The Stubborn Season

by Lauren B. Davis

  “Douglas,” she said, and the sound of his name brought tears to her eyes again. It would be a relief to die, and if she did, it would be of heart failure. Her failed heart.

  She punched herself in the chest. Stop. Stop. Stop beating!

  What would become of her? Widow woman. The widow MacNeil. I am too young. Too young to be a widow. Black-weed widow woman.

  If the street had conspired to laugh at her before, now it would be a mob of pointing fingers and whispers. She would never again be able to set foot outside her door.

  Even now, with the excuse of her husband’s funeral carving a clear path for her straight out the door, she was paralyzed between wanting to do the right thing and her untameable anger, her bitter discontent. If she could fully give herself to either one, then she would, she believed, find relief. Let her quench her thirst for love and loving, let her be a woman kind as apples, calm as butter. Or else let her release all grip on hope and fling herself toward the Other One. The Other Margaret. Let her become wind bred and lightning born. Fierce as rabies, unforgiving as a sharpened and thirsty sword.

  Misery stabbed at her when she remembered how cruel she had been to Douglas, how she had turned away from him in bed, telling him he disgusted her. How she had failed at being a wife. Hadn’t she tried, though, hadn’t she tried? And wasn’t he an impossible husband, after all? A drunkard. A philanderer. A fool.

  She had had such dreams, once. Even when she knew he would not be the great passion of her life, she had held the hope that they might be gentle with each other, might be kind, might bring out the best in each other. She had dreamed they might grow old and fat and prosperous together. She had dreamed they might laugh. Why did she never laugh? Wasn’t she filled with laughter somewhere deep inside? Hadn’t she once been the Laughing Girl?

  Margaret sat on her heels in the middle of the darkened living room and wailed. She doubled over so her forehead nearly rested on the floor, her arms wrapped across her aching chest. She could not go to the funeral, but having stayed behind, she could not forgive herself for it, nor forgive her daughter for not either pulling her along or staying with her.

  She had never minded being alone in the house when she knew someone would soon be home, but now being alone took on new meaning. She had taken it for granted that when Irene grew up and left home, Douglas, no matter how inadequate, would still be there. But now, if Irene went, there would be no one. No one to care for her, no one to distract her from the tug of the Other Margaret. She listened to the noisy silence, the house empty as a dry husk. Haunted by whispers in the walls, in the pipes, in the floorboards. There was just her. And Her.

  She would be left to scratch out her days like marks on a jail cell wall and no one would care or hear her screaming. Sound rose in her mouth, pushed at her teeth and lips. She moaned, but then clamped her hand over her mouth. What if she couldn’t stop screaming? They would take her away then, wouldn’t they? To somewhere filled with drooling women strapped to beds. She’d heard about such places. Needles in the skull. Puddles of urine on the floor. Straightjackets. Baths in icy water. Packed and tied in wet blankets.

  Margaret began to dash about the living room. She overturned the brass crookneck lamp on Douglas’s desk. It fell to the floor with a clatter and the bulb shattered. She ran upstairs to her room. She had to think. She had to plan. She didn’t want to die alone. Terror crouched, waiting to pounce. She slammed the door behind her. Pushed a chair under the handle and began to pace. She had to think of a way. She must not be left alone.

  It was nearly dark when Irene woke. For a moment she couldn’t tell if it was morning or evening. She went down the hall. She listened at her mother’s door but heard nothing. Perhaps she was sleeping too, but it seemed to Irene her mother was too quiet. Had she taken sleeping pills? She’d done it before, several times before, standing in a good light, making sure she was seen. Head tipped back, pills going in. Irene didn’t think her mother was suicidal. But how could you ever be sure this time wasn’t different?

  Irene decided she’d make some scrambled eggs and toast and bring them up to her. Food was a symbol for her mother; it meant care and concern, and often worked to soothe her when no words would.

  As Irene came downstairs something in the living room caught her eye. Glass on the floor. The lamp overturned. Oh God. Why hadn’t she checked on her mother as soon as she got home?

  She knew full well that if she rushed headlong up the stairs, panicked herself, it would only make things worse. Her mother fed off the emotions of others. A placid, unruffled surface was best. They both might know it was an act, but since so much acting took place on their small stage of a house, it was a long-accepted deception.

  She filled the kettle and banged it down on the stove. Had her father cared so little about her that he would leave her here alone to deal with her mother?

  A clunk from upstairs and a small scrape. The chair being removed from under the door handle. And so Irene was expected.

  She poured water in the pot, swirled it around to heat it, emptied it, spooned the leaves in and added more hot water. She placed her hands around the warm pot. Small rituals were comforting. Wash the dishes. Polish the silver. Shell the peas. Letting her hands do their tasks while her mind stilled was one of the weapons she used in the war not to become her mother, not to let her mother slice open a flap in her skin and crawl under, inhabiting her, taking her over. She watched her face in the mirror for signs of similar expressions: the frown, the pulled-down mouth, the suspiciously squinting eyes. If she caught herself scratching the back of her hands, she panicked and shook her fingers as though to scatter any taint. She celebrated any variance. She was taller than her mother and more solidly built. The difference in their hair colour, in the kind of clothes they preferred. Irene loved earth tones while Margaret loved her blood-red kitchen, her bright pink comforters.

  Teacup on a tray. Milk jug. Sugar. A small silver spoon with a carved high-masted boat on the handle. Her mother loved that spoon. Teapot. Yellow crocheted cozy on top of that. And up the stairs we go, one-two-three, every step echoing in the narrow canyon of the house.

  She tapped on the door. “Mum? Are you sleeping? I’ve brought you some tea.”

  Silence.

  Irene turned the handle and opened the door. Her mother wasn’t in bed, as she had expected, but was sitting at the window in the chair that had so recently been blocking the door. Her head hung down, framed against the long rays of late-day light.

  Oh, very dramatic, thought Irene. “Come on, Mum. Have some tea. You’ll feel better.” She set the tray down on the bed and poured. Milk and sugar. A brisk stir. She held the cup out. Her mother didn’t take it. She sat with her hands in her lap, plucking at a thread. Irene put the tea down on the sill beside her. She considered just walking out of the room without saying a word, leaving her mother to sip or sit as she wished. But the broken lamp was hard to ignore. Something must be said about a broken lamp and jagged glass left on the floor, for if she didn’t know what had happened, how could she stop it from happening again? This was an old dance between the two of them, Irene knew, but she was compelled to try to fix things, to make them better, to reassure, to console.

  “You might as well talk, Mum. You might as well tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “My husband’s dead, what do you think I’m thinking?”

  And my father’s dead, what about that? thought Irene. Does that count for nothing? Why was nothing ever normal in their house? Not even grief. Where they should comfort each other they only clawed at the raw wounds. Irene sighed, loud enough to be heard.

  “I know, Mum. I know how hard it is.”

  “You don’t know. You haven’t had your heart broken, not yet. You don’t know what it is to be betrayed.” That was not what Margaret intended. She pursed her lips, shook her head. “It hurts,” she said, which was closer to what she wanted to say.

  Irene went over to her mother, wanting things to be different between
them; there was always that, always the hope that somehow she would find a word, a phrase, the perfect speech, that would reach her mother, that would find its way into the labyrinth of suspicion and misery and pull her back into the world.

  She moved the teacup aside and leaned against the sill. She took her mother’s hand.

  “I suppose you’ll leave,” said Margaret.

  Looking at her mother’s face was like looking into the face of a sickly child trapped in the flesh of an older woman. Irene wanted to shake her, shake her until the child disappeared and the mother took her place, took her responsibility, took the burdens back.

  “You’ll go and leave me here now, won’t you. I know you will,” Margaret said again. Her eyes sparkled with tears.

  “Why would you think that? Where would I go? This is my home.” And Irene wanted it to be a home, wanted it to feel like a home, a place where the heart rested, where defences could be left with your boots at the door. It was part of what kept her there, the opium of this possibility.

  “He should have left it to me, not you.”

  “The insurance money?”

  Margaret nodded.

  “Yes, he should have, you’re right.” She handed her mother the tea and was relieved when she took it. “But it’s just a piece of paper, isn’t it? We’re still a family. We’ll be all right.”

  “You think you can manage it, do you? Because I can’t work in that store. I can’t. I just couldn’t stand to be there.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll have to quit school.”

  “We talked about that. I said I would. It was my idea.”

  “If your father hadn’t been such a fool, you could have gone to university. I know how much you wanted that. And you could have done it too, if your father had been a better man.” Margaret wanted to push the needle of resentment through both their skins, sew them up together.

  “I don’t mind,” said Irene, and she couldn’t help but avert her face as she said it. She had had dreams of going to the University of Toronto, studying English, maybe, or of becoming a teacher or a nurse. They had never talked about what she would do. All it had ever been was a vague destination, but still, until now at least the possibility had existed.

  Sensing the nerve touched, Margaret eyed Irene. “He was no good, that man, no good at all,” she said.

  “He tried his best, don’t you think?” Irene said.

  “His best? Useless, that’s what he was. A drunk.”

  “I feel sorry for him. Don’t you? What did he have, what did he do? I don’t think he ever got what he wanted. I don’t even think he knew what that was. I think he just went on, day to day, trying to get through, trying to make it to the end, and look at how little there was to show for it.” She was speaking to herself more than to her mother now. “Look at how small his life was. No mark at all.”

  “He left his mark on me, I’ll tell you that, my girl.”

  “We’ll be all right, Mum. I promise.”

  Margaret patted Irene’s knee. “You’re a good girl, Irene. You won’t leave me, will you?”

  “No, I won’t leave you. There’s no reason for you to worry. Do you understand?”

  Margaret studied her daughter’s face and then, seeing the quiet sincerity, she relaxed. Perhaps they could love each other.

  “You mustn’t mind what I say sometimes. I can’t help it, you know. I get so depressed.” And she smiled, for it was good to be able to open your mouth and have the words you wanted to say come out.

  “I know, Mum. It’s okay.” She pushed herself up from the window ledge. “Tell you what. I’ll make some eggs. Some scrambled eggs.”

  “I don’t know if I can eat.”

  “We’ll try, shall we? We’ll try and eat something.”

  “I suppose,” said Margaret and she rose. “I’ll be right down.”

  She went into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Perhaps she’d bake something this week, something just for Irene. Have dinner ready for her when she got home from the store. Irene hadn’t had a cake this past birthday and she should have one. Margaret would bake a cake for her daughter, a fluffy white cake with pink icing.

  18

  June 1936

  The new sign on the gleaming front window said simply “MacNeil’s” and underneath in smaller letters, “Notions and dry goods. Ice cream parlour.” Irene, with Ebbie’s help, had thrown herself into transforming the store. Chrome glistened, glass sparkled, even the wooden floor shone brightly. The pharmaceutical supplies were gone, as Irene didn’t have enough money to hire a pharmacist. But to the left side of the shop, where the druggist’s counter had once stood, new shelves were bursting with all manner of household goods. Brooms and mops and buckets, pots, pans and enamel cookware, buttons, bobby pins, mothballs and mousetraps. She even had hair ribbons and sewing supplies. Next to that, a modest supply of nonprescription goods: Gold’s Anti-Itch Powder, bandages, corn plasters, California Fig-Syrup Children’s Laxative, Zam-Buk salve, various hair tonics and one or two ladies’ face creams, shaving supplies. To the right was the ice cream parlour, a veritable shrine to confection: candied cherries, walnuts, and chocolate shavings rested coolly in covered glass dishes ready to be sprinkled on sundaes and floats. Tubs of ice cream beckoned temptingly, tilted just slightly toward the customers. Fresh strawberry, rich luscious chocolate and creamy vanilla. A radio sat on the back counter and Rudy Vallee sang “You Are the Girl of My Dreams.”

  Three girls, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, sat at the counter sipping milkshakes through straws. Their legs were hooked around the stem of their stools.

  “I think I like Rudy Vallee best,” said one.

  “He’s a dreamboat,” said the one in the middle, “but Bing Crosby, he’s divine.”

  The third girl merely sighed and sipped on.

  Irene stood behind the cash counter across from the entrance. She held out a jar of skin cream, assuring the woman that it would fade freckles completely and in no time at all. The bell rang over the door, and she smiled at Harry. He had taken to dropping in on her now and again, just, he said, to see how she was getting along.

  As soon as her customer left, Irene came around the counter, and as she did Harry plucked a sprig of lilacs from his lapel and handed it to her with a small bow and a click of his heels.

  “For the first day of summer.”

  “Why, thank you, kind sir,” she said and held the flowers to her nose.

  “Looks like things are coming along here nicely.”

  “Well, I’m trying. I’m not overwhelmed with business, but it’s picking up. School ends this week, but I don’t know if that’ll mean more business for the ice cream counter or less. Most kids will have to work for the summer. They’ve got to find something, anything to help out.” She looked around. “I have to find a way to get more cash coming in.”

  “It takes time, surely. Especially after a place, well …”

  “Yes, I know—after a place has gone downhill.” She blushed a little and picked at a roll of string.

  “Did you hear about what happened in Etobicoke yesterday?” said Harry.

  “No, what?”

  “Seems a crowd protesting relief cuts imprisoned the reeve in his own office. Had him trapped in there for hours. Stripped him naked, apparently.” Harry laughed.

  “They didn’t!”

  “That sort of thing doesn’t surprise me anymore. What surprises me is that there isn’t more of it. The way things are going. Of course, my father says I’m in danger of becoming a radical. There are more and more homeless on the streets, have you noticed? No one in Rosedale seems to, but they’re everywhere. Passed a man on the street on the way over here wearing a sign that said ‘Will Work for Food.’ ”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Irene. “There are two perfectly good rooms upstairs. They’re filled with junk, but I think I could fix them up. My grandparents lived up there when they first opened the business. They only left and got a hous
e after Dad was born. I don’t know why he never did anything about them.”

  She was just about to tell him that she was planning to rent out the rooms when the door opened and a trio of dusty, rough-looking boys headed for the ice cream counter. “I’ll be right with you,” she called to them. “Do you know what you want?”

  “Root-beer float!” one called out.

  “Chocolate sundae,” said the other. “And come on, baby, hop to it. I ain’t got all day.” He snapped his fingers and elbowed the third boy, who snorted. The one who’d spoken had a cap pulled low on his forehead. He stared at Irene openly.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Harry, turning to the boy.

  “Do you?” said the boy, wiping his nose loudly with the back of his sleeve.

  “Never mind, Harry,” said Irene. “It’s all right.”

  “Yeah, never mind, Haaaarry,” said the boy.

  “I don’t think I like your attitude,” said Harry.

  “I don’t think I give a fuck,” said the boy, stepping away from the counter toward Harry, who took his hands out of his pockets. The other two boys took their hands out of their pockets. Harry’s face went red.

  “All right, all of you, that’s enough,” Irene said. She looked at the boy. Scruffy, torn shirt, dirty hands. He was a working boy already, with no prospects for the future. Just a neighbourhood kid with a well-earned chip on his shoulder. “You’ve been here before.” She searched for a name. “Your name’s George, isn’t it?”

  “What if it is?”

  Irene couldn’t let anything jeopardize the store and everything she’d worked so hard for over the past few weeks. She would treat this boy George as she treated her mother when she became unreasonable. The way you’d treat a dog with its hackles up. You show no fear. “If you’ll give me half a minute, I’ll be right with you, and if you’re very nice, I’ll give you extra sprinkles.”