“I expect you’ve been hungry before, Ivy,” Gloria snapped, and after a moment, “Golly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. I just don’t know what to do, now that your grandmother isn’t home. I can’t just leave you here. What if she’s gone out of town?” She opened her purse. “Here, you can have my bun.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Ivy said. “I’m sure Grandmother will feed us. You haven’t had a thing to eat yourself.”
“Take it, Ivy.” Gloria pressed it into her hands. “I’ll be back home in no time and can eat all I want.”
Following the direction Gloria’s gaze had taken, Ivy saw someone coming along the broken sidewalk toward them — a tall woman with a long face and an angular figure, wearing a belted black dress. A small black hat sat on a head of greying hair.
Ivy wasn’t sure about the Queen of Siam, but she knew instinctively that this was her grandmother, Maud Chalmers, dressed in her Sunday best. She tucked the bun into her pocket. She and Gloria got to their feet as the woman opened the gate.
“What’s this now?” The woman pointed an accusing finger at the battered suitcase sitting on her front porch.
“Those are all my worldly possessions,” Ivy said.
“And just who are you?”
“I’m Ivy Rose Chalmers, Ma’am. Your granddaughter. I’ve come to stay for a while.”
“Are you really?” Slowly the woman turned her glare on Gloria. “And who might this be?”
Gloria stuck out a confident hand. “My name’s Gloria Klein. I’m an old friend of Ivy’s mother, Frannie.”
“Frances,” Ivy said.
“Something happen to Frannie?” The tone of voice was sharp.
“No, Ma’am.” Ivy spoke up quickly. “My mother’s an actress now, you know, and she’s gone to New York City to become a star. Gloria has a letter for you from her.”
Maud Chalmers looked her visitors up and down for a long moment before sliding a finger under the flap of the envelope Gloria had handed her. She took out the letter, and as she read it, her frown deepened.
“Well, you might as well come in,” she said, refolding the letter. “I don’t intend to stand out here in this heat any longer than I have to.”
In the small entranceway, Maud removed her hat, re-sticking it with its long pin and hanging it on a coat rack at the foot of the stairs. The newcomers stood by and waited. Ivy breathed in the scent of furniture polish, the fragrance of freshly ironed sheets.
Without another word, the woman strode down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. Ivy heard her running water into a kettle, heard it scrape on the stovetop as she set it to boil. By the time she returned to usher her visitors into the living room, she was shoving her arms into an apron that covered her dress from neck to hem.
“Sit there,” Maud said, indicating a wooden settee. She took a chair on the opposite side of a low table.
“You do realize, don’t you,” she said, addressing Gloria, “that I have never before laid eyes on this girl? For all I know, she could be some street urchin, looking for free room and board.”
Ivy sucked in a horrified breath and Gloria shrugged. “I guess you will have to trust me that she is not,” she said.
“And you, Miss, are a complete stranger to me. Why should I trust you?”
“Because Gloria Klein is my mother’s oldest and dearest friend,” Ivy said. “Besides that, she is a perfect angel.”
Clamping her hands over the arms of her chair, Maud failed to hide a bitter smile. “Well, the girl sounds exactly like her mother, anyway,” she said.
After that, there seemed to be no further doubt about Ivy’s parentage in Maud Chalmers’s mind.
Because Gloria had to hurry now if she wanted to catch her ride home to Toronto, there was little time for conversation. Ivy choked down the cup of strong tea that was served in the kitchen, without sugar or ceremony.
Walking back with Gloria to the intersection, Ivy seized hold of her hand, swinging it playfully, but not wanting ever to let it go.
“Everything will be fine, Ivy,” Gloria said. “I’m sure your mother would never have planned for you to live with someone who wasn’t a good person.” In her heart, Ivy knew this was true.
“But, Gloria, do you think my grandmother will turn out to have a good imagination?” she asked.
“What does it matter, Ivy?” Gloria said. “You have enough imagination for both of you. And after a while, you and your grandmother will learn to love each other. You’ll see. Why, by the next time I come to see you …”
“Then you will come, Gloria? Please? Don’t leave me here too long by myself.”
“Of course, I’ll come,” Gloria said. “Just let anyone try to stop me.”
In spite of Ivy’s fervent wish that the man had forgotten his promise, the red truck appeared right on time. The dog was sitting upright in the middle of the seat, like the third member of the family. The missus scowled at the road ahead.
Ivy felt the prick of tears as she let go of Gloria’s hand and watched her hop up onto the back.
The driver waved an arm out the window, and the truck pulled back onto the road. “Nice to meetcha, kid,” he called.
Gloria was sitting on the back, one arm through the side rail, her bare, freckled legs swinging.
Ivy cupped her hands to her mouth. “Gloria!” she shouted. “Don’t forget that I’m here!”
Ivy didn’t know whether or not her mother’s friend heard her, but the jaunty little salute Gloria sent gave her the courage to turn around and head back to whatever awaited her at the house on Arthur Road.
6
Camelot
Maud Chalmers was sitting on her porch in the rocking chair when Ivy turned the corner onto Arthur Road again. She could feel the woman’s piercing gaze all the way down the sidewalk to the house. Never had her feet and legs moved so awkwardly, nor her arms seemed so skinny and long; it was as if they dangled below her knees.
“Well, this is a nice kettle of fish, isn’t it?” Her grandmother confronted her before she’d reached the front steps. “Your mother’s gone and left you.”
“I knew she was going,” Ivy said. “And she’ll be back, like always. Usually, I just wait for her at home, but this time she wanted me to come here.”
“And have you any idea just how long this wait will be?”
Ivy shrugged. “She didn’t tell me. As long as it takes to become a star, I guess.”
Perhaps to keep from saying anything she might later regret, Maud picked up the letter that had been lying in her lap and read it again. The rhythm of the rocking increased.
Lowering herself to sit on the top step, Ivy stared out at the street and the railroad track that ran along beside it. There were no houses on the other side of Arthur Road, only an untidy barricade of trees and bushes that failed to hide the assortment of garbage trapped underneath.
Eventually, the creaking of the rocking chair stopped and Ivy’s grandmother got to her feet. “Well, I expect you’re hungry,” she said. There hadn’t been so much as a crust of bread offered with the cup of tea that she had provided before Gloria left.
Following her grandmother down the hall to the kitchen, Ivy remembered the little waxed paper package in her pocket. She took it out and opened it. “Gloria gave me a bun,” she said. “Why don’t I just eat it, for now? Save you any trouble.”
To Ivy’s surprise, the woman snatched the bun from her and began to examine it, picking at one of the currants. Then, without another word, she tossed it into a pail that sat next to the sink.
Ivy blinked. “I could have eaten that.”
“Three days old, at least,” Maud said, and she set about to prepare a supper of sardines on toast, instead.
Ivy had always had to eat sardines with her eyes closed.
She kept her head down, hoping that her grandmother wouldn’t notice.
They ate in silence. Ivy felt as though her grandmother had insulted her personally by rejecting Gloria’s currant bun. When the meal was over, she carried her plate to the sink.
“My mother and I never waste food,” she said. “She used to work in a bakeshop, and we always had three-day-old bread. It was still good, even if it was a little dry.”
“You won’t find me wasting food either, young lady. In fact, you may come with me in a minute and feed the contents of that pail to the chickens.”
“You have chickens?” Immediately, Ivy felt her spirits lift. “Oh, may I see them?”
“Bring the pail along, then.”
At the bottom of the garden, Ivy discovered ten brown hens pecking about in a pen attached to the side of the shed. They crowded around her legs as soon as she opened the wire gate, eager for the scraps she’d brought. Somehow it made her feel a little better to know there were other creatures living here with this formidable woman.
Ivy tore the currant bun into little pieces and scattered it for the hens. “While I’m here, can these chickens be my pets? I’ve never, ever had a pet before. They weren’t allowed any place we lived, and besides, Momma had a hard enough time just keeping the two of us fed. And would it be all right if I gave the chickens names?”
Her grandmother looked on from outside the pen. “I can’t say as I ever felt the need to name them,” she said. “They’re all exactly the same to me.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re not. Look at how this one walks with a little limp. I think I’ll call him Tiny Tim.”
“It’s a hen, Ivy; that means it’s a female.” With an exasperated flap of her apron, Maud turned back to the house. “But you do whatever you like,” she said, over her shoulder. “Just don’t expect me to call them anything but Chook. And I don’t want any blubbering when one of them finds its way into the stewpot.”
“Don’t you worry,” Ivy whispered. She closed the catch on the wire gate behind her. “I would never let that happen to a pet of mine.”
Maud was waiting for her in the kitchen. “Bring that suitcase and come with me. We’d best decide where you’re going to sleep.”
“I can sleep anywhere at all,” Ivy said. “I’m really no trouble, Momma says.”
“Does she, indeed. Come along upstairs and we’ll see about that.”
There were two bedrooms on the second floor of the house, one behind the other, tucked under the slope of the eaves. Both were furnished with steel bedsteads that were covered by patchwork quilts, flattened and faded from years of washing.
Ivy crossed the gleaming linoleum at the top of the stairs to the room at the front. Besides the bed, there was a chest of drawers set between the two front windows. She lifted aside a flowered curtain in the corner of the room and found a small clothes closet, empty except for a few wire coat hangers.
The back room, with its single window, was just as plain as the one at the front. Ivy hesitated in the doorway between the two. “Which one is my father’s room?” she asked.
“Good heavens, child! Is that what you were hoping? That he would be here? Your father hasn’t lived in this house in years. There’s no work in this town to keep him, or anyone else for that matter.
“And if you’re worried about where I sleep,” Maud said, “my bedroom is downstairs, to the left of the front door. You may choose whichever room you like up here.”
“Really? I’ve never had a room all of my own.” Ivy looked into the woman’s unsmiling face. “Just until my mother gets here, of course.”
She went into the back bedroom again, unable to decide. If she slept in here, she could look down on her chickens and over into the backyards of the houses on the next street. She liked to watch people going about their lives. From this window, too, she could see all the way back to the road that would one day take her home to Toronto.
Ivy returned to the front bedroom. “But if I choose this one, I can watch the trains go by.”
Before the girl could change her mind, Maud opened up the top drawers of the dresser, removed a few items and tucked them into the lower drawers. “I’m sure you can unpack your things yourself,” she said. “I have something to tend to downstairs.”
“Of course, Grandmother.” Ivy lifted the suitcase onto the bed. Gloria had folded her blue coat and tucked it under the strap that held everything together. Thoughts of Gloria brought on a wave of homesickness.
Determinedly, Ivy gathered her nightgown, socks, and underwear and set them into the drawer. She would try to be brave, in order to face the new adventures ahead.
Hanging the coat and her other dress behind the flowered curtain, she returned to the kitchen, where she found her grandmother greasing a cake tin.
“Looks like you’re going to do some baking,” Ivy said. “Is this a special occasion?”
“Possibly. But this is just a plain, rolled oat cake.”
“Is it a special occasion because I’m here?” Ivy dared to ask.
“Well, I suppose it’s not every day one has a grandchild come to stay,” Maud said, but she didn’t look up from the mixing bowl.
Ivy pulled a chair out and sat down to watch. “Momma thought we should pretend this town is Siam and that you are the dowager queen.” She was feeling giddy with gratitude for the special cake, and therefore, reckless.
“But I’ve decided that, since you live on a street named after King Arthur, I’m going to pretend this town is Camelot. Your house can be Arthur’s castle. It sat on the peak of a hill, you know, overlooking a beautiful river.”
Maud whacked the wooden spoon against the side of the bowl. “The only thing this house overlooks, Ivy Chalmers, is the railway tracks, and you’d best remember to draw the curtains over your windows when you’re undressing, else the engineers can look right in at you.”
***
Ivy wanted to know everything there was to know about her father. What little bits of information she managed to extract from her grandmother were never enough to satisfy her. She was sure the reason Frannie had picked this place to send her, while she was making a name for herself in New York, was that it was the most likely place for Ivy’s father to come looking for her.
A picture of mother and son, taken when the boy was about eight, hung in a shadowy corner of the dining room. It was the only picture Ivy had ever seen of Alva Chalmers, and in it he was even younger than she was now.
Studying its sepia tones, Ivy saw where her dark hair and eyes had come from. She’d also inherited his small, turned-up nose and short upper lip that didn’t quite cover the front teeth.
The boy in the picture looked uncomfortable. He was wearing a sort of sailor suit and white stockings. He stood very straight beside his mother, neither one touching the other.
He had been Maud’s only child. He’d gone to the school here in Larkin — the same school Ivy would attend if she stayed long enough (and Ivy was quite sure that she would not).
With the death of the boy’s father, Maud’s husband, it had been necessary for Alva to leave school and go to work in the woollen mill to help support the two of them. While he was still in his teens, the mill had closed, and Alva had moved to another factory job, this time in Toronto.
“I suppose Papa must come and visit you sometimes,” Ivy said hopefully. Otherwise, how was he ever to know that she was there, waiting for him?
She was standing on a kitchen chair while Maud pinned up the hem of a dress one of the church ladies had given her for the girl. It was a horrible dress, in Ivy’s opinion — purple, with little fuzzy knobs all over it. But since she did not intend to be here long enough for anyone to get to know her, she would grit her teeth and wear it.
“Your father is a busy man, Ivy,” Maud said, taking a pin from between her lips. “He has no t
ime to visit. He sends me what he can by money order every month, to help with the upkeep of this place.”
“Then, couldn’t you write and tell him about me? Tell him that I am here and dying to meet him?”
“Somehow, I hardly think you’ll die from lack of seeing him. Your mother never made the least effort that I know of.
“There, that does it. Take the dress off, Ivy, and bring it back down to me.”
“I can already tell it’s going to be itchy,” Ivy muttered, when she was halfway up the stairs.
While Ivy waited for Frannie’s return, the lives of the two residents of 54 Arthur Road began to follow a predictable pattern. Every day, unless it rained, Ivy watered the rows of vegetables in the garden behind the house. She learned to prime the pump in the yard, pouring a little water into the top of it first, then working the handle up and down, up and down, till she felt it take hold, raising the water up from the depths. The watering can sat under the spout, ready for the first gush of water.
She’d been amazed to see how quickly the radishes, which Maud told her had been planted the day before she arrived, began to poke through the earth, and how the beans seemed to grow taller, almost overnight. Unfortunately, the weeds did the same, and there was always the endless job of hoeing.
First thing each morning, Ivy fed her chickens and collected the eggs from the henhouse, a sectioned-off area inside the shed. Having to shoo the chickens off their nests made her feel bad, and she always apologized for taking their warm eggs.
“Don’t be silly,” Maud said. “Times are hard. I’ve got regular customers who pay me twelve cents a dozen for those fresh eggs.”
Every day after breakfast, Maud hung her apron on the back of the kitchen door, clamped her hat on her head, and marched to the lower end of the street to attend mass at St. Basil’s-on-the-Corner.
Feeling both guilty for not going with her grandmother, and curious to see what the inside of the church might look like, Ivy accompanied her one morning, early in her stay.
Growing Up Ivy Page 3