Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  When she wakes it’s barely dawn and everything aches, as if she’s ridden all night on a bus. Until Robert’s twelfth birthday, they’d always shared a seat riding home from the fair; once he’d even kissed her. Silence hugs the dimness, the TV’s hum melting into it, slightly louder than the drone of the fridge below. She can almost feel Robert’s scrawny arms around her neck, smell cotton candy, hear the couch springs jouncing. The blink of years faster than forty winks of sleep.

  A gurgle from the next room rouses her, a moan as soft as a nursing baby’s. Before she can move a muscle, the groaning starts, low and miserable. What day is it? What month? Is it really only four and a half weeks to Christmas? Mercy, Harry, please, she thinks, getting up. Limping in, she takes a deep breath, forcing herself to think of air—air and lightness, butterfly wings. Butterfly breath. “Hush, now. It’s all right. Lucy’s here,” she says, telling him to be a brave soldier, and she’ll bring his pills, get him cleaned up. But in the pinkish light, she might as well be cased in cement, and it’s all she can do to sit rubbing his feet. Below, there’s the squeak of a bicycle, and the newspaper thuds to the porch like a dead crow. The escape of its pages enough of a treat that she pads downstairs to get it.

  Hard little flurries wisp past the windows. It seems early for snow, but the paper’s full of travel ads, trips to Florida and Barbados. There are bus tours, too—shopping trips to Bangor and music pilgrimages to Nashville; speaking of pilgrimages, glory, there’s even one to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. “The Grand Ole Opry,” she reads out to Harry, feeding him his porridge. Imagine, loading the wheelchair on a coach, and pushing him around; don’t give Rebecca any ideas. But if he could go anywhere, he’d once said, it would be Nashville. What? You and all those blue-rinses? Heck—it wouldn’t be safe. She remembers saying that, not quite joking, and him asking, For who? and her laughing. Now she wishes they’d gone. But there’d always been something, his work and then the grandson, and when it came down to it, neither of them were the travelling type. Hell, he’d said, I got Don Messer. Buddy can play circles around Earl Scruggs, any day.

  She takes her time filling the spoon and when she offers it, Harry motions for his cardboard, the insert from a pair of nylons, the alphabet printed there in big letters. She has to hold it steady. “M-I-N-N-I-E-P-E-A-R-L,” he spells, his finger moving like a snail. She answers to the glint in his eye: “Can’t hold a candle to Marg Osburne, can she, Harry?” Pointing to the TV, he taps his ear and tries to speak. There’s porridge on his chin. “Oh, all right. But not till you’re finished.” The bowl is only half-empty. Pacing each spoonful, she could expire between each swallow; enough volume that he could actually hear his program would just distract and slow him down. Important that he eats to keep up his strength, the doctor’s words. Only trouble is, what goes in has to be put there, and what goes in comes out.

  After breakfast, once he’s washed and dressed she cranks up the television so loud the Avon bottles on her bureau vibrate. Harry settles back, and until she rises, looks almost relaxed. She’s going down to dust, she says, as if every move must be explained to ward off his panic. In two eternal weeks the whole house has grown cobwebs. Gathering up the tray, she strokes his wrist, and a faint smile twists his mouth as little children dance over the screen. A pretty gal with flipped hair claps her hands, and singing leaps out, “London Bridge is falling down, falling down,” before she switches channels.

  It seems she’s only got started downstairs when it’s lunchtime. Harry’s meal is runny carrots and turkey soup boiled to a beige paste. The TV’s racket fills the quiet as she spoons it into him. The local news shows a flatbed hauling a gigantic Christmas tree, an entourage of trucks moving down a freeway, lights flashing. “Boston-bound,” the announcer says, before she can switch him off. “An annual gift from our city to theirs, in thanks for their help in our time of need. In just a couple of weeks we’ll mark the fifty-second anniversary of the explo—” the fellow rattles off, his voice a jackrabbit hitting certain syllables. Staring straight ahead, Harry waves his hand violently, but before she reaches the set, they’re onto the next “story,” about a basement flooding. Dear God, as if everything’s made up, life not much different from Rebecca’s soaps—which have the same bleak look as news, never mind that the people look better.

  The afternoon is a crawl of dishes, bedpans, laundry, with no time to knock down the spiderweb over the mantel, or read the rest of the paper in peace, with a cup of tea. For supper, more soup and an experiment: a slice of white bread. Harry sucks at it for a long time, his eyes bulging as it finally goes down. “Good, dear,” she murmurs; every bit of encouragement helps, she knows. And if she forgot, Rebecca would step right up to remind her. Well, encouragement works, sort of. Reaching for his tomato juice, Harry knocks it over. Glancing off the bedside, it splatters the freshly washed spread before crashing to the floor, leaving a puddle studded with glass like the bus shelter’s windows after a Saturday night. What’s wrong with kids, anyway, vandalizing things? she wonders, on her knees again mopping up. A splinter jabs her finger under the nail. Wasn’t the tumbler “shatterproof,” another of Rebecca’s bright ideas? At least the glass can be swept up; the stain’s a different story. “S-O-R-R-Y,” Harry spells out on his card, looking scared.

  After this tiny disaster, they pass the evening watching TV; what else is new? There’s a National Geographic special, a man with a deep voice touring shrines of Europe, which puts Harry to sleep. But she savours the man’s soothing commentary as he leans over a glass coffin in France, the body inside small enough to be a schoolgirl’s, a face like marble. “The incorruptible corpse of St. Bernadette,” he says slowly, the picture shifting too quickly to a rushing green river.

  Harry stirs, and during an ad she trots downstairs to fix his snack—tuna on the same squishy bread—then, hurrying back, settles into the show again, one eye on the tube, the other watching him eat. The man on TV pauses, and there’s music: the Singing Nun, that song, “Dominique.” Next, they show him strolling beside the torrent, swept along by an armada of wheelchairs. In a shallow cavern a priest raises the Host like a tiny moon, and crippled people bless themselves. Lourdes! There’d been an article in Reader’s Digest; hadn’t it been Mrs. Slauenwhite’s dream to visit there? Yet, lulled by the pictures on the screen, by the pilgrims’ fever to believe, she can’t help watching for some sign of a hoax. Chicanery. But, just as the man predicts, people splashed with water rise from wheelchairs, and a young man who looks to have polio drops his crutches into the river.

  Harry smacks his lips, his plate leaning at a dangerous angle. “B-A-L-O-N-E-Y,” he spells out, his finger hooked above each letter. But she thinks of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, and her own longing to get swept away, anywhere, up, up and away, on filmy wings. A shrine. Doesn’t the word itself conjure peace, and craving—for something as simple as a pickle munched in solitude! “A certain rectitude,” the phrase burbles from the box; “wreck what?” she imagines Harry spelling. But who doesn’t crave something, she thinks, or pine for something that isn’t?

  The show continues, in the camera’s glare the sun baking down. The man on TV turns invisible, speaking like the Lord or the Wizard of Oz, as a fresh tide of the sick, crippled and weary surges forth. Those who can hold up candles, the kind she keeps around in case of power outages. From a nearby basilica bells peal “Ave Maria” over and over, with the sameness, the sureness, of carols in Simpson’s Christmas toy department.

  Harry pushes himself up in bed, catching his plate just in time. Surprisingly quick—which fills her with a spark of resentment and more guilt. Throngs, meanwhile, grope the cavern’s walls, aiming cameras. “Petite Bernadette,” the chocolaty-voiced wizard elaborates, “eyewitness to the Virgin Mary not just once, but eighteen times!” The sickly girl had drunk from a healing spring that burst from the ground. “Que soy era Immaculada,” he quotes the words on a statue, the image of the Holy Mother, her guileless eyes cast u
pward. “Greek to me,” Lucy murmurs, reddening. Glory, it’s like a hot flash; is it just her, or is it warm in here?

  On the screen, heat shimmers, the blaze of candles; a withered rose bush sprouts from rock. In the background, the river’s rushing is like that of wings. Then a boy Robert’s age wobbles to his feet. ‘“Walk ye sinners, walk, for whosoever shall walk in my light will be saved,”’ the wizard quotes gospel, as people stream to a wall lined with taps. Stooping to drink, they cup their hands so as not to waste a precious drop.

  Harry moans softly; yes, yes, he needs turning. But not just yet. In the faces and murmurs on TV she feels hope beating down, never mind that it’s second-hand, like the sunlight glancing off the river. “The asthmatic daughter of an impoverished miller,” the man repeats, almost like a chorus, “venerated as a saint and a comfort to millions.” A prickly heat, almost an itchiness, fans across her shoulders. Despite his saggy smirk, Harry looks intrigued. Suddenly she feels…responsible.

  “Who doesn’t want a miracle, dear?” She hates how she sounds defensive. But isn’t it true, not just in this house, but everywhere: in kitchens, garages, beauty parlours? Rebecca hoping for a perm that’ll last, and cookies that won’t break your teeth. Jewel: peace, something as simple as sleep while Robert’s got the car? And Robert? For success without work or school, cash and girls without expectations; she wasn’t born yesterday, it’s obvious where his mind is. What would Harry want? It’s too cruel to ask. A pack of Export As instead of just one; a two-four of Keith’s, beer from the bottle, instead of through a straw. And what would she want? Out of the muddled blankness, the image rises, faded and brittle, of a little girl giggling, flowering into a teenager, then a woman.

  On TV the man interviews a lady with a doily on her head, anointing herself with water, mumbling about arthritis. Droplets arc and glitter like rhinestones, the man watching from the wall. Its mossy stones conjure up the smell of mildew.

  Tapping on the bedside table, Harry makes a rolling gesture with his hand. She pretends not to notice. The TV man returns to an echoing room: the chapel of St. Helen, he says. Honest to God, and a spark travels up her spine. His arms folded serenely, he peers out from the screen. “…As pure in death as in life, the Blessed Bernadette lay here forty-six years before achieving sainthood. Just as believers say, her body has a fragrance, which the Church likens to the scent…of…lilies.”

  “FILL YOUR BOOTS, SON.” HARRY would watch him eat, the first little while after Jewel’s return, wondering if he had a hollow leg, or what?

  “Another egg? More milk?” she’d coax—not as though she needed to, and he’d curse, saying he wasn’t a little kid.

  When Harry told him not to talk to her that way, he’d stomp back up to bed. He was a ticking time bomb, his father said, sleeping his life away. Sleep was good; he needed it, but the truth was, she didn’t like him lying around all day, though the doctors advised rest. There was a piece of shrapnel they hadn’t been able to remove; too close to the heart, they said. The first time she saw the scar, her stomach had risen. A jagged stripe, it ran from his left nipple to his navel. His father had told him to put on a shirt. She’d wanted to lay her palm against it and weep.

  Once he’d recovered, Harry said maybe he’d get him on at the yards; he couldn’t lounge around home forever. “Why not?” he sassed back, and his dad told him to smarten the hell up. Then he’d get red-eyed and twitchy, accusing Harry of thinking he was smarter than him. But they’d make peace over drinks, Jewel following him downstairs; and ragged notes would rise up. His tired voice, guessing, “A Long Way to Tipperary,” “Harvest Home”? They used her Royal Albert for ashtrays; when she went to reclaim it, he’d be sitting on Harry’s toolbox, a bottle between his feet.

  “There must’ve been some good come of it,” she caught Harry saying once, but the blue of Jewel’s eyes had reflected nothing she’d want to know.

  In early May, he shocked them both by putting on the suit he’d worn to Black’s; amazingly, it still fit. He even left the house, and when he returned, reported that he’d got his job back. They’d hired a girl in his place, so there was no problem canning her. Though she’d rather hoped he’d try for something better, kneeling, Lucy gave thanks, and the next morning he caught a drive with Harry, as if he’d never left. He was at Black’s a week when the paper screamed Victory in Europe. Harry was late getting home that day; people were going nuts celebrating, he said, smashing windows and stealing everything but the kitchen sink! He wouldn’t tell her what some guy had been doing to a dummy. “In broad daylight! Pants to his ankles, arse in the air. Would I lie!” he’d said. He’d also seen sailors set fire to a tram, and a man lugging a dresser on his back, and Benny—“buddy with the wagon? the traveller?”—pushing a wheelbarrow full of shoes while everyone else was making off with booze. “To hawk?” he’d chortled when she looked puzzled, “Buddy’s only got two feet.”

  She’d made stew and a real chocolate cake, setting aside Jewel’s supper when he didn’t turn up. Harry had just wolfed down his when Edgar Boutilier, of all people, turned up at the door with a ’cordine still bearing its Phinney’s price tag. Fifty bucks, firm. Harry’s excitement had turned into nerves; he’d have to think about it, he said.

  Afterwards, she’d suggested a spin downtown, hoping to spot Jewel. “What,” Harry said, “and get a brick through the windshield?” Jewel was a big boy and could look after himself, he sighed, especially given where he’d been. But she’d thought of his wound and that stray piece of metal, trying to sew until the news came on, and then she’d started pacing. Didn’t he know he had work in the morning? she’d pointed out lamely.

  In the morning, a breeze reeled in and out of his open door, shouting his absence. To have him make it home, then be lost downtown on a drunken tear, or worse! The phone just rang at Black’s, then Harry called from work, saying the downtown looked like a bomb had gone off; goddamn this, and goddamn that, and asking, “Is he home yet?”

  Just before supper Jewel sauntered in, his suit looking slept in. Stinking like a blind pig, as Harry said, but otherwise none the worse for wear. “Guess who I ran into?”—he was all good cheer—“Lily’s daughter—remember?” Never mind that she’d been nearly sick with worry. “Get used to it, Ma,” he’d pecked her cheek. But while he bathed, she slipped her rosary under his pillow, and a card she’d been saving for Harry. A picture of St. Monica, patron of alcoholics.

  Thanks to God and Joseph, the patron saint of workers, Jewel kept his job. In a queer way, thanks to the riots too, the partying, for shaking him out of his shell; though people like Father Marcus called the whole thing evil. Harry was more understanding, saying everyone needed to get “shit-faced” sometimes, though there was no excuse for morons. Evil or stupid, she’d tried to argue, most people weren’t that bad. “The ratio, good to bad?” he’d argued back, rarely using such words. More stupid than bad, she’d said with conviction, until he’d goaded, “Bad-stupid, or just plain stunned?” That was splitting hairs, she’d given up, swatting him.

  Slowly things returned to normal, and as servicemen left, the city shrank. But Jewel continued drinking, keeping beer in his room. So long as he lived with them, she threatened, he’d mind the rules! But it was hopeless: he was twenty-seven years old. Meanwhile, he got promoted, and splurged on a natty new suit. She pressed it the day of the Black’s party and Harry loaned him the car, the afternoon threatening rain. A garden party? Surely they’d move it indoors? Blotting out the smell of cigarettes, she’d asked if Mr. Black had a daughter, then inquired about Mona. Christ, Ma, he said; it was a tea party, for frig sake! What she’d have given to be a fly on the wall.

  The minute he left, she went up to tidy, his room like a trench with ten men camped out. Hanging up his old suit, she’d stacked a month’s worth of newspapers. Clothes spilled from drawers and butts from three of her saucers, everything reeking of smoke. Dust furred the tiny crucifix over the
bed, and formed bunnies fit to smother him at night. It was too bad about Mona, who’d seemed the type that would make a good housekeeper. Not that Lucy was ready to dump him in some other woman’s lap, have them look after him. Boys love their mums, Mrs. Slauenwhite’s wisdom had filtered back, as she stumped downstairs for the vacuum.

  Men, she’d grimaced, moving the dresser. As a drawer slid out, something caught her eye. Photographs, a heap of them, in grainy, washed-out grey. Kneeling, she gathered the pictures in her lap. Ones he’d snapped of her with Mona—she barely recognized herself: how trim she looked, how dark her hair; Mona like a whippet, grinning. A nice shot of Harry showing off his violin—and one of a bell with a swastika on it, and fellows in uniform mugging for the camera. There was a picture of Jewel surrounded by little kids wearing wooden shoes and bonnets like the girl’s on a tin of Old Dutch. Another showed something charred—a tank? a boulder?—with rags lying around. But it was a photo of a meadow that froze her fingers to its border. The meadow mulched with helmets, bodies, and Jewel standing there grinning, his foot on someone’s back. Like Columbus claiming America, or Cabot Cape Breton. The Jerries are done for now.