Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  “Oh yes.” I smiled, thinking, what kind of question is that? Does a clam squirt water? Does a cat dig a hole to poop in? Then one of them asked what I would like to have more than anything in the entire world. I needed all of two seconds to think of it.

  “A trailer,” I shot back, then laughed. Worried I’d been too brazen, I let my eyes sink to the board in front of me and covered my chin with my hand. “Couldn’t afford that.”

  “There’s dreaming in Technicolor,” I heard another of them say under his breath, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  I sure would have liked to see Ev and me on TV, like they said we would be, these men who said they were from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They told us when the show would “air” so we could tune in and watch it.

  All we needed was a television set. After they left, Ev wondered what the chances might be of a set turning up at the dump. A working one, he meant. “Wouldn’t have a jeezly clue how to jerry-rig a busted one, would you.”

  The chances of finding either kind of set would be slim to none, I figured, and gave a shrug.

  Just as well, said Ev. “TVs are for lazy-arsed folks with nutting better to do. Besides, you don’t want any more attention swelling your head. Already got swolled-up hands, don’t want a swolled head too.” He laughed, but then sounded a little worried. “You were some smiley around those Cee Bee Cee fellas, weren’t you. Like you couldn’t get enough of ’em. Yup,” he gulped the word in one sharp inhale, “like you’d of run off with any one of them strangers if they asked you. Flirting, I seen you. An old woman like you. Your husband setting right here. Shame. You could learn some of that, a dose or two of shame. Couldn’t you.”

  I remembered all this as Constable Bradley Colpitts stood before me, hoping to weasel some unkindness out of me regarding Ev. I listened to the officer’s spiel about people being fearful, how fear kept some people from admitting the truth when the truth was unpleasant. Like fear was something I needed explained. It was the very thing that prevented some people from following their dreams, heck, he said, from getting out of bed in the morning.

  I waited for him to finish before I spoke.

  “Constable, you are barking up the wrong tree. Reckon if I was a scaredy-cat I never would’ve raised my prices.” I laughed. “Don’t suppose feeling one way or the other about fear has any bearing on painting.” Which was all I wanted to do and which was all I did, I told him.

  Constable Colpitts held his cap in both hands crossed in front of him. His knuckles seemed to tighten on it. He let out a little whistle of amusement, or maybe confusion. When he coughed, it stirred some soot and a little shower of grey sifted down between us. He pulled in a deep breath, squared what I glimpsed of his smooth pink jaw. “What’s it like, anyway, being on TV, Missus? I guess everyone all across Canada knows who you are, not just Digby County. How’d you like seeing yourself on the screen?” I couldn’t tell if he was making fun or not. I glanced at his shiny black boots, then I wondered if he had a holster under his jacket or a billy club or nightstick or whatever those things are called. He ducked down low, angling his boyish face towards me. It looked washed with regret. “Oh boys. Put my foot in my mouth there, didn’t I. Watching TV might be a bit tricky for you and Everett, I guess?”

  Ev-ert, was how he said Ev’s name.

  I chose to play along. “I guess.” What was the point in acting miffed or offended? Ev’s wisdom sprang to mind, naturally it bore repeating. “Seeing as we have nothing to plug a television into—a television set don’t run on water, does it, Constable.”

  He laughed then, rubbing the brim of his cap, realizing the extent of his gaff? “Right.” A more uppity soul, a Carmelita Twohig, would have taken umbrage to my remark. But Colpitts was a decent enough fella, I could see. Well-mannered, maybe even well-meaning. To spare his feelings I bit my tongue, held back what I was thinking: Lord love a duck, if we owned a television set, wouldn’t you see it, even if we used it to stack stuff on? Wouldn’t I have it turned on for company? Just the picture, maybe, and no sound: people talking, just a steady rush of silence pouring out their mouths? I do confess, a television was the one thing that might’ve made better company than the radio with juiced-up batteries or the Edison, which had died so long ago it felt like part of someone else’s life, someone else’s dream.

  Way back in our newlywed days, not a month after our date at the dump, putting on Mama’s record I’d cranked the handle a little too hard. Something inside the phonograph had let go. A rumbling had set the whole thing dancing in its corner, it shook so. Poor Ev, it gave him a bit of a fright! “Jumpin’ jeezus, wha’d you do to it?” Then he saw my face. “For Pete’s sake, don’t cry. It ain’t the end of the world.”

  Ev had lugged the Edison outside and opened it up like a carcass. Its innards, yards and yards of twisted black spring, spilled over the ground. The spring had snapped clean in two. “That’s what you get for windin’ ’er too tight. Never mind.” He’d disappeared down to his big shed where he’d kept the Ford that first winter, and the fixings for his cocktails, came back with a spool of black tape—the kind Joe Bent the electrician wrapped things with, I remembered from Yarmouth. Laid out, the two pieces of spring stretched from the road all the way down to the potato patch. Ev spliced them together, wrapped every inch of the tape around the joint. The worst was trying to wrestle the whole thing back into the cabinet, worse than forcing a gigantic jack-in-the-box back into place. Finally, cursing, he crossed the road and went up the hill, and I watched him knock on a neighbour’s door to ask for help. The man came back down the hill with him and they worked like buggers stuffing that spring back where it belonged. I thought how nice it would be to have the fella’s wife come for tea sometime and listen to Jolson.

  But at the first crank of the handle, the spring busted again.

  “Fuckin’ waste of time. Spend all your time listening to that music, you got nutting done anyways. Good fuckin’riddance, I say.”

  I was sad, but felt worse for Ev wasting his effort and I let him know. “Better it went this way than in the middle of playing music—it might’ve ruined Mama’s record.” Of course, having a cylinder and no machine to spin it on was the same as having a radio and no batteries. But nothing lasts forever, does it. And I imagined the loud thwump the patch would have made each time the spring passed through its housing, causing Al Jolson to hiccup. Kind of like when, in the midst of tickling the ivories,gazing at the sheet music, Mama blurted, “Turn!” Still, it grieved me that the Edison was a goner. Ev sold it for its wood, I don’t suppose he got much. Perhaps it went towards my smokes.

  And then the silence had descended, except for Ev’s talking. The silence around his voice had filled my ears, until the radio appeared, that is.

  But so much for enjoying an evening’s entertainment now, music music music was no more than a happy thought without batteries. I didn’t suppose they had music shows on television? I thought of asking Constable Colpitts this very question. But I didn’t want to hold him up, this young fella who I guessed would have been more at home in someone’s big tidy kitchen, eating pie. So I let my silence speak for me, silence softened by the wind’s whistling outdoors until a loud cawing broke it up. At last the constable put on his cap, as if to leave.

  “Well. I appreciate your time, Missus—Maud. Like I said, if you think of anything I should know, you have my number”—he cleared his throat again—“you know how to reach me.”

  I waved his card like it was a dollar bill. But then he made no move to go, glancing at the stairs. They hadn’t always been there, of course. Ev had found them somewhere and nailed them in place, kit and caboodle, sometime after we were married, to replace the stepladder that was there first.

  “You paint those yourself?” From where I sat I could feel his eyes latch onto the open hatch above them. I suppose he could see part of the old bureau Ev had recently found and stuck up here.
A place to keep the money, he said.

  Regarding the stairs, I could not hold back a beam of pride, and felt it warm my cheeks. “Oh yes.”

  The constable bent low to get a better look, eyeing the stairs like he’d never seen stairs before.

  “Can’t be easy for you, going up and down.”

  I shrugged. “My stairway to the stars,” I uttered under my breath, “like in the song. Ev carries me up them.” Land knows why I felt the need to say it, especially if it gave the constable fresh cause to linger. I only know I wanted him gone before Ev got home. I guess he read my thoughts. Slouching to the door, all at once he gave me a curt nod then left in a hurry.

  “Don’t suffer in silence.” Those words of his roared back to me the way his car roared when he started it. The words goaded me as I watched him hit the road.

  Suffer in silence: when had I done anything but? Me and most of the world. “Remember, my darling. There’s always someone a thousand times worse off than you are,” Mama used to tell me, even when gals wearing hats and dresses a thousand times nicer than ours passed us by.

  I rubbed the constable’s card between my thumb and fingers,enjoyed the smooth feel of it though it pained my whole hand gripping it. Under his name, Constable Bradley Colpitts, was the phone number for the Digby station. “You call me, you hear, if you need help,” these words lingered too as his car disappeared in the rain.

  “Sure, I’ll call,” I told the window, “same as I’ll see myself on TV.” I slipped the card into the fire. I suppose I could have ripped it up first, but Ev wasn’t about to read it, though he would have recognized Town Hall pictured on it, where the police had their office next to the mayor’s. “Well aren’t you a long, cool drink of water, Constable Bradley Colpitts, sharing that fancy building with the mayor,” I told the range. A long, cool drink of water, he was, just like a handsome fella I knew in my younger days. For the constable reminded me, if not in looks then in manner, of this man I had loved once. Whom I had fallen for, yes, and would have married if I’d had my druthers. Of course, then I might never have met Ev Lewis, or married him, or done my paintings the way I did, or had my name travel beyond Yarmouth, likely not even as far as the French shore between there and Marshalltown.

  And what a foolish thing, anyways, to compare that fella to a fella like Constable Colpitts, who was young enough for me to be his granny.

  9.

  Wildwood Flower

  I guess Emery had fishing to do. A week passed, then another week, yet he didn’t come by. I imagined him rising before dawn to go dory-fishing from one of the schooners that docked at Baker’s. I imagined him lowering and hauling nets, coming ashore to land his catch, then heading straight back out to sea again. It’s not like they had telephones out there.

  “You going to see that fella of yours again?” Mama had a hopeful sparkle in her eye. That sparkle made me blush. Just because her and I were close didn’t mean I’d share all my beeswax with her.

  “Oh yes. Sure as shootin’.” It was what Charlie would say.

  By now the weather had turned cold for good. I tried not to worry about Emery fishing, riding the waves in a dory, tossing in and hauling up nets. All it took was one rope tangling round an ankle and, just like that, over the side a man would go. But I refused to think such a thought. The best way not to worry was by sitting up in that room at the back of the house and painting. From there I would be the first to see the fishing vessels sail in.

  Mama and I got a good head start on our Christmas cards. Then one Saturday afternoon, while she and Father were off visiting neighbours, who appeared at the door but Emery? I’d been so fixed on watching the docks that I’d forgot to keep watch out the front.

  Pulling him to me, I smothered him with kisses. Drew him into the hall, into the parlour.

  “I thought you’d never come back.”

  “Your folks aren’t here? Thought I seen your ma walking down Water Street, was that your father? Expect them back any time soon?”

  Not if Mama had a cup of tea in her hand and Father had someone to chew the fat with for a couple of hours. “Expect they’ll be gone a while.” I gazed at his mouth, beaming all the love I had in my heart. Rolled my eyes up to take in his whole face. “What have you got in mind, Emery Allen?”

  The smile on his lips put the boots to any tiny, niggling worry I might’ve had during those weeks that he would not come back. That look drove away any fears that would cloud my happiness.

  “Oh, I think you know what I’d like to do.”

  “Did you miss me? While you were fishing and that?”

  “’Course I did. Reckon your bed is more comfy, isn’t it, than this old couch?”

  Emery was right, it was. And what we did didn’t hurt as much this time. The worry that Mama and Father would come home and find us together dulled some of the sweetness, but not all. Emery was good at reading my mind; he rose and pulled up and buttoned his pants right after. Then he said he had best skedaddle before my folks arrived and got the wrong impression. Of him, of us. He would see me again real soon, wouldn’t leave me waiting again.

  “You promise?”

  “What a foolish thing, you. Why wouldn’t I?”

  So I painted and painted till Mama and I had a whole raft of cards to sell by the second week of December. Painting got me through waiting for Emery to call. When he hadn’t called by the third week, I figured he was extra busy at sea, or he had gone to see folks back home ahead of the holidays.

  By Christmas Eve Mama and I had sold all the cards, going door to door. Customers invited us in for hot cocoa, fruitcake, and carols. I hung back, on account of not feeling so hot—even the smell of shortbread made me queasy. “It’ll pass,” I said, and left Mama to her socializing.

  “Good gracious, I hope you don’t have the flu. Or worse, my darling.” Mama had fear in her eyes, thinking the illness in my joints had maybe spread to a new place, in my stomach.

  Later, as she and Father and I decorated the tree in the parlour, I kept hoping Emery would appear with a gift to put under it. When he didn’t come, I figured like everyone he was spending the holidays with his people. You couldn’t fault a man for that. But Christmas and Boxing Day came and went, then New Year’s, and not a peep.

  I wondered what besides family was in a place like Woods Harbour to keep someone like Emery there. It had no Grand Hotel, no Majestic Theatre, I was pretty sure. I worried sick that he had been lost at sea. My worry was so raw it staved off my monthly visitor. Then mid-January came and still no sign of Emery, or of my monthly. I needed to talk to him—needed badly to talk to him, to feel his arms around me. I needed my wish to come true sooner than later, my wish to marry and live happily ever after with him in Woods Harbour, Upper Woods Harbour, Lower Woods Harbour, or what have you.

  Until that January, I had understood why Mama called it “the curse”; monthlies were a curse when you had to put up with them, and they sure would be one day, living in Marshalltown and making do without conveniences. But when my monthly visitor didn’t arrive and still Emery hadn’t come calling, I thought what Mama called a curse would have been a mighty blessing

  It couldn’t be, it just could not be, that I had something like a baby growing inside of me.

  Then one snowy day at the tail end of January, watching from my upstairs room, I spied Emery on Forest Street, walking up the hill towards Main. Barely stopping to tie my bootlaces, I hustled outdoors after him. He was going into Stirrett’s by the time I reached the corner. Cars stopped as I tried to dart across the street, hurrying the best I could, though I thought both ankles would give out before I reached the store.

  I was in luck. There Emery sat at the soda fountain having a cup of coffee and a hot turkey sandwich. I smelled the food almost before I spotted him sitting at the counter all by his lonesome. His hair looked stringy from the cold wet wind that blew so hard it swept into the
harbour any snow that fell. My fella was dressed for it, head to toe in oilskins.

  “Emery! So you’re just back now!” I clambered up onto the stool beside his. The gal behind the counter plunked down a menu for me. My stomach was in knots; it hardly knew if it was coming or going, starved half the time then turning on a dime at the very whiff of food.

  He ordered me a soft drink, kept on eating. I figured it was now or never. If I did not speak my mind no one would speak it for me. Out it all came in one big rush.

  “I got something to tell you. About Upper Woods Harbour, remember you said make a wish? Well, maybe you and me put the horse before the cart, just a little. We’ll be bringing along a young one, I mean. When you take me. As your legal married wife.”

  When he didn’t speak, I grabbed his free hand and held it. His other hand clutched his fork tighter, paused in midair as if all he could think of was how he wanted to pile it with more food. “I’m having a baby, Emery. Your baby. Isn’t it something? I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

  Looking back, I reckon this was the most Emery Allen heard me say in all the hours we spent together. It’s kind of funny to think of now.

  “I just had to tell you. I saw you going by, hadn’t seen you in so long, land, I thought you drowned! Guess I’d best not waste a second planning our wedding. Mama will be tickled pink.”

  Emery set down his fork, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He shook off my hand and nudged my glass closer to me. “You gonna drink that? If not I will. Thought you wanted it.”

  “Not like I want you. Just think, you and me and little baby. We’ll get a place by the marsh, all green and gold like you said it was. You can fish and I can—”