Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  “Better,” she says, smiling foolishly, blushing too. Making for the steps, but not before Mrs. Slauenwhite’s daughter corners her, describing when her boy’s girlfriend’s father had his stroke. “Thing’s are good,” Lucy heads her off, adding that they could always be worse.

  “Well that’s something, anyway,” Father Langille pitches in, seemingly relieved.

  Gone, though, is that excitement over the kingdom, whatever and wherever the kingdom may be—an estate walled by wind, she supposes, with a castle built of the same, or a mansion like the Clampetts’s, only made of water that resisted running away. The idea makes something inside her swell, not worry or grief so much as guilt. Despite his downy cheek, that keenness, maybe Father knows a thing or two. Maybe the mustard-seed kingdom was a place where things came out in the wash while you were busy flossing your teeth or emptying the teapot, or shaving.

  “So, you’re surviving,” says Mrs. Slauenwhite’s daughter approvingly. “Doing fine.” Surely her brightness will throw them off; the last thing she wants is sympathy, the snoopy, doting kind trotted out on the afternoon stories Rebecca watches. “Surviving,” she trills, nodding, what a person would say after getting slapped with a cold, or the flu.

  BIG DO TONIGHT AT BABINEAU’S, Harry’d winced the morning after he turned up in that snazzy suit. Rolling over, his breath had been like Keith’s brewery as he kissed her cheek. She’d stared at the ceiling as he groped under her nightie, and said she’d sooner eat dirt than go. As his fingers quit their crawling, she’d come right out with it: “Where were you, Harry?”

  His mouth had twitched, just a little, as he repeated the same old same old, that business of seeing Boutilier about an instrument. When she pointed at the suit jacket on the floor, he’d asked if she liked it, then gave her the usual, Look, I can explain.

  And still not bothering to ask about Jewel’s day at school, he’d stroked her nipple: “So, this party—you wanta come, or not?” But wasn’t seeing for herself better than sticking her head in the sand, or turning a blind eye? So she’d agreed to go, though he looked disappointed and said she’d have to leave the little blighter at home. As if she’d have brought him along.

  Just before eight o’clock, Mrs. Chaddock had come to babysit, armed with her crocheting. The dark woods smelled mouldy as she’d hurried to keep up with Harry. Light from Artie’s cabin spilled across their old place, which looked even smaller, overgrown with creeper. Artie’d claimed it for guests, Harry said, strolling into the party. A gale of music and laughter. Glass in hand, Lil strode right over. Painted up, she was wearing a dress that looked all wrong. Houdini, she’d called him. She’d seemed heavier, somehow, but still beautiful, dewy-eyed yet blowsy as a peony past its best. Her smile soured as Lucy hooked her arm through his; still she’d held out her drink and stroked his lapel, insisting, “Have a nip,” and that it didn’t take much to get feeling good. Then she’d laughed, and the fellow swinging a bottle behind her laughed too.

  The place looked pretty much unchanged from the few times Lucy’d ventured inside. Some crepe paper dangled from the buck’s antlers. In a haze of smoke the Boutiliers slouched round a table, Edgar and Birdie, and a girl Lucy recognized from their housewarming. Raising a glass, Artie’d hollered something about Harry bringing his wife. His eyes roving over Lil’s dress. Then Boutilier had waved his fiddle, slapping Harry’s back: Got something over the house you might be innerested in, bud. Dodging the reach of fellows playing cards, Lil swished past to boil water. Stockings drying behind the stove made Lucy think of cut-off legs and feet.

  A strange pair of hands had grabbed Lucy’s waist. Grinning, the fellow’d kicked away the mat in the middle of the room, dancers stepping back as he’d lifted a hatch and shimmied down into darkness. “More where that come from,” he’d hooted, hoisting up bottles. Then Lil reached inside her dress and passed him something. “Who’s mindin’ the young fella?” she’d asked sullenly, plunking down Lucy’s tea. Under the makeup her cheeks had looked doughy.

  Lucy’d murmured something about Lil being lucky having her mother to babysit. Lil just rolled her eyes, hiking her skirt and spinning into that fellow’s arms as Boutilier started playing. Then he and Lil disappeared, and a light had come on in the old shack next door as a fight broke out over cards. Show me your hand or I’ll fix your fookin’ face! Harry’d had that look that meant he was getting quietly soused, not so much as glancing up when she buttoned her coat and fled.

  The wind was raw and heavy with salt that night, and a peaty scent that’d made her think of smoke—of fire travelling the roots underground She couldn’t get home fast enough, though Mrs. Chaddock insisted she should’ve stayed out longer as Lucy tucked money into her fist. Upstairs, Jewel had every light on, studying a book on knots, something Harry’d picked up. She’d taken the book and laid it down, cracking the spine; next, for pity’s sake, his father would be bringing home a boat! Kissing Jewel’s forehead, she’d drawn up the blanket. “You smell like Daddy,” he’d said.

  1923

  AS SCHOOL WENT ON, HIS nightmares worsened. Kid might’s well be glued to the tit, and you encourage it! Harry would stay out till he figured the boy would be asleep, though he sometimes miscalculated. He’d crank up the wireless to drown out Jewel’s hollering. So much for a fellow’s listening pleasure. One more row, she’d tell her knitting. Socks for St. Columba’s tea and sale, the raffle prize a trip for two to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré up in Quebec: a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the shrine, the new basilica being built there. When the screaming continued, she crept upstairs. Jewel wanted to know what they’d done with Lucky’s head, and thought maybe Sister Jerome had it on her wall, like Mr. Babineau’s reindeer. “Buck,” Lucy corrected, and he’d asked what Daddy and his buddies meant when they said, “Pass the buck, frig that, gimme the doe.” Oh, for the love of Dinah!

  Downstairs on the sofa, Harry leaned his head back as if fielding secret messages. You could’ve heard that radio outside. Picking up her needles, she busied herself counting stitches. “Socks,” he badgered, “You trying to outfit an army?” and the smell from the kitchen range, with its hint of kerosene, roused her memory. “What’s wrong now?” he wanted to know. Jewel being gone all day left more time to think, she told him. “That’ll never do, dolly,” he said, “thinking.” As an ad for soap bubbled over the airwaves, suddenly there was peace upstairs. “No wonder I’m so frigging exhausted,” Harry griped.

  So many irons in the fire, she’d agree sarcastically when he came out with such comments; it was hard to sound neutral. Business, he’d say. Look around you, Lucy. As if she was stupid. For it was true: he’d done a splendid job furnishing the place, filling it to the rafters. Curio cabinets lined with ornaments, a fancy sideboard and drop-leaf table for the Tiffany lamp, the real McCoy. A friend of Artie’s had brought it back from the States, given Harry a good price on it, so he said. Still, it would’ve been nice if he’d consulted her now and then, instead of bringing home surprises. And how could she tell him that the nicest things in the world didn’t ease the panic she felt sometimes, the past hollowed out like a gourd? Or the longing that plagued her despite Jewel’s best behaviour? Persistent as dampness, it was emptiness that pushed her to St. Columba’s, where distraction, at least, was a gentle tickle, the Holy holy holy, Blessed triniteee wafting in and out of nothing. A relief, never mind how fleeting, when it came to roost however briefly. And didn’t that fancy Tiffany lampshade remind her of stained glass windows?

  But he’d surprise her some nights, following her upstairs. Outside Jewel’s room he’d draw her close, smelling of pomade, as they peered in. “Joool Jekyl,” he said once, kissing her temple almost shyly, then explaining, “I meant it, you know—about thinking. Don’t put much store in it, myself.” Then he’d murmured that what a person saw was it. “You could blame your almighty God for everything,” he said, his voice trailing off. About as useful, that, as blaming Ida Trott for their
loss. When she told him about her dreams, he said, “Lordie, visions? You’d best stick to knitting,” even when she tried explaining that sometimes she saw Helena, in her mind, as if…Shrugging down his suspenders, his shirt open, he’d held her hand to his scar. Clasping her fingers, pressing them lower, he asked, “Remember me, your husband?”

  Even as Lil burned in her head like a light in their old cabin, he knelt, laying his cheek on her knee. His hair slicked back as he stroked her thigh, he joked, “Convert me, dolly.” And she’d thought of the thirteen dollars hidden in her drawer, too mean, too shameful, to spend. Forgetting and giving up: weren’t they the same thing? Then Jewel had peeked in on them, singing A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket, and wondering if they could guess who’d got the strap for talking and nearly making Sister blow a gasket. “Becky Marryatt!” he said, asking, to Harry’s alarm, if he was still gonna get it.

  “A licking? Dolly? They’re going to hit my boy?”

  Behind the bedroom door he’d railed against the holy catlick church and her, too. Spare the rod and spoil the child—is that it? A bird in the hand worth two in the bush? A dead one worth two singing, whatever that meant. Depending on whose hand, she hedged, and what bush. Then, lying there in the creaky dark, she’d leaked the truth, saying that everywhere she went, she saw Helena; in every little face—something. He told her not to be so crazy, his dead eye gleaming in a stitch of moonlight, and his breath in her ear. “What you need to do,” he said, “is keep your eyes on Jewel.”

  He was gone when she woke in the night. But at breakfast he gave her a music box. Mahogany, with a ballerina that pirouetted to “A Bird in a Gilded Cage.” Jewel opened and shut it, balking over his egg. “Like it, dolly?” Harry asked a little anxiously.

  It was lovely, but where would they put it? And where had it come from? “Artie’s,” he’d explained vaguely, saying that someone had given it to Lil.

  “Note to head,” his voice changed quickly as he jotted a list: rosin, furniture polish, candy—“Jawbreakers or licorice babies, Jool-my-boy?”—saying he’d see them that night.

  In the schoolyard the traveller was snoozing under his wagon. Clutching his throat, coughing, Jewel asked if he was dead, then pleaded to go home. Redheaded Lucas was bouncing a yellow ball of blubber that an uncle, a whaler, had brought back for him. “My uncle could pound the tar outta your dad any day,” she heard him jeer.

  At home she stuck the music box under a bag of onions in the mudroom. But at suppertime Harry arrived with another surprise. Someone owed him, he said, humming as he replaced her picture above the mantel, stepping back to admire the new one, a painting of a waterfall as she imagined a waterfall in England might be, mossy and gentle. Folding the maroon socks she’d just finished, she told him about the raffle and how you could win a trip. “Queebec?” he said, as if she’d lost her marbles. Bouncing in, Jewel asked his dad how hard you had to hit someone before they saw tar. “Jesus Murphy,” Harry blurted, “what kind of question—?” Scrunching up his face, Jewel said, “Listen, Daddy. A fart!”

  BY THAT EASTER SHE’D KNIT through five pounds of wool: ten pairs of socks, grey, blue, red, maroon, plus brown ones Harry had his eye on. Two days to Good Friday she delivered them. Inside the church, the league ladies were dusting the purple-draped statues. The building creaked in the wind, sleet pinging the blackened windows. “Bought your tickets yet?” they grilled her. “You wouldn’t want to miss out.” The prize trip was booked for the Feast of St. Anne, patron saint of grandmothers—“and housewives!” they added in a flurry, the sign of the cross like a nervous tic. A shrine to the mother of the Blessed Virgin, Saint-Anne-de-Beaupré had a relic: a bone from her venerable wrist. Gathering up their buckets and rags, the ladies then left her alone—alone as Jonah inside the whale, the walls and ceiling a ribcage, the wind mimicking waves while, next door, Jewel practised printing: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

  Fixed on the drooping figure over the altar, she’d imagined the Son—not a baby lying on straw, but a carpenter young and wiry as Harry, except with flowing, girlish hair. In her mind’s eye, though, the Son’s face had loomed close, eyes blue and unwavering, wide with knowledge but haunted, too, and in the rocking wind, she’d imagined his breath on her cheek, so sweet that her breath caught, and a tingling started in her arms. Then the wind wailed and she’d thought of a baby in a cradle, a mother cooing—and in the flickering light the sweetness dissolved.

  “Hinky dinky parlee-voo!” Harry teased when she asked for ticket money, reminding her that Quebec was practically a “forn” land, and that she’d never been past Truro. As if he had. He wouldn’t even come to the sale, where the socks went in a jiffy, ten cents a pair. Most of the neighbourhood turned up, except Lil, though her daughter milled about with her grandmother. Erma’s housedress kindled in Lucy thoughts of humble St. Anne—and the bolder one of herself climbing the shrine’s Holy Stairs, a replica, according to Father Marcus, of the ones Christ the Son climbed meeting his earthly judge, Pilate. The draw got delayed when someone mislaid the ticket stubs, and she got roped into drying teacups until the fellow appeared, waving a bucket and asking for volunteers. Sucking a lollypop, Lil’s daughter elbowed forward. Blindfolding her, the man spun her around. A trip for two! All aboard! “Who’s gonna see the sacred bone, scale the Scala Santa!” he’d shilled, calling Lil’s girl sweetpea and telling her to pick just one.

  She reached in, snatching something, but when the man went to take it, she wouldn’t let go. He’d tried to pry it from her, asking, “How many humps does a camel have, dearie?” She just grinned, the sucker poking out her cheek. He’d asked if her mom was there, or her dad. Someone snickered, and he made a grab for the stub. Lucy could hear it rip as Erma scuttled forward, telling the girl to smarten up before she whapped her. Another little girl bobbed forward, a hush falling as the man held out the bucket.

  “And the winner,” he shouted, “the winner of this once-in-a-lifetime, all-expenses-paid trip to the greatest shrine in all of North America—” He looked around, and Lucy’s throat tightened; such a prize would only mean trouble. “The winner is…” A curse, really: Harry would never let himself get dragged along, and she could hardly leave him and Jewel to themselves for a week. “Mrs. Lu—” a whoop, and a woman covered her face “— cinda Slauenwhite!” Then somebody yelled from the back; half a stub lay underfoot, Lil’s daughter off playing tag. Retrieving it, the man unfolded his piece, scratched his ear—“Ahem, a trip for two”—and thanking everyone for their patience, called out the other winner: “Mrs. Lucy Caines.” God in heaven, she heard herself say, pumping his hand, as if she’d died and gone there.

  THE SOUND OF A TRUCK braking on the hill wakes her. Lordie, it’s light out. She’s overslept—not that Rebecca will mind; to Rebecca ten means eleven. Marryatt time.

  She’s been dreaming again, this time of her sister, and the thought of Ethel keeps her still, listening, grasping…It’s like clutching at smoke, and now Ethel’s only a voice, the echo of a voice. And the shadowy impression of a little bone, perhaps, a magic one in a fairy story, a talking one. A finger bone? In the dream they’ve been playing marbles, crouching at the top of the hill on Roome Street. A tisket, a tasket, someplace inside Lucy the little bone still sings, I lost my yellow basket! and keeping her eyes tightly shut, in her mind Lucy’s chasing a doughboy. And Ethel’s no longer a bone, talking or otherwise, but herself. Except, when she holds out her hand—Give it back!—she’s tiny and blue-eyed. Not Ethel at all, but Helena…

  The phone is ringing; not yet out of the woods, not yet free, she steels herself, padding down to get it. It’s Rebecca, of course, offering to take her shopping, insisting that if there’s one thing she’d love to do, it’s just that. No wonder she and Harry get on so well, two sides of the same coin when it comes to buying things, never mind any differences in taste. It’s the hunt that matters. “Make a list, okay?” she coaxes, meaning
items Harry could use. “We want Pop to be comfortable, right?” As if that railed, metal bed could be a La-Z-boy, and the monitor he’s hooked up to a top-model colour TV.

  “Oh, I think the nurses see to that,” Lucy says, as Rebecca rhymes things off: a bed jacket, jammies. Boxers, vests? A new razor, for sure, and deodorant. “Rebecca, dear,” she has to cut her off. “It’s not like he has to go out.” The gal means well, yes, but it’s always as though she’s got to have a leg up. Next she’s going on about his sponge baths, as if the water for them comes from the harbour! “I have everything he needs right here,” Lucy interrupts, but as usual Rebecca has to have the last word: “Well,” she sniffs, “a man can never have too many changes of underwear. Trust me.” Oh Dinah, her undies must be in a twist. She thinks the world of him, that’s all; she just wants what’s best. Jewel is always defending her. Yes, my darling, Lucy’s felt like saying more than once, and the road through the Grounds is paved with taffy. “Don’t worry about making tea or nothing,” Rebecca tells her before hanging up, saying she’ll be right over.

  It’s all Lucy can do to make herself presentable. The honk outside puts her even more on edge, and without any discussion, Rebecca heads towards the nearest department store, the radio blaring about Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh. “I never know if that’s a place or a person,” she babbles, zipping past the post office and the Ocean Limited’s whistle stop, “I can’t keep it straight, can you?” It makes Rebecca’s bossiness almost forgivable, since most news about the war confuses Lucy too. She murmurs that she could’ve saved her all this bother and walked, but Rebecca ignores this, scouting out a parking spot. Preying on one is more like it, as she whips ahead of someone else, never mind that there are lots of spaces farther away. Rebecca behaves like a hunter at the end of the season, though she does try to hold the revolving door. It clips Lucy’s elbow, sending a pain up her arm as Rebecca herds her inside.