The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

  Melody gives a drawn out, put-upon sigh before she says, “Well now you’re here, you might as well come in.” She holds the door only wide enough for him to step through. Now that they are close, Matt takes in the heavy makeup and clunky earrings, the short skirt and high-heeled shoes. Melody crosses her arms beneath her breasts and asks why he wants to talk to Curtis.

  “I want to ask him if he will sign a statement so that my dad can make an accident insurance claim.”

  “Sign a statement.”

  “Right.” Matt asks if Gary is around; he knows if Gary is around, he is wasting his time.

  “Last I heard, Gary was in Fort McMurray,” Melody says, “and if he knows what’s good for him he’ll stay there.” A hard look crosses her face and beneath the makeup Matt sees the scarred jawline.

  Matt loosens his tie. “I think I’ve made a mistake coming today, Melody. I’ll come back another time,” he says, knowing that he will not come back another time, that Larry will have to submit the insurance claim without the statement signed by Curtis Parlee.

  “Not so fast, Matt. Now you’re here you might as well show me what you want Curtis to sign.” Melody holds out her hand and reluctantly Matt reaches into his jacket pocket and gives it to her. “Take a seat,” she says, and points to the couch beneath a velvet painting of a stream wending its way through snowy woods. Melody sits opposite in a basket chair, frowning as she reads. “Can’t it wait?” Trish had said, and she was right.

  “So what this says is that Curtis admits that he was driving Spurrell’s truck over the speed limit and hit your mother,” Melody says.

  “Yes. And Curtis has already admitted hitting my mother.”

  “But if Curtis signs he’ll lose his driver’s licence.”

  “That depends on the police. But he’ll lose his job when the insurance company files the claim against Spurrell’s. Two of Spurrell’s drivers have already been let go as a result of speeding. And Curtis was definitely speeding. The tire tracks show he was going over twice the speed limit.”

  “I saw the tracks when I picked him up and drove him home.”

  “He phoned you?”

  “Yes. He used the pay phone outside Sharp’s drugstore,” Melody says. “Listen Matt, I want my son to be responsible for what he did. But it’s up to him to decide if he’ll sign. Since the accident, Curtis has had trouble sleeping and has kept to his bed. He is a gentle boy, not at all like his father and it was his decision, not mine, to apologize to your family.”

  “If Curtis decides to sign the statement, he’ll need a witness to verify his signature.”

  “Now you tell me,” Melody says.

  “Look, if it’s too much …”

  “No. It’s better to get it over with.”

  Melody clatters downstairs and Matt removes his tie, unbuttons his shirt collar and glances around. Near the window a wooden bench serves as a television stand and a similar bench serves as a coffee table piled high with movie magazines. The minutes drag by and finally Matt hears Melody come upstairs and into the kitchen. He hears her on the phone saying, “Well, come as soon as you can.” Matt tips his head back and closing his eyes, he asks himself that if it had turned out that Curtis was his son, would he ask him to sign the statement? Probably not.

  Returning to the basket chair, Melody tells Matt that Curtis refuses to come upstairs but as soon as her friend Thelma shows up, he will sign the statement and Matt can be on his way. Clearly she wants him out of here, but she makes an attempt at conversation by asking Matt what he does for a living. He tells her he works for a construction company in Calgary and asks what she does for a living. She tells him that she works part-time at the mall. There is no sign of the raccoon-eyed mother and Matt cannot ask about her whereabouts without embarrassing Melody and himself about the drop-offs of cash.

  Thelma, the woman from the convenience store, bursts through the door and without a glance at Matt, heads to the kitchen. He hears Thelma ask for a goddamned pen before the two of them disappear downstairs.

  Minutes later Matt hears the women come upstairs and pass through the kitchen. Thelma glares at him from the front door. “You have your nerve,” she says.

  Matt gets to his feet but does not venture into the kitchen. Instead he waits at the front door for Melody to give him the signed and witnessed statement. When she appears and hands it to him, he notices the smear of mascara beneath one eye. “I am sorry about the loss of your mother,” she says.

  “Thanks,” Matt says and tells Melody that he appreciates her cooperation. What he doesn’t tell her is that he is sorry she didn’t have a better chance in life.

  He backs out of the driveway, drives the short distance to the corner and turns onto Main Street and soon he is passing Better Old Than New. With the curtains drawn it is impossible to know if his father is inside and he hesitates before going to see to Corrie, who is expecting him.

  Matt taps on the screen door.

  “Come in, it’s open,” Corrie calls from the kitchen. Matt waits in the hallway until Corrie limps into the living room carrying a tea tray. “I made a lemon sponge cake and I hope you have room for a slice,” she says.

  Matt hasn’t eaten since breakfast and is ravenous. “I have room.”

  Corrie pours the tea and passing Matt a cup along with a slice of cake, she settles herself in a chair and asks if the truck driver signed the statement. “He did. I wasn’t sure he would but he did.”

  “Well now, that is a mark in his favour.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Who is he and where does he live?”

  “His name is Curtis Parlee and he lives at Sussex Corner.”

  “The only Parlee I know is Kenny but he doesn’t live around here,” Corrie says.

  Because Corrie is a sympathetic listener, Matt is tempted to tell her what Laverne said to Curtis yesterday morning in his father’s kitchen but Matt can’t be sure that what is said won’t be passed on. His aunt is an unreliable witness but apart from Corrie and the man from Quincy, there are no other witnesses that could prove his aunt wrong. Instead he tells Corrie about the disastrous meeting at the police station.

  “Two policemen measured the tire tracks this morning,” Corrie says.

  “Was one of them the deputy police?”

  “Yes. He was the same one who spoke to Carl. He and a younger fellow stood around talking for a while before they had a look at Millie’s bashed-in planter.”

  “Did they talk to Millie?”

  “She wasn’t home. I know they saw me watching from the picture window but they never came to my door.”

  “Well, at least they measured the tracks.”

  “High time they did,” Corrie says and offers more tea.

  “No thanks.” Matt hands her the second statement. “Could you sign this in the presence of a witness?”

  “Sure. I’ll ask Millie to pop over after supper.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave it with you and pick it up tomorrow.”

  By now Hal has left the shop. In the crook of his arm is the ditty box, rough and damp from repeated scraping and wiping. He will stand it on end on his workbench below the garage window and by tomorrow the box should be dry enough to sand and oil. Hal trudges along with his head down, hoping not to be noticed. Without the protection of the Impala, he feels naked and exposed. The feeling comes from not wanting to meet someone he knows, someone who knows what happened to Lily. He decides that if anyone speaks to him, says anything at all, he will walk on as if he hasn’t heard. Oblivious to the whoops and hollers coming from the swimming pool, Hal crosses the stone bridge and turns left. If he had continued on Main Street, he would have seen the tire tracks on the road but now he is on Magnolia Avenue and the tire tracks are half a block behind him. When he turns onto Winter Street, Hal is reassured by the sight of the car wash and the dry cleaners. He is almost home. Ducking into the lane beside the Baptist Church, he scoots across Church Avenue to his driveway and heads for the garage. Entering by
the side door, he opens the ditty box and stands it on the workbench just so, facing the window. He closes the garage door and crunches across the gravel toward the house without noticing that the Mazda is nowhere in sight.

  The Mazda is parked in the McIntyres’ driveway in Roachville. Larry and Matt are drinking Schooner beer on the patio outside the kitchen. They can hear the click of balls on the other side of the honeysuckle hedge as two men practise teeing off in the field that used to be the golf course. There was a time, in law school, when they might have joked about the click of balls but now that they are family men, they talk instead about their wives and kids. “We should trade places for a couple of weeks next summer,” Larry says. “We could stay at your place in Bragg Creek and you and your family could stay in our place on the Belleisle with your dad. The cottage is on the water and there’s a motorboat you could use to explore the lake. The fishing’s not bad if you know where to go.”

  “We might take you up on it,” Matt says.

  “My boys would enjoy the Stampede,” Larry says.

  Matt is drinking a third beer on a nearly empty stomach and lacks the energy to tell Larry that his family does not attend the Stampede, that Trish is upset by the cruelty of the chuckwagon races. But he admits the exchange would suit Trish and him because it would let them spend holiday time with his father. While Larry puts on the steaks, Matt phones Trish and tells her he is having supper with Larry and will be home in a couple of hours. Trish hears the slur in his voice. “Leave the rental car at Larry’s,” she says, “and call a taxi.”

  Hal has already gone to bed and after Trish spoons chocolate batter into cake pans and puts them in the oven, she joins Claudia in the living room where she is watching Anne of Avonlea. “I can’t believe I’m watching this program,” Claudia says.

  “I grew up reading the Anne books,” Trish says.

  “So did I and I would rather read than watch TV, but right now I can’t concentrate enough to read.” Claudia yawns. “Time I went to bed,” she says and heads for the yellow spare room.

  By the time the program is over, the smell of baking has reached the living room and Trish moves to the kitchen where she can keep an eye on the cakes. Ten minutes later, while the pans are cooling on the counter Trish is watching the CBC news when she hears a taxi pull into the driveway and goes downstairs. Before Matt stumbles onto the veranda, Trish is standing in the doorway, ready to help him upstairs to bed.

  VI

  Corrie is drinking a cup of coffee on the veranda when she hears a locust in the leafy branches of the elm tree. Corrie thinks of the locust’s staccato as a weather vane because she only hears it in warm, dry weather and is convinced that the telephone wires glistening with a spatter of overnight rain will be dry by noon.

  Corrie watches farmers drive past on their way to Saturday shopping in their half-ton trucks. When she was a girl, Saturday used to be her favourite day of the week because she got to sit up front between her parents while her brothers had to sit behind her in the truck box. Corrie’s parents were strict and came to town only after Corrie and her brothers had finished their farm chores and earned a reward. The reward was always the same: hot dogs and chips before her brothers went to the square dance at the Legion. Corrie’s father parked the truck on Broad Street where he passed the time chatting to the farmer on the left, and her mother to the farmer on the right while Corrie watched soldiers from Camp Sussex pick up girls who wore tight sweaters and too much makeup. Corrie was not allowed to wear tight sweaters and makeup until she was eighteen, the same age she was allowed to attend the square dance at the Legion. Corrie met Frank at the Legion. In those days she had a small waist and was easily picked up and swung around, her feet barely touching the floor. One night Corrie was dancing the quadrille with Frank when the waist band of the crinoline she wore beneath her square dancing skirt snapped and slid to the floor. While their partners stood around snorting and hee-hawing, Corrie stepped out of the crinoline and Frank folded it up, stuffed it inside his shirt, put his arm around Corrie and danced her around the circle.

  Corrie watches Millie Keirstead’s ten-year-old grandson make his way toward the veranda and reluctantly climb the steps. Corrie knows that if she wasn’t on the veranda, Neil would toss the newspaper on the step. “Thank you, Neil,” Corrie says and waits while he hands her the newspaper. Not a word from Neil, who according to Millie, is unhappy living with his grandmother while his mother cleans houses for the well-to-do in Rothesay.

  Corrie unfolds the Kings County Record and there on the front page is an article about Lily McNab’s death. STREET MISHAP FATAL, the headline reads. Mishap strikes Corrie as a weak word that doesn’t come close to describing being killed by a speeding truck.

  Mrs. Lillian McNab, 58, suffered fatal injuries when struck by a truck on Main Street here last Monday shortly after two o’clock as she was walking across the street from the Sussex Cheese and Butter Company, known as the Creamery, to the car where her sister, Miss Laverne Pritchard of Sussex, awaited her. Mrs. McNab was taken to the Kings County Memorial Hospital. An autopsy was ordered by Dr. Seamus (Squank) O’Donnell, coroner, but no decision has been announced as to an inquest.

  The truck, a three-ton vehicle owned by Spurrell’s Paving was driven by Curtis Parlee, 18, of Sussex Corner. The police attached no blame to the driver and said no charge would be laid. At the time Mrs. McNab started to cross the street to return to her car after purchasing two ice cream cones, traffic was light. It was stated that the driver sounded his horn and tried to avoid striking her but she came in contact with the front truck wheel and was knocked to the pavement.

  Somebody by the name of Daryl Dexter has written this drivel. Donald Trites, the editor of the Kings County Record, must be on holiday because if he had read this piece of sloppy reporting, he would never have allowed it to be printed. Donald is a stickler for facts and Daryl Dexter did not check the facts. He did not mention the fact that Lily McNab was in the crosswalk, that the gravel truck was going way over the speed limit, that after the driver hit Lily McNab, it took him more than fifty feet to stop and he bashed into Millie Keirstead’s planter. Daryl Dexter did not mention the fact that the police were more than an hour late arriving at the accident scene and that by that time the ambulance had taken the body away, Curtis Parlee was nowhere to be seen. Instead of interviewing Carl Reidle and Corrie, Daryl Dexter had gone to the police who “attached no blame to the driver.” Corrie will write Donald Trites a letter informing him of the facts and request that a correction be printed in the newspaper. As a member of the town council, Donald already knows the town police cannot be trusted to get their facts straight. Corrie will urge him to use her letter as further evidence that the town’s force should be replaced by the RCMP. She will write the letter today and encourage Millie to do the same.

  Hal is the first one up on Saturday morning. He dresses quickly, goes down the front stairs and steps into brilliant, eye-blinking light. He crosses the driveway and opens the garage door and there on the workbench, situated on a map sketched by the sunlight that has found its way through the leafy shapes outside the window, is the ditty box. Hal rubs his hand over the dry, smooth surface and satisfied that there are no rough spots or splinters, he will now finish the job. He opens the bottom drawer of his tool chest where he keeps odds and ends and removes the rectangle of sapphire velvet. He holds it up for inspection. The remnant is about the right size. Smoothing it flat on the bench, he checks and rechecks its measurements, and then the measurements of the ditty box. Wiping the shears clean, he cuts the velvet, holding it in place with the T-square. He works slowly, measuring with care before cutting the cloth and placing the strips upside-down on the workbench and coating them with a thin layer of carpenter’s glue. One by one Hal eases the strips onto the sides of the ditty box and smoothes them flat. The large rectangle is the last to be sheared and coated with glue. Then he presses it carefully to the bottom and thumbs it into the corners until there are no apparent se
ams, wrinkles or bumps. Next, he oils the key and fits it into the lock. A perfect fit. Hal stands back to admire his work. Lily would be pleased; she did not care about possessions and did not share his passion for beautiful wood, but she would be pleased.

  Hal hears his daughter calling, “Dad?”

  “In here,” Hal says. He has left the garage door open and soon Claudia is standing beside him. “Is that the container?” she asks.

  “It is.” Hal turns the key and lifts the lid.

  Claudia rubs her hand over the velvet. “It’s beautiful, Dad. Is it a jewellery box?”

  “No. It’s a ditty box sailors used to hold their keepsakes when they were at sea.”

  “ ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea,’ ” Claudia says. “It’s perfect for Mom. We should take it upstairs and show Matt and Trish.”

  “No. The ditty box stays here until …”

  “Yes.” Claudia puts an arm around her father. “We should go in, Dad. Trish is about to take a frittata out of the oven.”

  “What’s a frittata?”

  “A kind of omelette.”

  Hal is a fastidious, tidy man and as he follows his daughter to the door, he notices a wink of sunlight on the cement floor and cannot resist picking up a pearl-sized gold earring. He places it on his palm and holds it out to his daughter. “Is this yours?”

  “I don’t wear that kind of earring,” Claudia says. “It’s more Auntie’s style. I think I’ve seen her wearing an earring like this one.”

  “But what would she be doing inside the garage? She parks the Volkswagen in the driveway. Why would she come into the garage?”

  “Who knows? Come on, Dad. The frittata will be cold,” Claudia says. Pocketing the earring, Hal follows her inside.

  Breakfast is over and Matt is alone in the kitchen where, hangover or not, he has been left with cleaning up. The telephone rings and picking it up, he hears Corrie ask if he has read the Kings County Record. “Not yet,” he says.