by Caro Soles
I jump up and rush to the door.
“No.”
I draw my hand away from the doorknob as if it’s scalding hot. I ache to know what is happening, what Rona Layne is saying, whether Miss Jones even lets Mother in to see her.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Daddy says. He leans against the high back of the chair.
A few minutes later, Daddy rouses himself and goes into the Everything Room to change out of his good suit. I take a quick look down the hall, but Rona Layne’s door is closed and Mother is nowhere to be seen.
Twenty minutes later, Mother comes back, looking more like her old self. She slides the letter back into the envelope and drops it on the table.
Daddy says nothing; he just sits there, watching her face as he pours her a cup of the tea we made while she was gone.
Mother shakes her head. “What a strange place we have landed in this time,” she says in a conversational tone, as if she’s about to tell one of her amusing family stories. “They didn’t even offer tea.”
I stifle a nervous giggle.
“Sometimes I think that apart from her music, that woman is a complete imbecile, or maybe an idiot savant, and it’s really Miss Jones who runs the rest of her life.”
“Did Miss Jones write the letter?” Daddy hands her the teacup.
“Miss Jones was out, which was probably the only reason I got into their apartment, and Miss Layne seemed almost confused, as if she couldn’t follow what I was saying. She was like a child, Ned. And then Miss Jones came in with some shopping, and she seemed quite upset that I was there, though she couldn’t really say much in front of me. After that, Miss Layne kept glancing at her, as if looking for approval every time she said something.”
“So which one of them wrote the letter?” Daddy asks.
“Neither, apparently. Although no one came right out and said this, I suspect they both think Mrs. O’Malley wrote it.”
“And tried to make us think it was Rona Layne. That’s fraud.”
“I doubt it, since she didn’t forge Layne’s signature.”
“So the letter means nothing?”
“Not exactly. The O’Malleys are important to the running of this house, even though Mr. O’Malley is more of a shadow figure around here, as far as I can see. That came through very clearly. I think we’re all right, but I get the feeling we’re on thin ice and I can’t figure out why. Miss Layne is impossible to pin down, and Miss Jones is forever answering one question with another, like a politician.”
Daddy gets to his feet, lays a hand on her arm, and pats her. “I need a rest.”
Mother waits until he is out of the room. “Oh, God! My God, why have You forsaken me?” She covers her face with her hands and begins to cry.
I push hard against the tiles of the fireplace. I wish I could disappear. But in a strange way, I need to be here too. To let her know she is not alone. I’m afraid to move. If I were not here, would she come out of this Slough of Despond?
After a moment, she opens her eyes and looks right at me. “Oh, Vanessa,” she says, opening her arms, “you’re my one comfort now!”
I run into her arms and sink into the safety of her body. I don’t want to think about how I may have caused this whole problem. I have done those things I ought not to have done. What will happen to me now?
We are eating lunch—tomato soup and cheese sandwiches—when someone scratches at the door. Mother straightens her shoulders and nods to me, and I open it. Baggy Bones is standing there, wringing her claw-like hands. Her mouth is working as if she’s chewing something with not enough teeth.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says, stretching her neck into the room and looking at Mother and Daddy.
Daddy stands up politely and wipes his moustache with the linen serviette. “Is there something we can help you with, Mrs. Slinger?”
How does he know her name? I look at Mother who is also standing, reaching for another cup and saucer from the glass-doored cabinet. “Would you like to join us?” she asks.
“No, no.” Baggy Bones looks shocked at the very idea. “It’s them Pierces again,” she says. “I’m real sorry to bother youse about this, but there’s someone up there banging and shouting and carrying on outside their door. I don’t want the cops coming ’round. This used to be a respectable house.”
Mother and Daddy exchange glances. Daddy takes a breath. “Would you like me to see what it’s about?”
“Oh, thank you! I just want some peace and quiet, and them Pierces are always causing a hullaballoo. If you could speak to them…”
“Certainly.” Daddy lays down his serviette and slips on his second-best suit jacket from the back of the chair. He’s still wearing his house slippers and hesitates. “I’ll just get my shoes,” he says, sliding past her to cross the hall into the Everything Room.
Baggy Bones’s impatience fills the doorway as she waits. She makes no response to Mother’s efforts at polite conversation and refuses to move into the living room.
When Daddy returns, Mother follows them and everyone troops down the hall. Now we can hear the noise upstairs. Mother is still talking to Baggy Bones, but I don’t catch what she’s saying. She shepherds the old woman through her door with a comforting arm around her shoulders, and I quietly follow Daddy up the stairs to the third floor, where a man is banging on the door of number 8, shouting Brian’s name.
“Stop that at once!” Daddy says.
This must be his army voice, the one he used to order his men over the top in the trenches. I’ve never heard it before.
The shouting stops. I peer around Daddy and see the man from our church choir who looks like a Velázquez painting, one fist raised to strike the door.
“There’s something wrong,” the man says. His face is flushed, his eyes shiny like tears. “I was supposed to meet Brian at the bus station at ten o’clock, and he never showed up. I waited an hour, but when the New York bus finally pulled out, I came here to find out what happened. I’ve been practically pounding on the door but there’s no answer.”
“Maybe no one’s in,” I say, pointing out the obvious.
Daddy turns around, startled, and tells me to go home.
Why can’t they see this fact? I wonder, as I trot back down the stairs. If someone were there, they would open the door. It’s simple. Mother is still with Baggy Bones, so I keep going out the back way, determined to prove I’m right, and climb the ladder to the roof. But when I get to the big bay window, the curtains are drawn again. Perhaps Mrs. Dunn has convinced Mrs. Pierce of the wisdom of her shadowed-room-equals-a-cooler-room theory. I peer through the gap, but I can only see a thin slice of the place: the top of the harpsichord, the end of a table, part of the door.
As I am shifting about, trying to see more, the door bursts open and Daddy appears, balancing himself in the doorframe. At once his hand shoots out, stopping Brian’s noisy friend from rushing in. Daddy shouts something I can’t hear, and I fall back out of sight, frightened by the look on his face. Why does he have one hand covering his nose and mouth like that? The last thing I see before I scuttle away is the suitcase on the floor and Brian’s scuffed music case leaning against it.
A few minutes later I am sitting on the porch, sucking on an old Scotch peppermint I found in the pocket of my shorts. It was a bit fuzzy at first, but now it’s smooth and sharp like a new candy. In the distance, I hear sirens: first one, then another, then one more. They wail together, answering each other, rising and falling, coming nearer and nearer till they suddenly stop, so close now they sound as if they are in our driveway. Prickles of apprehension crawl along my spine. I run down the back stairs in time to see two police cars pull up under the porte-cochère, lights flashing, gravel spraying under their tires. A couple of uniformed policemen jump out. Over the crackle of the car radios, I hear Mother’s voice frantically calling my name.
We are being evicted. Mrs. O’Malley has called the police.
I turn around, feeling cold, wanting Mother to tell me everything’s all right, but her face is tense, telegraphing her anxiety. She scoops me close with one arm.
“Come,” she says. “Inside.”
The air crackles with strange energy. Do we have to leave right away? Leave everything behind? Our records? My books? Mother rushes me up the stairs, telling me we are going to Mrs. Sullivan’s for tea. What? I haven’t heard about this before, but now is not the time for questions. I go inside and get changed. Maybe this is Part the First of Eviction: getting dressed and out of the way, making it easy for everyone to throw us out. Being polite. Another form of noblesse oblige, perhaps.
Strangely, when we are both dressed up, we go out the back way. We never do that. The police cars are still there, but no police officers have come to our door so far. That’s a good sign, surely. Mother holds my hand very tightly as we hurry by.
Perhaps Mrs. Sullivan will let something drop about what is going on. I will just have to listen extra hard.
27. EXEUNT OMNES
JULY 1, DOMINION DAY, AND WE’RE MOVING. Again. But we’re not being evicted.
Everything happened very fast. I don’t know exactly how, or even why, except it probably has something to do with Mrs. O’Malley. No one mentions this, but what else could it be? Except maybe something to do with the policemen….
I didn’t find out anything when we were at Mrs. Sullivan’s. The whole outing was very odd. For one thing, no one had mentioned this invitation before. We didn’t even take a hostess gift. And it was strange being there without Janet, sitting in their dim dining room eating, with no one to exchange glances with, feeling really alone even though Mother, Janet’s oldest sister, and Mrs. Sullivan were sitting right there. I guess it was more like a peculiar high tea because we ate little sandwiches, some strange potato-and-egg salad, ladyfingers, cookies with jelly in the middle, some pound cake, and even some cheese and grapes. And everything was on the table at the same time, so it couldn’t have been dinner, really, could it? Mother didn’t mind me taking more than one of everything, which was a good thing because eating eases the butterflies in my stomach.
Everyone talked in a stilted way about what Janet was doing on the farm and about Mother’s hopes for a new job with that private kindergarten in the fall in spite of having lost her certificate, and Mrs. Sullivan talked about the trip to Montreal that Mr. Sullivan was taking for business and how the first time she was there she went up all the steps of St. Joseph’s Oratory on her knees. I wonder what state her stockings would have been in at the top. There are a lot of steps. I’ve seen pictures.
Then we went into the living room, and Mrs. Sullivan brought some of Janet’s old school books from grade six and gave them to me. “It’ll be like summer school for you,” she said, laughing in that sparkly false way adults have with children sometimes. She doesn’t usually do this, so it grates. It will be fun using Janet’s books, though, seeing her handwriting here and there in cryptic comments, looking at her occasional doodles, knowing she read exactly what I was reading. While I looked through the books, Mrs. Sullivan and Mother talked in low voices as they cleared the dishes in the dining room, something I would usually have been expected to help them do. Now and then, I caught snippets when Mother got carried away and raised her voice: housing shortage, nothing in the paper, no one wants children, that madwoman. I had heard all this before, though perhaps not about the madwoman. Later on, Mother made several calls on the telephone in the hall, one of them to Daddy, I think. We were there so long I fell asleep in the window seat. It was almost dark when we finally came home. There were no police cars to be seen.
So now it’s only five days later, and we are moving to Lame Duck Lodge. “How appropriate,” Mother says bitterly, and then reminds us we mustn’t call it that anymore, not even in jest. We’re to have the first floor of Miss David’s new house, which Daddy will finish fixing up for her so we can live for free for a while. And I will have my own bedroom! It’s just a sleeping porch really, Daddy says, but it leads out to the garden, so maybe I can feed some stray kitties and have secret pets like Baggy Bones does. Better still, a stray dog. Or maybe the five cats Mother says live with Miss David will come for a visit sometimes. All this should be very exciting, especially the part about me having my own room, but I feel numb. Mother says this is a bitter pill to swallow, but Daddy is happy. He’s the one who “sealed the deal,” as he says. Strange how the Music House was supposed to be our haven but now we can’t get out fast enough. Everything is happening at top speed and I can’t figure out why, so sometimes I don’t know whether to be happy or sad. It’s almost dizzying.
When I am gathering old newspapers for packing from the discarded pile on the porch, I find stories about Mrs. Pierce and Brian splattered all over the front pages. Scandal in Jarvis Mansion, says one. Murder–Suicide in Musician’s House. Older Woman, Youth, Pose as Mother and Son. Woman Poisons Teenaged Lover, screams yet another. The words make my heart race, my stomach flutter strangely. Most are newspapers I’ve never seen before. A few moments later, Daddy finds me reading one of the articles and takes them all away.
“Trash,” he says, and flings them in the fireplace and lights the fire, even though it’s a hot day. “You can’t believe anything they print in those rags. Pack the books.”
After a few minutes, I raise my head and look at Daddy hard until he looks back. “Brian didn’t go to New York, did he?” I know the answer, but I have to hear it from him to make it real.
“He’s gone, dear. That I can tell you. Here. Don’t forget Jonathan’s music books.”
“But it said in the paper Brian’s dead,” I say, trying to understand. “It says his mother killed him.”
“She wasn’t his mother,” Daddy says. “They got that right.” He stops what he’s doing and looks off into the distance for a moment. “Look, you’re too young to understand.”
“He was a friend of mine,” I say, my eyes blurring with tears. I wish I hadn’t seen those dreadful papers.
Daddy pauses, and for a moment I think he might tell me more, but then he picks up another carton and puts it on the table. He won’t talk anymore. And I know it’s no use asking Mother. She won’t talk either. I blink, push up my glasses. The print on the spines of the books blurs. Brian will never get my goodbye present. I picture him stumbling across the room, supported by Mrs. Pierce. He was dying then. Poison making its way through his veins, draining his life. Could I have saved him if I had cried out? I turn away so Daddy won’t see me wipe my eyes, and I try to think about something else: about my new room, the tiny garden that it looks out on, the thought of waking up there and getting dressed for a real school every morning in my crisp new white blouse with the notched collar and the new tunic with the crest in the middle. It helps a little.
This move is so different from last time. Then, Jonathan was here and we were surrounded by friends. It was cold outside, but everyone pitched in to help carry things under the naked trees, across the broad street, and up the stairs. We were moving into our haven. Everyone was so hopeful. Now it’s Dominion Day, so it’s hot, and the three people here are all strangers: Miss David’s brother, Stefan, whom I have never met, and his two Polish friends from work. They have brought their dilapidated truck and loaded up the piano and the wardrobe trunk, the window boxes and a lot of cartons, with much shouting in their own language, and then driving away in the shimmering heat under the green archway of the Jarvis Street elms. Soon they will be back for the last load. Our new house isn’t that far away. Mother points out that I’ll be able to walk to school. I’d feel better about it all if Patricia weren’t standing there, arms crossed, watching all the commotion as she leans against the wall just outside the O’Malley’s back door, her round moon-face strangely expressionless.
Mother stands looking lost in the living room, now
shorn of everything personal. Our dining table is gone, and so are the dining chairs, the wing chair, and even Jonathan’s daybed, which will now be mine for my new room. Only the huge oak desk remains, waiting for the new people who will live here. The place looks lighter, smaller. And sad. It is not a haven anymore. I move close to Mother, and she puts her arm around me and hugs me.
“What a life,” she says, shaking her head.
“Mummy, who was Mrs. Pierce?” I ask.
“I have no idea, dear,” Mother says. “Come on. Let’s wait for the men downstairs.”
“What’s going to happen to the harpsichord?”
“That is the least of my worries,” Mother says.
Baggy Bones has closed her door. I think of her watering her plants in her dim greenish room, feeding her secret cats on the windowsill, talking endlessly to Marie. She will have enough gossip now to keep her going for years.
As we walk down the long hall, I take one last look at the tapestry. I try to look deep inside the forest as I used to, but now everything is flat. Colourless. Silent. Dead.
Like Brian.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The picture of a writer toiling alone is true in a sense. But we are not alone all the time. We have a lot of help along the way from family, friends, first readers, and editors. I want to especially thank Inanna Publications for welcoming me into their literary family and being my first Canadian publisher. Thank you, Luciana Ricciutelli, for patiently switching all the American spelling I had worked so hard to use for my American agent and U.S. publishers, and for straightening out some of my more convoluted sentences. And thanks, too, to Val Fullard for the cover design which puts the piano front and centre, where it belongs in the story.
Caro Soles’ novels include mysteries, erotica, gay lit, science fiction and the occasional bit of dark fantasy. She received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, and has been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Aurora Award, and the Stoker Award. Caro lives in Toronto, and loves dachshunds, books, opera, and ballet, not necessarily in that order.