her brother John was. She mentioned half-sister Marjorie rarely, and always with sadness. She tried to say good things about competing sister Joan. But her mother didn’t get a word. Big Marjorie lived behind the door Alice never opened. Marjorie Tyler 1901-1948. My grandmother. The never mentioned.

  For Alice, who understood irony best of all, the greatest irony was that Big Marjorie did not leave her children the promised perfect happiness of horse shows, debutante parties, and Westmount mansions. She only left them her unhappiness.

  What would Big Marjorie have thought of Emily’s ambition —

  If I can stop one Heart from breaking,

  I shall not live in vain

  Big Marjorie lived in vain and in vanity.

  I never doubted My Goodbye Mother loved me, but there were days when she didn’t want me to visit. Her jaw would be set hard and her hold me close blue eyes would become a slammed shut door. I called them her loveless days. They had nothing to do with P and V. They were coherent. Even as a boy I knew there was a never ask me hidden behind her eyes slammed shut.

  It wasn’t until I opened The Campbell’s Soup Box that I knew it wasn’t a what, it was a who. Big Marjorie.
/>   As I began to understand the relationship between Alice and Big Marjorie, I could feel my teeth clenching and my stomach tightening. The anxiety I felt wasn’t for Alice. It was for me. Because I was seeing in Big Marjorie a piece of myself I had never admitted before.

  I inherited Big Marjorie’s hazel eyes and dark hair. I inherited her small hands. And I inherited her traits. I know they are genetic because nobody taught me how to be envious, vengeful, greedy, hateful, and selfish. I am a natural.

  I know this because every unhappiness in my life has begun in moments when it seemed easy to be envious, vengeful, greedy, hateful, or selfish. This was the Big Marjorie side of Alice a small boy never saw. She kept that door locked to protect me. For my thirteen young years her arms surrounded me and all I knew was a nothingness that loved me and I loved in return.

  My Goodbye Mother kept the door locked on Big Marjorie as long as she could. Silver labelled Smirnoff Vodka the key to that lock. One drink alone to insert the key. One fall down the stairs to turn it. One more drink that never stops and unhappiness is your life.

  And so My Goodbye Mother takes me to the train station.

  I couldn’t know then how painful it was for her to send me away, to ease my life the aching. I was only thinking about myself.

  Now that I recognize the love wrapped in her goodbye, it is too late to thank her. What I had interpreted as rejection was actually the most wonder­ful gesture a mother could make. She had baptized me and it had taken. I was strong enough to survive on my own.

  Today, years away, I continually discover, often horrifically, that I can survive but not defeat my inheritance from Big Marjorie. It is with me forever. I can only control it.

  In my worst times, I recall cold eyes warning me: Don’t let this happen to you.

  For My Goodbye Mother, I write the following so my children will know how hard she fought her inheritance. I write in her voice because I am all the voice she has left.

  Debu-Tramps and Dunderheads

  My name is Alice Tyler and I grew up in Westmount, a wealthy city inside Montreal, during the 1930s. The Depression, as other people called it, did not involve my family any more than the War that followed involved us. Depression and War were polite dinner discussions about inconveniences we would never experience . . . Until I met and lost my Jens.

  It’s all gone now. That’s what I should be writing.

  My crowd absolutely adored each other. We spoke English, attended Anglican or Catholic churches, and our mothers approved who we would marry. We went to the same schools, attended the same coming out parties, and holi­dayed together in the Laurentians. We were upper class — sophisticated. We were politely nice to servants — shopkeepers — gardeners. We could afford to be politely nice when it suited us.

  None of that matters. If it ever did, it shouldn’t have. But here it is anyway. Written like some goddamn English term paper. Boring.

  We lived on Lansdowne Avenue, which climbs through Westmount and intersects at the top with Westmount Boulevard. Our house had only seven bedrooms — As my father was reminded at least once a week. I had my own bedroom, which didn’t keep my sisters from snooping through my desk and closet. My parents didn’t sleep together — It wasn’t hard to figure out what else they didn’t do together. Our cook and housekeeper Annie O’Reilly slept downstairs. Father said she was a godsend. She came to us from Ireland, 16, poor, and uneducated. She didn’t like me and threatened to leave because of me. I didn’t like her. My mother liked Annie because she reported everything I did. We had an Irish Setter named Alpy. My mother — born an immigrant Flanagan in New York State — liked anything Irish. You couldn’t hide your poor Irish background with a name like Flanagan, so she paraded it.

  Behind her back, my mother was known as Big Marjorie. She wasn’t physically big. She was quite small, with dark hair and hazel eyes filled with suspicion, and not much love. She was a user of people — manipulative, ruthless, and determined. That’s what made her big. A big what? — You can guess for yourself.

  The only thing she cared about was a red brick and stone mansion on top of the hill: 3803 Westmount Boulevard. She wanted to be more than admired. She wanted to be envied the way she envied other people. How tragic to love that poison.

  Pathetic. I’m writing a diary of regrets. What kind of writer am I? Sitting here with a handful of steroids, a pack of cigarettes, and my Smirnoff. Who the hell do I think I am? Nobody wants to hear how I suffer anguish. The only writers worth reading live their stories in their guts and tell them without self-pity.

  When my mother first came to Montreal from Malone, New York, she was snubbed by society, particularly by my father’s family who thought he should have done better than marry an American who already had a child — my half-sister Marjorie.

  Marjorie of Malone was not a woman who took a snubbing well. She specialized in revenge, and the revenge she planned was to move into 3803 Westmount Boulevard.

  Once established in that mansion, she told us, she would be high enough in Montreal to “piss down on everybody else.”

  As her daughter I was part of her plan. That was my purpose in life.

  I’ll tell you what’s gone. The Alice Tyler who had ideas. Smart ones. The girl who could write. Not this biography stuff. The laugh and see inside a story. That’s what I could do. Pissed away.

  Where has all my good writing gone? The last thing I wrote worth reading was when I was 25. Where has the good stuff gone?

  In one way I can’t blame Big Marjorie for seeing love as ending badly — it’s bad enough getting dumped by one mother, and she was dumped by two.

  Her father — Joe Flanagan — owned the Flanagan Hotel in Malone, where vacationing New Yorkers enjoyed the rural air in the stylish comfort of formal dining rooms and verandas. Eva, Joe’s first wife, was broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and probably a more voluptuous woman than elegant Joe could handle.

  Joe and Eva had two daughters. When my mother was nine — I can only guess at her age — Eva ran off to start a new life for herself in Montreal, leaving Joe and the girls behind.

  Joe then married Ada who, although mean-spirited and thin, was a real millionaire. Not nouveau — like some people we would later avoid. Ada told Joe to get rid of his girls, so he dropped them off in a nearby convent.

  As soon as my mother was old enough to leave the convent she got married, apparently taking the first offer to come her way — I never learned his name. He turned out to be a no-good drunk who headed for Florida never to return. Poor Marjorie — dumped again! There was no record of a divorce. However, there was a consequence — “Little” Marjorie — born in 1921.

  There it is again. Me writing like vodka eroded every original thought. The steroids make me want to fight this but the only way to fight is to write and I can’t. This isn’t writing. This is facts worked into sentences. Writing is seeing the good and true in life and working that into sentences. Anybody — even Ted — can write grammatical facts. Next thing I know I’ll be adding a timeline and family tree.

  Long before she arrived in Montreal, my mother had made up her mind she was going to be looking down on the high society Flanagan Hotel guests who had ordered her to bring their summer drinks onto the veranda — All she had to do was marry the right man.

  The right man was up and coming Bert Tyler who she met drinking in a Montreal speakeasy. Big Marjorie could see Bert had possibilities — He just needed a plan.

  You make the money, Marjorie told him, I’ve got the plan. It won’t be long before we’ll be drinking at the Ritz-Carlton.

  Bert and a college friend owned Standard Cottons, buying the ends of rolls from textile mills and reselling the fabric to retailers as remnants — A good business.

  Rumours about Little Marjorie’s long gone father circulated in the gossipy circles of Westmount, but Big Marjorie was adept at covering her past. One gossip claimed she was never married, and another was sure she was never div­orced. My brother John says we are all ille
gitimate. He thinks that’s a riot! But wouldn’t that rip a page out of the Trafford genealogy! — A family of asterisks. Illegitimates. Bastards. Edward III*

  That’s some dishabille punctuation. Wouldn’t get a matric with it but who cares now. It makes sense to me. Besides I’m just trying to get all this down with the least confusion as if any of it would make sense to anybody but a goddamn lunatic which is what we all were.

  It makes me laugh to recall our lives. Geoffrey, always my smart aleck boy, has a tell it right saying about family facts and history — Do you want to know the truth, or do you want to be happy? After that two snorts from the bottle digression I continue —

  Expecting to be well received in Montreal after she married Bert was one of the few mistakes Big Marjorie would make, as far as her own life went. She made plenty of mistakes for other people.

  Whenever Ada visited us — Grandfather Joe never did — she arrived in her chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, gave us Grandfather Joe’s gifts, made critical comments about my mother’s taste in clothes and furnishings, and left. Only death could erase Ada from Big Marjorie’s Not To Be Forgiven list. Big Marjorie kept track of everybody, and everybody was on one of her lists. When Ada died and never left my mother a dime, my mother added Ada’s name to her Live Forever In Hell list. As if God wanted to help my mother get her revenge.

  That was better writing. I don’t get a paragraph like that too often. Tells a lot without footnotes.

  Big Marjorie’s plan for success began with raising her daughters as society debutantes and marrying them into the right families. Then we’d all move to the top of the ladder.

  We attended Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramp’s finishing school. (— Lots of laughs over that name!) We were educated to smile and act as if nothing in our lives was more important than balls, dinners, and coming out parties. While the rest of Canada counted pennies during the Depression, we bought gowns.