“Good morning, Irene. I’m so sorry for your loss. How’s your mother?” he asked.
“She’s not doing so well, Reverend. She couldn’t face it.”
“We’ll take it one thing at a time, then, shall we?” He didn’t insist on visiting as he might with another sort of family.
A car pulled up behind the hearse, and Aunt Janet and Uncle Oscar climbed out. Their sons had not come. Aunt Janet, narrow in the chest like her brother but making up for it in her broad soft hips and thighs, waddled toward Irene, her knees turned in, making her look like a fussy hen dressed up in a raven’s clothes. Her husband trailed behind, blinking myopically behind his glasses, his head turning this way and that on his turtle-like neck.
“Irene, oh my dear,” said Janet, taking her in her arms, tilting her ruffle-rimmed umbrella in the process and sending an icy rivulet down the back of Irene’s neck. “You poor thing. Sweet, gentle Douglas. I can’t quite get my mind around it. I can’t make sense of it. How could such a thing happen? We all loved him so much. Good morning, Reverend. I’m Janet Reade, Douglas’s sister. This is my husband, Oscar.” She looked around. “Where’s your mother, dear?”
“She’s not feeling well enough to come,” said Irene, disentangling herself. “But she sends her love.”
“Not coming? But it’s her husband’s funeral,” she said.
“Janet, dear, don’t work yourself up. Irene’s not to blame for her mother.”
“Someone has to say something, Oscar. In fact, it’s a darn sight overdue is my feeling. We should have taken things in hand long before now.”
Oh, the conversations they must have had, snug in their pretty, carpetmuffled house, about the sad, mad MacNeils.
“I think,” said Aunt Janet, “that I should go and get your mother. Oscar can drive me. I think that’s the right thing to do. She really must be here.” She dabbed at her eyes with a pale blue hanky.
“Mrs. Reade—it is Reade, isn’t it?” said Reverend Dillard. “I understand your concerns, and there’ll be time enough to talk later. But right now I think we should get on with the service. Mrs. MacNeil is here in spirit, if not in body.” He gestured with his hand toward the grave. “Shall we proceed?”
“Yes, let’s start,” Irene said, and she took the arm the minister offered her.
“Irene, you’re too young to understand. Reverend, you’ll just have to delay the service. We’ll go alone. Margaret will see the benefit later. Oscar, get in the car.”
“Aunt Janet, please, don’t do this.” Irene’s hand was tight on the minister’s arm.
Mr. Carrick looked stricken. “Madam, I’m dreadfully sorry and I certainly understand your point of view, but this isn’t possible. I have, sadly, other commitments, and if this service is delayed, well then, there are other bereaved … waiting …” He looked from one of them to the other. “I have to honour my schedule. Forgive me, but we can’t delay.”
“That, sir, is not my problem. It’s yours. This is not a pleasant situation for any of us,” said Janet, dabbing once more at her tears. “She’s a selfish woman. I don’t mean to be harsh, dear, but honestly. I simply must insist. It’s a question of respect. The entire family should be here.”
“The entire family? Where are Brad and Earl?” said Irene. “Riding their bikes over, are they?”
“Irene, they’re just young boys. It’s not the same.”
Irene gritted her teeth. She was one year older than Brad. “Well, lucky them,” she said, and was about to say more when she saw another car pulling up. It was a beautiful black Packard, shiny and new. She couldn’t imagine who would be in a car like that. When the doors opened and Ebbie Watkins got out of the passenger seat and her mother out of the back, Irene was speechless. And getting out of the driver’s seat, unfolding like an elegant, loose-limbed hound, was the boy with the Leslie Howard hair.
Ebbie put her hands on Irene’s arms, not quite hugging her. “Irene, I’m so sorry.”
“How are you, dear?” said Mrs. Watkins.
“God, you must be frayed, you poor thing,” Ebbie went on.
Irene blinked quickly. “It’s nice of you to come.”
“How’s your poor mother holding up?” said Mrs. Watkins.
“About as you’d expect.”
Aunt Janet bustled forward and introduced herself, and Uncle Oscar said, “We were just deciding how best to handle the situation.”
“No, we weren’t,” said Irene. “We were starting. Everything has already been decided.” Her voice had a slightly frantic edge to it that she had not intended.
“I think we should begin,” agreed Reverend Dillard.
“Yes, we should begin,” repeated Mr. Carrick, jingling the coins in his pocket.
“Now, Reverend, I think this is a family matter.” Oscar Reade’s voice was nasal and timid. “No offence, you understand, but I believe it is best handled along familial lines. I’m sure you can see … understanding that family must be of one mind … a unified, uh, unit, yes …”
“Oh, shut up, Oscar,” said his wife. “Irene, come along with us, dear.”
“No, Aunt Janet. You can’t do this. It’s out of the question.” Irene folded her arms. She wanted to be a lady, not to burst out crying, not to stamp her foot and not to slap her aunt.
“But surely you understand, Reverend. Douglas was her husband,” said Aunt Janet, her voice shrill. She pointed at Irene. “Make her see reason.”
“Wasn’t it Eliot who talked about a stubborn season?” said Harry Madison, who leaned against his polished automobile with his arms folded and his long legs crossed at the ankles. They turned to him in surprise. He pushed himself up from his lazy posture. “I’m sorry. I’m barging in where I don’t belong, aren’t I?”
“Harry, for heaven’s sake,” said Ebbie. “He was kind enough to drive us, Irene, and promised he’d behave.”
Harry opened the car door and retrieved two large umbrellas. He handed one to Ebbie and her mother and then opened the other and held it over Irene’s head. “Of course it’s none of my business, but I understood the doctors had ordered Mrs. MacNeil to stay in bed, heavily sedated. That was the case, wasn’t it, Irene?” He stood next to her, facing her aunt and uncle. “Of course, Irene didn’t want to burden you, I’m sure, with the sight of her mother so stricken. You have your own grief to contend with, naturally. However, I’m sure we can all have compassion for a mourning so profound.”
“Are you a friend of the family?” said Aunt Janet, her hanky-clutching hand at her throat. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Harry Madison,” he said, smiling. He extended his manicured hand, the gold wristwatch bright in the sombre light, and she had no choice but to take it. “It’s a difficult time, and so hard to know what to do.”
Janet Reade stepped back.
“I knew you’d understand, Mrs. Reade. Irene?” Harry held out his arm and she found herself taking it.
“I don’t know,” said Aunt Janet, but no one was listening to her any longer. She began snuffling into her hanky, and she and her husband joined the small procession to the graveside.
With every step they took closer to the grave, and to her father’s plain cheap casket waiting next to it, Irene was more and more terrified she would begin to wail, to scream. But becoming hysterical was her mother’s domain, not hers.
Grief came in spasms. Under normal circumstances she would never have been brave enough to take Harry’s arm, but under the sodden weight of loss, she became numb. She moved like a hollow thing, barely aware of what she was doing, while at the same time her skin tingled with the warmth of Harry Madison’s fingers resting reassuringly on the top of her gloved hand. The heel of her shoe sunk in the softening earth, tilting her, and she was afraid for a moment that she might faint. Only Harry Madison’s arm kept her rooted.
One of the gravediggers smoked a cigarette, and the scent wafted across the open grave. Irene looked at the man, although she didn’t give a damn if he smoked
or not, and he crushed the butt out under his heel.
She removed her hand from Harry’s arm and took a small step sideways. She needed to stand alone in this place, with the heels of her one good pair of shoes sinking in the muddy, partly thawed ground.
The Reverend was saying something now and she realized the service was over. It had been so short. How could she not have noticed it going on around her? She wanted to tell them they would have to begin again for she hadn’t really been here, had been somewhere else altogether. The gravediggers stepped forward and took the straps that lay under the casket, looped them over their shoulders. They wrestled it over the waiting bed of earth and lowered it jerkily down.
Watching this made Irene’s chest lurch. Aunt Janet sobbed and buried her face in her husband’s shoulder. Norma Watkins dabbed at her eyes with a hanky. Reverend Dillard patted Aunt Janet on the back and whispered something to Uncle Oscar, who nodded and led his wife away. Irene heard the engine start up, heard the crunching gravel beneath their tires.
She didn’t know what to do now. She couldn’t leave. She felt she should say something, but what? And to whom? Ebbie and her mother stood quietly on her right side. Harry stood on her left. She felt hemmed in, conflicted with feelings of gratitude that they had come and shame that they should witness this pathetic little performance. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it.
Mrs. Watkins put her arm across her shoulders. “Would you like to come back to our house, dear? Have a bite to eat? And you too, of course, Reverend.” Gently the woman turned Irene from the grave. Irene heard a wet clod of earth hitting wood.
“Yes, Irene, come back with us, for just a little while, even.” Ebbie took both her hands and rubbed them back and forth, the way one rubs a child’s hands to warm them.
Irene shook her head. The tears were there again, behind her eyes in sharp prickling drops. She could defend herself against the outrage and condescending disapproval of her aunt and uncle, but not against Ebbie. She wanted to hand all the hurt and the fear over to her. She wanted to throw herself in her friend’s arms.
“I can’t. I have to get back. It’s kind. Really.”
The unaccustomed compassion made her feel naked and unprotected; and yet to go home, back to what would surely be coiled and waiting for her … In her mind she spun in circles, looking frantically for a place to land, like a bird trapped in a house, hands grasping for it. There was no open window through which she could escape, no leaf-sheltered limb on which she could perch. She closed her eyes.
“The driver’s waiting. I need to go. Thank you for coming.” She hugged Mrs. Watkins, smelled the powder-fresh scent of her. Then she turned to Ebbie and buried her face in the soft white halo of her hair.
“Mr. Madison.” She held out her hand and was relieved to see it did not tremble. “Thank you again.”
He ignored her hand and took her by the elbow. “I’ll walk you to the car,” he said, and she did not protest. The rest followed in a small parade and left the gravediggers to their task.
They reached the side of the car and he opened the door for her. “Will you be all right at home?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No need to be alone, you know.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Yes,” he said. “Well, goodbye, then.”
1936
David has to get out of the country. After what happened, the nightmares don’t leave him. Every time he closes his eyes he sees things he doesn’t want to see, can’t get his mind to stop trying to rewrite what happened. There is a terrible sorrow at the centre of his chest, hollow enough that the wind seems to blow right through him. The sorrow is personal, the disillusionment with his country is political, so he crosses over to the great American promised land, hoping to find things are a little better there. Or if not better, then at least different.
In New York, no further away from starvation, no closer to a job and still unable to outrun his sorrow, he finds himself in a Hoover Hotel as they are called, even though Hoover isn’t president anymore. The Municipal Lodging House is run by the Department of Public Welfare, on 25th near the East River. Only the most derelict end up there, and he guesses he belongs. Since Regina, David hasn’t been able to sort himself out, hasn’t been able to get a footing on his life. He’d had it there, he believes, for a while, travelling and working with the man he called a friend, but of course, that’s over now. So he takes his place in another line that snakes around the block, holding the lapels of his thin coat together, trying to keep warm. When he gets inside he eats his bowl of mutton stew and drinks his coffee, not looking to the right or left of him, for what’s the point of getting to know anyone? Then he hands in his clothes to have them fumigated and takes a shower, leaning for as long as they will let him with his hands against the tiles and his head under the scalding water. He sees the doctor for the mandatory physical, a quick examination wherein he is declared fit to receive their charity, and he is given a white nightshirt and a cot in a room with hundreds of other men and is so tired the noise doesn’t wake him.
In the morning he asks if he can work at cleaning, or fixing something, or serving the breakfast, in order to pay for his stay, for he still wants to be proud, as his friend had drilled into him. “Stand tall. Be a man, no matter how far down you find yourself.” The friend who had reminded him, in some ways, of his proud old man. But they say no thanks, it is a charity place, and his humiliation feels complete. New York does him no good, and he wanders west.
In Chicago he can’t find room even in the shelters, and it gets colder every night. The wind is a knife-wielding witch. He goes all along the streets, to restaurants and bars asking if he can do anything, mop up, clean the toilets, in return for a meal and a place to stay. The answer is always the same.
‘Round midnight he goes into a dingy grill joint.
“We already got a boy,” says the owner and gestures with his knife to a man coming out of the bathroom carrying a mop and bucket.
“I don’t see any boy,” he says, but the man looks at him without understanding.
As he steps out onto the sidewalk, the man with the bucket follows him.
“Hard to keep your head up, ain’t it?” he says. “Sure hard.”
“Not easy, but I guess you know more’n most,” David replies.
“Yessir. Guess I do.”
“Least ways you’re working,” he says.
“Up north here, they might give a Negro a job, but they won’t pay him. I reckon if they had any money for pay, there’d be a white man standing in front of you now.”
The look on David’s face shows his confusion.
“I don’t get no pay, see. Get scraps to take home, is all. From the kitchen at the end of the night.”
“That’s not right, friend,” says David.
“Ain’t much that is these days. Could be worse. Down Mississippi, where I come from, the Klan are shooting Negro coal men right off the trains so they can give the job to a white man.”
They introduce themselves.
“Tell you what,” says Walker, “my wife and me, we rent out the bathtub if we can. Know it don’t sound like much and it ain’t, but put a plank over it and a pillow for your head and I bet you’ve done some worse.”
“Sounds good to me, but all I’ve got in my pockets is a hole.”
“Yeah, that’s just about the going rate when it’s this late and the tub’s empty. You’re welcome to wait around till I finish up and come on back with me, take your chances she ain’t found nobody. Vera’ll make you work it off, just to keep you happy.”
Walker and his wife live in a rickety tenement on the south side. The foundation is shifting, the building near collapse and wedged up with concrete blocks under one corner and along the porch in front. The heat and water and lights have long been turned off and the building should have been condemned, but the city knows the people who squat here have nowhere else to go. The stench from the backed-up toilets in li
ttle closets at the end of the halls thickens the air. The top floor of the four-storey building has been gutted by fire and the smell of smoke mixes with that of human waste. He learns that two people died in that blaze, which was started when someone tried to cook over an open flame on some bricks in the middle of the floor. Thin, timid children play in the dim hallways and broken staircases. Walker was once a Pullman car porter. His wife had taught school. Prostitutes accost David as he and Walker make their way along the hall. “Ooooh, looky here, pretty chicken meat. Look at this little baby needs a momma to take care of hisself.” The rooms are inhabited by junkies and preachers and gangsters and former cooks and domestics and labourers and pimps and war veterans.
He sleeps on a board over the bathtub and wakes up every few minutes to kick at rats. He wonders at the noises coming from the other rooms, the shouts and curses and cries of babies and moans and groans, all impossible to separate. The next day he does what he has said he would never do: he goes into the financial district far across town and he puts his cap on the ground. At the end of the day he has a dollar twenty-five, and he gives it all to Vera, a silent woman with arthritic hands and knees from years of scrubbing white people’s floors. She insists he stay for another night. He does.
The next day he heads back to Canada.
17
As soon as the car door shut and Irene drove away to the funeral, Margaret knew she’d made a mistake. A sinister amber of silence filled the house.
“I can’t stand it! What’ll I do now?” she cried, as she raked her fingers through her hair, tearing at it. In the centre of her chest a fire burned and she knew it was her heart consuming itself. She hadn’t known losing Douglas would feel so horrible, because for so long she had believed she didn’t love him. But now, with his absence taking up so vast a space in her future, an avalanche of grief buried her.
She feared she would die, too. She wanted to die. She went downstairs to the living room and sank onto her knees, driven down by the weight of grief. The carpet scratched against the skin of her thin shins. As her robe opened in disarray her own scent rose toward her nostrils and filled her with shame. Even the robe itself was sour and stained. She should wash herself, scrub everywhere and get the filth out.
The Stubborn Season Page 18