by Sonia Tilson
Gillian sat down thoughtfully beside the bed. “Mum, you started telling me yesterday about the man who gave me the Koala bear. Who was he?”
Her mother looked down, carefully smoothing the satin ribbons of her bed jacket. “Oh, just an old friend. A distant relative, actually.” She flicked a look at Gillian. “Why do you ask?”
“It seemed important to you, and I …” Gillian broke off as the door opened wide.
“Your mum’s really perked up after that procedure, hasn’t she?” Sunita came in, her arms full. She put down her load, filled a stainless-steel bowl with hot water from the wash basin, and wrung out the face cloth. “You’re looking rested too, Gillian. I won’t be long here, but I’m going to freshen Iris up and change the sheets as well as see to her medications. Give us about half an hour.”
Gillian walked to the Uplands shopping centre. After watching her mother and some of the other patients in the nursing home, she was appreciating the fact that she could walk, and briskly at that. Climbing the hill and enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face, she wondered about the man who had given her the bear. Could he be the young man in that photograph?
She was in the bookstore, searching unsuccessfully for any Canadian content, when a raised voice jolted her to attention. A middle-aged man was haranguing the young female cashier about an order that had not yet come in. She heard him say, “Do I make myself clear?” and saw a balding, grey-tonsured head thrust forward as the sallow-faced man turned and pushed past her, his pale eyes fixed on a distant goal.
It was the self-important swing of his shoulders as he left the shop that gave him away.
She had grieved all her life over that? She had wilted under the judgment of a future annoying old fart? She would have married him, and spent her whole life with him, would she? Hugging her elbows, she stood at the door and watched Llewellyn get into a Mercedes-Benz, the revelation further enhanced by the sight of a stout, equally angry-looking, black-haired woman in a red straw hat sitting at the wheel.
She bought up all the freesias in the grocer’s shop for her mother and set off for St. Anne’s, her arms full of the white yellow and purple blossoms. Despite their heady fragrance, her euphoria faded as she walked back in the noonday heat.
If only I had known! She thought of all the years she had spent held back by guilt, bruised by rejection, afraid to carve for herself, and unable to see her way; the waste of shame through which she had struggled all her life. To be fair, Llewellyn had not been the first cause of all that; he had been more of a symptom, she realized, as had Doug, and, after Doug, the dim purgatory of her marriage to Russ. She shook her head recalling the ten, trancelike years of their marriage, and the surreal awakening that had brought them to an end.
W
Watching Zorba the Greek one summer night at Ottawa’s Mayfair Cinema, Gillian saw that during those years of marriage to Russ, she had somehow mislaid her life. She was a ghost, drifting through the motions of domesticity while the living souls, clapping fervently, if stupidly, beside her in the cinema, for example, were surely caught up in the joys and pains of existence. They felt free to throw back their heads and belt out arias, or pop songs, or hymns. They jived to the pulse of disco lights and drums. Their teeth clenched on thorny roses, they swirled and swooped in sultry tangos. Cuddled on the sofa, they watched Wayne and Schuster, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. They threw cast-iron pots at each other, and then, if they survived, made passionate love on the kitchen floor. They rejoiced and suffered with a blessed intensity, in heaven or in hell, while she, prim and pampered, languished in limbo in a genteel, white-frame house in Manor Park.
She walked to the car behind a middle-aged couple, at least ten years older than she was. The woman put her head on the man’s shoulder as they walked in step, her arm tucked tightly under his. They were laughing in delight over the film, and Gillian knew that when they got home they would make love.
In her gleaming kitchen the next morning, she lifted the damp mass of hair off the back of her neck with a sigh and stirred lemon slices into a jug of iced tea. She drew out the long-handled spoon, pulling a face at her upside-down reflection in its back, and watched the drops of condensation trickle down the tall sides of the glass jug onto the shining, tomato-red countertop. An image of a stream tumbling down a cliff-face between wind-blown poppies was disrupted by the drone of the Hoover, as Mrs. Knight, her cleaning woman, apparently unfazed by the heat, began briskly vacuuming the upstairs hall.
Gillian blew down the front of her blouse. When she had immigrated she had thought the main problem with living in Ottawa would be the cold, but at that moment, even though it was still only June, she might as well be living in one of those hothouses, complete with banana trees, they used to have in the Educational Gardens in Swansea. Nine-year-old Bryn had found it hard to do his homework and to get to sleep the night before and had trailed off to school that morning, pale and bruise-eyed. She would ask Russ again about getting an air conditioner. He had given her the new Hoover as a present for her thirty-fifth birthday in April, so perhaps the air
conditioner could be an advance Christmas gift. She would tell him that several other households in the neighbourhood had already acquired one.
With a pang she remembered the couple walking from the cinema the previous night. Ten years before, Russ had been so insistent that he loved her, and that he would think of her unborn child as his own that, believing she had found a man who was neither user nor loser, she had gladly agreed to marry him. To be fair, she reflected, he had been honest when he made those promises. He loved her as much as he could, she believed, and probably would have regarded a biological son just as numbly as he did Bryn.
She remembered an incident in Windsor Park when Bryn was about seven months old. Needing to tie her shoelace, she had handed the baby to Russ who, as usual, held out the wriggling bundle at some distance from his body as if afraid it might explode. At a warning shout, she looked up from her shoe to see a football, arcing end over end through the air, heading directly for Russ.
“Russ! Look out!” she yelled, and watched, appalled, as Russ, taking in the danger of being hit on the head by a large flying object, raised his arms and fended off the ball with the baby.
Still in shock, and giddy with relief since the ball had bounced off Bryn’s well-diapered behind with no ill effect, apart from his ear-splitting objections, she had laughed off the incident, and for years, despite the recurring image of the flying ball and the baby in the air, had firmly told herself that she had been lucky to marry a decent, steady man who loved her.
He had certainly told her he loved her when he proposed marriage but apparently had felt no need to repeat himself, and lovemaking, if you could call it that, had long since become a thing of the past. He seemed satisfied with the routine of their life: a silent, hurried breakfast, packed lunches to take to the National Research Centre, and dinners of the sort that could be adjusted to his timetable. There was never a meal out, or a holiday trip. Restaurant meals were overpriced he said, and travel didn’t appeal to him.
Isobel had come every Sunday until her final illness, four years before, to spend the day with them, bringing Jack with her, to Bryn’s delight. Russ had agreed they would take over the care of Jack when Isobel became too ill to look after him, but when the old dog died, soon after Isobel, he said there would be no more dogs. Jack’s barking had disturbed his rest, he said, and affected his ability to concentrate. Moreover, the animal was smelly, scruffy, and towards the end, incontinent. His mother’s previous dog had died too, he remembered, after a similar deterioration. What was the point? He was, he said, allergic to cats.
He seemed to have no sense of family life; understandable perhaps, since before his marriage there had only been he and his mother, his father having died when he was a baby. When Tom had come to Ottawa that one time on BMW business, Gillian had hoped that the two practical-minded men
might find something in common to talk about: engines, fuel consumption, metal fatigue … But for the whole three days that Tom had stayed with them, the conversation had been minimal and awkward and he had left looking sad and subdued.
Their social life was equally minimal. Danielle, still teaching at Sir Charles Roberts, but now married and living in nearby Lindenlea, came over occasionally for morning coffee, but Gillian’s attempt at a dinner party for her and Pierre had been a failure.
Never one for small-talk, Russ had been polite but ill-at-ease, and conversation had been stilted over the shrimp cocktail, game-hens, and blueberry cheesecake Gillian had prepared in anticipation of a lively evening. While she served after-dinner coffee and liqueurs, Russ excused himself to check data, returning just as Pierre, who loved a joke, reached the punch line. Gillian saw Pierre’s mouth snap shut and his vivid, mobile face freeze as Russ re-entered the room, and understood immediately that there would be no more such dinner parties. It was not just because Russ knew few French-Canadians; he was awkward and unresponsive with everyone he met. Socializing was not his sort of thing, he said. No more than it had been Doug’s, she thought.
Work could have made her life less empty, but when, years before, she had suggested she could return to teaching once Bryn was at school full-time, Russ had dismissed the idea, arguing that unforeseen domestic concerns might interfere with his work. In any case, there was no need for it. He had looked complacently around at their well-appointed home. He could provide for all their wants.
Gillian had not argued. Perhaps Bryn needed her to be home, and she should be supportive of Russ, who was working harder than ever. She should appreciate what she had and not rock the boat.
The sound of the vacuum intensified and then stopped as Mrs. Knight arrived at the top of the stairs. There was another driven one, thought Gillian, wondering what motivated her cleaning woman to work with such fervour; a question which reminded her of a strange little discrepancy regarding Mrs. Knight. Her friend, or friendly acquaintance, Bernice, with whom she shared Mrs. Knight’s services, and who lived in a shabby-genteel house in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill, all hardwood floors, varnished panelling, and stained glass, had reported to her that Mrs. Knight had said her greatest pleasure lay in “helping to restore a beautiful old home to its former graciousness.” Mrs. Knight had told Gillian, on the other hand, that she preferred houses like hers, where everything was fresh and new and came clean quickly. “Not like those big old houses where, however hard you work, it always looks shabby.”
Turning her eyes from her reflected presence in the kitchen’s shining surfaces, Gillian prepared lunch. She heard Mrs. Knight bump the Hoover down the stairs, and saw her pause at the bottom beside the maidenhair fern, whisk a rag out of her apron pocket, and rub something, a finger-print maybe, off the oval hall mirror.
Knowing that Mrs. Knight would refuse anything more substantial, she laid out plates of lettuce and tomato and slices of the best, whole-grain bread, lightly buttered.
“I’ll just have a little bit of lettuce, and a bit of bread and butter, and a nice cup of tea, if you have one,” Mrs. Knight would say with a bright smile. “I’ll have plenty to eat tonight when the family comes to supper.”
Mrs. Knight was rightly proud of her family. Shirley, the eldest, was married to Nicholas, a very successful businessman, who had just bought a new Buick apparently, in which Mrs. Knight would be taken for a drive that evening. It seemed they had a lovely home on elegant Clemow Avenue, where they entertained important people like the mayor. Their six-year-old twins, Kimberly and Kendra, as bright as they were beautiful, were to start at a private girls’ school, in the fall.
Doreen, her younger daughter, was articled with a highly respected law firm. She had been engaged to a brilliant young orthopedic surgeon, but had recently broken it off; Mrs. Knight was afraid that Doreen liked living at home too much for her own good.
The youngest, Norman, his mother’s pride and joy, was doing his Master’s degree in political science at Carleton University. According to Mrs. Knight, in looks and personality he took after his father, Victor, a gentle giant of a man with hair so blond it was almost white, and piercing blue eyes.
Victor had died, it seemed, when Shirley was ten and Norman barely two, and Mrs. Knight had raised the children single-handedly since then, struggling to keep to the ideals and hopes her husband had for them. Gillian and Bernice thought she was wonderful: a shining example of what was possible.
“You must be exhausted in this heat.” Gillian pulled out a vinyl-topped stool for Mrs. Knight. “But we’ll all be much more comfortable soon because my husband’s buying us an air conditioner.” This was not strictly true, but it felt good to say it. “Look, why don’t you go home after lunch? With full pay, of course. It’s much too hot for such heavy work, and you’ve already done much more than I expected.”
“Oh, no, I’m not a bit tired. After all, I’m only fifty-five. I never run out of energy.” Mrs. Knight looked mistily at the rounded, sky-blue refrigerator. “My husband used to call me ‘the human dynamo’. He used to say it wore him out just looking at me dusting.” She studied the hot-pink polish on her short, broken fingernails. “I told you he died of leukemia, didn’t I?”
“No … No, I thought it was polio for some reason. You said he died when the children were very young. That must have been terribly hard for you.”
Mrs. Knight stirred her tea thoughtfully. Gillian noticed, for the first time, brown blotches on the back of her hand, and heard a little clatter as she replaced the spoon. Her amber curls had lost their bounce, there was a film of sweat on her brow, and while her cheeks and lips were their usual geranium pink, her blue eyes had a confused look that Gillian had not seen before, the shadows under them too deep for makeup to hide.
“No, it was leukemia. It was my father that died of polio.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have got mixed up.” Gillian poured Mrs. Knight another cup of tea.
The meal over, she collected the dishes. “I’ll see to these. And please let me drive you home today for once. It’s far too hot for you to have to stand at the bus stop.”
“No. I like the bus, and I may want to drop in on a friend, but thanks just the same, Mrs. Armstrong. Now I’ll be off upstairs to tackle that grouting. I’ll have it spotless in no time.”
“Please don’t, Mrs. Knight. Not in this heat. Leave it until next week.”
“Not to worry. I’d like to get it done.”
Two days later, Gillian was cutting roses in the garden in her coolest sundress while waiting for Bryn to get home from school. She felt sweat break out between her shoulder blades as she walked over the yellowed lawn. Thunder rumbled con-
tinuously in the heavy air like distant bombing, while rain always seemed to be about to fall, but never did, and the poppies and peonies drooped and faded despite daily watering. She moved listlessly along the bed of roses, looking for the least wilted. As she leaned over to clip a sheltered crimson bloom, she heard the phone ring.
“I’m sorry, Gillian, but I’ve got some awful news.” Bernice’s usually crisp voice sounded fuzzy and hesitant. “It’s Mrs. Knight. She’s dead, Gillian! She dropped dead here, cleaning windows.”
“Good God, Bernice! Cleaning windows? In this heat?”
“I know! I told her not to. Honestly, I did, Gillian; but she said she felt fine, and she wanted to do them because it’s better when the sun isn’t on them.” Bernice took a shuddering breath. “You get a better shine she said.”
Gillian sat down by the phone. “When did this happen?”
“About an hour ago. The ambulance has just gone.”
“Oh, her poor family! And poor you! You must be feeling terrible.” Gillian listened as Bernice unburdened herself tearfully at length. “We should send flowers,” she said finally to Bernice. “And go to the funeral, of course.” After Bernice rang off, Gillian sha
kily jammed the roses into a jug, crimson petals falling onto their own reflections in the gleaming, black and white tiled floor.
Visitation time at the small downtown funeral parlour coincided with both rush hour and the long-awaited downpour. Gillian was grateful that Russ, possibly feeling he should be sorry about Mrs. Knight, had uncharacteristically volunteered to be home when Bryn got back from school, and to stay until she returned. An accident on Bank Street necessitated a detour, and by the time she had found a parking place and hurried over swirling gutters and down streaming streets to the small funeral parlour, she was late for meeting Bernice. As she entered the dim front hall, breathless and flustered, a short, stout, middle-aged man stepped out from a doorway.
“You gotta be Mrs. Armstrong.” He shook her hand. “I’m Norm Knight. Thanks for coming to pay your respects to my mother.” He smoothed his thin, greying hair and tucked in his nylon shirt over a substantial belly.
This is Norman? Trying to hide her confusion, Gillian said, “I’m so sorry about your mother. She was a wonderful woman. I admired her so much.”
“Yeah, that’s what that other lady said. Would you like to see the remains?” He led her into a small, shadowy, visitation room where a dozen or so people, not including Bernice, turned sharply to stare at her.
The star of the occasion, clad in a silky white dress, lay in an open casket floating in a pool of illumination on a dais at the other end of the room. Accompanied by Norman, Gillian approached the casket to survey what seemed to be an artist’s version of Mrs. Knight; the brassy curls subdued to auburn waves and the cheeks and faintly smiling lips beneath the patrician nose, tinted a pale, refined rose.
She peered at the name and dates on the placard in front of the coffin:
Victoria Elaine Knight 1905–1970.