Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  Suddenly it seems important to get everything straight, even things that don’t matter, especially now that her days are nothing but chores and caring. Suddenly she’s confused, asking, “Miss Van who?’

  Buskirk, Beeskirk, Beeswax, Rebecca jokes. “Has a kind of a ring to it, don’t you think?” she hollers into Harry’s ear, his hand coming up to shield it.

  Lucy lunges to prevent another accident, a vial of pills rolling off the bedside table, but too late. At least the lid stays on, but Rebecca takes her sigh as a complaint, saying she needs a break. “Gwan! Take yourself shopping,” she orders, “or out to lunch.”

  As if I’m not already, thinks Lucy. But then Rebecca turns to Harry, yelling as if he’s deaf. “Where’s that robe I got you, anyways? Must be here someplace,” she clucks, exactly like a mother hen, telling them that if she finds the robe under the bed, so help her God, she’ll…

  Like all of Rebecca’s threats it fizzles out, but for once Lucy’d like to sauce back, “You’ll what?” the way Robert would. No chance though, for she’s bustling around—as if with a twitch of her nose the tomato stain and the book will vanish—and soon a rustling comes from Lucy’s room. It’s as if Rebecca owns the place; sooner or later she probably will, but not yet.

  “A-ha!” she gloats, appearing with the Simpson’s bag and the maroon bathrobe still bearing its tag, as pristine as the day they’d shopped together a few months ago. “You two are hopeless!” If it’s meant as an endearment, it doesn’t come off that way.

  Brushing invisible dust—germs?—off its cover, Lucy places the stain book out of harm’s way. If only Rebecca were like that, she thinks. So easily shut up. But, no. Perhaps Rebecca should’ve been a nurse, all that boisterous good humour put to some use. Appreciated. Except that she wasn’t good with bodily things, functions, and didn’t like touching strangers, she’d confessed once, when Robert was small and she still worked in retail. “Touching strangers?” Harry’d snickered, and she’d gotten all indignant. “Helping them try things on,” she’d insisted. If there was one thing Rebecca could be, it was insistent.

  “Take a cab,” she says, as if driving a nail—if she were the handy type. “Treat yourself. Get out of the house.” Then changing tack, teasing, “Oh. I get it. Harry? She doesn’t trust us. Your wife doesn’t trust us!” Her voice is shrill, and when she laughs her lipstick thins, almost fading to a lighter coral. Harry will be just fine, she says—“Won’t you, Pop? You’ll be okay, won’t you?”—prodding him so hard his head sags off the pillow like an egg about to fall from the nest. Listing like that, he taps his lips urgently, his gaze fixing on the drawer. Rebecca’s got the package out and is lighting up before he can shpit out the first shyllable of shigarette. “Hold your horses,” she chides. “Don’t have a nicotine fit on me, Pop,” exhaling a puff of smoke, poking the fag between his lips the way she used to jam her finger into Robert’s infant mouth. No, not a nurse. Pity the patients, thinks Lucy; there would be lawsuits.

  AFTER THE LOSS OF THAT first baby—or whatever it had been, a lie or not—Lucy had stayed after Mass offering novenas for what might’ve been but wasn’t any more. Whether or not Rebecca had actually been pregnant became a moot point, eventually. Still, Lucy was suitably vague passing on prayer requests solicited by Father Marcus. For my son, she’d murmured: some sort of peace, and for his wife? Someday, perhaps, a child. Then Father Marcus had wanted to know if Rebecca was of the faith, quickly cancelling out his question with, “Ah, best leave the details to the One above.”

  The kids meanwhile—and she’d still considered them kids, never mind the goings-on in Jewel’s room—finally found a place of their own above the sporting goods/music store downtown: one big room, a kitchen and bath shared with two other couples. Rebecca had soon invited her and Harry for dinner: beef masquerading as rawhide and doughnuts like pram tires, best slipped into a pocket. Before long, Jewel started coming home again for supper. “Trouble in paradise?” Harry would tease, Lucy kicking his ankle. Tired of slumming it, Rebecca wanted a house with her own kitchen; though she was a disaster in one, who could blame her? There was a place for sale down by Dunphy’s, Jewel told them, saying Becky wouldn’t take no.

  Somehow it had fallen on Lucy to pack up the rubble in Jewel’s room, things the pair had left behind. The photographs were gone, but there’d been a bill from Eaton’s as long as her arm, stuffed among frayed lace and empty lipstick tubes, and in a drawer, the marriage licence folded like a receipt. Jewel Augustine Caines and Rebecca Susan Marryatt below their squiggled signatures, and two unfamiliar witnesses. What God brings together, let no one drive apart. It would’ve been lying to say that she, Lucy, hadn’t thought about the weakness of city hall. Rebecca’d shoved the certificate into a pillowcase of old clothes, and hadn’t even bothered sweeping up afterwards. Driving off with Jewel in a borrowed truck, she’d blown kisses, and in a cranky moment, waving back, Lucy had wondered aloud if, given the way things had turned out, Jewel had considered annulment. Harry’d stomped on her toe. “What, and lose Rebecca?”

  One evening when Jewel came over, she’d offered to give Rebecca some cooking lessons; it wasn’t that hard. Even when he said she preferred food raw, Lucy dug out her Purity cookbook and started copying down recipes, things a trained monkey could make: war cake, beans. She’d squinted—spectacles would’ve helped—thinking of the letters she’d written Jewel; by then it was almost as if the war hadn’t happened. “One or two teaspoons of soda?” Lucy’d waffled, even as he winced at the time, saying Becky would have his arse if he didn’t get home. But she’d told him to keep his shirt on, it was for her own good. Once the babies came, she’d have to cook!

  As soon as the words were out, the idea of a grandchild took hold—a real flesh-and-blood, fist-waving baby, not just the notion of one growing inside someone like a mushroom. The idea swelled as Jewel fidgeted, saying she was wasting her time, even as she argued that if one wanted results, one must follow the recipe. They’d gotten into a debate, about catechisms of all things. “There’s a recipe book, didn’t you used to say?” he’d teased, and she denied it, blushing as if she’d betrayed something. “In your letters,” he insisted, to which she replied that Rebecca might try fishcakes. “A cat could make those,” she joked, and he’d asked what she had against his wife.

  “She just wants to make up to you,” he said, and a flash had started, its prickly heat moving up her neck a little like brushfire. Make up for what? she’d faced him squarely, that heat making her sweat. Out of the blue, he’d raised it; his sister, “the girl you never seen grow up.” Saw, she’d corrected, the flash making her head swim; even her eyes had tingled. Fanning herself with a recipe card, she’d said to tell Rebecca fishcakes were tasty, offering her cheek for a kiss. Instead he smiled ruefully, saying Rebecca had no time for anything not from a can.

  That week the church bulletin included a recipe on behalf of the league. Peace Pie, it was called.

  One huge dollop charity, one cup trust, one cup tenderness

  One cup good humour (extra pinch won’t hurt)

  One tablespoon generosity

  Blend with two cups unselfishness,

  a dash of interest in all He does,

  and one big helping of work—avoiding ruins flavour.

  Mix together with sympathy, understanding.

  Flavour with patience, salt with obedience.

  The sentiment made her skin crawl, but she’d cut it out anyway. God knows if it ever reached Rebecca, though, or what she and Jewel did with any of the recipes—picked their teeth on the cards, possibly. All she could do was try. It didn’t help, though, that she was always watching for Rebecca’s looks to change, her worst fear that the girl would turn out like her mother. Sometimes, seeing Harry and Rebecca together, she’d cross herself silently, thinking what a blessing, one less burden on her mind, that Rebecca was two years older than Jewel, born before Lil was even a spark in Harry’s roami
ng eye. Otherwise she’d have fretted even more; it could’ve been like something out of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  Then one night she’d asked if Rebecca’d tried the war cake. They were in the backyard watering the lilies, Jewel having wolfed down enough food for two fellows on death row. “The meals have never been better,” he’d said evasively, when the breeze brewed up, bending the spray. Some squealing notes ripped from the house, and Harry wobbled in the open doorway, raising his glass tipsily. “Get the gal over here, Joool, and we’ll go on a toot!” he’d hollered.

  There was no excuse for what happened next: had she been more pious, she’d have said Satan pushed her. But, twisting the spray towards the climbing rose, she’d let a gust push it. A few inches higher and it would’ve soaked Harry’s belly, but as it went, he looked like he’d peed himself. He and Jewel cursed at once, Harry glaring down. If he hadn’t been so loaded, no telling what he’d have done. “What the hell were you thinking?” Jewel kept saying, helping her mop up the kitchen, which got the worst of the dousing. They could hear Harry slamming around upstairs, as Jewel’s cheeks reddened, like when he was small. He’d sounded incredulous, disgusted, accusing, “You’re jealous. Of Becky. Aren’t you.” Not a question but a truth put in that grating voice, the one in which he’d asked years before about Lucky the dog’s head.

  Rocking back on her heels, she’d shoved a pin through her hair, the flashes coming and going in waves till she thought she’d melt. Frustration stung her face as she flailed for the words. How she was sorry, not for what she’d just done, but for Jewel himself having put up all these years with his father’s carousing. Wringing the sponge, she’d felt suddenly humbled. If not for Harry, she said, she wouldn’t’ve had him. Then he’d taken her hand as if he wanted to tell her something, touching the ring embedded in her finger, till she crouched to wipe the rest of the floor. Wiping her brow, she’d sounded like the priest talking, as if words alone would set things straight. “Peace and quiet’s a gift,” she’d said, “for anyone lucky or smart enough to see it. A child’s a gift too; don’t you forget. The only one some people ever know.”

  She’d been about to describe Helena, too, so he’d know something of his sister. But Harry’d stumped down in a towel, still smelling like a brewery, telling him not to talk to her. “Either it’s the change of life,” he scoffed, “or she’s demon-possessed!”

  In spite of that, she said that no matter what, a baby gave a person hope. Like a rope tossed by the drowning to the swimmer, she thought, as Jewel accused them both of acting like kids and said to forget it, just forget it, the reason he’d come over in the first place. Out he’d stalked—touchier than a woman, Harry’d marvelled—and even the car sounded mad backing out of the driveway. Then he’d turned on her, “Now see what you did?” But she was shaking, a little, not with fear or worry, but near laughter, and a feeling that she couldn’t have explained if she’d wanted to, floundering for excuses. Saying she didn’t know what had got into her earlier, and blaming the wind.

  “Well don’t look at me,” he’d replied, shutting himself in their bedroom while she skulked off to Jewel’s old bed, a sort of penance. Despite its sag she had no trouble falling asleep, but then she’d dreamed of a girl carrying a head. A baby’s, with wispy hair and a toothless grin. In the dream a soldier in a priest’s collar came up and told her not to be scared. Seek and ye shall find, he said. Ye of little faith.

  Long after Harry rose for work she’d lain there trying to purge the feeling it left, till the sound of knocking pulled her out of bed. It was Rebecca returning some knitting needles she’d loaned her, and some yarn still with its label. She was dressed to the nines for work, her dress the colour of buttercups, her lips a deep red. Those green eyes slid slyly over Lucy in her nightie, but no amount of war paint could mask her complexion, a match for those peepers. “Don’t tell me I woke you?” she’d started in. That cheeriness an alarm going off. Then Rebecca’d gritted her teeth, breathing in as if there were someone behind her coaching. “Jewel meant to break the news,” she began. “Don’t just stand there. Take a good look, Ma. Guess who’s expecting? No fooling. You’re gonna be a grandma,” she said, as if Lucy were dumb, dumb as dirt.

  “When, dear?” had been all Lucy could manage, falling into a chair and gripping the arms as if Jewel were driving it, while Rebecca mewled about how over the moon Pop would be.

  But then Rebecca asked what was the matter, saying that she didn’t look too happy. “Sheesh, if you were my ma—”

  Thank the good Lord I’m not, she’d thought, fanning herself with The Star Weekly, holding her tongue, fortunately, till the right words shook loose: “A grandchild? When, did you say?” Rebecca was already clacking down the walk in those ridiculous heels. Green! Her shoes hummingbird green, her hair mussed in the back and dusty-looking. “What lovely news!” Lucy’d hollered too late, then, trembling, offered up a prayer to St. Anne. Jesus, Mary and Joseph: a grandbaby!

  17

  AS GAMELY AS POSSIBLE LUCY hobbles downstairs, Rebecca’s voice behind her regaling Harry with a joke, a dirty one naturally. A bit of a shock: it’s begun to snow, tight little flurries circling down, but not badly enough to warrant a taxi. Bundling up reminds her of all the times she’d bundled Robert up, and Jewel before that. The frigid air burns her lungs, its sharpness a pinch: she’s alive, at least. Waiting for the bus, she’s a jailbird breaking free—the little man in his striped suit in Monopoly, which she and Robert played by the hour, once, waiting for his mother. Rebecca was always working back then, supervising one sales department or another, hard to keep track. “Go shopping, Ma.” Rebecca’s solution for everything.

  It’s true, though, she needs a few things, having let everything slide these past couple of months. Maybe some lipstick, though who’s to see her? As the bus swings up to the storefront, a train streaks past the parking lot, and maybe it’s the greyness, the gloom, but she sees herself after those train rides long ago, stepping to the platform empty-handed but with the weight of a barn on her shoulders. Well, today would be different; she’ll come home loaded with parcels, just to make Rebecca feel better. Spend Harry’s entire pension cheque, if need be.

  The store’s decked for Christmas, not a month away. “The festering season,” Jewel calls it, because of Rebecca’s wish lists. Never mind. Right now the warmth engulfs her, the tinselly brightness enticing even as her own plainness yells from a mirror: the wool hat and gloves, her sensible boots. A lady in a white coat beams from behind the perfumes; the scent makes Lucy’s eyes twitch. A welcome, fragrant heaven, though, after the bedroom with its bedpan and pills. Just thinking about it tightens a slip-knot inside her, a feeling that mimics the pain in her back. These days her aches spread quickly: water drawn through a willow, when she thinks about it, starting from the ground, moving up. Smiling faintly, she glimpses the display—little boxes and bottles laced with silver and gold.

  What day is it, again? And who buys all this stuff?

  Drifting towards some clothing, she squints at the sign half hidden by a garland. She’s forgotten her glasses, again. Ladieswear, it says, which makes her want to laugh. Some distance away, a woman fumbles through some blouses, her back to the other browsers, her purse strapped over her lumpy coat, school-bag style. It reminds Lucy of Jewel starting school. But then she notices the bread bags poking from the woman’s boots. Ben’s Holsum, she can read. Turning to the next rack, the woman glances up and Lucy looks away politely, her face getting hot. Should she say hello? It’s Benny’s friend, the traveller’s “old lady,” as Jewel has started calling her—the sayings he gets from Robert; it makes you wonder who’s raising whom. As if having her do Rebecca’s housework gives him licence. Shuffling up to a mirror, the woman smiles wryly, holding an orange blouse up to her bosom. It’s as though she’s got eyes only for herself; if she’s noticed Lucy she doesn’t let on. As if she should, thinks Lucy uneasily, picturing the cleaning book, herself and R
ebecca riffling through it to that newspaper clipping, the photo of that family—an invasion.

  Not knowing what to do, Lucy opens her purse; perhaps she should go over and slip the poor woman a donation? Ask and it shall he given. But she must have her pride, Miss Van Buskirk, doing what she does for a living, despite putting up with…There but for the grace of God. But money might be insulting, and it’s easier to escape to lingerie. There will be poor always, says a voice inside like Harry’s, if he wore a dog collar and could utter a full sentence.

  Guiltily she fingers the filmy bits of nothing on their hangers, then takes her time picking through some marked-down briefs. Everything is nylon and white, a slithery reminder of the snow. Distracted, she forgets her size, as if shopping for someone else, finally settling on medium. You’d worry a rock to death, woman, rubbing, Harry would say—not like she hadn’t tried, rubbing beads till her fingers burned, wishing and praying for things that couldn’t or wouldn’t be. But maybe she could just casually buy the blouse, that gaudy orange, and have Rebecca give it as a present for tackling Robert’s room. An appreciation of something, Lord knows what. Though when she looks around, Miss Van Buskirk, the cleaning lady, is nowhere to be seen, and so she moves on to Menswear. Do they ever! she thinks; the one thing Harry’s speechlessness has spared her is his mouth. If he could curse now, their ears would curl up and die. But then she imagines Harry lying there fed up, the blue of his eye full of resentment, and fear sets in. What if he falls out of bed reaching for something while Rebecca’s doing her nails? What if she forgets his pill? Helplessness engulfs her, an ache not so different from the one all those years back when she’d woken on a cot wondering what on earth had happened to him, and then to her little girl.

  But it’s only been an hour since she left the house; she hasn’t been gone long enough for anyone to miss her. Don’t be ridiculous, she tells herself as a pimply young fellow in a suit approaches. Keen to make a sale, he points out the men’s pajamas, satin and silk that snag at her touch. The kind of pajamas she can imagine that smarmy Dan Rowan character wearing, if he had a life outside Laugh-In, a real life.