The Wife Tree

by Dorothy Speak

  “You’d have to be declared mentally incompetent for the power of attorney to take effect.”

  “But you see, maybe I’ve always been mentally incompetent.”

  “Now, I doubt that, Mrs. Hazzard. But at your age, a power of attorney isn’t a bad thing to have in place. Is there anyone else you could entrust it to? Do you have other children?”

  “Daughters. But they’re all over the world helping people in important ways. They’re involved in causes and movements and maybe even in wars. I’m sure they’d find my minuscule problems very boring. Besides that, they’ve decided they don’t believe in money. They’ve found enjoyable ways to be poor. Do you have children, Mr. Burns?”

  “I never married.”

  “What is that like?” I asked.

  “What is it like? I don’t think I’ve ever given it much thought. I’ve nothing to compare it to.”

  “To be alone all one’s life.”

  “Alone? I — I’m not sure I think of myself that way. One always has — one always has oneself for company.”

  “It must make a person very strong.”

  “Well,” he said, turning in his chair to look out on the street and reflect for a moment. A city bus roared past, three feet from his window. “I suppose I’ve had to create myself, rather than being defined by the affections and demands of others. Of course, it’s taken me all my life.”

  “You never met a woman you wanted to love?”

  He swung round to face me again. “Unfortunately not. I might have, if I’d left Simplicity and exposed myself to a bigger population. My father wanted me to join the army. We’re a military family, Mrs. Hazzard. Our house over on Vansittart Avenue was built by my great-grandfather, who was an admiral in the British Navy. But I’ve no stomach for war. The very sight of blood makes me faint. Even as a child, I refused to fight in the schoolyard.”

  “A pacifist.”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said with, I thought, a tinge of regret.

  “And therefore you’ve stayed here. But you’re very successful, Mr. Burns,” I said, indicating his office.

  He laughed quietly. “This is just a small branch bank, Mrs. Hazzard. But what I do here satisfies me.” He turned and looked out the window once more. “I do admit, though, that there are moments when I’ve wondered what it would have been like to have children. I’ve heard people say having children has enlarged them.”

  “Enlarged? I feel quite the opposite, Mr. Burns. In recent years, at least, my children have made me feel very small. They’ve caused me to feel quite insignificant. There’s no way to be a good parent, Mr. Burns. And then eventually there comes a time when it’s wise to stop loving your children.”

  “Is that so?” he said, mildly surprised. “That must be a difficult moment.”

  “On the contrary, I feel quite soothed by the idea. I expect, Mr. Burns, if all your life you haven’t been pouring your love into your children, there’s a chance of loving yourself a little. Have you found that?”

  He looked out the window once more. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I suppose I have. Unless, of course,” he added hastily, “you mean in a physical sense, in which case —”

  “Oh, no, I wasn’t thinking of that at all.”

  Again a silence fell between us for an awkward but strangely poignant moment.

  “Are you telling me that withdrawing my money is a bad decision?” I asked, coming back to the business at hand.

  He sighed, clearly torn. “Sometimes, I suppose, we must follow our hearts,” he said carefully. “Passion over reason.”

  “Passion,” I said, trying to absorb the word because I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt any passion.

  “Passion. Yes. But please don’t quote me. It’s not a word you’ll find in the bank manager’s manual. Is it just the cash you’re taking? The fifteen thousand? You’re leaving the RRSPs?”

  “What are they worth?”

  He turned to a computer screen and tapped a few instructions into it. “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “That much?” I said, astounded. “But we never had two cents to rub together when the children were small. William was always unemployed.”

  “Well, whatever he earned in more recent years he seems to have saved and invested carefully. You haven’t been living the high life in your retirement, I wouldn’t expect. Those early years of frugality must have become a habit. As for the future, your pension instalments will still be deposited in your accounts every month. I assume you want us to continue to pay your utilities from there? Now if you’ll just wait in one of the chairs outside my door, I’ll instruct someone to get the cash together.”

  “Thank you very much for your help.”

  He rose from his chair. “Which denominations would you like it in?”

  “Twenty-dollar bills?”

  “One last thing, Mrs. Hazzard,” he said before stepping out. “Sometimes people hide money and then they can’t remember where they’ve put it.”

  “Oh, I’ll be very careful.”

  Large snowflakes began to drift down slowly as I walked home, the bible-sized package of crisp bills neatly wrapped in brown paper, forming a pleasant burden inside my coat, roughly the weight of an infant. Luckily, yesterday’s thaw and this morning’s rain had softened the earth. Using a spade I found in the garden shed, I was able easily to break the ground in William’s garden. The smell of the wet soil was powerful. In a hole three inches deep, I placed the package. By the time I’d shovelled the loose soil in on top of it and tamped it down firmly with the sole of my boot, the snow had developed into a squall and was swirling around me so thickly that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I wandered about in the yard for some time before I found the house.

  Dear girls,

  …Last night I dreamed that I was walking home from the hospital. It was dusk and in the softly falling snow I saw a boy with a canvas bag over his shoulder, trekking up and down the shovelled paths to the house porches. And for an instant, I thought: There is Morris delivering his evening papers. But then I said to myself, That’s ridiculous. How could it possibly be Morris when he’s now a man in his forties?

  But in this dream I stopped the boy and said: I didn’t know there were still paper boys, carrying their canvas bags. I thought all the papers were delivered now by grown men cutting ruthlessly through the snow in their heavy Jeeps. The boy didn’t answer me, but kept his head down, the great white flakes falling on his thin bare neck.

  So I asked: Is this a very lonely job? It was only then that he turned his face up at me and by the light of the street lamp I saw that his skin was marred with purple bruises and covered with boils as big and hard as walnuts, just like Morris’s face was when the children along his route used to cry out to him, Hey Scarface! Why are you wearing that Halloween mask? Get your ugly puss out of town!

  And you remember that in those days Morris had a route of one hundred papers because William believed that hauling such a weight of newsprint on his back would make a man out of him. And every winter in the bitterest months, Morris feigned a sprained thumb or an injured ankle, hoping you girls would be forced to take over deliveries for a while. But William, examining the thumb or the ankle, would see through Morris’s ruse and take him to the cellar to beat him for his dishonesty and his cowardice, sending him out once more scarfless into the snow.

  And some evenings Morris arrived home in his thin pea jacket and stood weeping in the hallway from the minus-thirty temperatures, his fingers so frozen and stiff that he couldn’t make them work to unfasten his coat. But I never once went out into the hallway to console him or to slip the icy buttons through their holes because he always came in with his empty sack just at six, when I was busy dishing out the supper for you girls…

  Once more I’ve had the dream in which I’m running through the snowy night pursued by a strange man. It’s deep winter and the temperatures have plummeted and our footsteps squeak on the frozen and hard-packed roads. My stalker is ca
rrying a heavy burden in his pursuit and when he draws near I turn my head and see a great canvas bag thumping on his hip as he runs and in this sack I notice bundles and bundles of paper money. I know then that this is Morris carrying his fortune of ten thousand dollars in a newspaper boy’s bag, and I turn further and see that in his new wealth his face is quite transformed, his complexion cured and scarless and lovable again. But though he carries a handsome treasure in his bag, still he’s not satisfied and won’t cease chasing me and finally I understand that he wants only to open the folds of my gown and warm his icy fingers against my skin. I look down at myself and see that my breasts are exposed and cold as the naked statue in the library courtyard, and I think: I must not let Morris touch me or he’ll see that I am made of stone.

  December 2

  The phone was ringing when I arrived home tonight.

  “Mom, I tried to cash that cheque and it came back NSF.”

  “Hello, Morris.”

  “What’s going on? Why did the bank refuse your cheque?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mom,” he said pointedly, and waited for me to explain, but I kept my silence. “Mom, there’s no money in the account! What happened to it? It was showing in your passbook last week.”

  “I withdrew it, Morris,” I said, both surprised and pleased to hear my voice coming across steady and calm.

  “But why?”

  “I wanted to keep it safe.”

  “What’s safer than a bank? Where did you put it?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve found a good hiding place.”

  “Why did you do that, Mom?”

  “Well, Morris, to be truthful, I didn’t want you to get your hands on it. I can’t give you the ten thousand. I can’t afford to. I don’t know what the future holds for me. I may need every penny of it. I’ve decided to last at least until I’m one hundred years old.”

  “Do you know how embarrassing this is for us?” he asked angrily. “We made a deposit on the house, based on that money. Then our own cheque bounced because of your NSF. We’ve had to pay a penalty. The real estate agent is furious. The vendors think we’re a risk. They don’t want anything more to do with us. How do you think I feel? I can’t trust my own mother.”

  “I never wanted to write that cheque in the first place, Morris.”

  “Well, then, why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I think I did.”

  “Olive is beside herself with disappointment. She was so happy about that dining room.”

  “Are you sure Olive is capable of happiness?” I asked, then bit my tongue.

  A palpable silence followed. I sensed he was about to hang up on me so I told him about The Cedars.

  “Dad shouldn’t be going there, Mom,” Morris said. “It’s too far away. You don’t drive. How will you visit him? He’ll feel lonely and abandoned. It could be the kiss of death for him. Why did you consent to it without consulting the family? We should all have a say. We’ve got a right to be part of these decisions. You should never have agreed to it. You should have brought him home.”

  “But, Morris, I wouldn’t ever have been able to leave the house.”

  “What do you go out for, anyway? You said your bridge is finished.”

  “I have my daily walks.”

  “What’s a daily walk against your responsibilities as a wife? In goodness and in health till death us do part. Isn’t that the vow you took? Olive will never abandon me the way you’ve deserted Dad. She’ll be at my side until I breathe my last breath. That’s what a wife is for.”

  “Why do you care about your father so much, after the way he treated you?”

  “Forgiveness, Mom. Isn’t that what Christianity is all about?”

  “I wish it were, Morris.”

  December 3

  Tonight after supper I went upstairs and crept into the cubbyhole, which runs under the eaves along the length of the two bedrooms and is accessed by a child-sized doorway. I was looking for a suitcase in which to transport William’s wardrobe to the rehab centre. I snapped on an old gooseneck lamp, its light flooding obliquely along the unfinished floorboards, which over the years have grown dry and brittle under the eaves, their warped edges flowing like waves. Creeping along the uneven boards, my rusty knee joints shouting with pain, the ceiling sloping hard over my shoulder, I found William’s army trunk, which I hadn’t noticed in years. Curious, I opened it and lifted out his cap, air force uniform and greatcoat, all perfectly preserved by the arid, dustless, tomblike environment. I lay the garments across my lap, their great weight of dense wool pressing, heavy as a man’s body, on my thighs. I ran my fingers over the rough wool, the brass buttons, remembering how William had slipped so eagerly from the matrimonial bed the morning he went overseas and the joy with which, in his lust for war, he’d thrust his arms into the uniform, into the overcoat, hungry for their warmth after the ball-freezing chill of his new bride’s body.

  In the bottom of the trunk I discovered his war memorabilia. I browsed through it with the help of the magnifying glass, pulled from my apron pocket. A notebook on explosives. Another on navigation. Both written in his own dry, horizontal script, the tops of each letter cut off, flat as the prairie. His Royal Canadian Air Force Identity Card, with a sepia snapshot of himself stapled inside it, his hair shorn close to his head. His enlistment papers. His Distinguished Flying Cross citation. A pocket chess and checkers set. A card of beer coupons. A snapshot of his squadron posed on the wing of a Halifax.

  I drew a letter, yellowed and brittle with age, from the bottom of the trunk, opened it gently, careful not to crack the fragile folds. From the page, my own young handwriting flew up at me, its fat, fluid loops and stems and circles and tails so foreign and painful to me in their passion and spaciousness, their all-or-nothing freshness of youth.

  January 1946

  Dear William,

  It’s many months since VE-Day and I don’t know how long since you set foot back in Canada, but still you haven’t shown your face on the doorstep of my apartment, which I thought we both now considered our family home. Nor have you even inquired after the health of your own child, who’s growing bigger day by day without knowledge of her father. Your air force cheques have of course stopped coming and I’ve had to swallow my pride and accept the charity of friends. They’ve been kind enough not to make me feel a beggar. Nevertheless, I’ve suffered unnecessary embarrassment, and your irresponsibility has to a degree blackened your child’s name. At this rate, she will quickly come to know what kind of hardship and disgrace can befall the child of a prairie man. I wonder what you yourself are living off of while you gallivant around the countryside and if you’re better off than your wife and your daughter, whom you fathered in good faith, I thought.

  I know you have itchy feet by nature and also that war does strange things to men’s minds, but an absence of so long with nary a letter or explanation is a sore burden to ask a woman to bear. It’s a comfort at least for me to know that you’re still residing in Ontario and not run off out west after some dream. I never conceived I’d have to communicate with my own husband by post office box. As for your romantic notions of launching an enterprise, I’d like to know where you plan to find the money to start it up. You’re no businessman. When I met you out west, your general store was deep in the red. A good thing the war came along to give you an excuse to shut it down, while still saving face.

  Lily is nearly walking now and soon will be needing a sibling. Her second birthday is next month and I know you’re going to be here to celebrate it.

  Never think it would be easy for you to escape me. I’d follow you to the end of the earth to provide a father for my child. Every day I ask myself what it is I’ve done to make you want to hide from me. As for your daughter, she’s innocent of any guilt and wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t performed the act to create her.

  Your wife,

  Morgan

  Shame. Shame, fury, anguish at what I read, so much so that
my whole body trembled with it — burned with a hot flood of self-loathing and disgust. How could I have had so little dignity? So few resources? I hated the woman in the letter. I folded it up angrily and slipped it into my apron pocket, determined that no other eyes would ever fall on it. Oh, yes, I imagined the children saying if they ever discovered the letter. Mother! Doesn’t that just sound like her? Or, Pity poor Dad. If only he’d gotten away.

  I was about to return William’s uniform to its storage when I noticed another letter at the bottom of the trunk, crumpled in a corner. I lifted it out and opened it up with curiosity and some trepidation. Pressing my magnifying glass to the page, I immediately recognized the handwriting.

  Dear William,

  I dispatch this letter by express delivery to let you know that Morgan is hot on your trail. She wrote to me asking to know your whereabouts and I replied by return post, playing innocent and claiming no knowledge of where you’d vanished to. I read both panic and tenacity between the lines of her letter. In my lifetime I’ve seen even people with as little imagination as Morgan find the resources to hunt down what they stubbornly believe is theirs. If you want to go off to war a free man, I exhort you to ensure that you’re posted overseas at the earliest possible opportunity, that you might escape the tentacles of Morgan’s reach.

  You never told me that you’d sent Morgan a silver bowl, and also (she claims) a pair of rings. How am I to interpret these gifts when, after her departure, you were keeping my bed warm every night and creeping home to your apartment above the store only when the prairie dawn broke, all too early, over the horizon? Seamus was just here on a furlough and, sober for once, was able to be passionate in his lovemaking, but each time he entered me, my thoughts were only of you and all my moaning and my cries of pleasure were just a celebration of the times you and I spent in each other’s arms and which I long to enjoy again…