by Joan Clark
“My stepdaughters,” Welland says. “Our older daughter is anorexic. She and her sister don’t get along. Our younger daughter is expecting her third child any day now. Lanie is with her now.” After Hal tells Welland about his grandchildren, they lapse into a prolonged silence until Welland says, “Why didn’t you like me, Hal?” Startled by the question, Hal asks his brother if he minds if he smokes. “I don’t mind,” Welland says, but Hal cannot remember where he put his cigarettes because his mind is occupied with his brother’s question and he decides not to smoke. Finally he says, “You were Murray’s favourite and he always took your side, never mine.”
“Well, Grace took your side.”
“But she never thrashed you.”
“True.”
“And neither did Murray.” Hal asked if Welland remembered the Saturday Murray told the two of them to clean up the cellar. Welland doesn’t remember. Why would he? So Hal tells Welland how he sat on the bottom step and watched Hal sort out the junk and stack the jars and boxes on the shelves. “I handed you the broom and told you to sweep the floor but you refused to lift a finger. Do remember what you said?”
“No.”
“You said, why should I sweep the floor when you’ll do a good enough job. So I smacked you and of course you ran bawling to Murray who came down to the cellar and gave me the thrashing of my life.”
“Back then, I was a jerk,” Welland says.
“I doubt you are now,” Hal says. If Welland was still a jerk, he wouldn’t have come all the way from Florida. Through the gathering dark he sees his brother’s yawn. “It is time I was going,” Welland says. Hal offers to call a taxi but Welland says, “No need, I was careful not to drink too much. I can drive myself.”
“Come for breakfast,” Hal says.
“Thank you, I will,” Welland says and pats his brother on the shoulder.
The family sits in the frayed light of the living room listening to Welland drive away. The stories have emptied them of speech and a deep silence settles in. But the mantle clock ticks on toward tomorrow and the coming days. It will be weeks before anyone in the room finds delight in small pleasures: the comfort of falling rain, sunlight on the wall, a familiar voice on the telephone. Later, much later, the family will remember how close they were tonight. In the months and years to come, one way and another they will reclaim their lives. Without Lily their lives will never be the same, but they will find comfort in the familiar and unchanged.
Deep into the night Hal continues to seek solace in memory. He and Lily are on their honeymoon and Hal is half lying on the beach, elbows on the sand as he watches his bride of four days sitting in an inner tube bobbing on the waves, her arms outstretched as she dips her hands in the sea. Waves tremble in the sunlight as they lift her up and down, up and down, legs splayed, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. As Hal watches, the inner tube is seized by a rip tide and suddenly Lily is being spun around and around at the same time she is being pulled away from shore. On his feet now, Hal races along the beach, splashes through tidal pools, slides over slippery seaweed rocks, never once taking his eyes from Lily as she is being pulled farther and farther out to sea. Hal dives headlong into the rolling swells and ploughs through the waves until at last he reaches her. Flipping onto his back he tugs the inner tube free of the rip tide and tows it to shallow water where he picks up his wife, white-faced with fear, and carries her safely ashore.
VIII
November and Katjana, the last hurricane of the season, is winding down. Thunder rolls in from the Dutch Valley, wind cruises the Kennebecasis and a cold wind dashes the last autumn leaves to the ground. The cool wind is a relief to Hal. He has never liked hot weather and after moving to the apartment above his store, he told Corrie Spears that he found Ernie’s bedroom too hot for sleeping. “Serves you right,” she said. “You should have stayed where you were for a year or two.” Corrie has not yet moved from the house where she and Frank lived together for most of their married life.
Laverne was in Holland when Hal told his children he was moving to the apartment above Better Old Than New. Matt offered to spend a weekend helping him move but Hal said there was no need for him to come, that Claudia had been helping out on weekends. He had hired a truck to move his mother’s antiques and the patchwork rocker; the remaining furniture was second-hand and would be rented along with the apartment. Hal did not mention leaving behind the queen-sized bed he could not bring himself to sleep in again; nor did he mention that rain or shine, every day he visits Lily’s grave. He told Matt that Claudia had already taken Lily’s clothing to the Salvation Army and donated her books to the library.
Claudia no longer comes home every weekend. Instead she telephones on Sundays and each time she calls, she asks if Hal has told Laverne that he has moved. When Claudia asked him again this morning, Hal assured her he would tell Laverne today.
“I’m surprised Auntie hasn’t found out by now,” Claudia said.
“I don’t know how she would find out. I didn’t put an ad in the paper.”
Attached to a clipping cut from the Kings County Record Hal received in the mail with Daryl Dexter’s version of the accident was a note: For your files somebody had written, somebody streaked with meanness. After he read the article, Hal burned it and hasn’t done business with the newspaper since. Instead of placing a rental ad in the Kings County Record, he spoke to the manager of the potash plant, who gave him a lead on a possible tenant. Hal told Claudia that the day before yesterday, he signed a rental agreement with an accountant. “He has already put down a deposit.”
“Then you should tell Laverne today.”
“I intend to.”
“You know she could make life difficult for you.”
“Life is already difficult for me.”
“I know, but she could make it even more difficult. She might tell the tenant that she is co-owner of the house but had not given her consent to the rental and on that basis she might insist that he will have to leave.”
Claudia is right: Laverne could make life more difficult for him, but that is not why he has been procrastinating. He has been procrastinating because when he tells Laverne the upstairs apartment has been rented out, he intends to show her the pearl-sized gold earring he found on the garage floor the morning he was working on the ditty box.
After Lily died, Hal’s memory was shot through with holes and he forgot he had picked up the earring from the garage floor and put it in a trouser pocket. The days dribbled away, each one following the pattern of the other with Hal driving to Kirk Hill and then on to Better Old Than New. Apart from attending Sunday morning church service and Kiwanis, Hal kept to himself and steered his thoughts from the accident until two weeks ago when he stopped at Northrup’s Garage and he and Joe fell to talking about who might have put water in the Impala’s gas tank. Joe said it could have been one of the young bucks who drove around town half the night in their souped-up convertibles. But why would one of those kids go to the trouble of putting water in a gas tank of a car that was out of sight inside a garage? It made no sense, which is why Hal was convinced that someone else tampered with his car.
It wasn’t until he had left Northrup’s Garage that Hal remembered finding the gold earring Claudia thought was her aunt’s on the garage floor. And he knew who had put water in the gas tank. No question, it was Laverne. She had done it to spite him and prevent him from taking Lily to a birthday lunch. Laverne didn’t know much about the mechanics of a car, but Hal thought it likely that she knew enough to figure out that if she watered down the gas, the Impala wouldn’t go far. Hal remembered putting the earring in his trouser pocket and later putting it in the top dresser drawer where he kept his handkerchiefs, tie clips and address book.
Hal hasn’t told Claudia or Matt that he suspects their aunt, that it was she who had interfered with his car. He hasn’t told his children because the difficulties he has with Laverne have nothing to do with them. There is also the likelihood that Claudia wou
ld regard his suspicion as far-fetched and would be alarmed on his behalf. Matt, on the other hand, would regard the suspicion as plausible but insufficient to prove his case. But proving his case doesn’t matter to Hal. What matters to Hal is that Laverne admit, at least to herself, that if she had not tampered with the Impala, he would have been home on time to drive Lily to the hospital for the X-ray. Neither of Hal’s children know about the tug-of-war he and Laverne had over Lily’s birthday lunch, and that if he had given in and let Laverne have her way, their mother would still be alive. These are bitter truths that are not easily forgotten or set aside. Which is why Hal decided that come hell or high water, he and Laverne cannot occupy the same house.
Before leaving his apartment, Hal put the gold earring in his trouser pocket and is now pacing the upstairs rooms of the Old Steadman House, trying to work out what he will say to Laverne. He reminds himself not to make an accusation she will dismiss out of hand. First, he will tell her that he has moved and then he will show her the gold earring. “I believe this is yours,” he will say. “I found it on the garage floor and I think you should have it back.” If Laverne refuses take it back, he will put the earring on top of the Volkswagen and walk away before he falls into the trap of saying too much.
Downstairs Laverne is in the kitchen eating a late breakfast. For the first time in her working life, she has taken to lying in bed on weekends. Without Lily upstairs she has no desire to get out of bed. And why should she? She has worked hard all her life and has earned the luxury of sleeping in. Now that she has the exercise of walking to and from school, Laverne sleeps soundly, but sorrow does not sleep and in the mornings she wakens exhausted from carrying its weight. Because of the fatigue she finds neither satisfaction nor pleasure in teaching, and if she could afford it she would ask Walter Coombs to hire a temporary replacement. Walter has been considerate; he has relieved her of recess duty and has not broached the subject of remedial classes after school.
School resumed two days before Laverne returned from Holland. She had wanted to stay in Amsterdam and be consoled by visits to the Rijksmuseum and walks along the canals with Lucas and Jan in whose company she felt lively, even carefree. Laverne does not remember being lively and carefree as a girl. What she remembers is Dorothy’s illness and Lou’s insistence that Laverne come straight home from school to look after her mother and her little sister. Her father expected too much of her when she was a girl. He did not expect as much of Lily which is why she was carefree and Laverne was serious—according to Dorothy, too serious for her own good.
Because she no longer tutors Xuan Pham, when the afternoon dismissal bell rings, Laverne is now the first teacher to leave the school. After a day of teaching, she longs for the solitude to contemplate the beauty and calm of the rooms that are her refuge, a retreat from the dashed hopes and difficulties of her life. As soon as she enters the apartment, Laverne opens the pantry and kitchen doors and makes herself a cup of tea. Settling herself on the wooden bench beside the window, she sips her tea while watching the afternoon light vanish from the opposite wall. It is from this vantage point that she likes to admire the economy and simplicity of her rooms. Laverne’s fascination with de Hooch’s painting has never included the woman and child. What fascinates her is the power of light to transform her home. It is the light that calms her and allows the comfort of solitude to take hold. Laverne has always needed solitude, except on those rare occasions when loneliness creeps in and she wonders if she might have been happier if she had sought a housemate. But the moment soon passes as she reminds herself that if she had a housemate, she would be denied the secret pleasure of these rooms.
Laverne hears rain pattering against the apartment windows. It has been three days since Katjana battered Cuba and all that remains of the hurricane is the tail end of the donkey: a fitful wind, grumbling clouds and bursts of rain, not enough to keep Laverne from her garden. Hennie has already telephoned to remind her that a hard frost always follows the last hurricane of the season and Laverne knows that if she doesn’t pot the herbs and plant the tulip bulbs today, Hennie will do it for her. Laverne pulls on the green poncho, knots the coolie hat firmly beneath her chin, and carrying a basket containing chipped herb pots, a spade and two dozen tulip bulbs she brought from Holland, she goes outside and digs six-inch holes in the narrow garden on either side of her door. The soil is cold but crumbly and in half an hour thirty-six tulips have been planted and Laverne moves to the herb garden where the digging is slower because she must take care not to damage the roots. While she works, Laverne reminds herself to telephone Harold Briggs and arrange a time when he can attach the tiles she bought in Friesland to the cornered wall. Before Jan and Lucas arrive to spend Christmas with Hennie, every detail must be true to the rooms Pieter de Hooch painted. Although the walls of Lucas’s gallery on Westerstraat are hung with contemporary art, his knowledge of the Dutch Masters is extensive and during her first visit to Holland it was Lucas, not Jan, who guided her through the Rembrandts and Vermeers, the de Brays and de Gelders. When they came to de Hooch’s Woman and Child in an Interior Lucas declared the painting his favourite and Laverne is determined that when he sees these rooms at Christmastime, the illusion will be perfect.
Lucas will understand why these rooms are important to Laverne. He will understand that they are meant to be a place of quietude and calm, a place where beauty can be found in the changing light.
——
Through the living-room window, Hal watches the maples bend to the wind as heavy blue clouds move in from the Dutch Valley. Soon rain will be lashing the windows and drumming the roof and if he is to follow through with his intention to speak to Laverne, he must do it now before the storm breaks. Telephoning is not a possibility. Neither is knocking on the door at the bottom of the back stairs because if Laverne hears him coming down the back stairs, she will not open the door and what he has to say to her has to be said face to face. Before he can lose his nerve, Hal goes down the front staircase with the intention of knocking on Laverne’s outside door.
But there is no need to knock because here is Laverne on her knees in the garden she keeps at the corner where her apartment joins the main house, the garden where she planted a cherry tree after digging up the blue spruce Hal had planted without asking if he minded, and of course he minded. There are four pots lined up beside her, two of them containing herbs of one kind and another.
Hal regards the removal of the spruce tree and the Sevres teapot as theft. He did not know the Sevres teapot was missing until a few weeks ago when he was delivering an assortment of china cups and other odds and ends to the Phams and there, proudly displayed on a shelf in their upstairs apartment on Essex Street, was the Sevres teapot Laverne had bought as Lily’s and his wedding present during her first trip to France.
Hal crunches across the gravel driveway and stops about ten feet from Laverne. “I would like a word with you,” he says.
A word? When has Hal ever spoken a word? “A word about what?” Laverne says, but she struggles to her feet, and tilting back her coolie hat, she looks up at the man who was once her brother-in-law.
“About the upstairs apartment. I’ve decided to rent it out.”
“You decided to rent it out without speaking to me first?” Laverne hears herself shouting against the wind. Hal has caught her off guard and she is furious.
“I am speaking to you. Or trying to.”
“Are you renting it furnished?”
“Yes. Except for the antiques I inherited from my mother.”
“What about the antiquarian books Lily inherited from our father?”
“Claudia has the books so you don’t need to worry about them ending up in the store.”
“Where will you live?”
“I am already living in the apartment above the store.”
Laverne did not know there was an apartment above the store.
“When did you move?”
“In late August. When you were on holiday.”<
br />
When she was out of the picture.
“But I have often seen your car parked in the driveway.”
“Well, there are a few things that need doing before the new tenants move in.”
“New tenants.”
“Yes. The upstairs apartment has already been rented out.”
Laverne’s lower lip trembles. “You should have consulted me first,” she says. “After all, I am co-owner of the house.”
“And you should have consulted me about the costly renovations you made to your apartment, which became part of our mortgage agreement, but which I have never been permitted to see.” Permitted, Hal thinks, a school teacherish word intended to keep an unruly student in place. Hal knows Laverne will not comment on his remark, but he waits until there is a drop in the wind before confronting the impasse between them. “The fact is you never thought I was good enough for Lily. You thought she should have married a doctor, a professional who would make a lot of money.”
Hal is right. Laverne always wanted what was best for Lily even if she couldn’t have it for herself, and what was best for Lily was that she marry the Boston doctor. Lily was smart and Laverne had high hopes for her future and thought she could have done far better for herself than marry a glib salesman who, though handsome and well-dressed, was cocky and full of himself. She was astonished when Lily told her she was marrying Hal McNab and asked why on earth why she would do such a thing. When Lily replied that she and Hal were in love, Laverne had nothing to say. She had endured painful crushes, but had never been in love.
“The husband has already signed the rental agreement,” Hal says. “He’s boarding in town until his wife and children arrive this week.” Hal does not mention the new baby.
“Have you told Sophie Power that you have moved?”
“Yes, Sophie and I have talked about it. I assured her that I am not leaving town and that if there is anything in her apartment that needs fixing, she is to telephone me at the store and I will see to it that the job is done.”