The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  Having come this far, Hal was determined to have his say about the benefits teachers enjoyed. “But you were paid for June and will be paid for July and August,” he said, “which is why you can afford to travel to Europe every summer.” It rankled Hal that teachers were paid during summer holidays and received a pension besides.

  And it rankled Laverne that from time to time she had to put up with the slurs her brother-in-law makes against teachers. Hal was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, according to Lily, received the bulk of his mother’s estate, and here he was trying to mooch off her hard-earned savings. In the calmest possible tone, Laverne said, “What I do with my salary is none of your business, and I will not lend you a penny.”

  “And you have no business coming upstairs whenever it suits you,” Hal said, and waved her downstairs. By the time Laverne was on the bottom stair, Hal had locked the door. He waited a few minutes—no more than three—before dialling Laverne’s number. Hal did not expect her to answer and later, much later, when he came around to thinking it over, he was disappointed that she did. Perhaps Laverne had been expecting him to apologize, but Hal had no intention of apologizing; his sister-in-law never apologized, so why should he? Hal told Laverne that she would have to cancel tomorrow’s lunch with Lily. “My wife is having lunch with me,” he said, and hanging up the telephone, he turned off the kitchen lights and waited in the dark until he heard Lily on her way to the bathroom. By now Hal was ashamed of himself and on the off chance that Lily might ask if something was wrong, he stayed where he was. He heard the toilet flush, footsteps in the hall, and still he waited. Only when he was sure Lily had set the book aside and fallen asleep, did he make his way to bed.

  Mindful of staying out of Sharon’s way, Hal passes the time on the back veranda, considering whether or not he should make Sharon an offer to build lawn chairs. Hal has made dozens of lawn chairs, solid chairs that never come apart. He has two patterns in his head and once the wood is cut, can build a chair in less than two hours. He can also make birdhouses and there are bound to be birds in the woods behind the rail fence that guests would enjoy watching. Hal pictures three birdhouses along the fence and a dozen lawn chairs: two groups of three near the fence and a group of six around a fire pit. Hal has never built a fire pit but Bill Colpitts builds them and he will pass along the business to Bill.

  Hal glances at his watch: only five more minutes to go but he forces himself to wait, frowning at the thought that once again Laverne has had her way. When she lived in the trailer at Sussex Corner, Hal was able to tolerate her rudeness but with both of them living under the same roof, her rudeness is impossible to ignore. Hal is a generous man but it irks him that on Wednesday nights Laverne has supper upstairs with Lily and him yet has never once invited him downstairs for a meal. What irks him even more is that although he agreed that the renovation expenses for her apartment could be included in the mortgage, he has never been invited to see what he has helped pay for. Whenever he complains to Lily about the unfairness of the situation, she tells him that Laverne’s apartment is so dreary and strange it would upset him to see it.

  It is time to give the engine another try. Hal sits behind the wheel, one foot against the open door, sweat beading his spine, leather burning through his trousers. Hal does not expect the engine to respond, but he follows Joe’s orders and turning the ignition key he hears the inevitable, disappointing click. He turns the key again and again before banging the wheel in frustration. Face it, Hal, he tells himself, the engine is kaput. This car won’t be going anywhere on its own. Unwilling to interrupt Sharon, who is almost finished painting the deck, Hal abandons the Impala, and following the paving stone path to the back deck, he opens the kitchen door. He phones Northrup’s Garage and when Joe comes on the line, Hal asks for a tow.

  “Ralph’s towing a car from Apohaqui,” Joe says. “It’ll be an hour before he gets back.”

  An hour. Resigned to waiting, Hal tells Joe that Ralph should take the dirt road to the right of the St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And Joe, the spare car you rent out …”

  “The Dodge.”

  “Can I rent it overnight?”

  “Sure, Hal.”

  “I appreciate that, Joe.” At least Lily’s birthday surprise can go ahead.

  The empty soup bowls are soaking in soapy water when Laverne serves the Coquille St. Jacques. “Oh my,” Lily says, “scallop shells.”

  “My friend Jessie brought them back from Grand Manan. She says there are thousands of them in the shallow water close to shore.”

  “I haven’t eaten scallops from a shell since I left Boston,” Lily says, referring to the six months she spent studying respiratory illnesses at Massachusetts General Hospital. “That was thirty-five years ago,” she says, “but I still remember how much tastier scallops were when cooked in the shell.”

  “Baked, they were baked in the shell,” Laverne says and pours more wine.

  Laverne’s telephone is out of sight in the small, dark room at the bottom of the back stairs she refers to as the pantry. The telephone rings twice. “That will be Hal,” Lily says and gets up to answer the phone, leaving the pantry door open. Laverne gazes out the window at the Volkswagen parked beside the garage and pretends not to listen. At first there is nothing for her to hear because, as usual, Hal is the one talking. When Lily finally gets a word in edgewise, Laverne hears her say that she understands Hal’s disappointment, that he is not to worry, the delay won’t spoil her day and there is no need to apologize. Apologize? Laverne has never known her brother-in-law to apologize. Hal must have asked Lily a question because Laverne hears her say yes, she is wearing the blue outfit Claudia gave her. He asks another question and Lily tells him that when she returns from the hospital she will be waiting for him upstairs. It occurs to Laverne that Hal is deliberately keeping her sister on the telephone and that if he has his way, the call could go on for a very long time. But no, the next thing Laverne hears Lily say is that there is no need for her to take a taxi to the hospital because Laverne can drive her there and back. Hal, being Hal, is refusing to take no for an answer. Lily is annoyed. “Laverne will drive me to the hospital,” she says and hangs up before Hal can get in another word. Pleased that her sister has stood her ground, Laverne savours the moment and when Lily returns to the table, she congratulates her for standing up to Hal.

  The remark does not sit well with Lily, who is loyal to a fault. She is well aware that Hal will try to have his way, but she will not tolerate her sister putting him down. Frowning with impatience, Lily says, “I’ll have you know, Laverne, that when necessary, I do stand up to Hal. Fortunately, standing up to him is not often required. Hal is a good man and it would make our lives easier if you recognized that fact.” Lily stops, waiting for a response and when none is forthcoming, she adds, “Furthermore, I am tired of being caught in the middle between you and Hal and it’s high time the two of you made an effort to get along, especially since we are living under the same roof. There are times when I feel there are two children living in this house: my sister and my husband.”

  This outburst has caught Laverne off guard and she casts around for something to say that will mollify Lily. “I never thought Hal was good enough for you,” she finally says, “and I always wanted what was best for you.”

  Lily leans toward her. “I know you have always wanted the best for me, Sis. But it’s important that you know that Hal is hardworking, honest and dependable and I would trust him with my life.” Lily grins mischievously. “Also, he’s good in bed.”

  Unable to respond to this bold disclosure, Laverne announces that it’s time for dessert. After carrying the scallop shells into the kitchen, she returns with two plates, a cupcake on each, one lit by a candle. No longer in a birthday mood, Lily blows out the candle without making a wish and licks the cupcake clean, prompting Laverne to ask if Lily remembers eating the icing off their mother’s birthday cak
e. “How could I forget when you remind me every year,” Lily says. “And it wasn’t me. Stinker ate the icing because you refused to talk to Tinker.” Tinker was the obliging elf under the table who ate whatever Lily didn’t want to eat. Stinker was the mischievous elf who hid Mrs. Roper’s false teeth, knotted her stockings and mussed up her bed. Mrs. Roper was the crabby housekeeper their father hired when their mother was upstairs dying of cancer.

  Apart from pretending to teach school on the veranda where, more often than not, Lily was her only student, Laverne had never liked to pretend. With pretending she could never be sure what would happen. It wasn’t that she lacked imagination, rather that she resisted the thought of losing herself in a story that was imaginary and therefore could not be trusted. Laverne wasn’t interested in imagining lives different from her own. She was interested in what she could touch and see: the amber window, the portrait of the burgomeister, the flush of green on the opposite wall.

  Leaving the table, Laverne goes into her bedroom where Lily’s birthday present is drying. Balancing the painting between her palms, she carries it to the table. “Happy Birthday,” she says, and is rewarded by Lily’s wide, all-or-nothing smile.

  “Is this the painting you began years ago when Hal and I lived at Fox Hill and Alan Harrington showed up in the meadow?”

  “It is, and I have been working on it every weekend for the past month,” Laverne says. “I only finished it yesterday.”

  “Well, you’ve done a fine job and have certainly captured the view from the bottom of the meadow,” Lily says.

  “I’m pleased you think so.”

  “I especially like the willows along the river. The shadings of silvery green look so real.” Lily reaches out a hand.

  “Don’t touch it,” Laverne says, more sharply than intended. “The paint isn’t quite dry. I suggest you leave it down here for a day or two.”

  “All right. That will give me time to figure out how to make room for it upstairs.” Lily feigns a sigh of regret. “I’ll have to take something down. Should I take down the etching of The Death of General Wolfe or the droopy sunflowers?” It is not the first time Lily has joked about the assortment of pictures on the upstairs walls: pictures of Blue Boy and Pink Lady, the Bluenose and the Titanic, folksy interiors by Norman Rockwell, leftovers Hal has picked up at estate sales and auctions. “At last,” Lily says, “we will have an original painting hanging on the wall.”

  Laverne offers her sister more wine.

  “No more for me,” Lily says. “I have to fetch my purse. It’s time we left for the hospital.”

  Now that the tow truck is on its way, Hal accepts Sharon’s offer of iced tea and cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, which they eat in a patch of shade on the back veranda. He glances at his watch: 1:45. Lily will be on her way to the hospital and the tow truck is on its way here. By the time the Impala has been towed back to town and he has picked up the rented Dodge, Lily will be waiting for him at home. Hal estimates he’ll be home by three o’clock, three-thirty at the latest and there’ll be plenty of time for him to change into the dress shirt, tie and blazer before they leave for Saint John. Mindful of having inconvenienced Sharon, Hal has already decided it would be too pushy to mention building lawn chairs or birdhouses and he will make the offer another day.

  A few minutes later he hears the tow truck groaning and clanking its way up the steep hill. Leaving the half-eaten sandwich behind, Hal follows the paving stone path to the front of the house and watches as Ralph backs the truck within a foot of the Impala before jumping down. Hal asks if he wants a hand. “Nope,” Ralph says, and after looping the chain around the fender, he hoists the front end four feet off the ground. “That should do it,” he says. “Hop in.” Hal climbs into the cab, which is almost as hot inside as the Impala. The truck crawls downhill and through the village of Waterford before Ralph picks up speed.

  “Some heat wave,” Hal says.

  “Sure is.”

  “I appreciate you coming all this way.”

  “It’s my job.” Like his father, Ralph is a man of few words.

  Although he knows the answer, Hal asks Ralph if he gets many tow jobs out of town, places like Anagance and Petitcodiac, where there are woods.

  “There’s woods everywhere.”

  Hal is silent for maybe a quarter of a mile. When he has a particularly good story, he likes to pounce on it, take the listener by surprise. “I bet you don’t know there are black panthers in these woods.”

  “Sure there are, and I got two heads,” Ralph says, which is the kind of answer Hal was counting on. He knows a listener won’t believe a good story until it is backed up and Hal knows he can back up the panther story. And so he begins: “Last summer when my wife and I were driving home from Moncton in the early evening, she saw a black panther come out of the woods near Petitcodiac. I didn’t see it myself because by the time I turned the Impala around so I could get a look, the panther had disappeared into the woods.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “I’m not pulling your leg. A few months ago, a guest speaker, a biologist who works for the government, told the Kiwanis that over the years there have been at least five sightings of black panthers and he estimates there might be a dozen or more in the province. He said that it isn’t known if the panthers live here or are just passing through on their way somewhere else.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s a fact.”

  Now comes the best part of the story. “My wife knows how they got here,” Hal says. “When she lived in Halifax, she visited the museum and saw a painting of a circus ship that was wrecked in the Bay of Fundy more than a hundred years ago. There was an elephant, a tiger, a lion and a bunch of other animals on the ship, but in the water close to shore was a black panther. After spotting the panther near Petitcodiac last summer, my wife got to figuring that the shipwrecked panther must have been pregnant when she swam ashore. After he spoke at Kiwanis, I told the government biologist about the painting of the circus shipwreck and he said that it was as good an explanation as any as to how black panthers came to be living in New Brunswick.”

  Ralph, in all seriousness, says, “A good thing a pregnant tiger didn’t swim ashore.”

  To avoid backing up, Laverne noses the Volkswagen into a hospital parking space that faces downtown. Side by side, the sisters walk across the hot asphalt. The hospital doors slide open and they step into an oasis of cool air and potted plants. Lily presents the requisition slip to a woman at the desk who tells her to take a seat outside the X-ray room. “Thanks, Carol,” Lily says, and disappears down the corridor. Laverne has no idea who Carol is. Except for her teaching colleagues, she doesn’t know many people in town, but her sister seems to have a passing acquaintance with any number of people.

  A nurse wearing blue scrubs appears in front of the tall, bony man sitting beside Laverne. “We are ready for you, Mr. Alyward,” she says. Laverne reads Mona Kyle RN on the plastic tag hanging around the woman’s neck. Why did nurses give up their crisp, white uniforms for this shapeless prisonwear? When Lily fills in for Dr. O’Donnell’s nurse, even she no longer wears the crisp white uniform hanging in her closet. Instead, she wears a white jacket over a skirt and blouse, which is an improvement over blue scrubs. Tired and disgruntled, Laverne closes her eyes, but not for long because in no time at all she hears her sister’s voice saying, “Time to go, Sis.” Soon Lily is sailing between the glass doors, Laverne in her wake. Leaving behind the cool air of the waiting room, the sisters step into a wall of scorching air. The Volkswagen is without air conditioning and Laverne reminds her sister to lower the window to allow the moving air to fan them. “Buckle up,” Laverne says. Lily often forgets to fasten her seat belt.

  “Let’s stop at the Creamery on the way home,” Lily says.

  By now Laverne is ready for the solitude of her bedroom and protests, “But it’s almost two-thirty.”

  “It won’t take long and it’s a perfect day for ice cr
eam,” Lily says. “My treat.”

  “But it’s your birthday. I should be buying.”

  “Nonsense,” Lily says.

  Corrie Spears sits on the veranda of her two-storey brick house directly across from the Creamery, fanning herself with the Kings County Record while keeping an eye on the sporadic comings and goings on Main Street. Because of the heat, afternoon school track events have been cancelled and the McKenna twins, bare-chested above their swimming trunks, cycle past in slow motion toward the Kiwanis Pool. Across the way two teenaged girls wearing bathing suits saunter across the parking lot and enter the Creamery. Corrie recognizes Sophie Power’s granddaughter, Jill, but she doesn’t recognize the other girl, which means she is either from away or from the other end of town—one way or another Corrie knows everybody from this end of town clear to Sussex Corner.

  Corrie watches as a red car with two people inside pulls into the parking lot. She waits until the couple enters the Creamery before training the binoculars on their licence plates. Massachusetts: more tourists come to buy the town’s famous ice cream. A white car with Maine plates pulls in beside the red car and four more tourists clamber out. The highway billboard advertising Sussex as the dairy centre of the Maritimes sure pulls in the Yanks. Carl, the owner, claims the billboard cost him a fortune and has threatened to sell the Creamery to a big-shot company in Saint John. It would be a shame if Carl sold out because he makes the best ice cream for miles around. Lucky for him there is a crosswalk between the Creamery and the sidewalk in front of Corrie’s house. Carl can complain all he wants about the cost of keeping the business going, but he obviously has enough clout with the town council to have a crosswalk in front of his business. What Corrie wants to know is: Did Carl slip the mayor a roll of bills on the golf course or did he finagle the crosswalk another way? Not that Corrie is against the crosswalk. It’s just that she likes knowing how things work in town, where so much depends on who you are and who you know.