by Joan Clark
“No, No. You stay with Jill.”
Later, Sophie moved to the mangy living-room chair and stared at Lily’s garden: the delphinium, baby’s breath and roses growing outside the window. Sophie didn’t cook or clean or watch television but sat quietly while the awful news leaked in. She saw the taxi come into the driveway, Corrie Spears up front, Hal and Miss Pritchard in the back. No Lily. Her absence weighted Sophie to the chair; her body refused to get up and she stayed where she was. Which is why, sometime later, she saw Claudia being dropped off in the middle of the driveway by a white-bearded man Sophie had never seen before.
Sophie opens the kitchen door and setting the basket inside, shakes the slicker over the veranda rail before wiping her sneakers on the kitchen mat. The comforting warmth envelopes her. My, how she loves her kitchen, the rag rugs on the oak floor, the padded rocker, the scratched pine table and chairs, the pantry shelves, the electric fridge and stove. She still misses the cast iron stove, but it was too heavy and costly to move from Millstream. She turns on the oven, flours her hands and lifts the warmed tea cloth from the bowl of risen dough. She punches down the dough before dumping it onto the floured board. Beneath her large, warm hands, she feels the dough breathing as she kneads and folds, kneads and folds, shaping the loaves until they are ready for the greased bread pans.
While she washes and dresses the chickens, Sophie casts her mind back to Grapevine, the game she and a circle of ten-year-olds used to play in the United Church basement. Cupping a hand to her mouth—there was an important lesson here—the minister’s wife whispered a sentence into the first girl’s ear and she whispered it into the next girl’s ear and so on around the circle until the last girl repeated the sentence she thought she’d heard, which of course was nothing like the original sentence.
Although Sophie has only lived in Sussex a scant four years, she knows that different versions of yesterday’s accident are already being passed around. She also knows that as much as she tries to avoid it, she will eventually be drawn into the gossip about what happened to Lily McNab. She will overhear a conversation in the Dominion or the post office or the church hall kitchen, where she works side by side with friendly, kind women who know she and Lily were friends. After offering condolences, they will want her to tell them what she knows. Sophie has already worked out what she will say: she will say that she did not see the accident and that she hopes justice will be done. No more than that. If anyone tries to soften her up by being false or sentimental about Lily, she will turn a deaf ear. She will not contribute a word to gossip pretending to be the truth.
Claudia awakens to the welcome sound of morning rain. The heat wave has broken and cool air seeps beneath the window carrying the sour odour of lilacs long past their bloom. The odour reminds Claudia of the lilacs that grew behind the rented duplex in Dartmouth where their family lived when she was a girl. A strip of crippled birch separated the scruffy yard from the sorry excuse for a stream that meandered for miles before petering out. How old was she then? Nine. In Grade Four. Their family moved so often Claudia kept track of her age by grade.
Not a sound from the purple spare room. Either her father got up earlier and made his way to the kitchen without her hearing, or he is still asleep. Her wristwatch shows ten o’clock which is late for an early riser like her dad. Claudia tiptoes to the bathroom carrying yesterday’s clothes. She splashes cold water on her face, pulls a brush through her hair, her own brush, not her mother’s, which is in a basket beneath the sink. In the kitchen she opens one cupboard door after another looking for coffee before locating it inside the fridge. She makes the coffee and looks around for her cigarettes which she finds in the handbag beside the living room sofa. She lights a Pall Mall and, opening a kitchen window, is careful to blow the smoke outside—her father gave up smoking when her mother developed recurring pneumonia and she doesn’t want to be responsible for him starting up again. Leonard complains about the smell of tobacco on her lips and hair but Claudia has no intention of giving up cigarettes, mostly because she relies on smoking to keep from gaining weight. Not that she’s fat. Far from it. Although big-breasted and wide-hipped, her bum isn’t flabby and her waist is trim. Leonard calls her his odalisque and has drawn her body many times over.
Leonard waylaid Claudia after an art history class he was teaching to ask if she would pose for an off-campus, night school drawing class. Too self-conscious to stand naked in front of strangers, at first Claudia refused but Leonard persisted. It isn’t you the students will be drawing, he told her, it’s your body. You can learn to separate yourself from your body by thinking of something else; successful models are well paid for being able to separate themselves from their bodies, and you will be well paid.
Foxy Leonard: his predatory eye had seen the body beneath the baggy sweaters and pants Claudia habitually wore when shelving library books. She never did learn to separate herself from her body because after the third class, a serial voyeur began telephoning her apartment. There were five women and three men in the class and Claudia had no way of knowing which man was the heavy breather and, quitting the modelling class, she delisted her telephone number.
Hal hears his daughter moving around the apartment. He knows that eventually he will have to get up, but he is in no hurry, especially now that it is raining. The rain tapping on the roof reminds him of the honeymoon week he and Lily spent at Summerville Beach, the hours they spent lying in bed listening to the rain on the cottage roof, alternately making love and sleeping. Those were good times, happy times, and Hal plays them over and over again in his mind.
There is a tap on the door and his daughter pokes her head in the room. “Oh, it’s you,” Hal says.
Who was her father expecting? Claudia tells him that Matt called from Moncton to say he will be here in an hour. “Remember? He left Calgary yesterday and spent the night in Halifax.”
“I’ll get up,” Hal says, and after changing from his pajamas, he is soon on his way to the kitchen. Like Claudia, he is wearing yesterday’s clothes and appears in the kitchen doorway just as Claudia is extinguishing a Pall Mall. “Coffee, Dad?”
“Sure,” he says. “And a cigarette.”
Hal lights up and watches the smoke spiralling toward the rainy window. “Did I ever tell you it was your mother who introduced me to cigarettes?” he says. “I never smoked until I met Lily. And I never drank. Mother was a strict Presbyterian and cigarettes and alcohol weren’t permitted in our house.”
Claudia has heard this declaration many times before. From now on, she thinks, there is nothing, absolutely nothing we say or do that won’t remind us of Mom; her absence is so palpable it has left nothing untouched. “What is that?” Claudia says when they hear a jangle of musical notes.
“The new doorbell. I got rid of the damn buzzer. It drove your mother crazy.”
Claudia goes down the front stairs and opens the door. A guy she vaguely remembers kissing at a high school dance stands on the doormat. For the life of her she cannot remember his name, but he remembers hers. “Sorry for your loss, Claudia,” he says and hands her a cellophane wrapped vase of flowers. Claudia thanks him and carries the flowers upstairs to the kitchen. Hal asks who they are for. “For us, Dad,” she says.
Hal nods. Of course. When there is a death in the family, people send flowers.
Claudia unwraps the cellophane and hands her father the card but he waves it back. “You read it.”
“My deepest sympathy to you and your family. Clive,” Claudia reads. “Who is Clive?”
“Clive Alyward. He owns the funeral parlour four doors away from Better Old Than New.”
“The undertaker sent flowers?”
“Clive and I are friends,” Hal says. “We often sit together at Kiwanis luncheons.”
Luncheons, a word Claudia remembers hearing Grandmother Grace use. She asks her father where he wants her to put the flowers.
Hal waves his cigarette. “Anywhere,” he says, and Claudia carries the vase of carna
tions, baby’s breath and ferns into the living room and places it on her grandmother’s rosewood desk.
The bell chimes and this time when Claudia opens the front door, there is Sophie Power, the woman who lives in the apartment below her parents’, a tall, long-jawed woman somewhere in her seventies, a woman her mother liked, a bashful woman who keeps her head down as she speaks.
“I made supper for you,” she says, handing Claudia the basket. “Mind the chicken. It hasn’t been long out of the oven.”
“Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Power.”
Sophie mumbles a you-are-welcome and ducking her head, she bolts into her apartment and closes the door. There. She did it. Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Yes, it was hard but she got through it without blubbering about Lily being the nicest person in town, how much she will miss their chats, how she can’t believe she won’t see her again, how sorry she is for the family. Sophie remembers that after the final stroke took Rolf, people kept repeating how sorry they were for her loss until she thought she would scream to the heavens for them to stop. “Say something else, talk about the weather, the crops, the cows, anything,” Sophie wanted to scream, “but don’t say I am sorry for your loss.”
Since then she has come to understand that the words were spoken out of kindness by neighbours who couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say; the plain truth is that when a loved one dies, there isn’t much you can say, especially to a family struck down by sudden death. Better to be doing rather than saying. Speak less, do more is Sophie’s motto, which is why she got busy in the kitchen this morning. At some time or other, the McNabs will get around to eating and it will be easier for them if a home-cooked meal is waiting. Every day this week she will put the food basket on the doormat, ring the bell and be back inside her own apartment before someone answers the door.
Claudia turns on the television. She knows her father rarely watches daytime television but he might be interested in the late-morning show. Hal isn’t interested but he agrees to watch it until Matt arrives. Claudia slips away and telephones Laverne. “Good morning, Auntie,” she says. “Would you like to join us upstairs?”
“I don’t think so,” Laverne says.
“But you’re down there by yourself.”
“I prefer being by myself.”
Claudia perseveres and tells Laverne that Matt will be arriving soon. If anything can persuade her aunt to come upstairs, it will be the news that Matt will be arriving soon. Matt has always been her favourite. It was Matt who accepted Laverne’s offer of a trip to France as a high school graduation present. Three years later when Laverne made the same offer to her niece, Claudia thanked her aunt and explained that Roger Monahan needed her and she didn’t want to leave him so soon after his father and brother drowned. Her aunt did not appear disappointed by Claudia’s decision. “Very well,” she said, and Claudia assumed she’d understood. Apparently not, because later Laverne complained to Lily that the drownings had not prevented Claudia from going to university, and the offer of a trip to France was never repeated. Since then Claudia has travelled to France and Italy with Leonard, but of course her aunt does not know about those trips or about the affair. Nor do her father and brother.
“How soon before Matthew is here?” Laverne asks.
“Any time now,” Claudia says.
“In that case I will join you,” Laverne says.
Moments later there are footsteps on the back stairs, the door opens and Claudia sees that her aunt is also wearing yesterday’s clothes. Claudia quashes the impulse to hand her aunt a Kleenex so that she can wipe off the smeared lipstick. Instead she offers coffee. “Thank you,” Laverne says.
Claudia carries the tray of coffee into the living room where Hal is wreathed in cigarette smoke. Allergic to smoke, Laverne sits opposite on the chair where Corrie Spears sat yesterday. Claudia passes around the coffee and they settle down to watch the television where a Dolly Parton look-alike is gushing about next month’s royal wedding, “How will Shy Di manage being a member of the royal family?” she says. “She is so young.”
“Prince Charles should be ashamed of himself, and so should Trudeau.” Hal says to the TV. “Cradle-robbers is what they are.”
Leonard is a cradle-robber. Claudia knows that if her father knew about her lover he would be shattered by disappointment, even disgust and might disown her. He would not order her to leave the house but he might push her away if she tried to comfort him. “Don’t tell your father,” Lily advised her. “He wouldn’t understand and he wants to protect you.” Her mother referred to Leonard as a phase Claudia would grow out of and predicted that eventually she would break off the affair. Claudia will, one day she will. But she cannot think about that now, she must think about the notepad in the kitchen, the list of duties she and Matt will follow after he arrives. Claudia turns down the sound and flicking through the television channels, she settles on General Hospital and the three of them watch a patient being wheeled into the operating room on a gurney, masked doctors bending to the task beneath a flood of light, none of it real.
The doorbell chimes and Claudia races downstairs to answer. It has been three years since she last saw her brother and seeing him on the doorstep, the black hair and blue eyes so like their mother’s, brings an onrush of tears. Dropping the suitcase, Matt holds Claudia close and cries into her shoulder until he hears a voice at the top of the stairs saying, “Hello there, Son.” Looking up, Matt sees the hunched shape of his father in the hallway. “Hello, Dad,” he says and after making his way upstairs, he embraces his father—it is a long embrace, an embrace of sorrow, a tacit recognition that the woman they loved is dead.
Laverne waits her turn in the solitude of the living room. She is not used to waiting her turn, but seeing her nephew after so long will be worth the wait, and at last here he is, walking toward her, taking her hands and in the European way, kissing both cheeks. “Auntie,” he murmurs and for a moment Laverne expects an embrace but Matthew lets go of her hand and follows his father to the sofa. Only Hal lights a cigarette: Matthew does not smoke and Claudia is being considerate. There are questions about the long flight from Alberta, the overnight in Halifax, the flight to Moncton. When the answers peter out, Matthew says that it is time to get down to matters at hand, that when there is a death in the family, there are decisions to follow up, decisions that have been set out in the will. “Lily didn’t have a will,” Hal says.
“Mom didn’t have a will?”
“She never thought she would need one. So soon.” This is all Hal can manage before he is waylaid by grief. Matt reaches for his father’s hand. “It’s okay, Dad,” he says. “It’s okay.” Claudia drags the vinyl chair to the sofa and takes her father’s other hand.
“Sorry, Dad. I should have seen to it that she made a will.” Matt says and once again the guilt moves in. As the lawyer in the family, he should have made sure that his mother made a will. “Don’t you worry, Dad. We will manage without one.”
Isolated on the opposite side of the room, Laverne feels a spurt of indignation: Why didn’t her sister make a will? Yes, Lily was a procrastinator, but together with Hal, she was co-owner of this house. Also, she inherited their father’s collection of antiquarian books: early editions of Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens including The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield, which Hal took to the store for display and later sold. Hal isn’t a reader and without a will, the antiquarian books will no doubt end up in Better Old Than New. Excluded from the huddle of comfort, Laverne carries her mug into the kitchen and pours the coffee down the sink. Leaning against the counter she stares at the tacky bird clock hanging on the wall above the telephone and waits until the minute hand moves from the song sparrow to the purple martin before returning to the living room.
Startled—they have not noticed her absence—the three of them look up. Claudia brings the wooden chair close to the sofa and invites Laverne to join them. “No thank you,” she says. “My intention was to welcome Ma
tthew and now that he is here, I’ll leave you to make the arrangements. I’m tired.” Laverne is tired. Grief has exhausted her, weakened her defenses, and she feels less vulnerable when she is alone.
Once the back-stairs door closes, Claudia lights two cigarettes, one for her father, the other for herself.
“What’s got into Laverne?” Hal says.
“Auntie’s always been a loner, Dad,” Claudia says.
“Even so, at a time like this, she shouldn’t be downstairs alone. She should be with us.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want any part in making the arrangements,” Claudia says and looks at her brother. “You and I will look after whatever has to be done.”
“But I’ll have a say in the matter,” Hal says.
“Of course, Dad.”
Matt asks where she is now: not Mom, not Lily but she.
“She’s at the undertaker’s,” Claudia says. “Alyward’s Funeral Home.”
“Well, she can’t stay there.”
“Of course not,” Hal says. “She’ll be buried in Kirk Hill. Years ago I bought a plot for three in the cemetery.”
“Why for three?” Matt says.
“Laverne has no family besides Lily and I bought it for your mother’s peace of mind.”
Matt is relieved to have one decision made. “Okay, so what about the funeral?”
“You know your mother was an atheist. She wouldn’t want a funeral.” Hal rubs his eyes. “Another thing, no viewing. Lily had no time for viewings.”
Claudia remembers her mother’s scathing opinion on the subject of open caskets, which she dismissed as grotesque.
“Lily would want to be cremated,” Hal says.
“Are you sure, Dad?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Hal looks at his daughter. “Your mother and I didn’t stop talking when you left home. There are a lot of things about your mother and me that you don’t know.” Hal means this kindly and is upset by the tears welling in his daughter’s eyes. He reaches for her hand. Hal knows that if Lily were here, she would tell him to stop being grumpy. Excusing himself, Hal boosts himself off the sofa and shuffles into the purple spare room where he can be alone.