The Stubborn Season

by Lauren B. Davis

  “Yeah. Somebody’d seen the parents get pushed away from the carriage and scooped the baby out before the carriage was overturned. The father had some broken ribs, but he was all right.”

  They were both tired, and quiet. Irene kept looking at David, who could now meet her gaze.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said. She felt hollow and numb, but clean inside too, as though she’d been washed out with icy water. “I know it was hard. You must be pleased the camps are all closed now.”

  “It doesn’t feel much like winning.”

  “It never does, does it? Things are just over, nothing more. It’s so hard to believe I’ll never see him again.”

  There was silence between them. This young man, this stranger really, didn’t feel strange anymore. It felt companionable, familial, to have him there, as though he had been adopted through Uncle Rory.

  “Where are your people, David?”

  “Oh, my mother died some years back, but my father and two brothers are still back home. They’re all older than me. Married with kids of their own. We’ve got a farm in Saskatchewan, a little town called Sonnenfeld. Don’t know how much longer the place’ll be there, though. Not after these past few years. Last letter from my brother said they were talking about maybe moving to the city.”

  “Have you thought of going back there?”

  “Not much for me there, and they’ve got enough people to take care of as it is. I’ll go back one day, though. I want to see my father again.” He shrugged.

  “So what are your plans?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought I’d go down to Flint, Michigan, maybe. There’s a big strike coming down there at General Motors and I thought maybe I could lend a hand.”

  “Haven’t you had enough of that sort of thing?”

  “Enough to last a fucking lifetime. Sorry,” he said, but she shook her head. “What the hell else am I going to do? Drifting around, picking up a day’s work here and there, well, it’s not much to sustain a man. So, at least if I’m organizing I feel like I’m maybe doing something worthwhile.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But if you’re ready to stay in one place for a while, I could use your help in the shop. I have a room over the store. It’s a good room. Clean. I could offer you room and board, a few dollars a week.” She had had no idea she was going to say this. She had not thought about it in advance, but it would serve many ends if he would stay. If her mother took a turn again, she could stay home without losing business. She’d have a man around in case the neighbourhood toughs gave her a hard time. And the only other person in the world she knew who had known her uncle wouldn’t just disappear the way everyone else did. “Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?”

  He scowled. “I don’t want to be a charity case.”

  “You’d be doing me a favour. The store is a lot for me to handle alone. As you may have guessed, my mother isn’t able to help. Maybe one day, but not yet. I could use someone in the store I trust.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I’m trusting my instincts.”

  “Not many Jews on this side of Spadina.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “Not for you, maybe, but what about your customers?”

  She shrugged. “Not any customers I care about keeping.” Finally he said, “I guess that’d be a pretty good deal. I’d be stupid to turn it down.” His mouth was dry. She couldn’t possibly know what such an offer meant to him, after where he’d been.

  “Good,” said Irene. She slapped her hands on her knees. “I’m very tired, David, and I’ve been away from my mother a lot longer than I’d planned. Do you want to stay here tonight? You’re welcome to. There’s a bed upstairs.”

  “I think maybe I can manage to survive without having to sleep with five other guys tonight.”

  “Then, you’ll stay.”

  “So, I’ll stay. First I’ll walk you home, then I’ll go back to Ma Gutkind’s and pick up my pack.”

  David lay on his back on the thin mattress, his hands behind his head. It was hard to believe he was here. Hard to believe he could shut his eyes and wake up in the same place tomorrow and not have to move on. When he’d first come into the room he’d run his hands over the walls, over the top of the table. He’d turned on first one tap and then another, let the water flow over his fingers. He’d filled the bath up to the rim and lay down in it, sinking under the water, letting his ears fill with the silence. He’d stayed in the water until he was wrinkled and waterlogged and almost fell asleep and drowned himself.

  He couldn’t stop grinning, and yet he didn’t want to keep grinning for he was afraid it wouldn’t last. What if she changed her mind after a few days, or a week? He vowed to be the perfect worker, the perfect tenant. He’d do whatever it took to be able to keep this room, with a toilet of his very own.

  26

  January 1937

  David sat in his room on New Year’s Day morning, drinking a coffee and reading the Globe and Mail. The front-page headline said fascists and Nazis were flowing into Spain. Below that was news that Toronto had just spent its merriest New Year’s in a decade, the nightclubs full to overflowing. There was a cartoon saying that Old Man Depression’s goose was cooked. David thought that if that was true, it was only because war was coming. Things getting better only so they could get worse, he grumbled to himself.

  While the rest of the city had apparently been out dancing and drinking and buying gardenias for pretty girls at a buck fifty apiece, he’d been sitting right where he was. But what right did he have, he thought, to be feeling low when life had taken this miraculous turn? Only a month ago he’d been homeless and near destitute.

  It had been only two weeks since he’d moved in and started working. There were nights when he woke up, his heart racing after some dream-demon, panicked, sure it would all prove to be a figment of his imagination. He’d reach out and touch the wall, the bed, the floor, until reassured by their solidity. The tension of the past years was lessening with each day, and he was slowly learning to trust that Irene was as good as her word. He put his edginess to good advantage, pouring the energy into work. He liked working in the store, liked waiting on the customers, filling up brown bags with small purchases, tidying the stockroom, joking with the boys who hung around.

  David took care of the ice cream counter while Irene dealt with customers on the other side of the store. He handled the heavy work of the stockroom. He did the cleaning and let her go home at the end of the day without worrying about that, at least. He liked making her life easier and he liked the steady rhythm of his days. He even got a kick out of the look on some of the customers’ faces when they saw him. “And where’s your family from?” they’d say. And he’d say, “Saskatchewan.” And they’d say, “The prairies?” and he could see them thinking, But he can’t be Jewish then, can he—do they have Jews in the prairies? He’d wink at Irene and say, “Just call me Dave, ma’am,” and leave them puzzling.

  The little apartment above the store felt like home, which was a feeling he hadn’t had since he’d left Sonnenfeld. The place was as clean as a sun-bleached sheet. He’d become a fanatic for cleanliness, sometimes taking two baths a day and never letting a dish sit dirty in the sink. There were curtains on the window that Irene had made herself. Three white plates in the cupboard and two white cups. A pot, a pan. A chair to read in and a good lamp behind for the evenings. He liked the watery winter light on the walls and thought he might like to get a picture or two to put up. There was a desk, there was a chair.

  On the shelf he’d put up above the desk, next to second-hand paperback copies of Jack London’s Iron Heel and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, stood a filled-up notebook. Saved from the fire for the time being, at least. Lying on the middle of the desk itself was a brand-new fifteen-cent hardcover book with all but the first few pages blank and the rest as full of empty space and possibility as a cloudless dawn.

  He’d thought he might not hav
e much to write about, a family-owned notions store, a room, no great labour battles to fight. However, he was finding the pages were filled with different sorts of observations, about kids and their crushes on each other played out over the ice cream counter, about the rhythms of the street and the fruit vendors who came at dawn to unload their fresh produce. About the grey fatigue of middle-aged women looking for a little escape in cheap novels and the promises of face powder.

  He picked up the journal now and scanned his entry for December 25. A Jew at the feast of Jesus, he read, maybe I should have brought a bar-mitzvah gift. He’d been surprised to be included in the invitation the Watkinses had extended to Irene and her mother, being both a stranger and a Jew, but Ebbie Watkins had insisted, and who was he to pass up a free meal? Mrs. MacNeil had refused to go, but Irene had managed to gain her mother’s permission for an hour after dinner.

  The house was a baffling and boisterous chorus of chaos. Isabel and Lisa Watkins, Ebbie’s sisters, had five kids between them, and this tribe was involved in a complicated made-up game that involved dashing about the rooms and grabbing handfuls of nuts or candies while at the same time avoiding the good-natured swats of their parents. Isabel and Lisa stood by the piano, singing a loud and magnificently off-key rendition of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” accompanied by their mother, who flailed at the keys as though flapping dust. Their respective husbands lazed in the afterglow of too much turkey, the top button of their pants undone, and took turns beating each other at checkers. Ebbie chased the children and seemed like an overgrown kid herself. David and Irene and Mike Hughian, Ebbie’s red-haired beau, stood in a corner trying to talk over the din.

  Just after nine o’clock the front door opened and, along with an icy blast of air, in came a tall man in a baggy Santa Claus suit, lugging a pillowcase full of gifts. He smelled of gin.

  David heard Irene’s gasp as she spilled her ginger ale.

  “Sorry, Irene,” said Mike. “We didn’t know Harry’d turn up.”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” said the man.

  “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” yelled the children, circling round him like mice around a block of smelly cheese.

  “I’m going to go,” said Irene.

  “Don’t go,” said Ebbie, who had appeared at her elbow and was dabbing at her skirt with a cloth.

  Madison excused himself, going up the stairs, no doubt to the toilet to have another toot, thought David. When he came back down he’d removed the Santa suit and cleaned himself up a bit. He cut an undeniably dashing figure, the cloth of his suit expensive, his tie silk.

  David felt shabby then, and the feeling made him angry. Even looking at the thick black hair on his forearms made him feel less civilised than this smooth pale man. Harry was not that much taller than David, and yet David felt squat around him. The rag picker’s son. The fruit man with his cart and horse.

  “It’s getting late,” Irene said. “It’s been wonderful, really. Tell your mother thank you for me.” She turned toward the kitchen. The coats and boots had been left in the back porch.

  “I’ll walk you home,” said David.

  “No, I’m fine. Really. I’ll just slip out this way.”

  “I’m so sorry, ‘Reen. I didn’t know, honestly. There’s no telling with Harry,” said Ebbie.

  “Yes, I found that out,” said Irene and she disappeared out the door.

  27

  February 1937

  “I’ll bet young David’s glad he stuck around here where it’s safe and didn’t head down to Michigan,” said Margaret with her nose in the morning paper.

  “Why, what does it say?”

  “They’re going to use machine guns and bayonets if the strikers don’t vacate.”

  “That’s awful! I mean, a quarter of the people in that town—Flint, isn’t it?—they work at the plant, don’t they? The police are their neighbours. How can they turn guns on their neighbours?”

  “That David’s a smart one. Found himself a soft place to land. But then, they’re all smart, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, Mother, don’t generalize.”

  “Well, then, Jews. They’re a smart people. Everyone knows that. They’re tricky.”

  “Tricky? Now why would you think David’s tricky?” Her mother had never been anti-Semitic. In fact, it had been Margaret who had defended the Jews when her father spoke ill of them.

  “You make it sound like I’m saying a bad thing. I’m not. I’m just remarking that the Jewish people have an ability to survive, they’re a little slippery.”

  “What nonsense! There’s nothing slippery about David. He’s the most forthright person I know.”

  Margaret got up to pour more coffee. Quiet. Quiet. Keep your mouth shut. She knew he had cast some dark Jewish spell on Irene, some malevolent charm. How else could he have persuaded Irene to give him a place to live, and practically for free? The problem had to be approached by a circuitous route. She leaned against the counter and watched her daughter.

  “I want to make Yorkshire pudding for dinner on Sunday, and roast beef. I need you to go to the butcher’s.”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you hear? They say the Germans are going to invade Czechoslovakia.”

  “Yes, I heard that,” said Irene, sipping her coffee and leafing through the paper her mother had left. “It’s here. Front page.”

  “We should be prepared. Those bastards!” Margaret shook her fists near her temples. “Someone should kill them all! War will come!”

  “We can hope for the best, can’t we?” Irene tried to keep her voice level.

  “I can see things you can’t. Bastards! So much evil! You don’t know where it will come from next!”

  Irene said nothing. Her mother had made significant progress, and the doctor had agreed that she probably didn’t need to be institutionalized. She hadn’t regained the ground she’d lost but could at least be left alone during the day, although she became fretful as evening fell. She kept herself clean and cooked meals. But she was still paranoid, and the paranoia had taken on this angry edge.

  “Bastards!” she said again, but quietly, baring her teeth, and then, “You still think it was a good idea, having a Jewish clerk in the store?”

  Irene hated it when her mother circled back again and again like a little mosquito.

  “I think having David in the store is one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. You know, he’s got a great head for business.”

  “Well, they all do, those people.”

  “Mother, stop it, really. You should hear the way you talk sometimes.”

  “I talk the way other people talk, and don’t go calling me anti-Semitic either, young lady. I don’t like what’s happening to Jews in Germany. I believe in live and let live. I just think it’s better that people stick to their own kind. That’s the way they want it too, you know. Jews live together over in Kensington, running their little kosher markets and whatnot. Why, when I was a girl, there was a rag picker, a tinker who went door to door selling things. My mother always gave him lemonade in the summer. He loved to gossip. He was a nice old fellow with a long beard and those funny ringlets. We were glad to see him, but he lived somewhere else, with his own kind. That’s the way they want it. They have their own ways. They’re not like us.” She looked at Irene. “Which makes you ask yourself, what’s young Hirsch doing up on this side of the table?”

  “I think David’s very nice.”

  “None of the good stores will hire Jews, you know. There’s a reason for that. People don’t like to be served by Jews—not me, mind you, so don’t look at me that way, but other people. You’ve read those sermons in the Telegram, the ones from Knox Presbyterian. ‘Invidious Jews,’ they call them. What does invidious mean, anyway?”

  “Unpleasant.”

  “I thought it meant odious.”

  “Close enough.”

  “I’m just saying, Irene.”

  “Mum, I have to go.” Irene put her cup in the sink without rinsing i
t, which she knew would irritate her mother.

  Margaret slathered another piece of toast with marmalade. She picked a chunk of orange rind from the jelly and ate it like candy. Careful. Careful. Things must be arranged just so. One had to be cautious to avoid the nasty traps God sent one’s way.

  It never stopped, the constant natter, natter, natter, pick, pick pick. Ever since she’d woken up that morning and found her mother hovering over her, she’d been a little afraid of her. It wasn’t that her mother would ever hurt her intentionally—would she?—but sometimes the things she did and said were so, so … crazy. Irene was perplexed by the dislike for Jewish people that had grown in her mother since David arrived. She wondered if, because David had been the one to bring the bad news, and because David was Jewish, Margaret had, in her faulty way, concluded that all Jews were to blame.

  As she walked into the shop, David’s head popped up from behind the ice cream counter.

  “Morning. Thought maybe you decided to take the day off,” he said.

  “Can’t I be a few minutes late if I want to? It is my shop, after all.”

  David held his hands up in front of him as though to ward her off. “Yes, ma’am.”

  David glanced at her as he cleaned the spigots on the soda fountain. She had hung her coat in the back and was tying the white apron she always wore around her waist. There were circles under her eyes and a rigid tremor in the way she held herself, as though she were afraid she’d crumple up if she let go.

  “So, I got a pot of coffee upstairs,” he said. “I could get you a cup if you want.”

  “Okay,” she said, without looking at him. “Yes, thanks. I could use one.”

  David went up the narrow tilting steps to his room and came back down with two mugs of steaming coffee, hers thick and caramel-coloured with cream.

  “Here,” he said. She leaned up against the counter and closed her hands around the heavy crockery, shut her eyes and breathed in the scent. She opened her eyes and looked at David, who stood near her sipping his own coffee.