by Caro Soles
Aunt Dottie’s vivid stories of the Second World War on the home front in London seem almost jolly in comparison, although I’m sure it was no fun at the time either. She was in charge of the children’s wing of a big London hospital, so she was so busy she didn’t have time to be scared, I guess. We have a picture of her in our photo album, standing outside the hospital in her crisp uniform and the regulation navy blue cape with the red lining, not that you can tell it’s red. She showed it to me one time. She keeps it in a trunk, just the way Daddy keeps his 48th Highlanders kilt packed away. Sometimes Mother says we should make a blanket out of it—there is so much warm material there—but she’s afraid Daddy would be upset, not that he’d say anything. I think it’s a bad idea because just seeing it there, even as a blanket, might make him remember things he’s trying to forget.
It’s not easy to forget, I’m finding. Much as I’d like to consign Patricia, her mother, and my life of crime to oblivion, they are always there in my head, lurking, like a bad smell in a closed room. Mother is so busy washing and ironing her things, getting ready for the twins job, and talking about the new doctor, it seems she has completely forgotten the O’Malley threat, but I know she has not. Sometimes I catch her unawares, looking off into space, and her face has lost all vitality. Lines of anxiety you’d never notice before are plain, etched deep from years of worry: the outward and visible signs of a troubled life. And then she sees me watching and she smiles and it all melts away, or goes into the poetry she writes in her Testament to Loneliness.
One of the things that’s making her secretly sad, I think, is Miss David. She came by last night to get Mother to help with some more papers, and when Mother found out what they were, I saw her face suddenly fall. For an instant, I thought she might cry, but the pleased expression was back almost instantly. I looked over at Jonathan, and I’m sure he saw it too.
Miss David and her brother have bought a house.
Afterwards, Jonathan called it “Lame Duck Lodge” and laughed about it, describing what it probably looks like, how dilapidated and tiny it must be, with mice gnawing on the floorboards and ivy pulling down the chimney. But Mother shushed him and said maybe Daddy could help them fix it up. If anyone knows how to fix up a house, it’s Daddy, who actually built an entire house once many years ago next door to my grandfather’s—this was where he met Mother. He tells the story about going to Mother’s front door to ask for water, and Mother opening the door and him thinking, I’m going to marry that girl. I just wish he was fixing up a house for Mother right now. I’m pretty sure she wrote a sad poem later about Miss David’s news.
I am going to wear my new Corpus Christi dress to the Recital. Mother has dyed it a pale blue, and I have new hair ribbons to match. I wish I could wear my hair loose, but it looks horrible like that, I have to admit. Janet’s mother offered to show us how to put my hair up in rags so I could have ringlets like Janet, but when she tried, she said my hair is too short to make it work, so pigtails it is.
Yesterday, Mother went down the hall and tried to talk to Rona Layne for the third time, but Miss Jones said she was not to be disturbed. We know Miss Layne has sick headaches, and before a big recital is probably a good time to get one. But Mother says it’s also a good excuse. It’s a great ploy, she says, since one would seem excessively boorish to keep on insisting on an audience after being told this. So she’ll wait until after the Recital and then try again. Having decided this, she seems to have put the problem aside.
I don’t tell her that I saw Miss Jones and Mrs. O’Malley chatting together on the landing earlier that day when I went to check for the early mail—Mrs. O.’s hands clasped on her mop handle, Miss Jones leaning one shoulder against the wall. They were talking in low voices and laughing. When they saw me coming, they stopped talking and watched me as I went by. In embarrassment, my face flushed hot and sweat sprang out under my armpits. I couldn’t get by them fast enough, but once downstairs, I was almost shaking. I am sure they were talking about us. I could feel it.
We are in the Everything Room when Mother asks me to go downstairs to check for the second mail. She’s expecting letters from Grandmother and Uncle Charlie, the artist, who’s not really a relative but an old friend of Mother’s. As I pass the tapestry, a current of air causes it to ripple. The trees move. I pause as goosebumps break out on my arms. For a moment, the air quivers, and I see Mrs. Pierce lolling in her tangled sheets, Brian’s sweaty body, Patricia’s fat face red with anger. I hear Baggy Bones’s voice droning on behind her half-open door. “Now Marie, I don’t badmouth anyone, you know that, but there’s something off about that Mrs. Pierce, if that’s really her name.”
Something snaps back into place, and I hurry downstairs. There’s someone standing by the griffin’s bench. One of Rona Layne’s Special People, no doubt. She has long hair running down her back like dark water. She turns around and smiles at me. Her face is pale, black bangs low over her black brows, dimples on her cheeks. Her red silky dress hangs just below the knees and looks very grown up, but her mischievous expression is that of a child. As I get closer, I see she’s wearing a gold bracelet with what looks like a swan charm hanging from it.
“Where did you get that bracelet?” The moment the words are out, I am appalled at my bad manners.
“You like it?”
“It’s lovely,” I say. “Unique.”
She smiles and holds out her wrist so I can see it better.
I touch the gold charm. I know how it feels on her wrist, the weight of it, the way the swan moves as her wrist turns.
“My father gave it to me just before my first big recital,” she goes on. “I thought I’d lost it a few weeks ago, but someone just returned it.” She holds her arm out straight in front of her and looks at the bracelet lovingly. “I’m waiting for him to pick me up. He’ll be so pleased.”
“Did Mrs. O’Malley find it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Some cleaning woman, I guess. She found it in Miss Layne’s studio. I’m so glad to get it back before the recital. It’s my good luck charm, you know. I was actually thinking of pulling out until I got it back.”
“My brother Jonathan is playing in the Recital, too,” I say.
“I’m glad Janey Drew isn’t. I don’t want to share the stage with her.”
“You don’t like Janey?”
She puts two fingers to her nose and pinches her nostrils closed as if there was a bad smell in the hall. “Have you met her?” I nod. “And do you like her?”
“Well, I only met her once.”
“That’s enough, believe me. But Dad says it’s not all her fault. Her mom is a real backstage mama, you know? Really pushy. And she keeps her dressed like a kid. But you want to know something?” She moved close and whispered into my ear behind her hand. “She’s almost two years older than she lets on, so she’s really older than me!”
“How do you know?”
“My sister’s best friend, Carla, goes to the same school as her, and you know what? Janey can’t keep that game up for much longer. Soon she’ll have to start binding her boobies.” She laughs gleefully and presses both hands over her mouth.
“Angelica?”
“Dad!” She turns and runs to the front door where a tall man with silver-grey hair is waiting. She hugs him and shows him the bracelet, then waves at me as they leave.
I wonder if what she says is true. Janey certainly acts young. I look at the griffins guarding each end of the oak bench. They look smaller than they used to.
Finally I look at the credenza by the staircase where Mrs. O’Malley leaves the mail, sorted according to name. The second delivery has come, but there is nothing for us, so I look through everyone else’s. Mrs. Smyth has a bill from Eaton’s and something from the school where she used to teach. Mrs. Dunn has a telephone bill and two letters, one of them from England, written on a pale-blue single-sheet airmail form. She alw
ays has mail. Mrs. Pierce and Brian never have anything. Strange. Even Baggy Bones gets mail now and then. I glance at Mrs. Tyndall’s postcard from Boston and see that her first name is Marie. She must be Baggy Bones’s friend! Amazing. And I have never seen her going either in or out. She’s better at being invisible than I am.
I know Mrs. O’Malley is out because I saw her leave, and Mr. O’Malley is at his day job so I know he won’t be there when I knock. Patricia opens the door and stares out at me. She looks rumpled, as if she was sleeping. She seems to do that a lot.
“What do you want?” she says, squinting at me.
I put my hands on my hips like Mrs. O’Malley. “Your mother decided to give the bracelet back to the real owner, I see.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away.” She starts to close the door.
I think of Cedric and Eddie. They wouldn’t back down. I put my foot in the way, and for once I am glad I am wearing Oxfords.
“You didn’t steal the bracelet, did you?” I say, suddenly seeing the whole thing.
“I told you I didn’t, Four-Eyes.”
“Well, I know that’s true now.”
“So is this your apology?”
“It was your mother who stole it.”
“Liar!” she shouts.
“It’s true.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it.”
I pull my foot away, and she slams the door in my face. I can’t prove it. She knows that. I run back upstairs and tell Mother about Angelica and the bracelet and how I saw it in the basement.
“Mrs. O. is like a magpie,” she says thoughtfully, “picking up shiny things, feathering her nest. I wonder…” She looks at the eiderdown she bought from Mrs. O. in the winter, and I can see her thoughts as plainly as if she has spoken. Who really owned that duvet before we bought it?
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” I say, and she laughs and hugs me and tells me I should study law someday. “I must say that this whole story doesn’t say much for Mrs. O.’s housekeeping abilities. She gave the bracelet back today and tells them she found it cleaning the studio? But the bracelet was lost weeks ago, which means either she’s lying or she doesn’t clean the studio very often.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“Not that it matters,” Mother goes on. “I suspect that Rona Layne will take the path of least resistance if we don’t persuade her otherwise. But after the recital. And Vanessa, don’t ever go down to the basement again, no matter the circumstances. Promise me?”
“I promise.” I feel much lighter now that I have told at least a version of the saga of the bracelet. Mother makes tea and we go out to the porch and sit surrounded by the cascading flowers from the window boxes she takes such care of: nasturtiums and petunias, even a pot of lavender to add scent to the air, along with the peppery geraniums that Mrs. Dunn has donated from her windowsill collection.
“Angelica says Janey Drew is older than she lets on,” I say, dipping my big Dad’s cookie in my tea.
Mother looks off into the distance, stirring her tea absently. “Sometimes we need a comforting story to tell ourselves about the competition,” she says. “And sometimes we need a façade to hide behind. Either way, it doesn’t take away from her talent.”
It’s not the response I anticipated, and I don’t know how to react, what she expects from me now. I munch on my cookie, trying to make it last. Tomorrow Daddy is coming home. Maybe things will return to normal then. Maybe the little worm of disquiet will stop gnawing on my entrails, like the raven picking at Prometheus’s liver when he was chained to the rock. Maybe one more cookie will make it go away.
21. OYEZ, OYEZ
WE ARE IN THE MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING at the corner of St. George and Bloor, waiting for Dr. Bachman, the new eye specialist. Mother is clasping and unclasping her hands, reaching over to pat my arm, picking up a magazine, putting it down again. I swing my legs, but Mother lays a hand on my knee to stop me. I try not to think about the possibilities a new doctor might open up. It’s always this way. And it always turns out the same. We even went down to Florida one time to see this doctor Mother had heard about who had theories about eye exercises. We went on the Greyhound bus, and Jonathan came, too. On the way home, we didn’t have enough money for him to get farther than Buffalo, so he had to sit in the bus station until we got home to Toronto and Mother could wire him more money. Daddy was in the hospital and hors de combat at the time. There was no joy in the eye exercises, but I got to swim in the Gulf of Mexico and Mother met a large lady on the beach named Mrs. Laughingwell who taught me how to do the Australian crawl.
In spite of myself and all my previous experiences and disappointments, my stomach flutters with hope.
There are a lot of people in the office. Two little boys play on the floor with big plastic blocks. They are both wearing glasses almost as thick as mine. One shrieks suddenly and throws one of the blocks at his brother. Mother reaches over and catches it, lays a hand on the little boy’s shoulder, and smiles at him. He is so surprised he just sits there and stares at her.
“Look,” she says. “If you put the block here, you will have built a doorway. What can go through that doorway without making it fall down? Can you show me?”
The little boys pull some small wooden cars out of a cloth bag on the floor beside them and begin to push them carefully through the gateway. One of them is concentrating so hard his tongue is sticking out. A woman sitting opposite us knitting a baby sweater smiles at Mother gratefully.
We go in next and finally meet the new doctor. He is slim and neat and has kind eyes, dark as chocolate. It doesn’t take him long to realize I have memorized the eye chart, and he begins to use other charts: shapes, pictures, random letters. I begin to relax, but Mother watches anxiously from her perch in the corner. She is on edge. I can hear her thoughts swirling and racing, the questions waiting to burst out, sharp and never-ending.
At last he leaves me, giving me time for my eyes to recover from the drops. I can hear him talking to Mother in the other room, their voices going up and down. Mother sounds excited and keeps asking what sounds like the same questions over and over. I lay my head back on the soft leather chair and close my tired eyes. The next thing I know, Mother is waking me up. Her face is full of joy.
“You can go to school,” Dr. Bachman says. “Eyes like yours should be exercised. The diagnoses you have received are very old fashioned. Thinking has changed, and our research has found new ways to understand severe astigmatism like yours.”
He says a lot more, but I can’t hear him. I am still hearing those words: You can go to school.
“Do you mean I can go to a real school?” I say, for once not caring that I am interrupting an adult. Even Mother doesn’t chide me.
“Yes, a real school,” Dr. Bachman says.
Mother talks a blue streak on the way home, but I am living inside my head and don’t really follow her. I am hugging around me the idea of school. Real school. No Eddie convulsing on the floor, no Dick and Jane, no gang of Vipers. We take a short detour up Walmer Road and walk past St. Mildred’s College, and we stop and look at it. “You will go to a school like that,” Mother says.
As we stand there, a group of girls come out the door, running down the steps. They are wearing tunics similar to mine, but theirs have a crest in the middle.
“Hope goes to school here,” I say, remembering a girl from church.
“And so will you,” Mother says, firmly. “So will you.”
We have a picnic on the grass in Queen’s Park: peanut butter sandwiches and an apple cut up in slices with lemon juice and a hint of cinnamon sprinkled on it. I am so excited I can barely taste anything.
Then Mother says, “How would you like to go to a movie?” She says it casually as if we do this all the time.
I stare at her. She is shaking off the crumbs, then folding up the
waxed paper and putting it in her handbag. Her eyes are sparkling. “The Secret Garden is playing at Loews.”
I am almost afraid to speak. I don’t know what to expect. As we walk to the cinema, I wonder how a book I see in my head will look up on a screen—if the characters will look the same, if the walled garden will be the way it is in my mind.
When we get to the theatre, Mother buys two tickets and we go inside. It is very grand, with red plush everywhere and brass railings on the swooping balcony. But Mother ushers us right up to the front, and we sit down in the middle. I cross my legs on the seat and look up at the giant red and gold curtains covering the screen. Mother pats my arm.
For the next hour and a half, I am in another world. Everything is amazing: the purring sound the curtains make as they draw away to reveal the screen, the newsreel, the snippets of other movies coming to the theatre later on. And then the main attraction. I don’t know if there is anyone else there, and I don’t care. I am transfixed by the colour. It’s just like the illustrations. And the beautiful old house is even grander than I imagined. There’s Dickon up on the screen, just like in the drawing in my book. There’s that nasty Colin with his skinny legs and his temper tantrums. There’s Mary, being sensible and cheerful in spite of everything. And there’s the garden. I think of Miss Layne’s garden, enclosed by its iron fence, hidden behind the tall bushes. It needs some loving attention too.
When it’s all over, I feel a little stiff and realize I haven’t moved all the time I was watching. I walk out into the sunshine in a daze.
“Did you like it?” Mother asks, taking my hand.
“It was perfect,” I say. “Just grand.”
Daddy comes home at noon the next day. Mother makes his favourite things: beans on toast for lunch and finnan haddie with potatoes is planned for dinner. Daddy looks better, his skin glowing and his blue eyes brighter than ever, especially after he hears about the new eye doctor. When I show him the wood Jonathan and I rescued for him, he smiles even more.