Frannie had used the telephone at the diner to call anyone she could think of who might know of a room to rent, and Ivy, who was only ten at the time, had fallen asleep with her head on the table.
It was Johnny, Frannie’s boss at the bakeshop, who’d given them Mrs. Bingley’s number. He’d even come and picked them up at the diner in his car and delivered them and their bundles to the rooming house. They had already begun to call the place Shangri-La.
Ivy had never ridden in a car before. She wished it weren’t nighttime; she so much wanted the people on the street to see her. Johnny had helped them haul their things to an upstairs room, and before he left he’d given Frannie a meat pie from his bakery for their supper.
“You see how kind people can be, Ivy.” Frannie had sliced the pie into little slivers. It would last two or three days out on the window ledge where it was cool.
“That is how you must behave, my darling. There are angels all around us, even when you least expect them.”
***
Ivy stepped onto the sidewalk out front of Mrs. Bingley’s. She looked back just once, and saw Lady Natalie of Bing watching her from the window.
She couldn’t help feeling a little sad at leaving this place. She and her mother had lived in one of Mrs. Bingley’s rooms for almost two years. It was the longest they’d ever lived anywhere.
Squaring her shoulders as best she could, considering the suitcase, Ivy took the first brave footsteps toward her new adventure. She’d need every one of Frannie’s angels now.
3
Gloria
Inside the diner, Ivy slid the envelope across the table. “Momma said you’d go with me to my grandmother’s. Fifty-four Arthur Road, Larkin, Ontario. I hope it’s not too far.”
Gloria frowned, studying the address. “You ever met your grandmother?”
“I don’t think so. Have you?”
“Not this one. I knew Frannie’s own folks, Mr. and Mrs. Johns. They were real nice. They both died of the diphtheria, and so did Frannie’s only brother, little George. She ever tell you that? Frannie and I were just about your age when it happened, and we were best friends. Their house was quarantined and everything.”
Ivy had heard the story before, but Frannie didn’t believe a person should dwell on the sad things in life, so it was rarely mentioned. The only reason Frannie had escaped the same fate as that of the rest of her family was that her parents had sent her to stay with Great Aunt Charlotte in Guelph until the danger had passed.
There was no family left by the time it was deemed safe enough for Frannie to return. Instead, she remained in Guelph, where Aunt Charlotte’s home became hers and where she finished her schooling. She was seventeen when she came back into Gloria’s life again.
***
Before she died, Aunt Charlotte arranged for Frannie to be employed by Mrs. Hubert Hinkman, an old friend of hers back in Toronto. It wasn’t long before Frannie had her own little flat and a few pieces of furniture. Shortly afterwards, she met and married Alva Chalmers, the man who would be Ivy’s father.
Gloria held the envelope up to the light at the window. “I don’t suppose your grandmother knows that you’re coming,” she said.
“I think she’s going to be surprised,” Ivy said. “Mostly everyone likes surprises, don’t they? And the letter will explain everything to her. Do you know how far it is to Larkin?”
Gloria pocketed the letter and edged her slim body out of the booth. “Far enough that I can’t take you today, Ivy. In fact, you’re going to have to wait till my day off. Which isn’t until Sunday.”
Today was only Thursday.
“That’s all right,” Ivy said. “If I can just stay with you, I promise to be no trouble.”
“Have you had anything to eat this morning?” Gloria swiped a damp cloth over the table.
Ivy told her about the doughnuts and the reason that she’d eaten both of them before going to bed.
After she’d spoken to someone in the kitchen, Gloria brought Ivy two plates of food. On one were two pieces of unbuttered toast. Ivy stared at the other, which held a greyish egg in a puddle of water.
“That’s poached,” Gloria said.
A dollop of ruby red jelly in a little paper cup came with the toast. “This is almost too beautiful to eat,” Ivy said.
“Just spread it on the toast.” Gloria reached into the booth behind her and, with a quick glance toward the kitchen again, produced a similar paper cup of orange marmalade. Frannie was right; Gloria Klein was an angel.
When the diner started to fill up with customers at lunchtime, Gloria took Ivy’s coat and suitcase and set them behind the counter. “Shouldn’t you be in school, Ivy? If you could go for the afternoon, I’d be finished here by the time you get out, and I’d take you back to my place.”
“I’d just as soon not go to school, if you don’t mind,” Ivy said. “When I get to my grandmother’s, I’ll have to go to a different school anyway.”
“Well, it’s like this, Ivy.” Gloria lowered her voice. “I can’t have you taking up the seat of a paying customer. Not while we’re busy.”
Ivy had the feeling that the faceless person in the kitchen had something to do with this. But she couldn’t bear to think that Gloria might get in trouble for her being there.
“I’ll just go across the street and sit in the park,” she said. “I went to that park once with Momma when I was little, and we had a lovely time.”
She and Frannie had sat on the grass that day and pretended to have a fairy picnic, gathering leaves and acorns to use as tiny dishes.
The park seemed different now, with many of the benches occupied by jobless men playing checkers or stretched out sleeping with newspapers covering their faces. Ivy had forgotten how little grass there actually was, how few places for Frannie’s fairies to hide.
She had to search for a vacant bench, one with the least amount of pigeon droppings. For the rest of the afternoon, afraid of losing her bench if she left it, she watched the frantic scurrying of the squirrels, and imagined meeting her grandmother for the first time.
***
On the way home to Gloria’s they stopped to buy a few groceries. While Gloria was making her careful selection, Ivy swirled about in the sawdust at the back of the store.
“Twelve cents a pound,” the butcher said, when Gloria asked the price of round steak.
Ivy saw her finger the coins in her change purse. “We’ll just take one of those sausages, please,” said Gloria.
Ivy loved the pungent smell of ripe fruit in the store, and as a special treat, Gloria bought one beautiful, brown pear. When they arrived at the flat she cut it in half, then divided each half into eight slender sections. The pear was crisp and sweeter than anything Ivy could have imagined, sweeter even than the oranges that had come in their food hamper last Christmas. Frannie had called them “ambrosia.”
The air in Gloria’s flat was stale and smelled of cigarettes, although she’d told Ivy that the smoker, the former boyfriend, Eugene, was gone from her life.
“And good riddance to bad rubbish, is how I feel about that,” Gloria said. She yanked some laundry off a line that was strung across the living room.
“Open the window if it bothers you. But sometimes the stink from the tannery comes way up here, and that’s much worse.”
Concerned that Ivy would be bored while she was at work for the next two days, Gloria found a pencil and some paper for her, suggesting that she might like to draw. Ivy thought she could find a much better use for the paper.
The next morning she picked up the pencil and began to write something that had been taking shape in her head ever since her mother left. She titled it The Story of Ivy and Frances. She would give it to Frannie when she came back from New York, and could already picture her delight at reading it.
Once Ivy started writing, the words tumbled easily onto the page. Except for getting up to wash the sink full of dirty dishes and to make herself a sugar sandwich, she worked on the story all day.
She was surprised when she finally looked up at the clock on top of the icebox to see that it was almost time for Gloria to come home. Ivy gathered her papers and was tucking them away when she heard Gloria’s key turn in the lock.
Gloria collapsed into the nearest chair and kicked off her shoes. “Oh, my golly, am I bushed. What a day!”
She looked around with obvious pleasure at the tidy apartment. “I see you’ve been keeping yourself busy,” she said. “I’ve never seen this place look so good. I just might have to keep you, Ivy Chalmers.”
“I spent most of the time writing,” Ivy said. “Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. What do you suppose a person has to do if they want to be a writer, Gloria?”
Gloria covered a yawn. “I’m not sure, Ivy. Maybe it’s like a lot of other things, and you have to just keep practising.”
“That’s what I’m going to do, then,” Ivy said. “Every chance I get.”
Gloria heated a can of soup on the hot plate for their supper, and they shared a currant bun, left over from the diner, for dessert.
Watching Gloria dunk her half of the bun into her tea to soften it, Ivy thought about what Gloria had said about keeping her. She considered asking if she could stay. If it weren’t for the fact that her father would never find her here, she thought she could be happy living with Gloria Klein.
After Gloria left for work on Saturday, Ivy watched as the scene below the apartment window came to life — dozens of children playing noisy games of tag or kick the can up and down the street, adults sitting on the front steps of the rooming houses and shouting across to each other.
It was a familiar scene, but not one that Ivy had ever been a part of. Instead, encouraged by her mother, she had learned that she could be happy within the confines of a dreary room by escaping into her imagination. She turned from the window and picked up her story again.
When Sunday came, Gloria and Ivy boarded the streetcar, riding it to the end of the line. From there, they set out on foot to walk the rest of the way to meet Ivy’s unsuspecting grandmother.
4
The Road to Larkin
Leaving behind the last of the small shops and houses that straggled to the outskirts of Toronto, the two travellers followed the highway out into the countryside.
They walked all morning, taking turns carrying the suitcase. Gloria had fashioned a strap and a handle for it from an old belt that had once belonged to Eugene.
By noon they were travelling between fields and farms where cattle grazed and curious horses came to watch. Until now, Ivy’s encounters with animals had been limited to the delivery horses in the city and those she saw in the Agricultural Building at the Canadian National Exhibition. She’d quickly discovered that it was worth attending school on the last day each year, just to get the free pass to Children’s Day at the Ex.
They stopped for a rest early in the afternoon, in the shade of a row of large trees that fronted the lush green of a golf course. Ivy flopped down and pulled off her shoes and socks, rubbing her bare feet over the cool grass and flexing her toes.
“I hate to ask you again, Gloria,” she said, “but how much farther do you think it is?”
“The longest stretch is behind us now,” Gloria promised. She tucked her cotton dress under her and sat down beside the girl.
The plaque on one of the stone pillars at the entrance to the golf course read SHADY DELL GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB. A group of men moved slowly across the clipped grass in the distance.
On the other side of the road, a teenaged boy wearing overalls and a cloth cap was walking back and forth in the wide ditch, his head lowered as if he was looking for something. Every once in a while he’d bend down and pick up some object.
When he reached the end of the ditch and came up on the same level as the road, Ivy saw that he carried a wire basket half filled with little white balls. The boy turned and retraced his steps, head down, combing the long grass with his eyes.
Ivy watched with great interest. Who was this boy? And where would he go when his basket was full and it was time to go home? Maybe he lived in Larkin, since they weren’t too far from there now. He might even know her grandmother.
Gloria had gotten to her feet and was brushing off the back of her dress. “Best be on our way again, Ivy,” she said. She poked at something with the toe of her shoe, and a golf ball popped up out of a depression.
“Here’s another one,” she called, and gave the ball a kick with the side of her foot, in the boy’s direction.
The boy looked up to see it bouncing across the road toward him. With one sweep of his hand he captured it and dropped it into the basket.
Gloria and Ivy walked past, and he took off his cap a moment, revealing a thick mop of reddish-blond hair. “Thanks, Miss,” he said, with a nod to Gloria. The skin on his bare shoulders was pink and peeling from the sun, his long arms covered in freckles.
Ivy was hoping that Gloria might ask him what he did with the balls he collected. Did someone pay him a penny or two for each one, the way the junkman back home did for rags and bottles? But just then a red truck came rattling up behind them, diverting their attention.
Because it was Sunday, few vehicles had passed them thus far. The pair stepped to the side to let the truck, and the clouds of dust it was kicking up, go by. To their surprise, the vehicle stopped and waited for them to catch up.
“Where you two ladies headed?” a friendly voice called out.
The driver was a man whose round, ruddy face peered out the window from under the brim of a straw hat. A dark-haired woman scowled at them from the passenger side of the seat.
Gloria set the suitcase down and stepped up to the truck’s window. She showed the man the envelope she carried with Maud Chalmers’s address on it. “We’re going to Larkin,” she said.
“Town’s just down the road a piece,” the man said. “Not too far now.”
“I’m delivering Ivy here to her grandmother.” Gloria put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “We’ve already spent most of the day walking. And then I have to turn around and get myself back to the city again.”
“We’re going right close to the street you’re looking for. The missus and I are dropping in on a sick cousin of hers. If you two don’t mind riding on the back, I can leave you off at the nearest corner. Get you there quicker ’n Shank’s pony.”
While he was talking, a dog that had been lying on the seat managed to shove his shaggy head out the window. The man pushed him away good-naturedly.
“Come on, Ivy,” Gloria said, and, calling out her thanks, she steered Ivy around behind.
The back of the truck was open, with wooden side rails and a low floor. Gloria hoisted the suitcase onboard, and they hiked themselves up to sit on opposite sides so they could hang onto the rails.
“All aboard,” Gloria said, with a wink.
“Momma would call this the most wonderful luck,” Ivy said.
The dog was keeping an eye on them through the back window now, its red tongue lolling out. Ivy had no doubt that he was wishing he could trade places with them. Who wouldn’t prefer to ride on the back?
She watched the boy back at the golf course fade into the distance.
5
Meeting Maud Chalmers
Ten minutes after picking up Ivy and Gloria outside the Shady Dell Golf Course, the red truck rolled to a stop at a street corner in the next village.
The driver came around to help them climb down from the back. “This is Larkin,” he said. “This here crossroad is McCane. You’ll find Arthur Road is one block over, before you get to the tracks.” And to Gloria he said, “If you’re right here in a coupl
e of hours, Miss, you can ride back to the city with us.”
“I’ll be here,” Gloria promised. She took hold of the strap on the suitcase again.
They found Number 54, halfway down Arthur Road, behind a picket fence. It was a two-storey house, grey and narrow, looking pinched between its neighbours. There were four slim windows in the front — two above a porch roof and two on either side of a green door.
Ivy immediately noticed the white lace curtains. She was used to window blinds in their rented rooms — vicious blinds that would snap back up out of reach or come off their rollers altogether when she tried to adjust them.
After knocking at the front door and receiving no answer, Gloria led the way along an alley no wider than a wheelbarrow that ran between the houses. The property at the back was only as wide as the house itself, but more than twice as deep.
Except for a shed in one corner, the yard was given over almost entirely to a vegetable garden. Someone had recently been planting in it, marking the rows with lengths of string attached to pieces of broken stick.
“Let me try, Gloria,” Ivy said, when no one answered Gloria’s knock. But though she rapped on the wooden door till it rattled in its frame and her knuckles were sore, she had no better luck.
They returned to the front porch and sat on the steps to wait, neither of them bold enough to occupy the single rocking chair that faced the street.
Gloria kept checking her watch, and Ivy knew she was afraid of missing her ride. She wished she could think of a way to keep her there. Maybe her grandmother would insist on putting on a big meal to celebrate Ivy’s arrival and then, because it would be late, she’d invite Gloria to spend the night.
“I’m awfully hungry,” Ivy said. She wrapped her skirt around her knees and imagined that big meal. Gloria had brought two currant buns for the journey, but Ivy had eaten hers the first time they’d stopped to rest.
Growing Up Ivy Page 2