The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  Laverne follows Maple Avenue to the intersection where she makes a right-hand turn and continues on Main Street until it merges with Broad Street. Soon the sisters are crossing the railway tracks and drive past the Mercantile, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the Dominion, Northrup’s Garage and come to the dairy known far and wide for its ice cream. To avoid making the left-hand turn into the Creamery parking lot, Laverne parks directly opposite, close to the sidewalk.

  Lily asks Laverne what flavour of ice cream she prefers.

  “Strawberry.”

  “Strawberry it is,” Lily says, and opens the door.

  The yellow crosswalk is behind the Volkswagen and, glancing in the rear view mirror, Laverne watches her sister scoot across the street to the parking lot. Drowsy from the heat and the wine, Laverne tips her head against the seat back and closes her eyes.

  Corrie trains the binoculars on a woman dressed in blue who has crossed the street and is now in the Creamery parking lot. She recognizes Hal McNab’s wife, a nice woman, friendly like her husband. Corrie doesn’t know Lily anywhere near as well as she knows Hal, but she knows she isn’t stuck up because the odd time she walks past the house when Corrie is on the veranda Lily will wave hello, although unlike her husband she doesn’t stop for a chat. Not that Hal stops for a chat exactly because only one of them is talking, and it sure isn’t Corrie. Hal doesn’t seem to notice that by taking both sides of the conversation he carries on talking a long time by himself.

  Corrie puts up with Hal because with Frank gone, eight years now, she misses male company. Also, because the liquor store is too far away for her to walk, she relies on Hal to pick up a bottle of rum. What she appreciates most about Hal is the gentlemanly way he drops off the bottle, handing it to her in a brown paper bag, waving away the roll of dollar bills until, pretending to be cross, Corrie tells him that if he refuses to accept her money she will have to a take a taxi to the liquor store and buy the bottle herself. He wouldn’t want her to do that, now would he? No, he wouldn’t. After that bit of awkwardness is out of the way, Hal accepts the money and for a while they sit together and chew the fat, Hal providing snippets of gossip Corrie hasn’t heard. Before he leaves, Hal always tells Corrie he will see her in two weeks, and she will, too, because unlike the four-hundred crowd who live up the hill, Hal McNab will go out of his way to run an errand or give someone a helping hand.

  Lily McNab disappears inside the Creamery and Corrie turns her attention to Hal’s sister-in-law, a teacher by the name of Miss Pritchard, who waits inside the Volkswagen, her head tipped back. It looks to her as if the teacher is asleep. Why didn’t Hal’s sister-in-law pull into the parking lot like the other drivers? Likely she parked on this side of the road because by now the parking lot will be as hot as a griddle, while over here there is at least a bit of shade from Corrie’s elm tree, one of the few in town that survived the Dutch elm disease. Wine glass elms, some people call them. Not Corrie. Rum, not wine, is her poison and there isn’t a wine glass or a bottle of wine in the house. Frank wouldn’t allow it. Wine’s for the hoity-toity, he’d say, them that puts on airs.

  By now the Massachusetts couple have left the Creamery and are eating their ice cream inside the air-conditioned red car. The two couples belonging to the white car appear soon after, but they don’t stick around and drive away toward Sussex Corner. A scabby bronze station wagon pulls into the parking lot and four youngsters scamper inside followed by their mother while the father stays put. A local licence plate, most likely a farm family who have come from a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment in town. Through her binoculars, Corrie watches Sophie’s granddaughter and her friend cross the parking lot, licking their ice cream and talking a mile a minute. They are in no hurry and stroll along the sidewalk toward the stone bridge and the swimming pool, unaware that the woman across the street is admiring their slim bodies and perfect summer legs. At their age Corrie had shapely legs she never got a chance to show off. The daughter of strict parents, she would never have been allowed to stroll along a sidewalk wearing a bathing suit that showed the curve of her bum.

  Because she has the binoculars trained on the girls, Corrie doesn’t see Lily McNab leave the Creamery and cross the parking lot carrying two ice cream cones. What she sees is a Spurrell’s gravel truck cross the stone bridge and pass the girls at breakneck speed. Corrie’s binoculars follow the truck as it hurtles past her house, its horn blaring and brakes squealing as Lily McNab enters the crosswalk, an ice cream cone in either hand. This brief glimpse of Lily through the binoculars is all Corrie sees before the truck blocks her view. She hears a thump, a thump as soft as a book falling onto a floor and the truck jounces on until it finally screeches to a stop eighty feet away.

  Corrie Spears will, in time, develop type 2 diabetes that will require the amputation of a foot. For eight years she will wheel herself along the corridors of the Kiwanis Nursing Home, her only pleasures Coronation Street and winning a few dollars at Saturday night bingo. During those tedious, unforgiving years she will never be able to forget the sight of Lily McNab lying on the road. She will never forget the soft thump of Lily being hit, she will never forget the smell of skidding rubber, the sound of screeching brakes. And she will never forget the blackout silence that followed, a silence like the one Corrie heard as a girl when she was watching a movie in the community hall when the electricity cut out and the film stopped short.

  Corrie sets the binoculars aside, heaves herself out of the chair and stumps down the veranda steps, favouring her gimpy leg. She hobbles past the Volkswagen where Laverne is now awake, sitting upright and staring straight ahead. In a hurry to reach Lily McNab, Corrie does not stop and moves toward the body, which is partly in the crosswalk. As she stands over the body, Corrie sees the father get out of the scabby station wagon and enter the Creamery just as Carl Reidle bolts outside and races toward her. Standing side by side, he and Corrie stare at the crumpled heap, the white face and startled eyes, the long strands of black hair, the blue beads scattered, the twin pools of pink ice cream melting on the pavement. “Holy Christ!” Carl says. “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know. But you’d better call an ambulance. And the police. I’ll stay here.” Corrie doesn’t know why she is staying, but she knows she cannot leave Lily McNab; that it is important to keep watch over her, especially since the sister has not left the car.

  Corrie’s bulk prevents her from kneeling and so she stands, not too close but beside the body, watching for a twitching muscle, a heaving chest, any sign that Lily McNab is alive. But there is no sign. The man from Massachusetts hovers nearby while his wife stays inside their car.

  By now five cars have stopped on the street: three from the direction of downtown, two from the direction of Sussex Corner and a dozen or more spectators have gathered round. There is no sign of the truck driver. For all Corrie knows, he might still be inside the gravel truck that came to a stop on the sidewalk against Millie Keirstead’s wooden planter. But no one looks for him; instead they stand close, but not too close to the figure crumpled on the road. Not a word is spoken until the circle of silence is broken by a shout. “My wife! That’s my wife!” a man cries and jumps from a black tow truck that has crawled to a stop behind the two cars. Hal McNab runs toward the body in blue lying on the road. “It’s me, Lily!” he cries. “It’s me!”

  Corrie watches as Hal, supporting himself on both hands, kneels over his wife. “I’m here, sweetheart.” Over and over, he says, “I’m here,” all the while searching Lily’s face for a fluttering eyelash, a quivering lip, anything that will signify she is alive. Gathered round him the spectators keep watch, silent as angels in a passion play. Time stops and no one moves until an old woman takes a mirror from her purse and hands it to Hal, who looks at it blankly until Corrie tells him to hold it against Lily’s nose. “If there’s breath on the mirror,” she says, “you’ll know she’s alive.”

  Corrie watches as Hal lifts the strands of hair from Lily’s face and supporting hi
mself on one hand, with the other he holds the mirror close to her nose. Seconds, minutes dribble away but Hal keeps holding, he keeps holding until he hears a voice telling him to look in the mirror. Hal searches the mirror, looking for a cloud, a wisp of breath but all he sees is himself and he knows, he knows Lily is not alive. The mirror drops away and Hal leans over the body, kissing the forehead, the cheeks, the lips. Then back on his heels, he lifts his head and howls, he howls to the pitiless sky.

  The old woman waits until Hal has been led away before she picks up the mirror, the mirror she will never use without hearing the man howling over the dead body of his wife. It is a howl the old woman first heard on her grandfather’s farm in River John. Eleven years old she was and lying in her spool bed when she heard the wolf howling for his mate, the mate her grandfather shot after she had been caught in a leg-hold trap near the sheep pen.

  ——

  The telephone shrills and Leonard passes it to Claudia without a word. “Hello,” she says. “Hello?” She hears a gut-wrenching sob then, “Claudia?”

  “Dad?”

  “Claudia,” the strangled voice says. “Your mother … she was … she was hit by a truck.”

  “Mom was hit by a truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Is she in hospital?”

  “No.” Claudia hears another sob. “She’s dead.”

  “She can’t be dead.”

  “She’s dead. Lily is dead. I saw her lying on the road.”

  Claudia has never heard her father sob, but he is sobbing now.

  “She wasn’t breathing. Please come home, Claudia. Please come home.”

  A voice Claudia doesn’t recognize as her own says she will come right away. The same voice asks if he has spoken to Matt.

  “I spoke to Trish.”

  Claudia hears the dangerous shudder in her father’s voice. “Hold on, Dad,” she says. “Hold on. Two hours and I’ll be there.” The receiver tumbles from her hand and after returning it to its cradle, Leonard gathers her in. “There. There,” he croons, stroking her hair. Mewling and snuffling, Claudia curls into him, her tears making circles of blue on the sheet where the mattress shows through. Overhead the fan stirs the sluggish air and beyond the window, heat waves shimmer above the marshlands. The minutes tick on until finally Leonard blots her cheeks, tells her to blow her nose, says he will drive her home. He pads to her closet and Claudia hears wire hangers scrape the wooden rail. He holds out a pale green dress, picks up a bra and underpants from the wicker chair, tells her to put them on. Weirdly, Claudia notices his shrivelled penis nested in its grey goatee. “Your suitcase?” he says.

  “Where do you think?”

  “It’s not my apartment.”

  Of course. “Under the bed.”

  “Now then, you shower while I pack.”

  After her shower, Claudia sits in the chair while Leonard braids her long pale hair. Circling the braids around her head he pins them in place.

  “You look like a sensible Dutch housewife,” he says.

  “Meant to be funny, I suppose.”

  A docile beast, Claudia watches Leonard put her suitcase in the Jeep before she climbs in beside him.

  They have left Sackville and are on the Trans-Canada when she tells him she will need her Honda.

  “I’ll drive it down whenever Greg is free to follow me in his car.” A colleague of Leonard’s, Greg is the only one in Sackville who knows about their affair.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t phone.”

  “I never phone.” Claudia is annoyed that even now Leonard is protecting his lush of a wife. “You are the pursuer,” she says. “Not me.”

  Mile after mile appears and disappears, miles of hardwoods, bushy greens, airy and clean, set back from the road; farmed trees replacing forests logged out by lumber barons centuries ago; swaths of shorn grass; here and there a glistening sweep of watered crops, all this passes unseen. What Claudia sees is grey pavement, a white tongue swallowing itself.

  Leonard has never been to her parents’ house. Turn here, Claudia tells him, turn there. Even now she has the presence of mind to instruct him to stop halfway up the driveway. If he drops her off at the front end, her father might see Leonard through the upstairs front window; if he pulls into the back end of the driveway, her aunt might see him from her downstairs window. Her mother was the only one in the family who knew about the affair. Claudia opens the passenger door and Leonard reaches for her hand. “All the best,” says the man who despises the cliché.

  Trish noses the Rambler into a parking space, rides the elevator to the eleventh floor and asks Matt’s assistant to call him from the boardroom. “Tell him his wife is waiting in his office,” Trish says. Because she rarely comes to his office, Matt will suspect something is wrong and, driving into the city, Trish worked out how she will break the news.

  Matt opens the office door and before he can ask why she is here, Trish says, “The kids are fine, Matt.”

  “Let me guess.” He grins. “You want to take me out for lunch.”

  “Matt.” Trish takes his hands in hers. “I have terrible news. Your father called. Your mother was hit by a truck.”

  Matt frowns. “When was this?”

  “A couple of hours ago. The accident was fatal.”

  “Are you telling me that Mom is dead?”

  “I am so sorry, Matt,” Trish says and tries to hold him.

  But Matt turns away. He knows if Trish holds him, he will break down and he will not allow himself to break down. Hands in his pockets, head thrust forward, he paces back and forth, back and forth between the windows and the wall. It can’t be true, it can’t be true that his mother is dead. In a desperate attempt to make sense of what Trish has told him, Matt stops pacing and, putting both hands against the wall, he bangs his head so hard the picture of the Calgary Tower tilts to one side. He keeps on banging, trying to bang the terrible news into his head. He hears the faraway voice of his wife telling him to stop, telling him that if he doesn’t stop he will hurt himself. But Matt cannot stop. Shock defies belief and he cannot believe his mother is dead. It is only when he feels pain shooting across his forehead that Matt allows Trish to pull him away from the wall. “Listen to me, Matt,” she says. “Hal needs you. Think of your father.”

  His father. Ashamed that he has not thought of his father, Matt lowers his head. Trish is right. His father will need him and he will go home to his father. And to his sister. Claudia will need him too. “Yes. I need to go home,” Matt says. Contrite and humbled by grief, he allows Trish to lead him to the parking garage.

  ——

  Strapped in his seat, Matt is blind to what is outside the window: the flawless blue sky; the jagged upthrust of ancient sea beds; the geometry of prairie crops.

  A flight attendant appears with the drinks cart and Matt orders a double scotch. As usual he is flying business class, which is why Air Canada came through with a ticket on short notice. His seatmate orders water.

  The flight attendant moves on and Matt hears a tremulous voice ask if something is wrong. For the first time he glances at the tiny bundle of cloth and bone beside him. Christ, the woman must be eighty at least. A frequent flyer, Matt habitually discourages conversation by occupying himself with a client’s file; but without a file on his tray table he is defenceless and he blurts out the naked truth that his mother is dead. There. Now that he has told her, maybe she will leave him alone. But the old woman persists and asks how his mother died.

  “She was hit by a truck.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “She was young.”

  “Yes.” Only now does Matt realize how young his mother was. Was, he thinks, already he is thinking was. He does not tell the old woman that today was his mother’s birthday. When Trish was driving him to the airport she told him that the accident happened around two-thirty, which means his mothe
r was fifty-eight for about fourteen-and-a-half hours. Matt asked, but Trish did not know how the accident happened.

  Matt tugs on eye shades. He cannot sleep but at least the eye shades shield his anguish and the old woman will not expect him to talk. If only he could sleep. But he cannot sleep because as soon as he closes his eyes, regret moves in. Flowers, he did not send his mother flowers. Every year since moving West, Matt has sent his mother birthday flowers: a private joke between them, Lilies for Lily, written on the card, ordered by telephone as soon as he reaches the office. But not today because as soon as he got to work this morning he was caught up in a protracted conference call that ended when his assistant told him that his wife was waiting for him in his office.

  But that is not the worst regret. The worst regret is that Lily never saw her grandson. Dougie is almost two years old and his grandmother never saw him and now it is too late. Matt could have sent his parents airplane tickets. He remembers thinking about it but then a new wrinkle at work would intervene. As chief counsel of Lingard Construction, Matt regularly flies to Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Denver, Spokane. Weeks, months go by when Matt sees Trish and the kids only on weekends. A demanding job that allows him five days in Sussex to bury his mother. Another regret to add to the pile.

  Claudia lugs her suitcase to the top of the stairs. She hears a strange voice calling, “In here!” Following the voice to the living room she sees her father and her aunt sitting at opposite ends of the sofa like strangers forced to share the same rescue boat. Claudia has become a stranger herself: it is as if she has never seen her grandmother’s rosewood desk, the walnut bookcase, the silent long-case clocks in opposite corners, the empty patchwork rocker, her mother’s crossword puzzle book tucked between cushion and arm.

  At the sight of his daughter, Hal begins to weep. “At last,” he says. “You’re here.”

  “Yes, Dad, I’m here.” Claudia sits beside him on the sofa.