The Stubborn Season

by Lauren B. Davis

  It was nearly noon the next day and Rory was in the vestibule getting his pack ready to leave, stuffing in his still-dirty clothes with short hard thrusts. A shirt, a pair of socks, an undershirt and extra shorts, an unmailed letter to a girl in Saskatoon whose face had now faded into his memory in a blur of sun-rose skin and wind-tangled hair, a blanket, a map of Canada and a dog-eared copy of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

  “Don’t tell me you’re on your way already,” Douglas said.

  “‘Fraid so.”

  “Well, if you must go there’s not much we can do to hold you, is there?” He kept his hands in his pockets. “Got the road fever, eh?”

  “You bet,” said Rory. He left Douglas to his hangover and went upstairs to Irene’s room.

  “What ya doing, Doodles?”

  “Reading.” She sat at her desk again, her back to the door, her ankles latched around the chair legs.

  “What are you reading?”

  “A book.” The flat answer told him he was unforgiven, and he didn’t blame her.

  He walked to her, stood next to the desk, looked out into unkempt backyard. He turned to face her, a simple movement more difficult than he had expected.

  “You mad at me?”

  She closed the book, which he suspected she had not really been reading. Seeing the look on her face told him that yes, she was angry. He knew she was trying to be brave and hoping for some miracle of diplomacy or heroism.

  “No. I’m not angry.”

  “You just got to remember that you won’t be in this house forever.”

  Her eyes looked so intently into his that it was all he could do to keep from turning away. “I’m afraid I’m going to disappear,” she said.

  “You won’t disappear. You can have anything you want in a couple of years. Things will get better. I promise.” They both knew he was probably lying, that it would not get better and that no help would come.

  He wanted to be a different man just at that moment, but there were some burdens, he shamefully admitted, that he did not have the moral strength to shoulder. He was fine at a short storm of fists and boots and sticks, fine for a strike, a march, a rally, a speech and the cinematic sorrows of strangers. He was no good at the long haul, no good at the intimate struggles of family, no good, it seemed, at fulfilling the contract of love.

  He put his arms around her and she was the one who pulled away first. He went downstairs into the kitchen, where he found Margaret but not Douglas, which was just as well.

  “I’m going now,” he said to his sister, who sat playing solitaire. She put down the last three cards and sighed, finding nothing useful there.

  “I wish you’d stay,” she said, and he had no idea if she meant it or not.

  “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “That work,” she said. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

  “Not me. I’m too tough for that.”

  “People get killed all the time, tough or weak, makes no difference to God.” Her voice was gummy and flat as molasses on a gritty floor. He kissed her on the top of her head as she began to shuffle her cards again.

  “Margaret,” he said. “You’ve got to pull yourself together, sister.”

  She dealt another row of cards.

  Margaret remained where she was in the kitchen, and Irene stayed where she was in her room. Only Douglas moved to the window to watch Rory walk down the street. Lucky bastard, he thought. He pressed his lips between his teeth and stuffed his slightly trembling hands into his pants pockets, where they tightened into fists. His life had become a tangled and unmanageable mess. He had seen the look on Rory’s face whenever he took a drink, the disapproving look, the judging look. But some days he was sure that if he could just find his way to the bottom of a perfect bottle, the answer would be there waiting for him, clear and sweet and simple. Some days it was all that kept him from getting a gun and shooting them all.

  Irene sat on her bed and pretended, in case her mother came in, to be reading. The late-afternoon light slanted across the floor onto the bed. She stretched out her legs and warmed her toes. From the kitchen came the sound of chopping, the knife’s thud on the wooden cutting board. She could smell onions frying, and the smell comforted her. Her mother making dinner was always a good sign.

  Her father was in the living room now, reading the paper and occasionally sneaking off to the closet under the stairs for sips from the bottle he kept hidden in his old croquet bag. Why he’d thought no one would find it there, she couldn’t understand. She’d snuck into the closet one day nearly a year before, and if she’d figured it out she suspected her mother had as well. Irene found the bottle in the canvas croquet bag, nestled like a hard brown beetle within the folds of an old green towel. She’d taken it and poured it out. Right down the drain and turned the water on full force to wash the smell away. She put the bottle back, hoping her father would find it and understand that she’d got rid of it and left the empty husk as a silent plea. Three days later a new bottle had replaced the old.

  Irene shut the book and rubbed her eyes. Uncle Rory had come for a day. What good was a day? Irene hadn’t realized until she’d seen him standing in the doorway, his face wind-marked, his shoulders so broad, that somewhere in the back of her mind she’d been waiting for him to come and set things right again. He was their only relative, really. Daddy’s parents had gone back to Scotland. If it hadn’t been for the photograph standing on the mantel, Irene knew that there would come a day when she wouldn’t be able to remember what they looked like. Her mother’s parents were dead, of course, buried on a hill somewhere, her mother said, although Irene had never seen the graves. Her mother kept a small picture album, but never took it out, nor did she want their photos “cluttering up the furniture,” as she put it. Then there was Aunt Janet, but she didn’t count.

  Her mother didn’t like Aunt Janet, and neither she nor Daddy liked Uncle Oscar, whom her father referred to as the Mouse. They saw them once a year when they were invited over to their big airy house for lunch in the garden, as Aunt Janet insisted on calling their yard. Her cousins, Brad and Earl, were noisy ten- and eleven-year-old boys who produced frogs and dead mice and sad-looking turtles from every pocket. They were never, in turn, invited to visit the house on Homewood, and her mother said, “Don’t they get the hint?” Apparently they didn’t, even though for two years now Margaret had refused to accompany her husband and daughter.

  So that was the extent of their family. Irene tried to picture them all together, but found nothing in her head but blank spots, like photos with shadows where the faces should be, as though they’d moved at just the moment when the photographer snapped the shutter.

  Her father tuned the radio to the Canadian National Railway hour of music. The announcer introduced Ernest Seitz, the boy prodigy who created such a sensation when he appeared with the famous soprano Madame Albani some years before. Irene wondered what it must be like to be a prodigy, feted and flung before the world like that. She had seen a photograph of Ernest Seitz once in the Evening Telegram: an overly serious young man with dark hair and just the sort of intense, deep-set eyes and slightly pouting mouth you would expect in a genius. He hadn’t looked very happy, but perhaps that was only the expression he adopted for publicity photos. Surely he must be happy to be travelling around the country, maybe even around the world, with all those people making such a fuss of him. He probably flew in planes. And stayed in hotel rooms all by himself and rode in his own automobile. And wouldn’t that be heaven?

  “Dinner’s on. Come and get it, or I’ll throw it to the dogs!”

  Irene knew the sound of that voice, knew the threat contained even in a remark meant to be amusing. Uncle Rory’s coming and going had rattled them all and it was just like her mother to respond the way no one else did, by suddenly becoming full of vigour. She braced herself.

  “Coming.” She put her book away and smoothed her hair.

  As she came down the stairs she met her father. He fo
lded his copy of the Mail and Empire and placed it on his desk, carefully centring it and aligning a pencil along the top edge. He patted the pockets of his pants and then his vest.

  “Coming, Dad?”

  “Yes, yes, coming right along.”

  He turned his back to her, opened the drawer of his desk and then closed it, without taking anything out. He put something in his mouth and then turned back to Irene. “Doesn’t that smell good!” he said, his words buoyed up with the scent of peppermint and whisky. For a moment Irene thought he meant his breath.

  “It’s getting cold,” her mother called.

  “Oh, yes. Smells great,” Irene said as she and her father went in to dinner. A piano concerto accompanied them down the hall.

  Margaret stood proudly at the stove, spooning carrots and peas into a dark blue bowl.

  “Irene, get the butter, will you, dear?”

  Irene got the butter dish from the cupboard and took her place between her mother and father at the table. Her mother hummed along with the radio. “That’s nice music,” she said. “Mozart, isn’t it? I like it. Who’s that playing?”

  “It’s that Jew, I think. The young one.” Douglas sat down at the table and put his napkin on his lap.

  Margaret put the bowl of steaming vegetables down next to the platter of pork chops. It was a feast tonight, a real treat. Margaret had opened one of her jars of applesauce to go with the chops. She even put a bottle of beer out for Douglas.

  “I wish you wouldn’t say it like that,” Margaret said, taking her seat. She picked up her fork and looked at it closely, checking for watermarks or bits of old food.

  “Say what?”

  “That Jew. Like that.” Margaret polished her fork.

  “How should I say it? That’s what he is, isn’t he?” Her father’s half-smile told Irene he considered it a foolish remark.

  “This is really good, Mum. Really good.”

  “You say it like it’s a dirty word,” said her mother to her father.

  “They’re a dirty people.”

  “They’re not allowed to sit at the bus stop on Carlton,” said Irene, who knew she should keep her mouth shut. “Someone put a sign up—Gentiles Only.”

  “People can be so disgusting.” Margaret cut her meat into tiny pieces.

  “Yes, I saw it, with that Nazi symbol,” said Douglas. “Well, that may be a bit extreme, but you can’t blame people. These immigrants, they infringe, you see. And they are devious. You give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.”

  “Douglas! I’m surprised at you. Honestly.”

  “May I have the applesauce, please?” said Irene. Her mother passed it to her without paying attention. “What’s the difference between us and the Jews, Daddy?”

  “Suffice it to say, my dear,” said her father, passing her a bowl of mashed potatoes, “that they are not like us. They live differently, have strange habits. They do not believe in Jesus Christ.”

  “And since when have you considered yourself a devout Christian, Douglas?”

  “I don’t have to be a churchgoer to know that Jews are not to be trusted. Look at the way they live, for crying out loud, all jumbled together over in Kensington. Chickens and pickle barrels everywhere. Women in those dreadful wigs, men with those ridiculous beards and hats. They are an ugly people, and not clean in their habits. We shouldn’t be letting so many of them in the country. I am somewhat inclined to believe Prime Minister Bennett when he says they are at the root of the economic problems.”

  “Are you saying all Jews are Communists?”

  Margaret had stopped eating, which Irene knew was a bad sign. Irene thought she might be disagreeing just for the sake of it, but she couldn’t be sure. In fact, Irene found the entire conversation confusing. Her mother and father seemed to have reversed roles: her mother sounded reasonable and kind, her father sounded angry and mean-spirited.

  “Who said anything about Communists?” said her father loudly. “Why are you always bringing up Communists?”

  “Me? Good God, Douglas. It seems I can’t mention that word without you becoming incensed these days. Methinks you doth protest too much!” Margaret picked up her fork and looked pleased she had got a rise out of him. “Perhaps I should denounce you to Police Chief Draper’s Red Squad, like they’re doing in Germany these days.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Me, a Communist! You say very foolish things, Margaret. Very foolish, indeed. This argumentative streak is not attractive.” He scowled while he chewed furiously. He swallowed and took a swig of beer from the bottle, not bothering with the glass set out for him.

  “You’re one to talk about attractive, my man. Wipe your face.”

  Irene tried to think of some way to diffuse the growing tension, to return them to the nice meal, a meal like other families were eating in other houses all over the city.

  “Do we know any Jews?” she said, because maybe if they knew one and her parents agreed on how they felt about that person, then they might not argue.

  “Of course not,” said her father.

  “Why would we know Jews?” said her mother.

  Nothing was said after that. Her father finished his plate, drank his beer, pushed himself away from the table and went back to the living room to listen to the news. Her mother pushed her peas and carrots around the plate for a few moments, and then put her fork down.

  “Irene, why do you think your uncle Rory left?” she said.

  “He had to go to work,” said Irene.

  “He has no work.”

  “He said he had work in the Maritimes.”

  “And you believe him.”

  Irene didn’t answer. Yes or no would be equally dangerous.

  “You don’t think he left because of something else?” Her mother looked at her out of the corner of her eye. Irene knew her mother was digging to see if Uncle Rory had left because of something her mother had said or done. This would fill her with shame, and the shame would twist around to annoyance, and then to anger.

  “No. He only left because he had to. He wanted to stay, he said so.”

  “I know you talked to him.” What her mother meant was: I know you talked about me.

  “He told me about riding on a train.”

  “You told him things.”

  “Just about school and stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Like what I’m reading. Books and things.”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  “No,” Irene said, bracing herself.

  “Yes, you do, you both do, you and your father. You think worse than that.”

  Margaret picked her plate up, opened the refrigerator and put it in with a clatter. Irene quickly tried to finish her supper.

  “I had peach preserves and biscuits,” said Margaret, shifting moods again, now sad and pathetic, a child whose birthday party has been ruined.

  “I can get you some,” said Irene. “Do you want some? I’ll have some with you.”

  “I don’t want any,” her mother said and walked out of the kitchen, past her husband, who was reaching for something in the back of the hall closet, and climbed the stairs.

  Irene heard her feet in the hallway and then heard her close the door. She heard the springs groan as her mother lay on the bed. Her mother would sleep in her clothes tonight. Soon there was nothing but the sound of her father, back in the living room now, trying to dial in Amos ‘n’ Andy on the wireless.

  Irene cleared the table and began to wash the dishes, her stomach heavy with the clay-like lumps of pork chops and potatoes.

  Upstairs, Margaret pulled the pillow over her head and wept. She had made an effort, hadn’t she made an effort? Too little too late, perhaps, but an effort. She reached her hand across the empty space in the bed next to her, wishing it could stay empty.

  12

  In the nearly a year and a half since Rory had last been to town, Joe Fleischman hadn’t changed much. He was still a big raw-boned man. Maybe his shock of wavy hair was
starting to thin, and maybe he looked a little unhappier than at their last meeting, but Joe had never been a smiling sort of man. His jacket was patched, as were his pants, and his shirt looked threadbare, but that was the uniform of the working man these days. Joe and Rory often joked about how the poor looked worse but the rich looked better during these hard years—domestic work was so cheap they could afford to hire twelve maids for the wages they used to have to pay two.

  The Blue Tulip Restaurant hadn’t changed much either. There was still too much smoke in the air and the coffee was still bad. The same mysterious men came and went out of the back room, where, when the door opened, you caught a glimpse of a blackboard and some desks, a number of phones and a couple of glowering faces with cigars stuck in their chops.

  Rory and Joe met once every few days to talk about how the work was going. Rory was helping Joe organize the men at the various shantytowns and flophouses to hold a march protesting unemployment levels and the lack of government response. Most of the talk today, however, centred around the recent fascist activity in the city. Here in Kensington Market, the Jewish neighbourhood, people were scared, but mostly they were angry. There was a core of hard young men in the pool rooms and the bookmakers in the area who didn’t take kindly to what had been going on in the city since Hitler had been voted into power in Germany, from where came stories of beatings, torture, confiscation, book burnings and, recently, the outlawing of all political parties, except Hitler’s own Nazi Party. The conversation inevitably swung back to Toronto and recent events at the Balmy Beach Canoe Club.

  “They call themselves ‘civic-minded young men,’ keeping the beach free of ‘undesirables,’ “ said Joe.

  “It true they’ve been wearing swastikas?” said Rory.