Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  But Matilda is neither here nor there. Yes, at the moment, I fancy myself a herring gull taking in the bay below, the marshes and mudflats. Or a goshawk soaring over Seeley’s Brook, glittering like a garter snake in the reeds back of where the house stood. It isn’t too shabby being a bodiless bird. The only sad part is life’s earthbound part, the leavings of life as it is lived, I mean. Such leavings make me think of a clam squirting brine at people bent on digging the creature up and eating it rather than letting it be.

  You’ve heard it said, so-and-so is happy as a clam. And so I was, just ask Olive. And maybe there’s a logic to the body ending up buried like a clam after the clamming up we do in life to save face and keep peace. There’s nothing pretty about a clam, innards full of grit, its foot like a man’s dirty old dick. Its shell, though, tide-scrubbed white, there’s a thing of beauty with uses galore. Even better is a scallop shell, its mother of pearl a lovely surface for a picture of a bird or a cat. Washing up on the shore, offering themselves as canvases free for the picking, shells never cost me and Ev a cent—perfect for painting on when boards were scarce or my hands hurt too bad to do a full-size painting. Tourists snapped up my shells, locals did too, even if they said they could paint just as good themselves.

  I mention shells because I sold one the morning before that March night Ev buried the jar. Sure, my inkling of what he was up to harked back to that day’s business, which was capped by Secretary dropping off the pickles. I was glad to see her though I was worn out. I’d been up since dawn making myself useful.

  I call her my secretary because she was exactly that. She answered letters when I couldn’t, and she was the help who handled the mail orders. She would come by regular to take my finished paintings to the post office in town. She had two little boys, and before they grew up she sometimes brought them along. They’d play on the swing and watch Fred, the trout Ev kept in the well, swimming round and round and snapping at flies. Once her boys stopped coming, she would stick around long enough to take a quick cup of tea before driving off with paintings to wrap and stick in the mail. Ev and I would have got nowhere without her help, I know it. Without mail orders, we would have relied on drop-ins and been at the mercy of drive-bys. For there are two kinds of customers in the world, the curious and the self-satisfied, buyers and tire-kickers.

  A little squall blew in as Secretary’s car pulled up that chilly March day, just before suppertime. The orange sun shone through a swirl of snow that lasted but a second yet scattered the crows. By the time my helper knocked on the door, the snow had quit.

  I was tired, like I mentioned. I guess my tiredness showed when I let her in.

  “Aw, shoot, I shouldn’t have got you up.” She was apologetic, stepping inside. “Ev’s not around, is he?”

  I slipped back into my corner by the window, happy my secretary didn’t expect to be entertained. I had a slew of paintings almost ready for her to take, and Ev had stuck them in the range’s warming oven to dry. I couldn’t help notice her nose wrinkle as she glanced that way, at the basin of dishwater standing on the range-top and the opened tin of meat waiting to be sliced up. At least our cold spring kept the flies at bay. I suppose maybe she caught a whiff of the rabbit Ev had keeping in the breadbox. I saw that she’d come bearing a present, a jar of something.

  “Keeping all right, are you, dear?” Her voice was warm, yet she spoke with a shiver as she loosened her scarf. Its wool caught on the sparkly brooch pinned to her coat. I glimpsed it from the corner of my eye. I think she said her boys had given it to her.

  “Now why on earth wouldn’t I be?”

  Then I remembered the piss-pot needed emptying. There the bucket stood, just below the shelves with the breadbox for storing food. It was kind of comical how Secretary gave it a wide berth—well, as wide as she could—looking for somewhere to set her pickles. There wasn’t a square inch not taken up with something; Ev and me had run out of space for our treasures ages ago—old Couriers, cookie tins, magazines, dishes, rags. She set the pickles on Ev’s chair. Not the best spot, as it suggested the pickles were for him and not for the two of us to share. I didn’t say nothing to her, of course. Even the nicest people like to talk, and I feared she thought Ev had no time for her. People get ideas, gad knows where these ideas come from. And there is no telling what people will say if they think you’re playing with half a deck.

  Secretary was a nimble woman in her blue woollen coat. I guessed she had come from some meeting or other in town or at church. Maybe it was her nice clothes that made Ev wary. She stood on tiptoes to get the pictures out of the oven above the range top. She took care not to let the front of her coat touch the stewpot Ev had left simmering.

  I gazed out the window. Another snow squall had started up. “Will you stay for a cuppa?” Flakes twirled past the panes, and even though I wasn’t certain there was water in the kettle, it only seemed right to invite her.

  “No, no—I’ll leave you be, and if I skedaddle quick I might get these in the mail before they close.” The post office was a good five or six miles away, in the middle of Digby, past Conway. Far enough that we relied on Secretary using her car.

  “Look at that snow. Won’t stay on the ground, though. Won’t affect the driving.” Secretary liked to talk, but not too much. I could picture her before a room full of church women or helping her boys with their homework. The boys keeping still, listening. I smiled and nodded at the clock by the stairs. Its hands were stuck on the same old time they’d been stuck on for ages. Its cuckoo-bird was permanently shelter-less, put out of its house.

  “Quite the drive for you. All the ways up there and back. I appreciate it, I do.”

  I had the addresses ready, scraps torn from the corners of envelopes folks sent their letters in, requesting this or that: cats, oxen, deer, what have you. I’d strung the scraps together on a big safety pin and got up and set them atop the boards in my secretary’s arms. Then I laid the obits section from a Courier overtop everything to keep the snow off.

  But Secretary made no move to go, cradling her burden. “My, you’ve been busy.” And she smiled.

  Of course she wouldn’t take a cent for helping us out, so I didn’t offer one. Ev kept promising to pay her back for the postage as soon as a new batch of cheques rolled in. I left this up to him since he was in charge of the money. He knew better than me about the business of money, that you never knew when it or the work that brought it in would dry up. Even though he hated bankers, he had an in with the one at the Royal Bank in town, a Mr. Sutherland.

  Still Secretary lingered, and eyed me in a funny way. I wondered if she was wondering how much we owed her. But that wasn’t it.

  “You okay, Maud? You don’t seem yourself.”

  “Why, who else would I be? I’m okay. No complaints.” I laughed to prove it. Truth was, I was more than just tired. I was wondering, well, ruminating, about some folks who had dropped in that very morning. Couldn’t get them off my mind, heck knows why.

  “Oh, before I forget.” Secretary set down the paintings and dug in her purse. She pulled out a tiny tin of Aspirins and slipped it onto my table-tray.

  “Reckon you’ll think I eat those like candy.” I gave a great big chuckle. But I was thinking of Ev entertaining those people, a family who’d stopped by with their boy and two little girls. They’d been all eyes taking us in. You could say I was fretting about them, just a bit.

  “Sure you’re not feeling poorly? You don’t seem—”

  “I’m fit as a fiddle, don’t you fret.” I glanced out the window, then at the door.

  If I seemed poorly, it was just that I expected Ev home any minute and he would have something to say about Secretary and me lollygagging the afternoon away. But I couldn’t tell her that.

  “Well, I guess that’s that.” Maybe she’d expected me to ask after the boys? As she gathered up the stack of paintings, I saw that the wind and snow had quit ag
ain. When she let herself out, the world outside the door glowed blue and gold.

  Matilda’s mate, Willard, perched on the mailbox across the road. He watched Secretary leave. I’ll bet he had his eye on her brooch. She looked so nice in her coat with its little fur collar, and I remembered the first time we met. My secretary and I, not me and Willard.

  One early summer’s day not too long after I’d come out to Marshalltown, I had taken myself out by the roadside to pick a bouquet of dandelions sprung from the ditch. One ankle had seized up, then the other, and next I knew I was flat on my arse, so close to the asphalt that if he’d been there Ev would have had a fit. No matter how I tried, there was no graceful way of getting back to my feet, even rolling onto my knees. Sinking down again I figured I’d have to set there till Ev came home from wherever he was, unless some good Samaritan appeared first.

  Just as I’d thought this, a car had come along and slowed down, a car I had seen going to and fro, a lady driver who Ev said lived with her husband up the road. “Oh, steer clear of them two,” Ev had said. “They think their poo don’t stink, you don’t want nothing to do with folks like that.” Lo and behold, the lady had stopped and got out and walked towards me, calling out, “Everything all right?” Like it wasn’t too unnatural to be sitting in a patch of dandelions by the road, and so I couldn’t be completely off my nut—that is, I wasn’t from the almshouse cheek by jowl to our place. Of course, I didn’t like asking a stranger for help. The last thing I wanted was a stranger’s pitying look; worse, that roll of the eyes that means you are not where the person thinks you ought to be: Why, shouldn’t you be locked up somewhere, somewhere like next door?

  But no, this lady had bent down and held out her hand, gentle as could be, and I’d let her pull me up. Even after I’d steadied myself, she kept ahold of one hand and her arm at my waist to prevent me stumbling again.

  “Land, first I spotted you I thought, that’s a bear in the ditch!” She’d laughed, kind of embarrassed, like she had said the wrong thing. “Then I thought, that’s no bear, what bear dresses in a pretty flowered skirt? None that I know of. But seriously, it gave me a fright. I hope nothing’s sprained.”

  “Didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry about that.” And I had felt my face turn as red as her lipstick. By then she’d said her name, Kay MacNeil, and how she would see me in the window and her husband was always saying she should drop in and make my acquaintance. “But I didn’t like to intrude, knowing you have enough on your hands with Everett.” She still hadn’t let go of me. Polite as could be I withdrew my hand, and she’d slid hers into the pocket of her peplum jacket. It was a nice green gabardine. Her skirt matched perfectly, a getup such as a teacher would wear or a bank teller. “Well, I’m so happy to finally meet you,” she’d said, and the sunny look in her eyes was different from when others, like Ev’s old mother, said the same thing and you weren’t sure they meant it.

  Now, on this blustery March day, I peeked out from behind the curtain at Secretary going to her car and the crow sitting there—of course it was Willard not Matilda, I knew on account of his size and the brazen way he stayed put, hoping for a cookie or a peanut or whatever else might get tossed his way. Secretary had nothing to throw to him. I watched him watching her start the engine. He squawked in disgust and flew off empty-beaked. Just like a man, I thought, and allowed myself another chuckle, a chuckle I enjoyed this time. Only then, still peering out, tilting myself way back, I spied Matilda up in the pine tree. I could just see the top of her head poking from the nest she and Willard and last year’s brood had only finished building a day or two before.

  Watching Secretary drive off I confess my heart sank a little for all of us, with regret that she couldn’t have stayed a bit longer, and for Matilda. If Matilda wasn’t in for it already, soon enough she would be, tethered to the nest while this year’s eggs incubated. Then she wouldn’t be swooping down to visit any time soon, she would be playing the stranger even more than I did.

  See, I wasn’t blessed with the gift of gab. Even if Secretary had stuck around, I’d have run out of things to say, the same as I used to with Olive if and when the indolent and lunatics in her care allowed a moment’s peace. I liked how Matilda and I didn’t need words to stay friends.

  Oh boy, could she keep a secret!

  “You like that bird better than me,” Ev had joked once, watching Matilda peck at a lump of pork fat he threw outside. Instead of hopping up onto the sill outside his window, she hopped right up onto the sill outside mine and perched there for a full minute. She looked right through the pane into my eyes. I swear she could see the picture taking shape in my head, of yellow finches and apple blossoms. She must have liked what she saw, because she gave the glass two sharp taps with her beak.

  It wasn’t hard to see why the bond between her and I left Ev feeling slightly ruffled.

  “For frig sake, I’d like you too if you fed me. That weren’t but a bit of rancid fat I threw her. Easy come easy go.”

  No shortage of things ruffled poor Ev’s feathers.

  He got really ruffled at people who came and went without buying anything, and at those who he said made you feel beholden. Over the years, he had not grown kindlier to Secretary; he seemed to forget all she did for us by handling the mail orders. He couldn’t have done it, with just a bicycle to get around on. I doubt he could have lugged a stack of paintings all the way to town without them getting ruined. Not to mention the fact that he couldn’t decipher or write the addresses.

  And yet, ever since the day—so long ago I forget now what year it was, 1948? ’52, ’55?—some fairy godmother had brought us a radio, he seemed to think Secretary turned me into a slacker. Oh, he liked to tease. “You got to earn your keep, girl. Sit around shooting the shit, listening to the radio, you and that woman. Like a pair of white lawn darkies, you’d make good ornaments but that’s about it.”

  I hated Ev’s jokes aimed at people over Jordantown way, and I expect Secretary would have bristled at them also. I let him know it, too, how these jokes didn’t sit well with me. “Now Ev, I reckon most folks step into their drawers same as we do, one leg at a time, whether they’re brown or yellow or white. Or green, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Oh, g’way. See? You’re listening to that one again. What else does she have to say? She ought to mind her own business.”

  “Reckon our business is her business.”

  “Her beeswax, then. Mind her own beeswax, I mean. Her husband ought to keep better tabs on her. Where’s he at when she’s gadding about? It’s a man’s business knowing where his wife is. If he ain’t minding her, who is? Why isn’t she home with her kids?”

  It was after the days of him showing off the first couple of Freds swimming in the well that he said this. “Because they are grown men?” was my reply. Ev could come off sounding cranky, sometimes even silly—just his way of making himself heard. Like Ev himself said about Joe, his bark was worse than his bite.

  Still, something made me glad that March afternoon it was Willard and not Ev watching Secretary come and go. I was happy Ev had made himself scarce, wherever he had got to. Never mind that rabbit needed cooked, never mind the piss-pot needed emptied, though as far as I could tell its hum was softened by the smell of wood and tobacco smoke.

  Speaking of tobacco, have I mentioned what’s not to like about being in glory?

  Well, for starters there’s no cigarettes. No chocolates, molasses kisses or ribbon or clear toy candy either, and you would be hard pressed to find a gingersnap cookie, or a hairnet or jewellery. Though of course you can live without these things, and the latter are but vanities.

  But, getting back down to earth, by the time my secretary hit the road with those orders, I was bone-weary and glad to have the house to my lonesome for a spell. As I said, she was not the only human who had come to call that day or that week, a day and a week that unfolded like most others, aside from the fact tha
t daylight stretched longer and longer past supper hour into the evenings. The orange sunlight beaming into my corner meant another hour or two that I could have made myself useful and started on another painting.

  Something about spring’s lengthening days made me wish the sap that flows in trees flowed likewise in a person’s veins. It just wasn’t so. Like my aunt Ida used to say, the spirit might be willing but the flesh is weak. As weak as the day was long. For right after breakfast that same morning, Ev had set my sign outdoors like always, hung it by my window. I do believe Ev had spring fever, so keen was he to get started on the day’s business. I had barely scarfed down my toast and a cup of tea. Even though most mornings went like this, this one seemed different, somehow. Of course it helped business if I stood outside with a painting, held it up as cars sped past. Today he brought his chair out so I could sit now and then.

  “Gonna be a good day, Maudie. I feel it in my bones, see? Make yourself comfy, set there and don’t forget to wave to them folks whizzing by. Just give ’em a nice wave, make them slow down and stop, turn around if they have to, come and have a look-see. Let them sniff around—I’ll be out back. Gimme a shout and I’ll come and give ’em my spiel. Any tire-kickers only in’erested in wasting our time, don’t worry, I’ll give them what-for.”

  Once I got settled on the chair he handed me the sign. We’d made it from a child’s blackboard, a piece of twine salvaged from the mailman and strung through holes in both upper corners. I had painted it up nice, taking real pains to make it attractive. Paintings, for sale, I had lettered on it, and M. Lewis, adding a sprig of apple blossoms, four bluebirds, and a big yellow butterfly to brighten it up.