The little Ben at the bedside says 4:30; in its greenish glow her mind grows tentacles, like the tubes that she pictures trailing from Harry in his cold white bed. Choking off his voice and her reason, they latch on to rubble best left buried, snowed or grassed over. But like rocks growing in the garden, the rubble leaches upwards through dust and cobwebs the colours of dawn, if dawn ever comes. There are worse things than dying, way worse, and knowing it knocks her down, it no longer matters if she’s waking or sleeping, all but defenceless against memory’s wave.
Good thoughts, good thoughts: her will bubbles at first in protest, a fierce effervescence. And so it floods back: a flash of light at first, for the only way to begin her freefall is with white. A snowy hill in the background, whiteness solid as a drumlin, Citadel Hill an upside-down bowl....
1917
FOR SNOW HAD FLOWN THE night she gave birth; covering the hill and everything else, it pushed and stung and drifted. Tent walls flapped, men shouted, sweeping them off. The wind yowling like a cat as she’d laboured. A goddamned tomcat, someone said, as God whitewashed the wreckage. He was present when the baby came, and only he had known how the Jesus she’d got there, because she didn’t, shunted through piles of matchsticks to a forest of tents.
Canvas shifted like sand near her face, its smell a comfort as hands worked over her. Freezing hands. Dubbin and the stink of kerosene, a thread of warmth; and in her mind she’d been a schoolgirl again. Grade two, Richmond school, the kid beside her crawling with cooties. Next she’d been home stoking the stove, in the flat on Campbell Road, cracking eggs…
“Breathe!” the dove had cooed, tending her. A nursing sister veiled in grey. “Push!”
Breath chugging out like a screaming locomotive’s plume. Mama? MAMA? There’d been no Mama. But her body’d remembered what to do, no trouble at all jerking up those bloodied knees till the cold had nipped her backside. Push! And quickly, too quickly, the baby’d come.
“Some fast for a first. A boy,” somebody said. A boy? Her first? A mistake, surely, wrought by the wind’s caterwauling, and weeping from the other tents. Her lungs like slob ice; for an instant, she’d quit breathing.
“Poor little critter—it’ll freeze to death, we don’t get ’em moved.”
But before she could argue, before she could explain the difference, they were swaddled in filthy blankets, madonna and child, and moved.
The whisk of runners carving tracks away from the hill and the tent village resembling a sea of Christmas trees huddled at its foot.
But that was as far as whiteness went.
The sky had rained tar earlier, what, a morning before? A lifetime? Tar and blood and needles of glass. It’d wept chunks of earth and flaming metal when she came to on a hill: another, smaller one way across town from the overturned bowl. One boot on, one boot off, she’d found herself lying there arse over teakettle, limbs splayed. Barelegged, knees big as softballs oozing purple.
No sign at all of the itchy grey stockings she’d just pulled on, slouching over her cannonball belly. Gut in her throat, as Harry’d yelled—
“Cufflinks. You seen my—?”
Her shirtwaist wrung like a dishrag, every last button gone. Toes facing uphill, hands and feet the points of a compass rose. Blood drummed her ears as a mushroom grew in the sky, a giant, spreading fungus that crowded out the sun. The spiky grass grazed her cheek: an inch from her eye a bedspring, and something else, unspeakable, purple, with suckers trailing from it like a jellyfish’s. A hand?
Pinning her there, a buoy, the baby’s weight on her back had made her pant.
Mama? Dad? Harry? she’d screamed and screamed, till no sound came out.
AS THE AIR LIGHTENED—GRUEL THINNED with water—its stillness seared her. Not a breath of wind, not a wisp. In the mushroom’s shadow, the view was like a pot left on the stove, the bottom burnt right out. Somewhere far below lay the greasy gleam of water. Blood from a gash stained her vision pink, the vision of a cellar dredged clean to China; trees smoking gallows. Curled like a snail, she groped for her name, the day. Limbs starfished, the baby pressing her spine, she flailed for a location.
Harry was getting his tooth out, wasn’t he, the appointment booked for the sixth…?
Rag dolls dangled from wires, wires like skipping ropes: a cockeyed game of double dutch? Washing stuck in a trapeze. Voices yelling in her head: Liar, liar, pants on fire, couldn’t get over the telephone wire…
Dolly, you must’ve put ’em somewhere. When you washed my shirts?
Our Father. Our fa-ther. Dad?
Mama?
Sis? Ethel?
Her big round belly a buoy.
A front-room radiator, a stove pipe, a piano’s keyboard lay there too: a junkyard trail. If she followed the pieces they’d lead her home? Thoughts ricocheted. A war zone! A newsreel had spun, like the box office hit that might even come to the Strand, The Battle of the Somme, and dumped her into its mud. The Huns. The work of the Kaiser—the Krauts!
Oh sweet Jesus and all that’s good, they’d been bombed, and why would the devil give a goddamn if it was Wednesday or Thursday?
Something squirmed: a fish inside her?
Harry? Harry Caines?!
FOUR FORTY-FIVE IN THE MORNING, there’s nothing for it but to get up. Useless, lying here in this black bog.
Downstairs, glancing off the cupboards her voice is as artificially bright and jarring as the overhead light. “I’m calling about my husband?” It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, she’s heard somewhere—maybe it’s the priest who’s said it—therefore it takes less energy. The new fellow at St. Columba’s. That earnest voice of his seems to coax from inside her as the nurse, or whoever, answers, puts down the phone. Believe, he’s always saying, because believing makes it so.
“No change. I’m sorry.” The nurse’s news is a scalpel wiped in compassion. Officious enough that Lucy listens, foolishly, for Harry’s voice. But all she hears is
Have you seen my. Shaving brush. My. Cufflinks…?
The pickles wait on the counter; they haven’t gone anywhere. Just as well. A desperate energy fills her: like the “zest” she used to get when her period started, and then when it finally ceased. Keep busy, busy: if she buckles down, the dills might be saved yet. A treat for Harry, when he gets out. The little frogs are wizened, yellowed, but firm enough to justify starting over.
There’s just enough vinegar to try again. “Square one, Harry,” she declares, as if he’s there. A clean slate—if only. If only troubles could be sucked like water up a hose.
ON THAT BARE SLOPE HER unborn baby had kicked and jabbed her back to life. Her eyes jammed open like a shutter: roofs ripped off like box tops. Clothes spilled from open-eyed windows, laundry that should’ve billowed, would have, hung out that morning. Early, early. The pulse of early had beat in her neck as she vomited.
The only one in the entire world spared.
Harry, eyeing that tooth in the mirror…
The air had tasted of roasted iron. As it cleared, in the starless, backwards black, bonfires had sprouted. Boy Scouts? The whiff of scorched meat. But like a genie, like a scent released from a porcelain bottle, it had enveloped and pulled her to her feet. Her face felt sunburned, one ankle like a pincushion, a gash where her boot would’ve buttoned, and her knees… It was as if a leg, an arm, a foot, a hand, something had been amputated, and yet, she counted, she could see, none were missing. Her tears were soot: of course she was dreaming. She’d wake, and find herself back on Campbell Road, poaching eggs.
Knife-sharp, the rising wind had shoved her downhill to what remained of the street. A house flagging like cardboard, gusts playing the staircase that dangled by a nail. Turning a corner marked by a picket, she’d passed a cow: an upside-down bathtub, its feet like hoofs. Her ears rang, a dull whining drone, and as she tripped past what looked like a drawer, the w
ind wailed just like a baby. Picking her way round a horse’s fetlocks, she’d heard it again, a whimper. But then a foghorn moaned, and something had staggered out of the darkness towards her. A man, buck naked, skin curling from his bones like wood from an awl. His eyes were holes, his hands pawing at nothing. His cries a rattle of blood: Help me.
The wind had pushed harder, and she’d limped and wallowed faster. The moon had appeared, a hazy eye atop a swaying wall. Tiny heels pummelled her lungs, and squatting, she’d dreamed, no, heard, a miracle. Voices. Angels, faint at first, then shouting. Men. Shimmying wheels.
She’d no longer felt her knees; even her belly had grown weightless. Almost airborne…missing, missing…
Words. That homey, lazy drawl: Haligonian not Deutsch: “Keep yer jesus shirt on. Can’t do nothin’ for that poor bastard; leave him.”
Here. Her voice a croak, the crackle of a tiny flame. Then louder. Loud enough to quicken the dead. Please.
The soldiers had loaded her into a cart with a woman clutching something in a towel. The poor creature could have been a Hun, for her lack of expression. Someone wrapped Lucy in his coat, held a flask. Brushfire had ripped down her gullet; she could’ve kissed each finger of his bloody glove. Her neck snapping to the horse’s lope, eyes pinned on the blue of its flanks, she’d given herself up, and been hauled from the lip of hell up Agricola Street…
DAWN BREAKS AS SHE LADLES in fresh brine the colour of the liquid that’d been dripping into Harry’s vein. Drip drip drip: she can almost feel a stinging yet invigorating chill entering her own body. As she seals the jars, re-boils them. That sound again: her voice, praying. One long looping Our Father. He has to pull through; he can’t not.
The pop of each cooling lid buoys her, buoys her more than she might’ve hoped. He’ll make it, says each tiny burst, each lagging beat marking the fridge’s melodious drone with a cockeyed percussion. Believe, it yells, and dawn sweats through the curtains, a pale flush. Humbled, blushingly optimistic as the sun begins to scale the wall, she digs out her biggest bowl and mixes porridge bread: Harry’s absolute fave. Criminy, she hasn’t made it in years.
“It’ll be all right,” she murmurs, kneading. Her hands are stubby as driftwood punching the dough; but the motion of her fists sinking into it suddenly, with no warning at all, pulls down tears. It’s the ghost of loss. “I could kick your arse, Harry,” she’d like to blame him, “your Londonderriere.” Sticky fists in her eyes, her choking laugh graces the air’s shadowy, yellowing blue. O Danny Boy! Luckily only God can hear. Think white, think snow, he shouts back, at least the voice inside her does, the voice that she’d like to consider his. So she obeys. But then there’s no stopping it, the whiteness of snow on canvas melting to a dismal grey…
A SHIP’S ON FIRE, SOMEBODY’D hollered first thing that deadly bright cold morning—the fellow in the flat downstairs? And she’d thought, Good, that’s as good a place as they could get for a fire, on water. And that had been it for a warning…
“Lucy, wha’d you do with my goddamn cufflinks?” Harry’d bellowed.
No time to answer, or even to back from the stove…
Pieces of sky like smelts, a blackened silvery red streaming down…
And then the tent, the flapping cold, a frozen confusion. Some fast for a firstborn, wha’? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a small mercy, nope, a miracle she went the way she did, not a hitch. Loaded onto the sleigh, this boy creature bundled to her like a foundling, yet both her hands, if not sliced right off, then utterly, utterly empty.
3
TWELVE FRESH JARS SHELVED IN the cellar and dough on the rise, she’s upstairs rinsing her eyes with cold water when the ruckus erupts. Jewel already, this early? A chill zippers her spine. Her eyes throb, then tingle, and something inside her shrivels. There’s news?
Footsteps below on the porch. Banging. A voice explodes: “Scissors? Knives? Anyt’ing youse need sharpened?” The shout cracks around that last word. She forgets and leaves the tap running, creeping across the hallway to the sewing room, Jewel’s old bedroom. Peering down, she sees. There’s a wagon, of all blessed things, not much bigger than the kind Robert had when he was small, piled high with junk and some sort of machinery. A sign perched on top says Saints O’ Knives.
God of mercy—of all bloody times! It’s that wing nut from the cove, the one who seems to come and go with the tide—or the wind, like birds of the air: crows that is, scavengers. “Take a hike, bud,” that was Harry, the last time the fellow had the gall to come around here. “Last thing you want is that frigging traveller in your face.” Hard not to feel sorry for him, though; she’s always pitied people like Benny. Just Benny, people call him, as if his last name’s a secret. “Classified information,” as Harry would snort.
Try next door. Mrs. Chaddock’ll give you something to sharpen, she almost hollers down. But he’s stopped yelling, scenting her perhaps, like a fox or raccoon would. The bell’s long, endless brrring practically wires her jaw shut. G’way! Vamoose! she screams silently. Still, it’s hard to resist peeking down again at his gear, a jumble of shiny things heaped in a dishpan—blades? Just as she looks, he scowls up from the walk, his plaid hunting jacket seedily jaunty. Remembering the tap, its impatient hiss, she shrinks back, though not fully out of sight. There are her old sewing scissors and the garden shears, dull as cloth, and the lilac does need pruning. Now don’t encourage the guy, an inner voice like Harry’s warns. And hadn’t she done him a favour once, hiring him to fix something? “It’s your fault buddy comes around.”
“Get lost, Benny—or I’ll sharpen you!” The bite of Harry’s tongue that day brings a smile even now as she creeps downstairs, uncertain what to do. For half a second, it’s as if Harry’s not even sick, but right here being pestered in the middle of a tune. “Don’t you get it? That’s how fellas like him operate. Make you feel so guilty you go, ‘Here, take the goddamn shirt off my back, oh, and my boxers too,’ just to be rid of ’em.” It’s true, on top of everything else, she does feel bad for deciding to play dead, pretending not to be home. The frigger, Harry would say. Too late to go blithely answering the door; but now she feels like a hostage trapped inside.
The sound of tires chewing gravel and the tick-tick-tick of an engine save her.
“Not today, bud. Go home to Foxy—your girlfriend?” she hears Jewel joking. “Oh, no, sorry, it’s Boxy isn’t it, Boxy Lady? Listen, Ma’s got a lot on her plate right now. You gotta pick your spots.” They could almost be old pals, it seems, until Jewel’s voice gets gruff: “C’mon, shake a leg. Get a move on, I’m serious.” A few grunts of protest, but the fellow saunters off, his cart clattering behind him. Then dread rushes in: behind the little lace curtain she feels suddenly faint, faintly disgruntled, then dizzy. She wants to lie down.
“They called you?” The first thing she says. “There’s a change?”
Patting her arm, smiling grimly, Jewel just hands her a paper bag. Baking? “Thought we’d go in early. Becky says—here, she sent these over.” His nose wrinkles. “What’s that smell?” and she remembers, almost with embarrassment, the dough rising under its tea towel like a belly, a belly with a bun in the oven.
Jewel slides a doughnut onto a plate. “How ’bout a bite, first?” Its middle puckered, the thing’s as hard as a puck. Enough to pick off a crow if someone chucked it, Robert might say.
“I’m not too hungry just now, my darling.”
He eyes the bowl with its gingham-covered mound. “Jeez, you been busy. Don’t knock yourself out now.” Sucking his teeth, he shakes Rebecca’s treat back into the bag.
“It’s just that…I like having things ready. In all respects ready.” That last bit’s so officious it even makes her blink.
“Ma—?” His look is searching, incredulous.
Having to explain is like stabbing a balloon with a safety pin. “For when your father comes home, dear. There was that other time, you k
now. When I almost…when it seemed for good. That time before,” she says, those words quite sufficient.
AFTER THE BIRTH, A SPOT had come up in a church basement, a shelter full of strangers wearing turbans of gauze. A nurse whisked her and the strange infant behind a curtain and washed them down. Dabbing at her kneecaps, the woman’s brisk hands bound Lucy’s belly, stopping just short of binding her breasts. Go ahead, she’d wanted to say, staring at the blue-lipped creature fussing between them. Its crib was a munitions box: Ah, so this foundling had come by sea? “But he’s not mine,” she insisted. “I don’t know how he got here.” The nurse gave her a pitiful look and the infant’s face a lick and a promise with her cloth. That look was like the grit on Lucy’s scalp, sand? But her fingers came away nicked: it was ground glass.
And who would’ve guessed Harry was there? A whole day passed before she found him; no wonder. He was unrecognizable at first, lying on a stretcher at the far end of the cellar. All bandaged up, just his right eye staring out, his head cocooned. A pail sat beside him, something round and red and grisly lolling in it. He cried out when she grasped his toe: “Oh my Jesus—is it you, dolly?” He made a choking sound as she clawed at his hand. His one eye roving over her. “What’s this? My Jesus, you had it?” Clasped to her shoulder was the swaddled babe, which she was minding for someone, she said. Then his eye, the one in his head, glazed over, and his breath was a wave curling, breaking. “But where’s my pumpkin? Lucy? Where’s Helena?”
Then a nurse, the one who’d bathed her, gripped her shoulder. There was news, she said, of both their families. Already caked, Lucy’s breasts throbbed; the heat, the tightness worming through her at the same instant a blade fell. Helena—?
Glass Voices Page 3