The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  “I didn’t see your mother hit, but I can tell you what I saw before she was hit.” Corrie shoves herself into the rocker and watches Matt remove a notebook from his pocket. He asks if she minds if he writes down what she says. “I don’t mind,” Corrie says. “It’s important that someone writes down the facts. The town police should be doing it but …” Corrie stops herself. This is not the time to rail against the police. This young man has lost his mother and she will stick to the facts. And so she begins: “Early yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the veranda watching people stop at the Creamery for ice cream when I saw a green Volkswagen pull in just there,” Corrie nods toward the giant elm, “where you were standing. I’ve seen your aunt park on this side of the street a number of times. Your mother got out of the car and crossed the road while her sister waited in the car.”

  “Was the parking lot full?”

  “Far from it. There were three cars parked over there, two from the Boston states and one local.”

  “You could make out the licence plates from here?”

  “I had my binoculars.”

  “Where did Mom cross the road?”

  “The crosswalk.”

  “How long was she inside the Creamery?”

  “Not long. No more than ten minutes.”

  “What did you see next?”

  “I saw the Massachusetts couple leave the Creamery and get into a red car to eat their ice cream. It was hot and their car must have been air-conditioned. Then two couples from Maine came outside with their cones, got into a white car and drove away. I saw Sophie Power’s granddaughter and her friend leave the Creamery with their ice creams and walk toward the stone bridge. Because I was following the girls through my binoculars, I saw the gravel truck barrelling over the bridge and pass the girls, but it wasn’t until I heard the horn and the squealing brakes that I shifted the binoculars and saw your mother heading into the crosswalk, an ice cream cone in either hand. That was all I saw of her before the truck blocked my view, racing on until it finally screeched to a stop in front of Millie Keirstead’s house.”

  “The truck driver was speeding.”

  “He was speeding all right. I saw you looking at the tire tracks so you know how far the truck went before the driver could stop.”

  “Where was Mom’s body?”

  “Outside the crosswalk on the Creamery side. Only, her feet were in the crosswalk, the rest of her was outside the yellow lines.”

  Corrie watches Matt’s shaking hand. You poor boy, she thinks.

  “I don’t think I can write this part down,” Matt says, and shoving the notebook in his pocket, he asks Corrie if his aunt saw the accident.

  “I don’t see how she could have seen it because her car was facing the bridge and the crosswalk was behind her. Also, the truck came between her and your mother, same as it came between your mother and me. Even if your aunt looked over her shoulder, she wouldn’t have been able to see the accident happen.”

  Matt asks Corrie if anyone in the parking lot might have seen his mother hit.

  “Like I told you,” she says, “there were only three cars over there and one of them had already left before your mother came out of the Creamery. But once I got myself off the veranda and across the road, I saw the Massachusetts man looking at your mother’s body. His wife stayed inside the car but he got out to have a look. He said that as far as he could make out, your mother’s clothes somehow got caught up in the front wheel, the wheel on the Creamery side, and she must have been thrown against it.”

  “The front wheel, not the back.”

  “That’s what he said. The man in the bronze station wagon disappeared into the Creamery, likely to warn his wife and kids to stay inside. I didn’t think to ask Carl, your old boss, if the kids were still inside or if he hustled them out the back door. It was Carl who called the paramedics and the police.”

  “Did they come right away?”

  “The ambulance arrived about ten minutes after he called. I know because they came while I was waiting for a taxi to bring your father and aunt home. The police didn’t show up while I was here, but they might have talked to Carl. You should talk to him.”

  “Who was the driver?”

  “I don’t know but he was driving a Spurrell’s gravel truck.”

  “Do you know when the truck was taken away?”

  “No, but it wasn’t in front of Millie Keirstead’s when the taxi brought me home from your father’s last night.”

  Last night, was it only last night, Matt is thinking, but he pulls himself together and says, “Thank you, Mrs. Spears, for telling me what you saw.”

  “Corrie.”

  “Thank you, Corrie.”

  “Before you go … It’s about your father …” Corrie hesitates. Should she tell him the whole story? Would Hal want her to tell him? Maybe it’s too soon to tell him, maybe she shouldn’t tell him at all. “Perhaps I’ll you later,” she says.

  “I’m only here for a few days,” Matt says, “so if it’s important, I would prefer you tell me now.”

  “It will be hard for you to hear.”

  “No harder than what I’ve already heard.”

  Corrie isn’t so sure. She remembers chanting hard, harder, hardest in the one-room schoolhouse as a child. Even then she never understood the difference between those three words but maybe there is a difference that might help Hal’s family to understand the whole story. “Well then,” Corrie pauses before going on. “Your father came along in a tow truck just as a crowd was gathering in front of the Creamery. Two cars had stopped in front of the tow truck but, sitting high up like he was, Hal could see right over them and he jumped down and made straight for your mother. Was down on his knees, bent over, saying her name over and over, trying to revive her. A woman handed him a mirror and told him to hold it close to your mother’s nose and he did, he held it steady. He held it and held it but it was no use, the mirror was clear.” Corrie sighs. “It will be terrible for your father when the shock wears off. He was crazy about your mother.”

  Matt knows that Corrie Spears is right, that his father was crazy about his mother, that it will be terrible for him when the shock wears off, that he will never forget the sight of her body lying on the road. How desperate, how frantic, how helpless his father must have felt. The thought of his father on his knees bent over his mother is too much for Matt and submitting to an ambush of tears he accepts the handful of Kleenex Corrie thrusts his way. He feels a bulky warmth beside him, a swollen hand on his knee “There, there, let it out,” says the fat woman with the generous heart.

  Half an hour later, Matt pulls into the driveway and parks beside a dented Plymouth van. Carrying the wine and rum he picked up on the way home, he goes inside. Partway up the stairs he hears a man’s booming voice.

  Claudia meets him in the hall. “Reverend Harrington, the United Church minister, is here,” she whispers, following her brother into the kitchen.

  “Well, reverend or not, I’m having a drink,” Matt says.

  “Me too, but first you should come and be introduced.”

  In the living room Matt notices the reverend is sitting in the plaid rocker. Matt hasn’t been home for four years but he knows the patchwork rocker is his mother’s chair and he stops himself from insisting that the reverend take another one. After all, the minister didn’t know whose chair it was. “We’ve never met,” Matt says and the two men shake hands.

  At first glance Matt would never have taken Alan Harrington for a church minister. With his ripped blue jeans, dirty polo shirt and Adidas, the man could be sitting cross-legged on a sidewalk, a begging bowl between his feet. The only giveaway is the clerical collar. The minister explains that he returned from conducting a theatre camp in Fundy Park an hour earlier and came straight here as soon as he heard the news.

  Matt asks the reverend if he would like a drink.

  “I wouldn’t turn down a glass of wine,” Alan says.

  “Claudia?”

 
“The same.”

  Matt looks at his father. “Rum and Coke?”

  “You bet,” Hal says. “I’ve got to keep Alan company.” Hal knows there are members of the congregation who would be against Alan accepting a drink. These are the same members who complain about Alan’s insistence that Bible stories be taught to the children through play-acting rather than memorizing scripture. They also complain about sponsoring the boat people, using the missionary fund to buy their food and rent them an apartment on Essex Street. They would certainly not approve of Alan organizing a theatre camp.

  “You will be interested to know, Hal, that we raised enough money to sponsor ten boys who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend theatre camp or, for that matter, any kind of camp,” the minister says.

  “Who is ‘we’?” Matt asks. He hands Alan a glass of wine.

  “The congregation.” Alan lifts his glass. “Thanks for your contribution, Hal.”

  Hal does not remember making a contribution but he must have because even with a pile of overdue bills, he never fails to contribute to a good cause.

  “Next summer I hope to organize a camp for girls as well as for boys. My wife has agreed to help with the girls,” Alan says, surveying the room as he does while delivering a sermon.

  “I gather you have worked in the theatre,” Claudia says.

  “I came to the ministry from the theatre.”

  Claudia is thinking that if this man and not boring Reverend Titus had been the minister when she was in her religious phase, she would have continued attending St. Paul’s United with her father instead of switching to the Baptist Church where she nearly succumbed to being saved by the evangelical, charismatic minister, Reverend Fitch. Claudia asks Alan if he was an actor.

  “No,” he says. “I went from high school to art school and from there to a career designing theatre sets across the country.”

  Annoyed that the minister is talking about himself when he should be comforting the family, Matt gets up and stands in the doorway in the hope that the man will take the hint and go on his way so that he can take Claudia aside and tell her about his conversation with Corrie Spears. But wouldn’t you know, his sister is asking Alan Harrington if he would like to join them for supper.

  “Only if it’s no trouble.” Alan explains that his wife is visiting her sister in Toronto.

  Claudia tells him that it is no trouble at all, that their neighbour downstairs has provided them with roast chicken and a loaf of homemade bread.

  “Ah yes, Sophie Power, the mainstay of the Women’s Auxiliary. What would we do without Sophie,” Alan says.

  The rainy light brings an early dark and Laverne is in her kitchen, making herself a meagre supper of toast and tea. She has switched on the light above the refrigerator and closed the window. Last year a bat, attracted by the kitchen light, flew through the open casement window while Laverne was in the bathroom. When she saw it lying on the kitchen floor in the morning, she was upset that the bat had been inside her apartment all night without her knowing.

  Laverne has finished the toast and tea, switched off the kitchen light and is lowering the blind above the plank table when she notices Alan Harrington’s Plymouth van parked beside her Volkswagen. How long has his van been there? How disturbing that she did not hear Alan park in the driveway. The sight of the van means Alan is upstairs offering Hal his condolences. It also means that when he has finished visiting upstairs Alan will probably knock on her door and expect her to answer. But Laverne will not answer the door and admit Alan Harrington. Even now she has her pride and does not want Alan to see her in a disordered state with her hair unwashed and her clothes unchanged. She will proceed to bed.

  Removing the nightgown from the bathroom hook, Laverne slips it over her head and takes off her clothes—after years of attending summer schools, sharing accommodation with strangers, Laverne still undresses beneath the cover of a nightgown. She swallows another of her sleeping pills and, sliding between the sheets, she falls asleep remembering the summer afternoon she met Alan.

  Four years ago when Laverne returned from her first trip to Holland, she turned up at Fox Hill with her paintbox and suggested that she and Lily go down to the river. It was mid-afternoon, the sun had reached its zenith and the sky was a spotless blue. The sisters crossed the road and followed the tractor path downhill, Laverne carrying her easel and paintbox, Lily the picnic basket. Below them the slow sliding Kennebecasis was a drab olive green while the meadow on either side of the path was an astonishing emerald green. On the other side of the river, the time-worn Appalachian hills were patched with dusky greens and browns and in a hollow was a white farmhouse surrounded by a field of buttercups the colour of the mustard fields in France. Laverne decided to paint the farmhouse and the surrounding hills and while she set up the easel, her sister continued toward the river. Unfolding a campstool, Laverne carefully sketched the scene on canvas as the how-to-paint books instructed. Then, squeezing colours onto the palette, she picked up her paintbrush and began to paint. How relaxing it was to concentrate on the scene, to allow time to pass without glancing at her watch.

  An hour or more passed and Laverne was painting the fallow field a sienna brown when, startled by a baritone “hello,” she tumbled backward, legs splayed, wide-brimmed hat askew. “I’m sorry,” a male voice said. “May I help you up?” Laverne was furious, how dare the man creep up on her without warning! She was about to give him a piece of her mind when she felt a warm hand cup her elbow and looking up, she saw a tall man wearing a straw hat leaning over her. Removing his sunglasses, he introduced himself as the new United Church minister and asked her name. Laverne scarcely noticed the clerical collar; what she noticed were the green eyes flecked with gold. She allowed him to help her up and they exchanged names. The minister pointed to an opening in the willows about twenty feet away and assured her that he would paint over there.

  Covertly, Laverne watched Alan Harrington walk away and plunk down what appeared to be a kitchen stool before he disappeared into the willows carrying a tin bucket. Minutes later he reappeared, poured water into jelly jars, taped a sheet of paper onto an easel and, never once looking her way, began to paint. Laverne finished painting the fallow field and was deliberating about whether to paint the farmhouse a pure white or a greyish white when she saw the minister lay the finished painting on the grass and lift his cap to wipe his forehead. It was then she saw the gleam of baldness at his crown, and emboldened by the fact that the new minister was probably well into his forties, possibly into his fifties, she asked if he would join her for a cup of coffee. While he obliged, bringing his stool closer, Laverne fetched the basket from where Lily had dumped it and took out the Thermos and cups. As they drank their coffee, Alan Harrington observed that Laverne was working with oils and asked if she had ever used watercolours. “No,” she said. “I prefer oils because I want to paint what I see, I mean real pictures. The paintings I admire the most are those of the Dutch Masters. Are you familiar with the work of Pieter de Hooch?”

  “Yes, I am. Are you familiar with the work of David Milne? He paints extraordinary watercolours.”

  Laverne tried to think of an encouraging response. Although she had never heard of David Milne and preferred oils to watercolours, she did not want to discourage Alan Harrington’s interest. What should she say? Laverne was spared an answer by Lily who had returned from her wanderings and was walking toward them, the binocular strap outlining the V of her breasts beneath the damp cotton of the flimsy sundress. She was carrying her sandals in one hand and a bunch of wild purple phlox in the other. “Am I interrupting something?” Lily asked, her voice curious, amused.

  “Not at all,” Alan Harrington said. “We were becoming acquainted.”

  “This is my sister, Lily,” Laverne said. “Lily, this is Alan Harrington.”

  “The new United Church minister,” Lily said. “Hal mentioned you. He’s a member of your congregation.”

  “Hal McNab.”


  “My husband.”

  Alan offered his stool but Lily said she preferred to sit on the grass and so she did, leaning back on her hands, legs straight out, ropes of dark hair dripping between her breasts. Laverne asked if she had fallen into the river. “I went for a dip,” Lily said.

  “Without your bathing suit?”

  “Why not? There was no one around and it was heavenly floating in the shallows.”

  “Did you see any birds?”

  Lily held up an index finger. “One crow.”

  “Crows fascinate me,” Alan said.

  “They fascinate me too. This one watched me float.” Lily glanced at Alan, her dark eyelashes glistening with river water.

  Laverne could not be certain, but she thought that Lily was flirting with Alan Harrington. Laverne envied her sister’s ability to flirt. Flirting was something Lily did naturally. She was comfortable with men, treating them as if they were nothing special, and this was the way she was treating Alan, who was flirting back. Laverne could think of only one way to break up the flirtation and that was to announce it was time for her and her sister to leave. “You go ahead with the picnic basket,” she told Lily. “I will follow with the rest.”

  Lily was halfway up the hill when Alan asked Laverne if both she and her sister would come again. Both you and your sister, he said and Laverne took her time straightening the paintbox before telling him that she couldn’t vouch for her sister but she would try to come again. Wild horses wouldn’t have kept Laverne away but she didn’t want to appear too eager for Alan’s company.

  Laverne returned the next afternoon and claimed her painting spot at the bottom of the meadow. Alan appeared soon after and asked Laverne if her sister had gone for a swim. “No,” Laverne said. “Lily is frail and is resting at home.”

  “She didn’t seem frail to me,” Alan said. “She seemed full of life.”

  At that moment Lily was at the top of the hill in the derelict farmhouse, propped up in bed, living the impassioned life of Madame Bovary. The bedroom was at the back of the house, which had the advantage of being quieter than the bedrooms facing the road. If she had looked out a front bedroom window, Lily might have seen Laverne and Alan at the bottom of the meadow, but looking out a front bedroom window was the last thing on Lily’s mind because now Emma Bovary was prostituting herself to Rodolphe, imploring him to become her lover, if only he would pay her debts.