The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  With Hal beside him, Matt avoids the Creamery and following the side streets, he crosses the stone bridge. Past the park and the undertaker’s, Matt pulls into the driveway of a tall grey house set well back from the road. With its gingerbread trim, veranda columns and a small oval window beneath the eaves, the house looks vaguely Victorian. There is a similar window above the door of a smaller building at the end of the driveway that Hal uses for storage. Beside the door is a wooden plaque lettered in black: Better Old Than New. Matt asks his father if he wants a lift home. “I’ll walk,” Hal says. “I might be a while.”

  Hal doesn’t ask Matt to step inside. Under normal circumstances he would have asked, but of course nothing is normal. Matt has never been inside his father’s store, which was still in the idea stage when he was last here with Trish and Jenny. While his father walks to the side door, Matt takes a minute to admire the elegance and simplicity of the house. His father has good taste and no one would mistake the store for a junk shop. Someone, it wouldn’t have been Hal, has planted ferns, orange tiger lilies and white flowering shrubs along the side of the house and in front of the veranda. Hal wouldn’t have painted the house either; he would have hired someone to do the job. Obviously he has sunk money into the property and it will be a while before he can pay off his debts and turn a profit. All the more reason to have the accident insurance claim underway before Matt leaves town. Backing out of the driveway, Matt drives to Larry’s office, picks up the witness statements and heads for Sussex Corner. It is eleven o’clock in the morning and already he is exhausted. Even with the help of trazodone and Trish beside him, Matt could not get back to sleep after the Grand Prix wannabes quit racing past the house and lay in the dark worrying about the accident insurance claim.

  And he is still worrying. Matt knows Corrie Spears will sign the statement but he is far from certain that Curtis Parlee will sign; before Laverne interfered, he might have been willing to sign, but after what happened in the kitchen, Curtis might refuse, which will leave Matt with no choice but to have him charged with a hit and run. He does not have the authority to charge him with a hit and run, but he can tell Curtis there is a witness, Carl Reidle, who can testify that after the accident Curtis did not stay with the vehicle as required by the law.

  Matt doesn’t know where Curtis Parlee lives in Sussex Corner and he’ll have to stop at the corner store and ask.

  Hal lets himself in the front door. Stepping into the crimson light of the showroom, he makes sure the red velvet drapes are pulled close enough to allow him privacy, and leaves the CLOSED sign in the window.

  There is enough light for Hal to make his way to the centre of the room where two scarlet runners form a pathway allowing customers to walk about without bumping into furniture or knocking over lamps and vases. Hal stands beneath the cranberry glass chandelier, one of the exquisite items left to him by Grace, who unlike Murray, recognized their son’s appreciation for rare objects and beautifully crafted wood. The most valuable pieces in the store once belonged to Grace, who inherited them from Grandmother Harriet, who brought them to Nova Scotia from the Boston states when she married Dr. Burchell. The fact that his grandfather, father and brother chose the medical profession has had an unsettling effect on Hal who sometimes thinks that if it weren’t for the family trio of doctors, he might have become a cabinet maker instead of a pharmaceutical salesman.

  As a boy Hal enjoyed working with his hands and in school excelled in shop. He remembers making his mother a walnut whatnot under the watchful eye of Mr. Brownell, who discouraged using nails and showed Hal how to secure shelves using glue and wooden pegs. Mr. Brownell also showed him how to turn a teak bowl on the lathe—teak was easy to come by in those days. Hal’s skill and pleasure in shaping the wood was the main reason his mother willed her antiques to him and not to his brother; the other reason was that Grace could not bring herself to forgive Welland for abandoning his first wife, Marilyn, and running off to Florida with a married woman. Grace did not tell Hal she disapproved of Welland’s second marriage; what she told him was that she did not want the family heirlooms ending up in a place where people led frivolous lives golfing, lounging around swimming pools and frequenting amusement parks.

  Murray McNab said nothing about the whatnot or the teak bowl Hal made for his mother. The doctor wasn’t given to encouragement or praise. The son of a hard-nosed grocer, Murray had received little of either and put himself through medical school by buying and selling property; otherwise Murray had no interest in property. Neither was he interested in antiques and navigated his way through the house on South Park Street like a sea captain whose eye seldom left the horizon.

  During his years on the road selling pharmaceuticals Hal dreamed of opening an antique store and went out of his way to check out the handful of good ones in Atlantic Canada. He seldom resisted the urge to attend an estate or auction sale and browsed through second-hand furniture shops, in fact any store that advertised collectibles, on the assumption that amid the clutter of chipped crockery, beer steins and kerosene lamps he might find something of value. Occasionally he did. He became adept at spotting the differences between an imitation and a genuine antique. No matter what the style, in most cases it all came down to a perfect union of function and wood. He paid close attention to presentation. He noticed that quality stores, such as Rare Antiques and Things of the Past, did not crowd items together but allowed ample space between them so that each was shown to optimum effect.

  Hal’s motto is “less is more,” and the largest items on the floor are the cherry wood étagère and the fruitwood armoire against the back walls, and in the corners the two long-cased Belling clocks. Spaced out on a side wall is a colonial blanket chest with a butterfly brass keyhole, a sack-back settee and two Windsor bow-back chairs, and in opposite corners, two more long-case clocks. The Queen Anne chairs Hal bought at a recent auction are against the opposite wall beside an Oriental-style collector cabinet and a Classical-period sofa. The smaller items are on either side of the carpeted walkways: his great-grandmother Harriet’s Federal tea table, marble top washstand and various chairs as well as smaller, less expensive tables. Maintaining a price range that will interest most customers is a challenge, as is the placement of the NOT FOR SALE sign which can aggravate the aggressive customer who refuses to leave the shop until he becomes the owner of a particular antique. Ever since an obnoxious customer, in this case a she, refused to leave the shop without Grace’s slant-fronted desk and the family cradle, Hal has kept Harriet’s long-case eight-day clock, her rosewood desk and Chippendale dressers at home.

  The sale of a large antique is rare. Tourists want to buy an item that will fit inside their car and for that reason alone small boxes are popular, which is why only three remain on the showroom floor: an ornate Art Nouveau box, a desk box of hammered copper and a two-drawered poplar box. Hal examines each in turn but for reasons of size and taste, none is right for Lily. Hal cannot picture what box would be right for Lily but he knows he will recognize it when he sees it. If he cannot find a box that is appropriate for her upstairs, he will make one. When Ernie Thompson owned the store, he converted the second floor into a four-room apartment, concealing the staircase behind a red velvet drape—unless customers hear footsteps overhead, they would never guess that anyone lived upstairs.

  Hal climbs the stairs and gazes at the assortment of end tables, stools, washstands, chairs and benches awaiting repair in what was Ernie’s living room. On the floor, beneath the oval window are two cartons of smaller items Hal bought at an estate auction in Hampton last month and stowed up here until he could find the time to sort through the contents. Although most of the items will be of little value, at ten bucks a carton it is worth taking a chance that a valuable item will turn up. Only six months ago Hal found a spirit bottle of German glass in a carton of junk he bought at an estate auction.

  Hal parks himself on a wobbly piano stool and paws through a carton of dented brassware and mismatched candleholde
rs, rust-scabbed knives and assorted bookends. Nothing there. The second carton contains a kitchen clock, lace doilies, a chenille bedspread and beneath a satin pillow, a flat wooden box. Hal lifts the box onto his knees. Though badly scratched, the wood is solid oak. There is a narrow bald space above the keyhole that once held a metal plate. Hal opens the lid: inside are seven wooden compartments: the largest intended to hold letters, the others to hold smaller items. Hal has never seen this kind of box listed in Smiley’s Antiques and Collectibles, but he knows what it is. It’s a ditty box that sailors used for storing valuables when they were at sea. Hal remembers seeing a ditty box much like the one he is holding in Denny Quinn’s house in Bridgewater. It had belonged to Denny’s uncle who was a merchant seaman during the war. Hal knows he has found the right container. What could be more appropriate to hold Lily’s ashes than this box that had once held valuables while the sailor was at sea.

  ——

  Matt stops at the convenience store in Sussex Corner to ask directions. The grey-haired woman waits until he is at the counter before looking up from her paperback. She asks what he wants.

  “Can you tell me where Curtis Parlee lives?”

  The woman gives him the once-over before telling Matt to turn right at the corner.

  “And?”

  “He lives in the sixth house on the right. A pale green colour. A wooden deer on the lawn,” the woman says. “You couldn’t miss it if you tried.” She waits until Matt is back in the car before picking up the telephone.

  At the corner Matt turns right, crawls past five houses and stops in front of the pale green house with a wooden deer on the lawn, a small grey car in the narrow driveway. He remembers his sister telling him she saw a dark-haired woman she assumed was Curtis’s mother waiting for him inside a small grey car. Realizing she might be home, Matt drives on, sweaty hands gripping the wheel as he looks for a place to pull over. Although the pale green house looks nothing like the shabby bungalow where he handed over half his pay to the raccoon-eyed mother, Matt is convinced it is the same house.

  When he was eighteen, after his shift bagging groceries at the Dominion was over and the pay envelope was inside his jeans pocket, Matt biked to this house for the last time and caught Melody outside. She was sitting on a chrome kitchen chair parked in a patch of weeds, a blond guy beside her on the same kind of chair, the baby on his knees. Taking in the scene, Matt kept his backside on the bicycle seat, one foot on the ground to steady himself. He noticed that Melody had put on weight, let herself go.

  “Who the hell are you?” the guy said. He was about Matt’s age, sharp-chinned and chippy.

  Melody answered for him. “He’s someone I knew in school, Gary.”

  “Someone who just happened to be passing by.”

  “That’s right.” Matt nodded toward the baby. “That your kid, Gary?”

  “Of course it’s my kid.”

  “Congratulations,” Matt said, his dislike of Gary replaced by overwhelming relief. “Gotta go,” he whooped and, making a tight circle in the weedy yard, he cycled away with his pay envelope intact. After the encounter with Gary, Matt did not give Melody Stiles a single thought. If he had thought about her he might have assumed that she and the kid had moved to Penobsquis or Moncton, wherever Gary found work. Might have assumed. How callous he was, how little he cared, how little he knew about Melody Stiles. Or for that matter, Curtis Parlee. Because he had never given Melody or the baby a second thought, it never occurred to Matt that they might still be living in the house that had once been shabby and had a patch of weeds out front.

  Freaked out by the thought that Curtis Parlee was the kid sitting on Gary’s knee, Matt pulls over to where the road divides and puts his head on the wheel. By now he is sweating and his stomach is in knots. What if Curtis had been his kid? Get a grip. This isn’t a soap opera, Matt tells himself. Get a grip.

  ——

  Hal rubs his hands over the ditty box. The size is right: twelve by six by four inches. And no wood stands up to time better than oak. Hal remembers Lily telling him a story about a Viking king who was buried in a ship made of oak because the wood lasted for centuries. Hal likes the idea of Lily’s ashes lasting for centuries, he likes the fact that the box is solid and plain. He knows Lily would like this box—she never liked anything fancy or showy and had to be talked into accepting an engagement ring. The plywood dividers will be easy to take out and once they are removed and the box given a thorough cleaning, he will line it with a remnant of sapphire velvet that is in his workshop at home. There is a rightness to lining the box with blue velvet because, as Hal likes to remember, it was the colour of the sea the first afternoon Lily and he were alone.

  Hal met Lily by way of Laverne whom he knew slightly from having played singles with her a few times on the Bridgewater tennis courts. He had not seen her for so long that he was surprised when she invited him to play bridge, explaining that her sister was visiting for the weekend and she needed a fourth. Hal had never been much of a bridge player and only showed up at Laverne’s trailer in Petite Riviere that Saturday afternoon in June because he had nothing better to do. He arrived just as a chilly fog was riding the incoming tide and wreathing its way through the old graveyard. Across the road from the graveyard were two trailers and Hal figured out which was Laverne’s because of the bridge table and four folding chairs set up on the grass near the door. There was a jar of pink flowers on the table and two decks of playing cards.

  Standing in front of the trailer were Laverne and Bill Nauss who Hal was later told were going out together, and another woman, a slender, dark-haired woman in a pink sweater and skirt who was standing with her back to Hal. At his approach, she turned and looking him up and down, she asked, “Well, who have we here?” She had blue eyes, black eyebrows and a mischievous grin. For once in his life, Hal couldn’t think of a thing to say. “Harold, I would like you to meet my sister, Lily. She will be your bridge partner,” Laverne said. Still at a loss for words, Hal seized the bouquet of pink flowers from the table and gave them to Laverne’s sister. “For you,” he said with a bow.

  “Thank you,” Lily said and calmly returned the flowers to the jar.

  Hal doesn’t remember much about the game. He couldn’t take his eyes from Lily and made wild and foolish bids. But he was aware that Lily knew what she was doing and that they were skunked on his account. Lily accepted their defeat in the calm way she accepted the flowers. It was Laverne who was offended. “I will have you know, Harold,” she said, “that my sister is an excellent bridge player and that you have let her down.” Then she huffed into the trailer to make tea, followed by Lily. Bill told Hal not to mind what Laverne said, that she doted on her sister.

  In spite of the chill, there was no suggestion that they have their tea in the trailer and after Bill went inside, Lily carried a plate of brownies outside and told Hal that her sister was upset with him because he had given her the flowers she had brought for Laverne.

  A minor embarrassment. Nothing was going to stop Hal from making it clear that he had fallen in love. He had never been in love and now that he was, he was determined to speak his mind. “I gave you the flowers because as soon as I saw you, I knew you were the woman I’m going to marry,” Hal said.

  Lily raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little ahead of yourself?”

  “It’s true. I’m going to marry you.”

  “You do realize that I have some say in the matter.”

  “Of course, which is why I intend to woo you.”

  “Now there is an old-fashioned word.”

  “Do you play tennis?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Do you swim?”

  “I dog paddle.”

  “Would you come to the beach with me tomorrow?”

  Lily asked Laverne to come along and Laverne asked Bill. It was too cold for swimming so Lily and Hal splashed through the flattened waves before the four of them shared a picnic on Rissers Beach. Afterwards, Hal dro
ve Lily to Halifax to save her the bother of taking the train. The next weekend Lily had free, Hal picked her up at the nurses’ residence and they drove to Carter’s Beach, where the sea was a sapphire blue, lupines and wild roses grew in profusion and there was enough driftwood to build a table for their picnic. Three months later Hal and Lily married in Bridgewater. Unwilling to miss the opportunity to study at the Sorbonne, Laverne did not attend the wedding and Beryl Saunders, a nursing classmate of Lily’s, was maid of honour.

  Hal carries the ditty box to the shed attached to the back of the house. When Ernie moved into the Kiwanis Nursing Home, he left his tools behind. It is Ernie’s pliers Hal uses to remove the dividers in the box. Beneath one of the dividers Hal finds a rusty key. In his experience, keys to antique boxes and chests are often lost or mislaid and it is a small miracle this one has survived. The dividers have been glued in place and it takes some time to scrape off the epoxy without gouging the wood.

  Finally Matt parks the Mazda behind the grey Tempo, mounts the concrete steps and presses the bell. He hears it ringing inside but no one opens the door. He presses the bell again and this time he glimpses a dark-haired woman in the picture window but she doesn’t come to the door and he waits, sweat gathering at his temples and neck. Finally he hears footsteps and the woman holds the door open partway. “Hello Melody,” Matt says. There is no mistake, she is Melody Stiles although not the Melody Stiles he remembers. She is still pretty but no longer petite. “Hello Matt,” she says and waits for him to explain why he is here.

  Matt represses the urge to say he is here to talk to the truck driver who killed his mother. Instead he says he was told that Curtis Parlee lives here.

  No response.

  “Is it possible to talk to him?”

  “Why? So you can chew him up and spit him out like you did yesterday?”

  “Are you going to let me come in or do we carry on the conversation outside?”