Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  But that was Romeo, a jackdaw, inclined to be seduced by a bit of shine. Oliver was Oliver. Romeo’s house would never know a bookshelf holding volumes of The New World Encyclopedia, Fairy Tales of the World, The Books of Knowledge, Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories, A Child’s Illustrated Stories of the Holy Bible. A refinement that the infrequent visitors to the Vandal house attributed to Sara. But Sara’s eye was for decoration, for arranging furniture and painting the walls a different colour every five years or so, whether they needed it or not. Oliver was a soft touch for any salesmen who landed on the doorstep wanting to sell conveniences for the lady of the house, or an enhanced future for his children.

  It was Oliver who purchased the latest in kitchenware and appliances: the brightly coloured melamine dishes, which proved to be truly unbreakable when hurled as a discus against the side of the house. The gigantic Servelle refrigerator, with its faulty door handle. The real McCoy, the Rangette, which according to the salesman required less juice to heat than the new electric ranges. Its oven proved to be uneven; anything put into it came out either undercooked or burned to a crisp. It was Oliver, too, who purchased a perpetual-motion drinking bird and set it on the windowsill above the younger children’s table, so they’d be entertained while they took their meals. For a time, a young red fox rescued during spring high-water streaked through the house, darting out from behind the furniture to nip at the children’s socks—again, Oliver’s doing.

  The Heintzman in the second-hand store would cost most of the money Oliver had in his pocket, with enough remaining for him to claim the wedding suit, which was being altered. Enough to have the piano shipped to Union Plains. He made the arrangements and left the store, while Romeo dallied over the bracelet he’d admired and was finding difficult to resist.

  Oliver rocked on his heels, contemplating a playbill posted outside the entrance of the second-hand shop while waiting for his brother. The picture on the playbill, of a man seated at a grand piano, had captured his attention. A family of musicians, The Musical Eckhardts, were performing at the Pantages Theatre. He recognized a familiar longing, but a stupid unreasonable timidity told him that such events were meant for others and not for him.

  Romeo joined him, flushed with pleasure over having bought the bracelet for Claudette, an early Christmas present. Abruptly, Oliver pointed to the playbill and said, Whatever’s my pleasure, right? Your treat? He made his brother’s promise sound like a dare. This was how he wished to spend his last night out on the town as a free man, by going to see The Musical Eckhardts, he said. But he’d no sooner spoken than he was beset by doubts.

  Romeo surprised Oliver by not arguing against it, hiding his reluctance with an exaggerated shrug, indicating that while he didn’t understand the odd request, he’d indulge his kid brother. He would meet up with Oliver at the theatre, he said, leaving him on his own to wander about the snowy streets looking in windows, to eat a meal in a greasy spoon, not the snazzy meal Romeo had promised. Romeo was getting back at him for not going along with his plans, Oliver thought, regretting having changed them. One more little toot on the town wouldn’t have hurt, Sara being safely tucked away on the farm with her sister and not any the wiser.

  Oliver was surprised when Romeo hurried towards him outside the theatre, on time and freshly shaven, dapper-looking in a slouch chapeau Oliver hadn’t seen him wear before. The hat, along with a paisley scarf knotted at his neck, gave him a debonair appearance, and as Romeo purchased their tickets Oliver realized that his brother was handsome in an offhand way. Then Oliver smelled liquor on Romeo’s breath, and understood that he’d needed to fortify himself. His brother lit a cigarette and Oliver noted a tremor in his hands, a wariness as he surveyed the milling crowd in the foyer, as though he expected someone would come over and request that they leave.

  Attending picture shows hadn’t prepared Oliver for the rows and rows of red plush seats, the chandeliers shedding light on the people sitting in gilded recessed arches. At the picture show an audience became noisier and fidgety when curtain time drew near, while the atmosphere in the theatre felt charged with a quiet and expectant waiting, the shuffling sound of paper as people read through their programs. Geez, it’s like a church, Romeo muttered. He glanced up at a balcony directly above them. Anyone spit on me, I’ll be up there before they can say jackrabbit. He laughed nervously. When Oliver didn’t reply he slouched into the seat, his chin propped in a hand as he stared straight ahead. As he would for the entire concert.

  The theatre darkened and the stillness was instant. The curtain rose, and the audience around the brothers vanished. A young man walked into a spotlight and stood for a moment looking out, then cradled a violin under his chin, raised his bow, and began to play. As he listened Oliver remembered the blinding dazzle of sun on snow, trudging knee-deep through it, his feet plunging down into the foot-holes where Romeo had broken trail among the red osiers. Wanting nothing more than to be outdoors after a two-day storm, to feel the clear sky moving away from him. Hear a school bell ringing in the distance, the church bell calling. His throat tightened with an almost overwhelming desire to weep.

  When the applause ended, another young Eckhardt came on stage to join the first one in a violin duet. As would happen for the remainder of the concert, one after another family member appeared to play various brass, wind and stringed instruments. Midway through the concert a young blonde woman seemingly floated onto the stage in a pale green gown. She sang an aria, her voice an incredibly high warble; when the applause faded she was followed by a banjo-picking black-faced brother performing a vaudeville routine. The audience murmured and shifted in their seats, the young man’s Al Jolson act causing excitement.

  Near the end of the concert the Eckhardt father appeared, a tall poker-stiff man, his tuxedo shirt a glowing white breastplate leading him across the stage. He sat down before a grand piano, and after a pause to adjust the stool and another pause to set his hands above the keys there was a great crashing and swelling of music. The piano concerto unfolded with a magnificence a man would be a fool not to recognize. Oliver’s hands grew clammy and he began shaking as the music washed over him in waves. He was carried away by its force, by its over-large, if not overblown, European beauty. The last note faded and the audience leapt to their feet in applause. Oliver rose hesitantly, followed by Romeo, rumpled and grey in the face, caught half-asleep, startled by the sudden commotion.

  The brothers moved with the flow of people towards the exit and stepped outside, threaded their way amid an ebullience of chatter, clouds of exhaust billowing from automobiles idling at the curb. Oliver’s face burned, his head rang as though he’d been on a long train journey. They went along Main Street towards the city of St. Boniface, where Oliver would stay the night at Romeo’s, two loose-jointed slim figures disappearing into the darkness between the lamp standards and reappearing in a circle of warm light moments later. Oliver elastic in step, filled with energy. Finally he couldn’t resist: What did you think of the concert?

  So that’s how the other side lives. The mucky-mucks, Romeo said, the effects of the liquor worn thin. He loosened the scarf at his neck and almost angrily took it off, stuffing it into a coat pocket.

  Oliver stifled his reaction—pity mixed with disappointment—making allowances for Romeo’s moodiness, as he had done as a child. Romeo kicking Oliver away in anger when he tried to curl against him in bed for warmth; the nightmares that had Romeo thrashing and calling out, and left him dark and silent the following day.

  They crossed the bridge over the river into St. Boniface, a scattering of lights from houses shining among the wintering trees beyond, made soft by a mist that overnight would paint the city white. Oliver sensed now that by insisting on going to the concert he’d caused a distance to come between them. Romeo’s children spoke French while Oliver’s would speak English. I guarantee you that, Oliver had said. Spelling it out clearly for Sara. Speaking French would not get them far in Union Plains and speaking German wouldn’t
even get them to the starting gate. Sara had agreed.

  But there would be no guns, she said. No liquor, no dancing, no worshipping of idols. Crucifixes, she clarified, when he wondered. Within a week they would be married by a priest, as Romeo had insisted, fearing for the souls of Oliver’s children. The following week they were to be married by a minister of Sara’s religion, as her sister had requested. Oliver was agreeable, wanting to clear all the hurdles in their path. When it came to religion, as long as the kids were baptized, Sara could raise them up on her side, it was no skin off his nose. He knew, however, that even though Sara had agreed to the Roman Catholic wedding, the distance between him and Romeo was bound to grow wider.

  There’s a photograph wedged between the pages of a German hymnal that Sara keeps on a shelf on her side of the closet, a photograph that Alvina sometimes takes out and ponders. Oliver is seated on a piano bench, his hair thick and ropy and flipped up at the ends like tiny wings. He leans forward on the bench to nuzzle Sara’s neck, his eyes half-closed. It appears he intends to sniff a corsage pinned near to her shoulder.

  He’s inhaling this moment, inhaling Sara, who perches on his lap, her dress hiked to display a strong-looking calf. The leg of a milkwoman of Flanders, which is where Sara’s ancestors originated. They were Anabaptist martyrs who fled from the Roman Catholic church, going north to the Baltic, where they worked under the protection of a nobleman in fields overshadowed by an imposing red castle. So, perhaps Sara is part Teutonic, especially her work-woman legs. Or her legs may originate from a later migration of the Mennonites into what was south Russia—perhaps she’s descended from a Cossack. But that is highly improbable. Sara’s people, unlike Sara, were slow to mix their blood with others. Whatever the case may be, Alvina is relieved that she didn’t inherit Sara’s plodding, tree-trunk legs.

  Where was the picture taken? Alvina wonders, as Sara unexpectedly and soundlessly enters the bedroom. This particular photograph—the way Sara’s head is turned, exposing the length of her neck, her features obviously embellished by cosmetics, a tendril of hair falling in a C shape on her forehead—causes Alvina to realize that once upon a time her mother was a woman, and not a mother whose rolled-up Wallis Simpson hair is at odds with the pink shirtwaist dress she wears, spotted with large white polka dots, an Eaton’s basement special. Her breasts are flat, two drooping pears, Alvina knows, from once having come upon Sara stepping out of the bath.

  Where were you and Dad when this picture was taken? Alvina asks.

  Oh, it’s just a picture, Sara says, with a dismissive air. Now put it back. And how many times do I have to tell you to stay out of my closet?

  Where was I? Alvina burns to ask. I can count, you know. I was a six-month baby. She suspects her mother is ashamed of this fact.

  Or perhaps Sara cherishes the moment of the photograph, and is reluctant to give Alvina even a small part of it. This all too brief moment when she had Oliver to herself.

  In one such brief moment, Sara and Oliver set off on a brisk winter day to the cathedral near Romeo’s house, to be married. Sara tucked her arm firmly beneath Oliver’s as they followed Romeo and Claudette along the icy walk. The cathedral’s twin spires were their magnetic north on the compass, guiding them towards holy matrimony. As they came near the church Sara had to crane her neck to take them in, to see the birds circling and coming to roost at the base of a spire and then flying away. She thought, spire. The word was now as familiar as the word sky, its winter face above her distant and wan. She could also say the correct word for the white column pouring from a chimney stack across the river in Winnipeg: steam. A tram bell echoed across the frozen river; there were bird tracks dotting the dirty snow around a tree. Sparrows.

  They entered the churchyard and were headed towards the entrance of the St. Boniface Cathedral when Romeo veered from the path. He wound his way among gravestones and moments later called out, Here it is. He squatted and cleared snow from a foot marker. Come and see where Louis Riel is buried.

  Sara refused to go, not wanting to look at graves on the day of her wedding. Her mouth quivered with cold, with nervousness, as Oliver and Claudette obliged Romeo. The twin spires seemed to pierce the winter sky, and her eyes teared from the cold. Months would pass and she wouldn’t think of her family. Now she imagined that her parents rose up from among the gravestones and stood before her. Her father doffed his cap, his weathered features softening with a smile; the fringes of a shawl around her mother’s shoulders fluttered in the wind.

  I’m here, Sara told them. As though they’d been looking for her. As though it were she who had gone away and not they. She said to herself, Papa, give me your blessing. The baby moved, a gentle shifting to one side, and she put her hand against it. If falling to the ground, pounding her fists against the earth, if screaming, if weeping would bring them back, then she would do it. She held her breath and waited for the others to return. By withholding her tears she kept her parents somewhat present, even as they faded into the snowy yard.

  Our grandmother knew him, Romeo said to Oliver, meaning Louis Riel.

  But their father had cautioned them not to mention Riel’s name, as—like many Metis—he was fearful that people would think his family had had anything to do with the man, that their family might be branded traitors to the crown of Britain.

  The brothers and Claudette rejoined Sara and they continued on towards the church, Romeo picking up on what he’d been saying to Oliver. The Orangemen had been hellbent that Riel be executed. When Oliver sent him a warning look, Romeo said that it was important that Sara know about Louis Riel. Despite her growing nervousness at having to stand before the priest, Sara wondered but did not ask, who are the Orangemen? She imagined the name had something to do with the colour of their skin.

  Oliver steered Sara away from the front entrance and along a narrow path cleared in the snow leading to the rear of the church. Twice before they’d gone to the small varnished room, once to request that the priest marry them and then to receive his answer. Sara refused to call the man Father. The ceremony proved to be swift, and throughout it, Sara, accustomed now to Oliver’s almost shy demeanour in the priest’s presence, was subdued too, her voice monosyllabic and barely audible.

  They left the churchyard as husband and wife, Sara animated, while Romeo and Claudette were like children set free from school, giddy and relieved to be away from the saturnine man of the cloth, who had smelled faintly of mothballs. They scooped up snow and threw it at the bride and groom, laughing raucously.

  The priest doesn’t like me, Sara said, and then astonished Oliver by saying that in her opinion the marriage had been held at the rear of the church because the priest feared the sanctuary would be soiled by her Protestant presence. I could feel he didn’t like me, she said, wanting Oliver to dispute it. When he didn’t reply she asked indignantly, How can that man call himself a Christian?

  Oliver wondered what the connection between the two might be. There were people you liked and others you didn’t. He wasn’t accustomed to speaking his thoughts when it came to matters of religion. The man’s a priest, of course he’s Christian. He certainly isn’t Mohammedan or Jewish or hea-then, he said.

  Not everyone who calls himself Christian is a Christian, she replied, with an authority Oliver hadn’t heard from her before. He couldn’t recall ever having used the word Christian in a conversation.

  They went away from the great stone cathedral, along a snowy walk, and then Romeo sprinted towards a busy intersection where the traffic was constant, bound for a taxi stand on the corner. Claudette set down a bulging cloth bag while she waited for Sara and Oliver to catch up. Refreshments, she’d explained somewhat mysteriously when she and Romeo had met them at the train station.

  Hey, you two, she said now, meaning that she was happy for them. Her scarlet Cupid’s bow bled into the chapped skin beneath her nose. Once you got around the strange appearance of her pinched-looking nose and accustomed to the nasal sound of her voice, you coul
d see that she was really quite nice-looking. She waited on Romeo hand and foot. She walked with tiny and cautious steps, her fur-topped boots shuffling cautiously, while Romeo careered mindlessly across the polished snow to the taxi stand, slipping and sliding, whooping as he nearly fell. Moments later a taxi entered the street and Romeo called out to them from the back seat.

  They quickly left the city behind, motoring east along the river on the narrow and wind-drifted road that Kornelius had taken when he’d driven Sara in and out of the city. There was nothing to be seen for miles around except the road reaching on into a white blaze of light, the grooves worn into its surface by sleigh runners, the snow glazed and yellowish like a callus. The whiteness of winter in the countryside was relieved now and again by copses of shrunken-looking oaks, bunches of beige eyebrow grass and wild oats poking through snow banked along the fence lines.

  On one side of the road the land was farmed in narrow strips, affording those early farmers all they required of water, wood and hay land. Land that Kornelius had recently acquired. On the other side of the road the land was divided into squares, each a quarter of a section intersected by a grid of dirt lanes. Where Oliver’s grandfather had built a Red River log cabin, post-on-sill construction, a design brought to the prairie from Quebec.

  Oliver and Sara were bundled in the back seat of the taxi under a blanket, while Romeo sat between the driver and Claudette in the front, nipping at a flask he’d taken from Claudette’s bag even before they’d got out of the city. The windshield began frosting over and Romeo was kept busy for a time, scraping it clear on the driver’s side. But as his features grew blotchy and his speech careless, he switched places with Claudette, who took over the task while Romeo slouched in the window seat and drank in earnest.