by Caro Soles
Mother likes Mrs. Dunn. They met in the hall and Mrs. D. introduced herself.
“This is my daughter, Vanessa,” Mother said scooping me up against her with one arm, as if she were a bird gathering me under her wing.
“How are you, dear?” said Mrs. Dunn, shaking my hand gravely.
“I’m very well, thank you, and I hope you are,” I said, as I was taught, trying not to make it a singsong. I’ve never heard anyone else say this, but Mother always insists. Everyone is invariably pleased.
Mrs. Dunn smiled even more broadly and invited us to tea on Thursday. Maybe in England, where she comes from, this is what people say to one another. I’ve never been to England. Neither has Mother, but she is always pleased when people assume she is from there, as they often do.
“Our family goes back to William the Conqueror,” she tells me, looking fierce and proud as she works the bellows to make the fire come to life in our brick fireplace. Daddy sighs, the sound light as a feather floating up to the ceiling. “If my grandfather had followed his head instead of his heart, we’d still be there in Hadleigh Hall where we belong!”
One time Mother showed me a picture of Hadleigh Hall, a huge place that makes the Music House look like a cottage. The whole stately pile is surrounded by formal gardens where fountains used to play and a rose arbour blazed with colour in the pale sunshine.
Sometimes when Mother tells the story, it’s as if she is still angry at the man who followed his heart instead of his head and was exiled because of it and became a remittance man. Sometimes she tells it to show how her grandfather was, in reality, a man of principle, of honour. He chose to marry the woman who otherwise would have been ruined. She was a school teacher. She worked with children just like Mother and Aunt Dottie.
“We were at Agincourt,” Mother goes on, shaking the poker. “We were at the Boyne!”
“On what side?” Jonathan asks, suddenly interested.
Mother scowls. “Charles the First may not have been much of a leader, but he was the king, after all.”
“He liked dogs,” I say.
“So did Hitler,” Jonathan remarks.
My father grunts and makes a face. Although this recent war was not his war, any mention of it reminds him of the years of hell that ruined his health and made him unable to work, of the poisons that still secretly crawl though his blood just under his pink skin, erupting now and then and putting him back in torment. He is never completely free of it. Somewhere on his body, there is always a hot patch of itch and pain, and at times of stress, the poisons erupt through his skin. Then he spends hours every morning, every night, washing down the sores, spreading on the tarry-smelling ointment, wrapping himself in bandages to keep his clothes free of stains. When things get really bad, he disappears for weeks at a time into Sunnybrook Veterans’ Hospital, and Mother visits almost every day. But when he’s home, he always dresses in a shirt, jacket, and tie, although he wears slippers in the house now, a concession to his swollen ankles. I’m not sure if he wants to dress this way or if it’s to please Mother, to whom proper dress is very important. “We may have fallen on hard times,” she says, “but think of who we are.”
I often think of who we are. I wonder about it, about how I fit in. I was born into such a different background. Not that I know much about my real background, except that it was French. The knowledge of my adoption is in my mind like the shadow of a memory, a faint exotic perfume from another world, but when we talk to people, I never say a word. I let Mother spin her story of where we’ve come from, why we’re here. Jonathan and I each have a part in that story, both of us shining examples of Mother’s handiwork. He’s adopted, too. We are the chosen ones. I listen, and every time I marvel at the power of her words. How her view of who we are changes our world. She keeps us going, holds us all together. She is indomitable, my father says, like Boadicea, her namesake, the warrior queen. Of course that’s only her middle name, but the indomitable part’s still the same.
I am looking forward to tea with Mrs. Dunn. I don’t often get to visit anyone, even Janet, who goes to school, takes violin lessons, and has to practise and do homework. She’s a year older than I am, but we have a wonderful time playing together. One of our favourites is the Trojan War game, and I carefully explain to her what our roles entail. We make wristbands and greaves for our legs out of brown paper decorated with black and red crayon in the kind of Greek designs we find in Janet’s encyclopedia. We scale walls in her garden and indulge in hand-to-hand combat with short swords made out of sticks. I used Daddy’s supply of sandpaper to make them smooth. One time we built the Trojan Horse in her living room, using overturned chairs, two small wicker baskets, and a brown chenille bedspread. Her mother was not pleased with this, and I couldn’t go over there to play for two weeks. Mother wasn’t cross. She’s the one who’s reading me the Iliad, after all, so I guess she feels a little responsible. “Just wait till we get to the Odyssey,” she says, laughing. “You’ll be building ships then.” I love going to Janet’s, but we’ve only been to tea once.
At three-thirty on Tuesday afternoon, we go upstairs to Mrs. Dunn’s. Mother is wearing her Liberty-print dress, with the tiny blue flowers all over it, and she has her pale-blue sweater draped over her shoulders. I can smell the dash of 4711 cologne she has splashed on her wrists and her earlobes. Under it lies a faint memory of the lavender from the sachet she made to hang in the wardrobe trunk where she keeps the dress and her suit from Ada Mackenzie and the hat made to match by Rose Broderson. I’m wearing the usual: white blouse, navy blue tunic, long black stockings. Both my blouses are getting tight, but Mother has sewn an extension on one side of the placket and moved the buttons over so there’s more room. You can’t see this adjustment under the tunic, but I know it’s there.
The stairs up to the third floor are quite different from the others. They’re enclosed and narrow and dark, and although there is a small window on the landing, its tiny diamond-shaped panes are dirty and streaked, letting in little light. The carpet on the stairs is thinner too, but our footsteps are still muffled as we rise higher and emerge into sunlight streaming in through the glass part of the door that leads onto the roof. I am delighted. I can see the top of the iron ladder that leads from our porch down below, looping gracefully into the air before swooping down to attach itself to the edge of the roof. I hadn’t had a chance to climb up from below yet, so I didn’t know where it ended up. It’s a great discovery, enlarging my world in a way I can’t explain.
Mother pays no attention to this, but is looking at the brass numbers on the doors. We are number 6 and 7. Mrs. Dunn is number 9. Engine, engine number nine, steaming down Chicago line, I think, beating out the rhythm with my hand against my thigh before I can stop myself.
“Hush, dear,” Mother says, and she knocks on the door.
Mrs. Dunn is large, with silver hair piled into a bun on top of her head, tortoise-shell hairpins like my grandmother’s attaching it all firmly in place. She is wearing a grey skirt, a silky cream blouse with a ruffle down the front, and a lacy black sweater that looks hand-knit. My grandmother knits all the time, so I recognize the pattern. Mother smiles, and her face lights up, as it does for company. They stand for a few moments talking in the middle of the bright room, and I notice Mother is using the interrupted step, her hands clasped, her head on one side. She has tried to teach me to stand this way—feet together, one slightly in front of the other—but when I try, I find it hard to balance, and she laughs and says there’s plenty of time to learn more grown-up, ladylike ways.
Mrs. Dunn brings a tray with tea things on it over to a small table by the window and sets it down. The cups and saucers rattle slightly. The cups are touched with gold around the rims, and all three have a different flower pattern. I wince, thinking of the similar cup and saucer I received last year at Christmas from an ancient great-aunt whom I have never met. Opening that present was such a disappointment,
but I smiled and smiled and said, “How lovely.” Also on the tray is a plate with a doily on it, with Peek Frean biscuits arranged around the edge in an exact circle. We don’t have this kind except on special occasions. Jonathan bought a package last week for Daddy’s birthday. Daddy has a sweet tooth, like me. When we take our walks and he talks about nature—how trees grow, how reforestation works—we sometimes stop in the store where they sell penny candy. Last time I bought a marshmallow mouse and he bought a licorice rope. It’s our secret.
We’re sitting now: Mother on a small armchair, me on a hard chair so high my feet barely reach the ground. I’m trying not to look at the biscuits. I’m drinking my tea slowly. It’s half milk, and Mrs. Dunn has put sugar in it, which I’m not used to. Finally our hostess offers me the plate. I glance at Mother who gives me a small nod. There are only two chocolate ones, and I feel guilty taking one of them, but my mouth is almost watering, I want it so much. I take it and don’t look at Mother again until the biscuit is gone.
“I’m so sorry about Vanessa,” Mrs. Dunn is saying. I’ve been so involved in the chocolate biscuit issue, I’ve missed the “curtain may fall any time” speech, where Mother quotes the big-name eye doctor we came to Toronto to see. I push my thick glasses up on my nose and take refuge in the sickly sweet tea. It’s cold now, but I don’t care.
“What grade are you in, dear?” Mrs. D. asks now. She obviously hasn’t heard the whole speech, or Mother hasn’t gotten to that part yet.
“I don’t go to school,” I say.
“She can’t see well enough,” my mother says, and her hand flutters over to me and covers mine convulsively. “The doctor told us to keep her at home. Have her rest her eyes every day. We spend that time reading to her.”
“I’m sure you’ll learn more with your mother than at school anyway,” Mrs. Dunn says, smiling at me a little too long, a little too hard. I duck my head, feeling the unwelcome blush.
Mother talks for a bit about the tutors who have come to the house to teach me. Most of them are Mother’s “Lame Ducks,” as Daddy calls them, but this doesn’t come up in Mother’s version. She finds them everywhere she goes, talks to them, finds out if they have some knowledge that could be useful to me. I’ve had a smattering of Greek and quite a bit of Latin from a man who speaks only in whispers—a British soldier suffering from shell shock. He was an Oxonian, with a doctorate in classics. I loved lessons from Mr. Thompson too, who arrived on two crutches, his body twisted from two years in a POW camp in Japan. He was a linguist, and he taught me French and Geography. Now I have Mrs. Dane, a pinched woman Mother found at church, who used to teach in a convent school and now teaches me penmanship and Canadian history. I expect she won’t be coming back though, ever since Mother discovered she was getting some of the history wrong. Mother will send her away with a flea in her ear now, I expect. I wish Miss David could be a tutor. Her real name is something like Davidovitch, but David is easier so she uses that. She’s always so happy and enthusiastic about everything. I don’t think she knows she’s a Lame Duck. Perhaps she could teach me some of her language, though I’m not sure what it is. Mother seems rather vague about it.
Mrs. Dunn tells us about some of the people who live in the Music House. Mrs. Smyth used to teach music at a girls’ school, but Jonathan has already found that out. He has talked to her a few times, has even been in her room. Mrs. Dunn says she has an urn of her husband’s ashes on the mantelpiece.
“So that’s who she’s talking to,” I say without thinking.
Mother frowns.
“I imagine so, dear,” says Mrs. Dunn. “She doesn’t have anyone else.”
As we are leaving, we meet a tall woman and a boy about eighteen or nineteen, around Jonathan’s age anyway, standing in the open door of the room looking onto the roof. These must be the new people Baggy Bones mentioned.
“How do you do?” Mother says. “We live downstairs. I’m Lillian Dudley-Morris and this is my daughter, Vanessa.”
The tall woman is wearing a fur coat with a long filmy dress the colour of violets underneath. She smiles distractedly, shakes our hands, and tells us her name is Alice Pierce. “And this is Brian,” she says, gesturing to the boy.
I stare at Brian Pierce. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful, like a Renaissance painting in art books from the library. His face is a perfect oval, and his skin is very pale. His eyes are green, his hair a mass of careless blond curls.
“This is Vanessa,” Mother says.
Mutely I stick out my hand and shake first one, then the other.
“Hello,” Brian says with a smile.
I just nod and duck my head. I can feel the heat from Brian’s hand on mine all the way down the stairs.
3. JANEY DREW
SNOW LIES DEEP ON THE GROUND NOW, and every morning our windows are laced with frost like big doilies. We have been in the Music House for weeks. Suddenly everyone has a job. Mother says my job is to be good and do my lessons and rest my eyes. Not very exciting. Daddy has had his job for a while now, something he does at night at the Windsor Arms Hotel, but he doesn’t talk about it and neither does Mother. Whatever it is doesn’t make him happy the way he is when he’s making things out of wood. I think he should just make things and sell them, but no one listens to me and most of what I think I don’t say out loud anyway. Mother is going to teach part-time at a private kindergarten. She is filling in for someone who is in the family way. She is happy about her job and has worked at this school before, but she’s sad when she has to leave me. Daddy is supposed to be looking after me, but he is tired and sleeps most of the day now. Jonathan is at school. He goes to Jarvis Collegiate and does some babysitting and tutoring, too, and he even has a job for when summer comes. He’ll be going up north to some tree-planting place. He won’t actually be planting anything, though, which is good because I don’t think he has a green thumb. He’ll be supervising, which means telling everyone else what to do, I guess. He’ll be good at that.
“Wish me luck,” Mother says, pausing at the door one more time. She is wearing the tweed skirt with the blue flecks and the sky-blue cardigan over the white blouse she bought at the May Company on sale. Every night she will wash that blouse in the kitchen sink and iron it early the next morning. I know this because this is what she does every time she has a job. The only difference is this time we have our own kitchen and a tiny dressing room with a wash basin attached to the Everything Room, where we can hang things to dry overnight. Daddy has strung a line on the porch, too, where we can hang wet things during the day. When everything is dry, we just unhook the line and reel it in as if it’s a fishing rod, and it stays there all curled up inside its black case until we need it again. We are all pleased with this invention. Mummy says he should get a patent for it, but he just smiles and shrugs. Now every time I look at it, I think, patent pending.
“Good luck, good luck!” I sing to Mother, the chant making it more potent, like a charm. I can tell she doesn’t want to go, even though she’s happy to get the job and have more money for food and Jonathan’s lessons and everything. “Can I go to Janet’s house when she gets home from school?”
“‘May I,’” Mother corrects, checking her purse to make sure she’s remembered everything. “We’ll see when I get home.”
She buttons up her Persian-lamb coat, gives me a quick hug, and finally leaves, blowing one last kiss before she turns and goes down the staircase.
I stand very still, waiting to see if Baggy Bones will poke her head out. Sure enough, after a moment she peers out, checking the hall. I smile. She makes a tsk noise and pulls her scrawny neck back inside like an old turtle. I go down the hall, pretending I need to go to the bathroom near the stairs.
The bathroom is palatial, with a huge tub raised high on gnarled claws on one side, a white sink on a pedestal on the other, and of course, the throne. It is so much better than the tub we had three houses ago—a ru
sty old tin thing with a wooden rim all around the top, in the dim basement. Mother kept worrying about germs. We didn’t stay there long. Here everything sparkles with whiteness. Along the far wall is a chrome stand for towels, but of course, no one leaves anything there anymore. The whole thing is tiled in tiny black-and-white octagonal tiles on the floor and large square ones halfway up the wall. Octagonal means eight sides. The room is a lovely place to sing because it echoes most satisfyingly, but Mother never lets me anymore, not since that time there was a sharp knock on the door when I was on the fourth verse of “Barbara Allen.” I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and wipe them on my tunic. I imagine Baggy Bones listening, frowning, nodding her head, her sparse curls quivering like scrawny baby birds. As if she knows anything.
On the way back, I pause and study the enormous tapestry that covers one whole wall, leaving only enough space for Mrs. Smyth’s door. In the dim light, the woven picture seems to grow, reaching back into the wall, drawing you in. It is a medieval hunting scene, and if you look closely, more and more animals become visible in the dark forest, lurking in the shadowy trees as the hunters, one blowing a curved horn, pursue their prey. I stop and look at it every time I pass by, and each time I notice something else. The air here is different. Far above my head, the trees sigh in a ripple as the breeze stirs the duke’s standard. The dogs bark as they surround the wounded quarry. For the first time, I realize the young man holding the banner looks like Brian from upstairs. I feel that funny little flutter again in my stomach. I turn and run back to our living room, not sure if what I hear behind me is coming from the tapestry. It could be Mrs. O’Malley, the caretaker, toiling up the stairs with her cleaning things. I sit under the dining room table for a while, catch my breath, and recite the kings of England all the way up to William and Mary, where I get stuck.