by Caro Soles
I can’t go and see Janet for at least another week. It’s not clear whether this is because of the horse dung incident or the fact that I have fallen behind in my schoolwork. Mother blames herself for the latter and is spending this evening in the other room, working out my new schedule of studies. She hasn’t had the time to find any more tutors for me, so I am on my own for a while. I don’t mind this. I get to read by myself, as long as I don’t do it for more than half an hour at a time. We have a kitchen timer to set so I don’t forget.
I am finally drifting off into a bright dream world where Brian and I are mounted on a silver horse, setting forth on a wonderful adventure, when I feel the bed shift and Mother bends over me. I squeeze closer to the wall, but she rolls me over and brushes the hair off my forehead.
“Midnight surprise,” she says. “Get up. Put on your dressing gown.”
Sleepily I roll out of bed and pull on the old kimono Mother cut down for me.
Daddy is home. He and Jonathan are sitting at the dining room table with a gargantuan bowl of ice cream in the middle. There is a bowl at everyone’s place.
“Ice cream?” I say, wondering if I am still asleep after all. We never have ice cream.
Daddy is beaming. He is still in his street clothes, but Jonathan is in pajamas. He sleeps in the living room on the daybed.
“I don’t think she should have any after what she did,” Jonathan says.
“It’s for everyone,” Daddy says. “Eat it all up. It won’t keep in the icebox, you know.”
I sit down and see that Mother has put the new silver spoon she just bought with the money from her new job at my place mat. I feel a rush of joy and pick it up and look at her. She’s smiling. Everything’s all right.
“This will make the ice cream taste even better,” she whispers. She is now the only one without a silver spoon.
9. THE MISSION
JONATHAN HAS BEEN CHOSEN as one of the four performers at the big June Recital in Eaton Auditorium. He has started practising already, although it is only May. Mother is very excited. “This is the first step,” she says. “This is the beginning of great things!” But Jonathan seems depressed.
From my perch on top of the low built-in cabinets where we keep the books and some china, I listen as I work on my project for Mother’s birthday present. Her birthday isn’t till June either, but it will take a long time and I want it to be special, like Jonathan’s performance. I’ve called it Proverbs and Strange Sayings Illustrated by Vanessa Dudley-Morris. So far, I have done “Birds of a Feather,” “Hammer and Tongs,” and “Raining Cats and Dogs” I’m working on “Hoist on His Own Pétard,” but it’s turning out to be harder than the others. I’ll have to look up pétard in the Book of Knowledge so I know exactly what it looks like. I think it’s a dagger of some sort, but I’m not sure. Jonathan’s not sure either. I want to get it just right.
One of Bach’s partitas sparkles in the air around me. From where I sit cross-legged in my aerie, I can see Jonathan’s long fingers dancing over the keys, striking each note with precision and force in spite of the fast tempo. When I try this, I’m told not to thump. How does he manage? I remember listening to hours of scales and swooping, rattling-fast exercises from the yellow book. I have no patience for boring scales. When I’m alone, I try to reproduce what he does—the pieces, not the exercises—playing mostly by ear what he plays, but with quite different results. I don’t have a music teacher at the moment, but I’m still supposed to practise.
Mother often tells the story about the first time she took Jonathan to Rona Layne’s to audition. When she tells it in company, I feel a strange mixture of embarrassment and pride. We’d just arrived in Toronto then, and I was only five, but I went with them since Daddy was either at work or in the hospital—I forget which. Everyone was very nervous. Getting Jonathan a superior music teacher was part of the reason we had come to this big city—that and seeing this well-known doctor for my bad eyes—and he had been practising his audition pieces for weeks. While he played, I watched Rona Layne, fascinated by this tiny woman dressed in a long-ago style; her feet, not much bigger than mine and crossed at the ankle, were clad in beaded velvet shoes with tiny curved heels. She looked like Queen Victoria before she got fat.
As they talked afterwards, I wandered over to the great Steinway and began to play my version of what Jonathan had just played. I still remember the sudden silence and how I stumbled to a stop, thinking I had done something wrong. Rona Layne came over and pushed the cushioned piano bench closer to the keyboard, adjusted the special wooden contraption that allowed short legs to reach the pedals, and asked me to go on.
At once, I froze.
“Play whatever you like,” Rona Layne said. “Or would you like to see the music in case you forget something?”
I shook my head. Although I knew the notes one by one, I couldn’t sight-read very well. I haven’t improved much since then.
She smiled and sat down close by. “That’s fine, dear. Choose something else. You can play whatever you like. Pretend I’m not even here.” She folded her hands.
She was impossible to ignore. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I looked back at Mother. She nodded encouragingly, and I started again. A moment later my fingers stumbled and I jumped down and ran back to Mother, hoping the floor would open and swallow me, the curtains would tumble and cover me, the sky would fall, and I wouldn’t have to know what happened next.
“She plays by ear?” she asked.
“She just copies what I do,” Jonathan said dismissively.
Miss Layne went over to the piano and stood in front of the keyboard, striking one note after another, asking me to name the note. I did, whispering it to Mother who repeated it.
“She seems to have perfect pitch.” Rona Layne came back and leaned close to Mother with her small doll smile. “You may have two of them.”
Whenever Mother repeats this story, she looks at me fondly and I cringe. I know I am not anywhere near as good as Jonathan. I know I lack that special something he says you need, what he says Janey Drew has, that special something they all have who gather around Rona Layne—her Special People. Like Brian. I am not one of them.
“Why don’t you dust while you’re up there, Piglet,” Jonathan says now. He is putting the music away in the piano bench, except what he’s taking with him to his lesson. “Make yourself useful.” He throws the dust cloth up to me, and I begin to clean off the top of the cupboard, the sill of the small leaded pane window that looks out over the back stairs, the window frame.
Jonathan puts on his cardigan and combs back his straight dark-brown hair with his fingers. It’s getting a bit long and one side flops down over his high forehead. “Try not to get into trouble,” he says, standing at the door, his music case in one hand.
I climb down, run to the door, and watch his back disappearing down the dim hall. When he’s gone, I wander after him, past the tapestry. I catch the sound of whispered words, and I freeze, thinking it’s the hunters muttering amongst themselves in the woven forest. But it’s just Mrs. Smyth talking to her husband in his urn. I retreat back to the porch and look out over the grass and fences behind the house and wonder what’s in the garden behind ours, the one I saw plainly the time I was stuck on top of the coach house. Mother says it’s a crying shame the place is so neglected and allowed to go to rack and ruin, with the housing shortage the way it is. She gets that dreamy look in her eye as she describes how we could live there, what we could do with the space, the curtains we’d hang, the colour we could paint the cupboards in the little kitchen (she’s sure there’s a little kitchen in there somewhere), and the high polish we could put on the wooden floors. We could bring our big rug out of storage, the one with the tree of life pattern that matches the smaller one we have now in the living room. Mother is always imagining what things might be like in some other place. Daddy just smiles, lies back in his cha
ir, and closes his eyes.
Daddy is sleeping now. Again. He hasn’t been back to work since the midnight ice cream feast and I can sense Mother getting more and more worried, but nobody says anything. I run down the back steps and cross the driveway to the gap in the fence between our house and Ryan’s Art Gallery. I’m filled with the energy of a new idea and slip through the thin part of the hedge and turn left, following the driveway till it veers into a lane going out to Wellesley Street. This shortcut will take me to the place Daddy and I saw the old wooden bookcase. It could still be there. Maybe.
I keep to one side of the lane, hoping no one will notice me against the bushes. Jonathan’s lesson will take an hour at least, maybe more, plenty of time for my adventure. I almost turn back when I feel someone watching, but I think of Daddy, his hand patting that wood, and I keep going. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the rows of windows of the apartment building looming above the unkempt bushes along one side of the alley. They look blank, burnished gold from the afternoon sun—but behind this innocent shield, who is lurking? Watching? Waiting to pounce? Whispers follow me in the bushes as I start to run.
The lane slopes suddenly downward, and I am on the street where I often walk with Daddy. I stop. Take a deep breath. I’ve missed the wood. The people and cars and sudden rushing confusion startle me. I turn quickly, push my glasses firmly in place, and trudge back up the slope of the driveway. I’m walking slowly along the other side of the alley now, keeping the whispering menace at bay as I look from side to side. I spy a piece of wood behind the back porch of the Art Gallery where the garbage cans are. In a pile of discarded things, I find two broken chairs, a battered old suitcase missing a handle, a pail with a big hole in the bottom, and the bookcase. It seems to be more damaged than it was before, but there’s still enough left to make something. I wish Janet was here to help, but she’s in school and I won’t see her till Saturday so I have to do it myself. If I wait, someone might take the rest or break it even more. I wish Brian would come along. I blink and see him there, right there on the porch, smiling, the sun in his hair, his hands in his pockets the way he stands sometimes. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’ll help you.” I sigh. He doesn’t go to school, but I suppose he’s at the Conservatory now, practising.
I knock one shelf loose, using a rock for a hammer, and slide the top shelf under my arm. I can’t carry more than two pieces at once. I begin my trip back to the porch. I have to keep stopping because the shelves are heavy and slip out of my grasp, but I’m happy I’m rescuing the wood for Daddy. All the time I keep imagining what he will make, how pleased he will be.
After two trips I’m tired, but there is more wood still there so I go back. I look at the remains of the bookcase. The bottom part is nailed firmly together, and it’s too big for me to carry. I think about the old wagon we saw on one of our walks and wish I had one here. There’s nothing to do but go home, leaving the rest behind.
I’m piling the shelves up neatly beside the icebox when Jonathan bursts out the back door, his face red.
“Where the hell have you been?” he shouts at me.
I stare at him, speechless. I’ve never heard him swear before. What is he doing back so soon anyway?
“I’ve been looking for you for ten minutes!” He sees the wood and looks from it to me. “What’s all this?”
I tell him about my plan to cheer Daddy up with the wood he admired a few days ago. “There’s more, but I can’t carry it,” I finish. “I tried.”
“Hell,” he says again. “Show me.”
I turn and run down the stairs and lead him to the remains.
“All right,” he says. “Okay. We can do this, but you have to help. And you have to promise you won’t disappear like that again. Tell me!”
I nod, hoping that will do. He shifts the awkward piece into his arms, and I help balance it as we make our way home, me skipping sideways like a crab.
Jonathan makes lunch of vegetable soup and a peanut butter sandwich, and then he has to go back for afternoon classes at Jarvis Collegiate. He gives me a lecture before he goes. I look meek and nod my head a lot and say, “Yes, yes, Jonathan.” I am very glad he helped, but it’s good to be quiet again. I’m used to quiet now.
I take out the map of Canada that Mother traced for me and fill in the borders of the provinces and the capital cities from memory, remembering to add Newfoundland. Daddy was pleased when they joined the Dominion in March. He said there were some Newfoundlanders in his unit in the army and they were “good men.” I colour the provinces green and yellow and blue and burnt sienna with the new coloured pencils I got for my birthday. I list the premiers, correcting the one I got wrong last time, and write down what each place is famous for. Seth strikes the half hour. I go to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
“What are you doing in there?” Mrs. O’Malley appears at the half-open door, leaning on her mop. She shouldn’t be here in the afternoon, I think, but I just stare at her, confused by her sudden appearance. She licks her lips and pushes her frizzy hair back from her face. “You should be doing school work,” she says.
“I am,” I say.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“It’s recess.” Janet told me about recess. They have it in Parliament, too.
Mrs. O’Malley leans back and roars with laughter. It’s insulting. I feel my face getting redder and redder. I think of closing the kitchen door but can’t quite bring myself to do such a rude thing. The kettle boils, and I mix the cocoa and sugar in our mug with St. Paul’s Cathedral on it, wishing she would go away. She watches me, but she’s moving the mop around again in tiny circles on the narrow band of wood on each side of the hall runner.
“You should be at a real school,” she says now, all her laughter gone.
I don’t answer. I take my mug, turn out the light, and push out the door, closing it carefully behind me. I feel her eyes on my back as I go into our living room and close that door, too. Then I slide my back down the door and sit on the floor, sipping my cocoa as I listen to Mrs. O’Malley humming and mopping on the other side. I have the unpleasant feeling she knows I am just sitting here, right against the door.
At last she goes away. I sit here for a long time, listening to the Music House breathe around me. In my head, I recite the states on the other side of the Canadian border, then the provinces from sea to shining sea.
Seth is striking the quarter hour when I get up and go outside to the porch. The window boxes are filled with soil now, ready for the seeds Mother has bought: nasturtiums, marigolds, baby’s breath, and sweet peas. One small box will be full of runner beans. We can’t plant anything until after May 24, but already Mother has started some of the seedlings indoors. They’re stretched out in egg cartons along the windowsills in both rooms and look spindly and frail, like invalids.
I can’t go downstairs since I promised Jonathan not to, but he didn’t say anything about going up. I smile in secret triumph and skip along the porch to the ladder. I feel more confident climbing it now. Halfway up I pause, swing around so my back is against the brick wall and look out over all three gardens. The secret one is directly below, almost hidden in overgrown bushes, now fragrant with lilacs and orange blossoms. Straight ahead, just beyond our own boring square of close-trimmed lawn, I can see over the back fence into the long grass of the abandoned yard behind the coach house. No one has mowed there for a long time. It has a derelict air, forgotten, unloved. If I could climb the fence and explore it, I’d be the first one to set foot there for many years. My footprint would stay there, imprinted in the soil like Friday’s on the sand, a testament to me being there. But that will have to wait. I swing around again and climb higher.
No one is on the roof today. For the first time, I climb all the way up and tiptoe over the pebble floor to the door. It is locked. Disappointed, I turn away and look around. I am beside the wide bay window of the room whe
re Brian and his mother live. Brian is one of the ones chosen for the Recital too. I guess now he and Jonathan are rivals. Maybe they always were.
I slide down and listen. From inside comes the tinkle of an instrument. Not a piano. A harpsichord! I recognize the plucked string sound from some of our records, where Wanda Landowska plays Bach anytime we want.
I slide to my knees and slowly inch my face closer to the window. I want to see the harpsichord. The only ones I’ve ever seen in real life are at the museum in the ancient instrument section. No one ever plays them.
I can see inside now. Brian is playing a small spinet to the right of the window, facing my way. His eyes are on the keyboard, watching the black keys and the white sharps and flats. His mother is standing behind him, her hands slowly rubbing his shoulders. As I watch, Brian’s long hands slow, pause, stop altogether. He leans back against her, and Mrs. Pierce slides her fingers down inside his shirt. She rests her head on his and keeps rubbing. I can see the movement, like mice under the white material of his open shirt as her hands slide lower and lower.
I pull back, feeling curiously warm and short of breath. I think of Jonathan and Mother. She often watches him play, often caresses his cheek or touches his hair, just as she does with me. She rubs my legs when they hurt. Maybe Brian’s chest is hurting. I take another quick peek. Brian is frowning now, pulling away. He turns towards her with angry words I can almost hear but not quite. The sudden change in the atmosphere frightens me, and I jump back, shifting along the roof on my bottom until I reach the ladder. Quickly, I climb down and run inside.
Daddy is standing in the living room, fully dressed, his small brown leather suitcase open on the dining room table. When he sees me, he closes it and sets it on the ground.