Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  The prisoner’s breath, the memory of it, seemed to lift from the paper and settle on her skin till she felt clammy. Any thoughts of Lil and her fancy feather turned grey as a molting pigeon. Freundlichkeit. What did it mean, that he felt obliged to repay her? For her charity—in exchange for his giving her her life back, the small, cool treasure of self-preservation she’d curled her fist around, despite the guilt. As she fingered the banknote, her heart thumped in her ears.

  At home she tucked the envelope into Father Marcus’s catechism and slid it under the sofa. The letter would have to be disposed of—but, a thousand marks! Manna—enough for fifteen loos! But then a dreadful notion had crept in, one that sucked the air from her. She was no better than a Lily Marryatt, a proper sleveen: he was paying her! Filthy lucre. Lead us not into temptation, she imagined the priest leading a prayer, never mind that she hadn’t been to Mass in a dog’s age. But then she’d quickly shoved the thought away. One thousand marks: that would more than cover the improvements upstairs, with some left over. But how ever would she explain—that she’d won it?

  Harry arrived home early with Artie in tow. They’d both been drinking, Harry too lit, perhaps, to notice the look on her face. “Where’d you put my fiddle?” was all he said. Giving Harry a shove, Artie asked if he could count on him, and he’d winked at her: “If not, bud, I’ll take that as a sign you’re agin me.” Then the two of them had disappeared to the basement, Artie cursing a blue streak to the squawk of “Roll Out the Barrel.”

  That Saturday, out of the blue, two fellows in a truck dropped off a pedestal sink, tub, and toilet. Harry’s doing, though he still quibbled. “What if we end up with another brat? Where’ll we put him, in the outhouse? That’d make a fine nursery.” Or music hall, she’d felt like sniping.

  Didn’t he know what it summoned up, the mention of a baby? That newborn tenderness, the thought of it like a whirlpool, the ghost of a small, fading smile spinning through her, pulling her down. Coyly, she’d remarked that she didn’t know he wanted another. “I don’t,” he’d snapped back, then resumed playing, “Lord Lovat’s Lament” veering like a car off the rails.

  Next she’d heard him on the phone: I’m cutting back, bud. Saying it was her doing; she didn’t like him playing poker, not every night, anyhow. As if it were her, and not the fiddling that interfered with his gaming. Never mind the front room crowded with porcelain, a storeroom for bathroom fixtures all of a sudden. She’d just got Jewel into the sink when Artie appeared, the yeastiness of his breath reminding her of lilacs. “I been thinking,” he told Harry, raising a beer, “maybe we could figger something out.” Dwink! Jewel had lisped, pointing, and before she could stop him, Artie’d held the bottle to his mouth: Long as he don’t chug it, eh? And then he’d turned business-like: “Okay, Harry. Show me what I can do you for. Cash, up front? Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Right, missus?” he’d boomed, asking if she was sure about losing that bedroom, before the pair of them thumped upstairs to take a gander. “I mean, what if,” he said, “you find that little one youse’ve been missing?”

  SHE TRIED MAKING A GAME of it—Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall—teaching Jewel the motions to the words as the plaster caved and crumbled overhead, the handiwork of a team of men thundering around up there. She just had to trust that they knew what they were doing, making way for the pipes. The room looked like it’d been shelled, the pounding enough to drive a saint crazy, that and that infernal fiddling. It took five fellows to wrestle the tub upstairs. “Watch she don’t go adrift!” one kept yelling. Meanwhile, Harry paced and sweated over what it would cost, while she kept mum—which ratcheted up her guilt, and made the prospect of springing her windfall on him all the more delicious, but scary. What the heck would she say? By the way, look what I found under a rock?

  As she washed dishes beneath the groaning joists, men piling around her cracking beers, she’d spotted a chance, well, half a chance, and brushing off Harry’s What’s there to eat? slipped to the front room. The toilet was in the way, but she managed to squeeze around it. The envelope was where she’d left it, undisturbed. Waiting till she heard Harry go out back for more beer, she’d scooted upstairs. Tucking the brownish bill into her purse, she’d given Heinemann’s note a final skim, its meaning still no clearer. The men’s banter filtered up through holes in the floor; a riddle, laughter. Whaddya call a lure? A hooker, get it? Ah, our lady Lily! Artie’s rasp: You jealous little bastards! then his laugh. Forget Lil, you fellas—it’s the gubbermint keeping me in business. The gubbermint?

  Skirting the holes, she’d stepped round the tub marooned there like a giant shell; below the window gaped the opening they’d punched for the hot and cold. Kneeling, she folded the note into a hard little square, and dropped it in. But a worry buzzed, and she went and got Harry’s bow.

  Below, laughter turned to groans about finishing up; in the next room Jewel woke from his nap. Poking the bow down into the cavity, she’d probed around, its hairs snagging a stud, but that was all. Harry hadn’t bothered with insulation, not a scrap of newspaper or seaweed to get in the way. Then a creak came from the stairs, and her hand jerked. Slipping, the bow clattered down, disappearing. Glory, how stupid, careless! Harry would have an utter conniption, missing it; worse, what if he found it? Not only it, but…Gimme a hand with the sink, fella, she’d heard. Mind that pedestal, it cost me a fortune. She’d reached down as far as her arm would go, but nothing.

  Picturing the bow sitting on the sill plate in a hill of sawdust, Heinemann’s letter for company, she imagined Edgar Boutilier hectoring, Pizzicata, Harry! Then boots had scuffed the landing. “That’ll learn you, putting a woman in charge,” Artie moaned as the others barrelled in with the sink on its little white pillar. The sight had made her think of Lot’s wife, and salt. Then Artie’d winked, his saggy eyes all over her. “Bad luck, fellas, keepin’ a lady waiting. Harry, you paying us by the hour, or wha’?”

  A strange giddiness bubbling inside, she’d been unable to resist, “Lil keeps you hopping, I guess,” aiming it at Artie.

  She only meant it as a joke, but after the men left, Harry demanded to know what she had against her, anyways, and she’d pretended not to know who he meant. “You know damn well,” he’d muttered fiercely.

  SHE WAS DAMNED GLAD OF Jewel snuggled against her, a shield, when she slid the banknote through the wicket. “What’s this?” The teller had seemed flustered, going off to get advice. When he came back, he pushed a couple of five dollar bills and a few ones towards her. Baffled, she’d felt her face go red and then pale, her breath warming Jewel’s curls. “There must be some mistake,” she’d said. The teller pursed his lips. “Don’t you read the paper? Hun money, honey.” He flushed at his little rhyme. “Peanuts, ma’am, but with nutting inside.”

  Lacking the heart to start supper, she dawdled over the dusting, the whole house in need of it. Harry banged pot lids, baffled: “Nothing cookin’?” She was polishing the mantel when he opened his violin case. There was a silence, then he started scrabbling around, looking everywhere. “Where the hell—?” he said, accusing Jewel of getting at it. Turning things upside down, searching high and low, he’d ranted about respect, wondering how any decent woman could let a kid—“No one touches Artie’s stuff!” he bellowed, and she could only grit her teeth for so long.

  “All right,” she’d said, standing up to him, “so what kind of woman tells her little one, ‘Drink your spit?”’

  He swung the violin before laying it back in its case, the thing forlorn as a calf-less cow. Laughing bitterly, he told her to get over it, that Lil was a good head, a good sport.

  “I’m sure she is,” she’d faced him squarely, “but what I’d like to know—”

  Okay, okay, he’d waved his hands. “So she helps—with Artie’s business, all right?” and he’d explained how she drew customers, players he meant, and kept them in line. Then, like a little ki
d, he asked if there was pie from the night before, saying he was near perished. And she’d snarled back, why not ask Lil for pie, or some cake? Or was Lil too caught up in business to bake?

  She’d thought of their housewarming party, the daughter’s fingers in the frosting. “That poor child,” she sniffed.

  He practically jumped down her throat: “Becky, you mean? Give it a rest, for chrissake.” Latching the case, he stalked into the hall, yelling, “Wouldn’t you like to know,” when she asked where he was going. His voice the same as when he made a mistake: measure twice, cut once.

  Wheedling about the bathroom, she heard herself say she’d whip up supper, something nice. But he’d shoved on his cap, and she’d lost her temper—“For Pete’s sake, what would Lil cook up?”—sounding hoity-toity, but hurt, too, and instantly regretting it. Because this thing with Lil was a trifling, wasn’t it? A fling of the imagination?

  But then he’d thrown it back at her: “If you’ve got something to say, say it,” blaming her for having too much time on her hands and listening to priests. Which was ridiculous, since she hadn’t been to St. Columba’s in what, a year?

  But Harry hadn’t stopped there, ranting about Ida: “That bloody old rag-bag,” he railed, accusing Ida of filling her head with this rot about Lil and him. “Garbage,” he dragged it out. And she’d goaded, “What about you an’ Lil?” until he’d hollered, “Don’t tempt me, dolly,” and somewhere in the house Jewel started screeching, as she dared him to raise his voice like that again. Yet, he’d grabbed the last word, asking, “Know what’s good about Lil?” Since Lucy seemed to know so much, he said, calling Lil a friend. One who knew when to keep her trap shut, “and when friggin’ not to!” Then he’d slammed out.

  Sometime in the night, though, he came home; she’d woken to the sound of pounding. In the morning, there was the throne itself freshly installed—Her Majesty’s Waterworks, June 20th, 1920 scrawled on the plaster above it—but positioned so close to the tub one had to sit sidesaddle. She found Harry downstairs trying to make coffee; other than that, it was as if the fight had never happened. But then the noise of splashing erupted upstairs—how had Jewel escaped from his crib? Harry on her heels as she dashed upstairs; and then he’d proudly demonstrated. You push the handle, like so.

  Jewel blinked and laughed with delight, and the phone rang—never mind that it was just after dawn and likely some crank on the party line—and Harry ran down to answer it. “Lemme see what I can do,” she heard him say, and that he’d be seeing Babineau later, and they’d settle things after that. The plumber, he’d explained, coming back up and lathering his face for a shave. Jewel swishing his hands in the bowl, flushing and flushing again. Tanyerhide mum-mum tanyerhide.

  FEELING GUILTY FOR HER ABSENCE, she re-entered St. Columba’s through the sin-box, as Harry called it, though he’d never darkened the church doorway let alone a confessional. The spirit was willing, she’d wanted to plead, but the rest of her got waylaid. Father Marcus had barely blinked, prescribing two Hail Marys, no meat on Fridays, and keeping the Sabbath. It was only wise to obey, for Jewel’s sake, since St. Columba’s was also the nearest school.

  Harry took delight in frying bacon on Fridays. “Oops,” he’d say, telling Jewel to get it off her plate; they didn’t want her going to hell. Hard to say which was worse, his teasing or his fiddling; he’d already gone through another bow after replacing the first.

  “Hellinahambasket, right Daddy?” Jewel would crow right back, old enough, before they knew it, to start grade one.

  As usual Harry had something to say, never mind that he waited till she’d seen Sister Jerome, the principal, about signing the boy up. “Bloody Catlicks,” he’d started in, asking what they taught there, exorcism? They could practise on you, she’d wanted to say, focusing instead on her knitting. Then Jewel had started, refusing to go for his bath, his dad fiddling “Shave and a Haircut” as she dragged him upstairs.

  Digging his heels in, Jewel said he didn’t want to go to bed—or to school. Who could blame him? Harry nattered, saddled with a name like that. “The kid’ll be teased six ways to Sunday—watch,” he said.

  The gall, to raise it after nearly five years!

  “Sounds like ‘drool’ with a lilt,” he’d added.

  A little voice had piped up from the stairs, “I like my name,” saying it was jiggly as green jelly. “Green like an emerald, right Ma?” He sounded so pleased, even when his dad hollered to get upstairs.

  She’d found it funny enough to ask, “What colour’s ‘Ma,’ then?” And his father’s name? No colour, and brown like dirt, apparently. She’d stifled laughter, threatening, “Upstairs, before I put your head in a sling!”

  Harry wasn’t amused, though. “Think he was a pansy, talking like that,” he said, accusing her of raising him like a girl. Behind the grate, blue flames hissed as singing travelled downstairs: Run, run, fast as you can, can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man. And she’d thought of Helena, the name like white smoke wafting upwards, and where she’d got it: the tale from the Greeks she’d heard in school of the woman whose love for somebody launched a war; if any war started here, it’d be Lil Marryatt behind it! Surprisingly, Harry’d gone along with ‘Helena;’ ‘Helen’ was too plain, he’d said, holding the infant girl up to the sunlight—holding her as if she were a piece of china, used as he was to things of metal, or wood. Mama had loved the name, because it made a person slow down to say each syllable.

  Dropping stitches, she’d had to rip out a row. “Enough, finis,” she’d cut Harry short, borrowing the word from Sister Jerome.

  “A forn language now, is it?” he’d sputtered. Putting his bow safely out of reach, he’d grabbed his coat, muttering that there was a big game that night, so she needn’t bother waiting up.

  She’d found Jewel awake upstairs studying an ostrich in his little illustrated dictionary. “Snow works as good as sand, I bet, if you’re like him,” he said soberly. “Except, if he’s a bird, how come he can’t fly?” The spat with Harry ringing in her ears, she’d tried coaxing him to say his prayers, like pulling teeth. He wanted to know if Jesus had to go to school—“that guy in the pitcher”—and where he lived. Now I lay-mee down ta sleep, he finally mimicked. If I shoul’ die be-four-eye wake…I pray the lord myso’ to take. Even parroted back, the words had weight.

  One afternoon she’d caught him lying on the road—like the gingerbread man baking, he’d protested, as she swatted, tanned, his behind. Then there’d been the winter morning, not long enough ago, he’d wandered off while she was cleaning. She’d been washing walls, had just wiped down the plate rail, the pink baby cup nearly slipping from her hands as he straggled in, half-frozen, his little duffel coat dripping. “I seen…saw,” his voice had wobbled, “the abdominal snowman!” Then it dawned: he’d taken himself all the way to the swamp by the barn, and had gone through the ice. Queasy, mute, she’d hugged him till the wetness seeped to her skin, and he’d pulled one of Harry’s new cufflinks from his leaden mitt: “Look. Ma—a table for a little pinhead guy!”

  After his prayers, she’d just got to sleep when he screamed that there was a sea hag in the window. “I can smell her!” he shrieked, trembling in the doorway, pointing to the landing. The furniture polish, forgotten in the midst of a chore. Then he whined, “I don’t wanna go to school.” More sobs, as his sturdy arms hooked round her neck. The sea hag had eyes, he said, like the eyes of a dead reindeer. Just a dream, she’d murmured over and over; and after a while he’d tugged at her hand and smooched it, asking if he was a flower, like Daddy said. “Oh, my darling,” her voice had slid out, saying that flowers grew in gardens, and what would Daddy know about that?

  The first day of school, he was as balky as ever, refusing breakfast, and Harry, swatting fruit flies with the paper, barely speaking, didn’t help. There was always the Protestant school, she said, though it was a bit late to change plans, and his fath
er would have to drive him. By now they had the Model T, the tin lizard, Jewel called it. But all Harry said was, “Well, if you’d learn to drive…” But then who’d have gotten the meals? Too nervous to eat, she’d taken Jewel’s hand, walking him over, despite his complaints. I’m not a baby! Never mind that he clung to her in the dusty schoolyard, watching the other kids swarm around. The air full of chamomile, a clutch of mothers comforting the smaller ones.

  A girl with braids, a year or two older than Jewel, was chasing a ball; her smile sent a jolt through Lucy as the child tossed it to a dog lolling there. Someone waved, a woman Lucy knew vaguely from Mass, and pushed her boy, named Samson, at Jewel. Samson stuck his tongue out, just before Sister Jerome appeared, a bell dangling from her sleeve, not a hint of a smile on her stony face. Mannish shoes poked from her habit sweeping the scuffed step. One sharp jingle, and as the children formed lines Jewel latched on to Lucy’s waist. Prying him loose, she stood there bereft as the lines chugged forward, disappearing inside.

  Out by the road, leaning against the statue of Christ was Lil of all people, having a cigarette while her little girl kicked stones. Having shot up, the child had grown pretty in a feral way, bony but cute in her droopy jumper. “Why do I have to?” she was whining to her mother. “You never went.”

  Lil smirked as Lucy passed: “Kids, eh?” But all Lucy could think of was Jewel’s frightened look.

  Further up the road she’d passed the tinker—the traveller, as some called this fellow who’d turned up and seemed to live in the woods. No more than a teenager, he was leaning against a cart with what looked like a whetstone. Pots, pans, knives. Fix and sharpen. Reasonable. He’d followed her right down their street, finally stopping at Mrs. Chaddock’s; she could tell by the barking. At home, she’d busied herself with housework so as not to fret over Jewel. The front room had become a dust trap, Harry forever bringing home knick-knacks, when he was in a good mood. A china cat and a crystal scent bottle were too nice to hide upstairs, so they’d joined the pink cup whose china would always remind her of bones—the relics of saints Father Marcus went on about, as if to lure parishioners on some grisly pilgrimage.