“This is more than that,” he said.
“I thought that maybe, it’s just that, people said … I heard around that you was a kind man, a man that would maybe help a girl.” She began to cough again, and he feared a repeat of the previous bout, but she managed to choke it back.
“I’d like to be able to help, miss, but where would I be if I just gave away all my stock? If I gave in to every sad story that came along? It isn’t fair to ask. I have a family to feed myself.”
“There must be some way.”
Douglas was repulsed by her, and at the same time he was aroused. She was completely at his mercy and they both knew it. It was a feeling of power he was horrified to find excited him.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
She came around the desk, as he knew she would. She put her hand on his arm. She had a ring on her right hand, with a little blue stone in the middle. He looked at her hand there, touching him, and his skin became hot even from so light a caress.
“Is there no way I can persuade you? No appeal I can make?” The words sounded rehearsed. Her face was close to his and her breath smelled of something overripe, too sweet, milky. He did not want to kiss that mouth. He looked around him, as though unsure of where he was, and saw the scene as an observer might: this little shop with its dusty shelves of medicines and fly-sprinkled windows; this woman with her heartbreaking need, her Woolworth’s finery. And of course, Douglas himself, a whisky-bloated fool of a man with an erection.
“You should stand back. This is a public place. Someone could come in.” He looked at the glass door, at the large glass windows, where people passed by.
“We could discuss it in private. I’d be so grateful.”
He felt her fingers farther down now, on his thigh. His penis pressed against his trousers. It had been so long since a woman had touched him. Since anyone had touched him, for that matter. There was nothing right about this, nothing he recognized as coming from the man he supposed himself to be. A good man would give her the medicine, and he was a good man. He had given medicine to people before for nothing, old rheumatic men and anxious women with wheezing children in their arms. A smart man would tell her to go to the House of Industry on Elm Street, to the Salvation Army, anywhere but here. The fingers floated over the front of his pants, lingering over the buttons, and his penis jerked painfully. He thought of Margaret. He touched the girl’s throat and felt the warm pulse there. His hand began a slow descent to her breast. He grunted. He pushed her aside roughly and walked to the door. He turned the sign to read Closed, and slouched back to her, grabbed her arm and wanted to bruise her.
“Go in the back. Now.” He hardly recognized his own voice. She looked afraid, and this aroused him further.
As they stepped behind the curtain she opened her mouth as though to kiss him or to speak, but he pushed her face away. He didn’t want her lips on his, the threat of contagion. He reached up to the shelf over his head and grabbed the whisky bottle. He drank deeply, put the bottle up to the girl’s mouth, forcing her to drink while she choked and a coughing fit came on her again. The whisky spilled down her dress and he rubbed it into her skin, not caring that she was coughing. He put his hand on her throat again and pushed her back against the stock cabinets. With his other hand he pulled up her skirt, grabbed her soft inner thigh above her stockings and squeezed hard until she cried out. Quickly, he grabbed a handkerchief out of his back pocket and pressed it over her mouth. With the other hand he tore aside her panties and stuck his fingers inside her, smiling when he saw her wince.
He reached down and freed himself from his pants. He turned her around and bent her over. He flipped up her skirt and exposed her thin buttocks. He entered her violently, making her moan. He stabbed himself into her, the feeling rising up from the soles of his feet. It lasted only a few moments and then he grabbed her hips and thrust her back, impaled against him while he came in great spasms that made him grit his teeth and dig his fingers into her hips.
He came back to himself slowly and knew that the sound he heard was the girl crying. The bloody passion of a moment before was replaced with self-loathing. Hurriedly, he rearranged himself and helped her to stand, leaning her up against the cabinets. She was gasping for air, choking, gagging.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry, so sorry.” He mopped at her face with the soiled handkerchief. She began to slide down to the floor.
“No! No! Wait!” Gesturing with his hand, as though through will alone he could force her upright, he raced into the shop and grabbed a chair. As he passed the counter he snatched the bag that contained her medicine. When he returned she was leaning on the cabinet, her arms extended, her lungs heaving, her mouth open in an effort to get air. Each laboured breath ended in a long, uneven rattle. He noticed a trickle of fluid on the inside of her calf and tasted bile in his mouth.
He sat her down and slapped her gently on the back until she could catch her breath, then opened the bottle of cough syrup and handed it to her.
“Drink some. Drink. It will make you feel better.”
She tilted the bottle and drank, bowed her head and pressed her hand to her chest. “It hurts,” she whispered.
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry,” he said again, unsure whether it was her cough or what he had just done to her that was causing the pain.
She ran her hand along her forehead, which had broken out in a sweat. “I want to go home,” she said. “I want to lie down.”
“Of course,” he said. “Take the medicine. You don’t have to pay for it.”
The look of contempt on her face made him lower his eyes.
“If you need more, come back,” he said, and then knowing how that must sound, added, “I won’t want anything, nothing at all, you understand. But if you need more medicine, I’ll see you get it.” He pulled a five-dollar bill from his pocket and held it out to her. She hesitated, but then silently took it and slipped it in her brassiere.
“I want to go,” she said again. He saw that he was standing in her way, but he didn’t want her to go out the front door. Did not want to have to walk with her, with her face looking like that, to the front door, and unlock it, and let her out. If someone was passing …
“Go out this way,” he said and pointed to the door behind her that led to the alley. As soon as he spoke he was again ashamed of himself—was there no depth to which he would not sink? Once again she stared at him, but this time her frown and slightly open mouth, the slight shake of her head, showed that he’d amazed her with his recurrent cruelty.
She took the bag of medicine and without another word opened the back door and left. She didn’t bother to close the door behind her.
Douglas stared after her for a few moments and then closed the door, sliding the bolt in place. He put his hand up to his mouth, noticed with some surprise that he was crying. The tears wetting his hands might have been blood. The bottle of whisky lay on the shelf. He picked it up, but instead of putting it directly to his mouth, he began to sob. When he threw the bottle at the back door it shattered with a satisfying crash. The fumes rose up and hit him hard enough that his eyes would have watered had he not already been weeping.
He collapsed in the chair and put his head in his hands. What had he done? What had he done? Taken advantage of that pathetic creature in a way he had never imagined possible. He knew, of course he knew, what liquor did to him; knew he was a drunk. That was the root of all his problems. If he could just stop drinking. He would stop drinking. He’d turn over a new leaf. Clean the shop. See Margaret through this bad time. He’d be better. A better husband, a better father, a better man.
If only he could be forgiven what he had done.
Douglas poured all the booze he could find down the sink. Bottles behind books, in the back of drawers, under old long-unused cleaning rags, whisky stashed in syrup tins, in seltzer canisters. When he was done he closed the shop early, needing to be absent from the scene of his crime. He came home, his mouth dry an
d his head full of the memory of the afternoon’s depravity. He found Margaret sitting in the late-afternoon sun, her face buried in a year-old Chatelaine magazine. The radio was still tuned to the CBC, where reports came in from the Nova Scotia mine. Douglas kissed his wife on the top of her head, and she looked up from her magazine with surprise, but said nothing. Irene came out of the kitchen to see what he was doing home so much earlier than usual. He knew from the look on her face that she expected the worst, and he hugged his daughter, trying to reassure her. Irene patted him absently on the back as though she were the parent, not he, as though she knew it was he who needed reassurance, but her interest, and her patience with his problems was worn thin.
Every nerve in his body wanted a drink, sizzled near the edge of his skin with that need. But he was committed. Feeling sick and exhausted, he went to bed, but release evaded him, and he tossed and turned, haunted by images of vile, debased acts and the face of the woman condemning him for his lack of mercy.
Margaret and Irene climbed the stairs some hours later. Margaret settled herself in bed, as far from him as she could, nearly leaning over the edge of the bed, her hand trailing on the floor as though out of a boat. For the first time in many months Douglas longed to put his arms around her, to hold her, to tell her he understood how dreadful life could be. He felt he was to blame for everything just now, most certainly at the core of his family’s floundering, and he was sorry, so sorry. But he neither touched her nor spoke to her, fearing she would push him away, or worse. He lay as still as he could in his itchy skin so as not to disturb her. He felt it was the least he could do. It was a place he could begin.
Douglas gave in to wakefulness. It was before dawn on Sunday, and although his stomach felt filled with writhing worms and he trembled so badly he fumbled with the buttons of his pants, he clung to the remorse-born moment of clarity he’d found. He went down to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. He was sweating and ill, but he knew this would pass, knew it was a rite of passage to a better life. He sat at the table, watched the day arrive over the back fence, and embraced it all, even the sensations of his body trying to cleanse itself—the shivers and the nausea and the spike he felt being driven into his head. An end to all their suffering was in sight. He had lost his way, was all. The terrible events of yesterday had been a wake-up call and he would heed it. He felt a sense of redemption and as he watched the sun rise and waited for his family to waken, he made lists in his head of things he would do.
Later that morning he watched Irene eyeing him skeptically over her own morning cup of tea. This was not the first time he had made a stab at putting down the bottle, and he knew he would have to prove himself, but his mind was made up. Starting today, things would be different.
He looked at his daughter and noticed what had happened to her over the past few years. Where had he been? She was a young lady now. She sat with legs crossed at the ankles, her back slightly arched. She wore a dress she’d sewn herself, well made, with a little lace around the neck salvaged from an old outfit of her mother’s. She had a quiet dignity about her, a determination, that gave her an air of mystery. She was seventeen now and would graduate from school this year. She might go to college next fall. He would have to talk to her about that. Although girls were marrying later and later, she might still be married in two or three years. He hoped she would marry early and settle down to a life of her own. Children. A future. Of course, she’d never marry if she didn’t get out of this house, didn’t meet young people and learn to sparkle a bit.
“What are you doing today?”
“Nothing special. I thought I might go to the eleven-o’clock service. I’ll be back in time to get lunch on.” That was something she had begun to do in the past year. Her mother couldn’t very well refuse her permission to go to church, although she made her displeasure known every Sunday by coming down with one of her “bilious” attacks, or a sick headache, or a sudden overwhelming premonition that Irene would be hit by a streetcar. Still, Irene held her ground more often than not, and Douglas was proud of her.
“Why not go out this afternoon?”
Irene looked at him with undisguised suspicion. “Why do you want me gone all of a sudden?”
“What do you mean, why?” He wanted her to stop looking at him like that. She should have more respect. No matter what had happened, he was still her father and a girl should have respect. “You need a more rounded life, Irene. I know you’ve been a great help to your mother, you’re a good girl. Still, there is a limit. You can’t stay under her skirts forever, you know.”
“Stay under her skirts? I wouldn’t call it that, Daddy.”
“Never mind what you’d call it. I’m trying to tell you that things are going to be different around here now. You may not believe that, and perhaps I can sympathize with your doubt, yes, sympathize. However, I am telling you now that I have decided to take a more active role in caring for your mother. A far more active role.”
“I see.” She looked so tired sitting there, as though she were holding herself together by willpower that might at any moment fail her.
He could see that action was required.
“Wait here,” he said. He went to the hall closet and returned carrying the bottle that had lain for so long in its dubious secrecy. He had her attention now. He went to the sink and poured the contents down the drain. The smell of the liquor rose up and made his stomach churn. For a moment he was afraid he might vomit.
“There, I thought you should see that.” It was, he thought, a grand gesture.
“Oh, Daddy, what’s the point?” Irene put her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her fingers, her thumbs along the side of her face. “I know you mean to stop, but —”
“But nothing. It’s going to be different this time. I promise you.”
“All right, Dad, all right.” She pushed herself up from the table and smiled at him. “It’s good, Dad. Really. I’m just going to go up and make sure Mum’s all right before I leave, okay?”
Even after yesterday’s hard rain the neighbourhood looked as if it could use a good wash. The air smelled of worms and spring-thaw garbage. It was that unpleasant season when the trees had not yet begun to bud and cast their veil of hopeful green. The yards, newly clear of snow, revealed the debris of a harsh winter—sodden paper, scrappy brown grass, dead mushy leaves. Only the mild wind held an undercurrent of scented promise, and Irene breathed deeply when a whiff of lake breeze passed her. Just to be out of the house was such a relief.
As she walked to the Sherbourne Street United Church she tried to quell her annoyance at her father. She wanted to believe him, of course she did, but how could she? How many times had he vowed he’d had his last drink? What worried her was the motivation behind it. The first time he’d decided to quit was after he’d given Mr. Casselman the wrong medicine. If the man hadn’t been suspicious about the dosage and asked to reread the prescription, he might have died. Then there was the time he’d “misplaced” the grocery money and they’d had to eat bread, beans and ketchup for a week. Once he’d fallen down the stairs and broken his wrist. It was always some near-calamity that she was convinced would one day go too far. She was getting as bad as her mother, fearing that every knock on the door would be the police. She wondered what had induced him to pour his precious whisky down the sink this time.
Stay under her skirts! Didn’t he know that it was all she could do to stop from running down the street and never coming back? But she had nowhere to go, and she couldn’t support herself even if she did. Then, too, she was a little afraid of her mother, and fear was an authoritative warden. But it wasn’t as simple as that either, for no matter what, she loved her mother, even loved her sorry excuse for a father. When her mother was “better” she was so repentant, so full of shame. Her mother was sick, and you simply didn’t leave a sick mother. Or maybe some people did, but Irene couldn’t.
She still had a few minutes until church began and wondered if she had time to
sit in the Allen Gardens for a moment, but feeling restless she decided to take a walk around the block. She walked down Seaton Street, and just before she turned the corner at Gerrard she spotted Ebbie Watkins and Sue-Anne Richmond walking directly toward her. They were with a young man Irene didn’t recognize. He was tall and had a rolling gait, the long stride of his legs making Sue-Anne take two mincing steps to his one, while Ebbie loped along with ease. His wavy blond hair was slicked back from his forehead, and Irene thought he looked ever so much like Leslie Howard in the poster she had seen for The Scarlet Pimpernel. Ebbie linked her wrist through one of his arms and Sue-Anne hugged the other. It struck Irene that they might at any moment begin a tug of war with him, although he didn’t seem to mind a bit. In fact he looked perfectly pleased, a big smile on his face and a cigarette dangling between his lips.
Irene started to cross the street.
“Irene, hey there! Where are you off to?”
“Hi, Ebbie. Hello, Sue-Anne.” Irene never knew what to say to Ebbie, who was never unfriendly but wasn’t exactly a friend anymore either. The same was not true of Sue-Anne, who would never, ever, start up a conversation on the street, who would just walk past like she’d never laid eyes on Irene before. Irene preferred it that way, in fact. It was simpler all round and solved the problem they now faced: the quandary of what to say after hello.
“So, where are you going?” asked Ebbie. “On your way home?”
“No. I was going to church, actually.”
“Church, huh?” said the young man. “Part of the angelic choir, then? Haven’t seen one of those in a while.”
Irene blushed.
“Oh, pay him no mind.” Ebbie elbowed him in the ribs and gave him a look of mock disgust. “He is a degenerate. Nothing wrong with going to church, Harry. In fact, it might improve some people.”
The Stubborn Season Page 14