It was March 1963. She didn’t come to buy anything, just to snoop around and leave me some bad news.
“Awful sad about Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins,” she’d said. “What, you didn’t hear? It’s all over the radio. They’re dead. Died in a plane crash. Flying home to Nashville, their plane went down.”
Of course, Ev and I had the radio but no batteries. He was worried about money because the almshouse had shut, and with it, Olive’s free dinners. Even when money started coming in he said we couldn’t afford to buy anything that wasn’t a life-and-death necessity. I was fit to give him a scolding until he said, “What do you want to hear the old news for anyways, it’s always bad.” It was true. I was so sad about Hawkshaw and Patsy dying that I quickly saw Ev’s point.
I still wonder if I’ll see those two floating around up here, too. Hear the sweet strains of them crooning “Crazy” together, or Hawkshaw by his lonesome singing “Lonesome 7-7203.”
But gazing down at the folks gathered for my funeral, I looked for a certain someone in the flesh—not Olive, who had been so kind to me over the years and for all I knew had beaten me to glory, and none of the kind, caring customers from here and there who had kept in touch with letters—but the visitor who had caused me more upset, more grief than a hundred Carmelita Twohigs ever could.
The visitor who had come calling before I turned famous, the one who called herself my daughter.
She wasn’t there, thank the sun, moon, and stars. Neither was her father, the man who had known my father, I mean—good enough. Of course, it had been ten or fifteen years since that gal had come knocking, and I’d seen her only the once—maybe she was in the crowd, I just didn’t recognize her? Now that I was up here out of harm’s way, to tell the truth I wouldn’t have minded having another gander at her. Out of curiosity, I mean. But then I had the eerie feeling that she might’ve gotten here ahead of me.
There was a lady who could have been my old hairdresser friend from Yarmouth, Mae. I had not seen her in years and years, not since Mama died—so long ago I couldn’t be certain the lady was her. If it was, she looked darned good for her age. So she’d stayed in the beauty business? I longed to reach down and pat her blue-rinsed hair. I’d have liked to introduce her and Secretary, they could have made friends. I admit it disappointed me some not seeing my nurse from the hospital, Darlene, or Constable Colpitts.
Chit-chatting softly, my mourners looked out upon the apple trees backing the cemetery, the thick spruce woods behind them. I wondered if Matilda or one of her kids might be hiding there. If so, I hoped a goshawk or osprey wasn’t perched nearby.
From the roadside at people’s backs a caterwauling rose from the ditch, not a bird squawking but a man. Ev. I suppose he hadn’t come up for air all weekend, drinking through a span of days that was but an inky gap for me—a gap the Cat’licks down where you are might call purgatory.
The day was hot but not so hot as to make me fear I’d landed in that place even lower down. A perfect midsummer day, I’ll bet it had most of these people longing to take a dip, feel the bay’s cooling breezes on their skin. A day I would have near sweltered to death in my corner, the sun beating in thick with road dust. The kind of heat that turns flies stupid but not so bad the birds quit twittering. For blue jays yammered from the spruces. A crow couple swooped in to watch the festivities, then perched atop a big old maple. My spirits leapt up. Matilda and Willard, could it be? I hoped it was. Sun flickered through the apple trees’ branches; the fruit was only just coming in. An unexpected breeze stirred the leaves so gently only the birds and me noticed. Out on the bay, miles away, whitecaps looked like gulls surfing its blue. Cape islanders dotted its expanse, crews hauled nets and lines. Closer at hand, the smell of fresh cut grass wafted up. They had groomed the cemetery for my send-off?
Voices quavered. “Abide with Me,” that gloomiest of hymns, drifted upwards. “‘The darkness deepens…. Help of the helpless…’” The loudest voice belonged to a woman in a navy blue dress, the minister. Balancing an opened book on her arm, she belted out the words so as to drown out Ev’s wailing. “‘Through cloud and sunshine…Earth’s vain shadows flee….’”
I wish I could have put in a request. There was the hymn Mama used to play on the piano, the one that reminded me of us watching Mary Pickford cradle the dying baby. Then, next thing I knew, the crowd was singing it, I recognized it straight off. “‘Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beauteeful, the beauteeful river….’” And for one long sweet moment I pictured Mama tickling the ivories, the sheet music before her, me turning the pages when I could still keep up. “Shall We Gather at the River,” that was it.
“‘Gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God.’”
On that note, poor Ev staggered up from the ditch. He waved a bottle, blaspheming the Lord and anyone else who might be listening. I felt sad for him, almost as sad as I had in life. He was a sorry sight in his ragged shirt, the knees out of his pants, the brim of his cap slipping down. He could barely stand. The reverend broke off singing. She held up her hand, as if to halt that river’s “crystal tide.” The reproach she fired at Ev was a lot harsher than her warbling about “silver spray” would have you expect.
“Everett Lewis. Shame! Bad enough you denied your wife the dignity of a proper church service, you hear me? Least you can do is remember why we are gathered, to love and honour our sister.” The word we rang out, not you. Folks said plenty of things about Ev behind his back but no one ever spoke like that to his face.
“Not my sister,” someone slurred. It was Ev.
With the words of that hymn as armour, the minister refused to shine the “poor you” light Ev’s way. A spotlight Ev enjoyed now and then, I guess, for he always did like attention. And he wasn’t about to let an opportunity for attention pass without seizing it. For better or for worse.
“Who are you, talkin’ about ‘my wife’? I don’t got a wife. Nor did I ever have one, not the decent kind of wife a fella has every right to expect.”
For a moment the breeze stood still. People gawped at their shoes, dumbstruck.
I imagined Mama playing on, no matter what happened, bravely singing even when I fell behind, messing up the sheet music. “‘At the smiling of the river, mirror of the saviour’s face….’” What else could a person do but carry on?
If there’s one thing I’d learned in all our years of wedded bliss, it was to pick my spots with Ev. There is a time to love and a time to hate, as the minister read now from her book.
Even if it was the liquor, the old TNT juice talking, what Ev had said was damned hurtful. But the reverend’s sass was no less wounding as she broke off reading: “Everett Lewis. You will shut your mouth, or I shall have you removed.”
At that, I could have hummed away happily into nothingness, less angry at Ev for being himself than at the minister for calling him up short. Without meaning to she had called me up short too: Oh, I could see the questions on people’s faces. How had I put up with my husband’s shenanigans, all his tippling? What was wrong with me that I had? I could see a few of the ladies wondering the same about themselves and their men, as if they hadn’t occasionally tolerated behaviour they might not or should not have. Only the virgin spinster Carmelita Twohig wore a smug grin.
Ev let out a gurgling sound and slumped down in the grass. He was no more than a little baby sucking from the bottle. The reverend bowed her head and prayed, “‘For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.” People prayed along, “forever and ever, amen.” Then everyone launched into “The Old Rugged Cross.” Twittering voices wavered in and out of the breeze, “‘The emblem of suffering and shame…where the dearest and best, for a world of lost sinners was slain.’”
Just as I fancied myself being a bird, each word became a weight chained to my talons, airy as these talons were. Like a fledgling, I all but lost my hovering skills so newly lea
rned. “‘To the old rugged Cross I will ever be true, Its shame and reproach gladly bear.’” Eyes lifted skyward, the minister pitched the rest of the hymn my way: “‘Then He’ll call me someday to my home far away, Where His glory forever I’ll share.’”
At that moment, someone pointed to some clouds gathered over the bay. The sun beamed through a far-off sheet of rain. Lo and behold, a rainbow arced! “Somebody’s happy, crossing the rainbow bridge,” Carmelita Twohig murmured into a glove worn so tight she could barely wiggle her fingers. Long, spidery fingers that would thread a needle or pluck a hair from paint faster than I could’ve blinked. Fingers that, despite their owner, reminded me of Mama’s piano-playing ones.
“She was so shy.” I do believe it was Mae the hairdresser who uttered this, speaking of yours truly. Her voice was soft with regret. By now the rainbow had vanished. I wanted to holler down, Forget those sweet fibs about a rainbow bridge and pearly gates. There’s no such thing, or if there is, I haven’t seen either yet. Though it was early days up here, I admit. Then someone threw a pink carnation at the coffin. The reverend tossed down a handful of stony dirt. Scattering over the lid, the pebbles sounded like a plague of June bugs hitting the wood. Before I knew it, people turned and started strolling over the lumpy grass to cars parked at the roadside. If I could’ve called out to Mae I would have, though I wouldn’t have wanted to startle her as she picked her way in her fancy shoes, taking pains not to twist an ankle. The one person from my early life who thought enough of me to come all the way from Yarmouth, the friend I hadn’t seen since she’d curled my hair to cheer me up. Thinking of Yarmouth opened up such a longing that I was almost sorry I had remembered it. But a person mustn’t let the present spoil the past, or the past spoil the present. And at present the sunlit breeze was sheer bliss as it riffled skirts, neckties, hairdos. Imagine that breeze as me following close behind as folks got into their cars; it was me listening in, at times shaking my head.
“She was some sweet person. Didn’t deserve the likes of that bastard—”
Not always, I wasn’t, no sirree, I whispered. For I had my faults like anybody.
“Ev? A goddamn sin how he treated her. And her so cute.”
Glad you think so, I breathed into the speaker’s shiny ’do. You don’t know the half of it, I longed to say.
“Sweet!? Shit would’ve melted in her mouth. Or wouldn’t’ve. However that saying goes.”
Now there’s one sad excuse for a compliment. I looked around for the Twohig woman, who might’ve shushed the gal who had said it. Carmelita Twohig might have been many things but one thing she wasn’t was vulgar. Where was Carmelita when she was needed? I looked in vain for her cotton-candy hair. I found myself pining for Mama’s genteel manner, Aunt’s upright tongue. I looked all around, before, behind, and even above me. Neither hide nor hair of Aunt or Mama was anywhere to be seen. But like I mentioned, it was early days yet—and I say days loosely. I reckoned we had forever—eternity like one big timely whirlpool—to find each other up here.
The “compliment” was one I could imagine Ev paying himself, no crudeness intended. Meanwhile, after his carrying on, suddenly he was nowhere in sight.
People rolled down car windows. Men loosened ties, women peered into mirrors, wiping their eyes. Voices wafted up.
“You know the President of the United States has one of her pitchers.”
“Go on! Nixon? A painting of hers? Is that right!”
That voice startled me a little, I recognized it. Carmelita’s. What her friend had said wasn’t exactly true either, some distant helper to the President had bought the picture—maybe some acquaintance of that cottage-owner in Liverpool? I was in no position to argue or, just now, to care. Not while Ev was a worry. Where had he got to, had he slipped into the woods to sleep off a stupor? Or maybe he had straightened himself out enough to hitch a ride with someone headed for the highway. Stone cold sober, it would have taken him ages to walk those six or seven or eight miles. Even if he’d had his rusty old bike he was too gooned up to ride it, though it would’ve been an easy pedal downhill from the ridge to the house. His house, as he still liked reminding people.
I don’t know why everyone was in such a rush to skedaddle. I’d have been happy to see the odd one stick around.
And I am not just talking about the folks below. Never mind Patsy and Hawkshaw, hadn’t Aunt promised we would meet up here? Her words exactly when Mama passed. “That’s what the sweet by-and-by is for, dear. The promise of meeting on that heavenly shore consoles us in our grief.” Eager to ease my grief she had meant well, I guess. People say lots of things to lighten others’ loads. Aunt had left the world quite a while before I did, and if anyone was bound for a heavenly shore it was her. So it was more than a bit discombobulating not to find her waiting, lounging at the top of the airy stairway to the stars I took to get here. I kept thinking of voices singing that song “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d’ve Baked a Cake.” Already I was sorely missing the sweet taste of sugar. Unlike yours truly, Aunt wasn’t one to fib.
Maybe she’d up and got tired of waiting?
You’ve got all day now, I told myself, don’t you be so quick to give up.
When, down below, had I ever given up? I wasn’t about to start.
Watching people drive away, dust devils swirling after tailgates, already I missed the mourners and their lifted voices. I knew as well as anybody about forgetfulness, how easily some memories turn like Crosby’s molasses warmed in a pot: sticky-sweet but too smooth and runny to give a lot of comfort. Of course, memories stick with us. But folks remember what they want to, sure. At that moment, I was glad they could remember me by my pictures. Cheery, happy scenes that let on there’s no such thing as trials and tribulations. For every single one of us has something we would sooner forget.
It should have done me a world of good—when I was down below it would have—hang-gliding over the land of the living and beyond, up to where the sun burns off heart- and headaches. Now there are two haitch-words naming things I knew well but used to chain-smoke to forget. Up here, where there’s no hunger, sickness, or hurt, you could half believe paradise was one big hitch-less travel trailer, a dwelling you could stay parked inside while the rest of creation rolled merrily along—forget Aunt’s old talk of a father’s house with many mansions.
Up here, you would think I’d feel nothing but joy.
But joy is a slippery thing.
Life is like that patchwork below I told you about. Not all summer greens and blues, in equal measure it’s a grey rack and ruin. Cobwebs, broken glass, shingles that won’t hold paint. Yet the prettiness stands. Fundy’s pink-red mud, black rocks and cliffs pocked with the nests of swifts. These colours crackle and pop like a bonfire. All this beauty hollers out that the world goes on even if people don’t. Our ways are not the bay’s or the hills’ or the forests’ or the birds’ and beasts’ ways. Show me a cat named Fluffy that’ll take another cat named Fluffy by the throat and kill it, or a dog named Joe that’ll do the same to another dog named Joe—though I suppose it could happen. But show me a crow named Matilda that will eat her own, and I will eat my hat. (If I could lay hands on my red one.)
But maybe I keep looking down at things through sunrise-tinted glasses, that’s my trouble?
Down in your world, if I could have sewed a quilt (seagulls like flocked stitches, scraps of cloth dyed all the colours of nature), there is no telling what I might have guessed up for it. If I’d had paint at hand in each and every one of those hues and a board as big as Nova Scotia, I surely would have tried painting such a view as I enjoy now. But not even here, where everything flows ever onwards in sweetness and light, can you lay your hands on such colours or their shameless, burbling glow.
7.
Standing on the Promises
I guessed early on in marriage that I mightn’t lay my hands on such a canvas. So I turned my mind right a
way to the canvas at hand: the house. Ev’s house. And forget a rainbow’s array of colours. I started small, using up stray bits of boat paint Ev had in the shed, the dregs of cans he scavenged from the wharf soon after I arrived.
Standing on the promises of matrimony, each day I looked at the ring on my finger a hundred times if I looked at it once, and thanked my lucky stars that I had been saved.
But arriving in Marshalltown was not like arriving here, I had to do something to keep from going loony. It wasn’t the happiest task trying to put Ev’s dwelling in order—though this was why he took me in. The first few months I spruced up the place simply by shifting one mountain of his stuff to another mountain of his stuff. There wasn’t a great deal of room to manoeuvre. Cupboards were scarcer in that house than tourists are in January, which is to say there weren’t any. I do not know what I’d have done if there’d been space to hide things, or what poor Ev would have done to keep track of things then.
“Where’d you put my razor, woman? Where the hell did you hide my jackknife? And the can opener, what the jeezus did you do with that? You trying to drive a fella nuts, hiding everything?”
Making Ev’s house into a home for two of us meant things got lost, in the way that trees get lost in the forest. More often than not my new husband would find the missing item inside his boot, or in his pocket, or resting in the rafters where he had laid it. More often than not he would laugh and shake his head, a crackle of regret in his bright blue eyes, and hustle outside to do chores.
The day I am thinking of was a month or so after the wedding—you could say ours was a shotgun wedding, but not for the usual reasons. A February blizzard reached under the door and around the windows, and covered the panes in patterns like the ferns that would unfurl by the brook if spring ever came. Wearing all the clothes that had come with me, save the dress I got married in, I freed up enough tabletop for us to dine off of, busied myself scrubbing at the soot ground into its wood. All that livelong day I sorted, tidied, folded, tucked, swept, and scoured, the white at the windows a guiding light. I had even got down on hands and knees to swirl a wet rag over the floor. Promised myself that when the snow let up I would haul the mat outdoors, hang it from a branch, stand on a chair, and beat it with a stick.
Brighten the Corner Where You Are Page 13
