Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  The smile wiped itself from Darlene’s face. “The poor thing. Well, she’s in a better place now.”

  “If you believe in that stuff.” Carmelita wiped her mouth on her serviette. “Now that you’re in front of me, officer, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Remember that man I phoned you about? The one who I told you beats on his wife, getting drunk and disorderly, out by my place in Guinea—the one you said, Oh, so a little bird told you about this? Well, I saw him just this morning lying on his porch passed out drunk.”

  “Ma’am,” Bradley said. “There is not much we can do to stop a fellow doing what he wants in the privacy of his home. Unless the victim reports the assault herself, if you read me.”

  “Well that’s just stupid,” Carmelita said.

  Darlene laid her hand on Colpitts’s arm. He patted then squeezed it and gently brushed it off.

  “I agree, it is. But we just can’t go arresting someone on the basis of hearsay.”

  Carmelita scowled, pushing her plate away. Her Salisbury steak was only half-eaten. If either of the lovebirds could’ve scooped it up and saved it for Matilda, I’d have been happy. But they turned to each other then stood up, and Bradley gestured to the waitress for the check. Carmelita didn’t look up as they left.

  After the early visits I’ve told you about, Constable Colpitts paid me a couple more later on, right before my first stay in hospital and just after I went home, to Marshalltown I mean, to recuperate. By then two years had passed since the constable had first come by looking for Ev, back when he was new on the job.

  One summer’s day, round about 1968, he had appeared out of the blue once again. To my relief, it turned out he was interested not in Ev but in the stairs of all things, my fancy stairway to the stars. He wanted to know how I had managed to paint all but two of their risers. Bradley Colpitts was just that kind of person, I guess, inquisitive about stuff others wouldn’t think to ask about. Some would call this the mark of a first-class Carmelita Twohig nose-minder. I’d call it the mark of a natural-born detective. I found it sweet that he showed an interest—and to think I almost missed this visit!

  Do you remember when those TV people had come around three whole years before, one of their questions was, If you could have anything you wanted, anything in the world, what would it be? Saying I wouldn’t mind a trailer, I knew I was whistling Dixie, this was asking for the moon. But here is the magic of television: little did I know, little could I have guessed, that fairy godfathers watched what was on it.

  Yet, one day, lo and behold, a man appeared with a trailer he told Ev was up for grabs. I could barely believe my eyes looking out and seeing the truck with this wondrous abode like a tin can on wheels hitched to it. “Pinch me, am I dreaming or what?” I watched the man park it on level ground beside the house. Ev shushed me in short order. “Don’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth.” For the trailer was real all right. It was like I’d died and gone straight to heaven (well, heaven as I thought of heaven back then).

  A gift from above, it seemed, free for the taking.

  Well, the trailer had windows that wound open and shut, with screens to keep out bugs and let in fresh summer air and cooling breezes. It had a fold-down table, a cushioned bench for a body to bunk down on. It had a little gas stove if ever I took a notion to cooking (which I did not). It even had a tiny washroom with a throne for doing your business but with no pipes attached. And here’s the best part. The fairy godfather had the Nova Scotia Light & Power hook it up to the wires where Matilda liked to sit when she wasn’t brooding. “Let there be light,” I said, and oh my land, so there was! Of course, a part of me wished the trailer came with a television set—but there is human greed for you, no different from having a big slab of cake and even before you’ve finished it, craving seconds. You want to tell your bellyaching self, Git out! Be content with what you’ve got, you don’t know hardship when there are folks living deeper in the woods than you, out in Mayflower or Guinea, say, making do with less than you can imagine. I was not going to jinx my good fortune with a lack of gratitude!

  The trailer had barely got parked before Carmelita Twohig came along in her little blue car. She came to the door with a grocery bag. Ev grunted when he saw her and wouldn’t let her in, just took the bag and waited till she drove off before he looked inside it. “What the hell—it must be for you. Unless that one thinks I play with dolls.” Handing it over, he shook his head in a mix of disgust and bafflement. Inside was a doll with shiny yellow hair and a big full skirt knitted out of orange Phentex yarn. Instead of legs there was a roll of toilet tissue under the skirt. It was kind of cute. In spite of my feelings about Carmelita, I was gobsmacked that she had brought a present. A peace offering, or a token of apology?

  I was setting up shop in the trailer when the constable came to call. He nearly sent me out of my skin rapping on the screen door, the sound was so new to me. He had gone to the house first and, finding neither me or Ev there, had the sense to come around to the side. He’d crept up so quiet through the grass he found me in a reverie enjoying a fag. I’d been thinking how nice it would be to have Secretary stop by for a leisurely chinwag. The breeze stirred the smoke’s bluish wreath round my head. Call it a halo if you want.

  Constable Colpitts’s smile filled the doorway. A hornet buzzed close. He flicked it away.

  “Well well well, Missus Lewis. Isn’t this something? So Everett’s come through, buying you a bit of breathing space, this place.”

  “You forget, or what? You can call me Maud. And it weren’t all Ev’s doing, he had help.”

  The constable’s smile became a shy grin. He stuck his head a little deeper inside the door, keeping his body parked outside. “So your friends at the CBC came through, did they? Didn’t know Fletcher Markle was Santa Claus.” It was a funny time to mention Christmassy stuff. The day was hot; the man must have been cooking in his serge jacket. When he lifted up his cap and pushed it back on his head, sweat gleamed on his brow. “Well, this is an improvement. You deserve it. It suits you, Missus Maud, a place of your own.” He squinted up at the ceiling, it had a round white light in the middle of it. At night when it was turned on, if I laid on the bench for a rest I could see flies inside the glass shade. Better they were in there dead than swarming round a person’s head like they did in the house. “Don’t tell me Ev’s let you have electricity too.”

  My smile said all he needed to know. I guess it emboldened him to continue.

  “All righty then, forget what I might’ve said in the past. People say things, I guess. Seems Everett’s done right by you, finally—more or less. Springing for a place that’s at least a bit more comfy for you. Better late than never. I hope no one took unfair advantage—wheelers and dealers, they’re out there. And, you know, at the Royal in town the manager’s always wondering why Ev Lewis won’t spend any of that money he’s piling up. What’s he saving for, a trip to Las Vegas? He’s quite the saver, I guess? They seem to think he’s got more over at the Bank of Nova Scotia. But you would know. Like I say, people love to talk, don’t they. I’m glad he’s finally spending some of it on you.” He peered around, and I wondered if a trailer was something he coveted.

  I should have invited the constable in out of the sun. But, truth be told, I liked being a foot higher than the ground he was standing on, so I was slightly less obliged to bend over backwards to look at him. This way we weren’t so very far off meeting eye to eye, and there was no need for him to fold himself in two venturing inside. Pleasant as he was, he was still the law. You didn’t really want the law entering your abode, not if you could help it.

  “A place of your own. It’s about time.” The way he took his time gazing about, I wondered if he was looking for the washroom. It was the size of a closet and had a bucket that worked. The door was ajar. Atop the empty toilet tank sat Carmelita’s toilet tissue doll. “No offence,” he said.

  “None taken.”

&
nbsp; “I guess you’ve got your work cut out, haven’t you, with decorating and that? Place is kind of plain, if you don’t mind me saying.” He sounded like he was teasing, maybe having spied Carmelita’s gift, which was no match for tulips, swans, or bumblebees. But he quickly turned earnest. “Must feel like a blank slate. After the house, I mean.”

  This was how we got on to the subject of the stairs. He said ever since the first time he’d dropped by, he had been wondering how on earth I tackled them, especially if I relied on Ev to carry me to the top.

  “You don’t want to know.” I laughed, though I was seized by a stray, sudden notion that Ev might try selling Carmelita’s bathroom doll if he thought he could get something for it. Chances were Carmelita might see it someplace and think I was ungrateful.

  Constable Colpitts asked how long the stairs had taken me to do. “The paint must have stunk up the place pretty bad? I suppose it kept the upstairs off limits sometimes. You sleep up there all the time, do you? Hope the paint dried before nighttime.” He flicked another hornet away and I almost said, Come in and shut that door before half the neighbourhood buzzes in.

  “Some fellas get owly missing their bed,” he declared. I figured he was speaking for himself about working long hours, going without sleep. Then I thought of Carmelita Twohig and him. In all likelihood, even back then, before I spied them in the diner, they must have been acquainted.

  “What did Ev think of your project? Must’ve inconvenienced him a bit.”

  What a question. “The stairs?” His curiosity walked the line between Carmelita’s Nosy Parkerdom and police routine, it seemed to me. I probably blushed, more than a little confused. But I was happy enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Oh, Ev’s bark is worse than his bite. I reckon the two of us made do, staying off ’em. Like we’d do now if we had to. No big hardship.” Really, I was thinking how hot it got in the loft, how these nights it would be no great mischief, my sleeping on the daybed, even if Ev wanted me upstairs.

  How I didn’t like thinking about what went on between Ev and me up there—between Ev and a part of me, I mean, a part I don’t want to talk about—and how, for years, in my bravest imagination, while he lay on top of me the stairs would keep going up through the attic and the roof and all the way up through the black velvet sky to the North Star and the Big Dipper.

  But I kept this to myself, it was nothing an officer of the law needed to hear.

  “That’s good,” Constable Colpitts said. “Some fellows would growl about the inconvenience. You know, plenty of fellows like to be king of their castle, that line of thinking.” The constable smiled with his eyes, eyes that were green but not like a cat’s—eyes I could imagine washing over a pretty young woman, taking all of her in. Bending over, he leaned his head in further, the rest of him staying put. “It’s quite the wonder you’ve worked next door, Missus Lewis. What I would like to know is how you managed to reach the top few steps especially, then getting all the flowers to match, and—well, I’m asking for a friend.” He looked embarrassed. I guessed why. This was women’s work he had delved into, the work of prettying things up. I could be wrong, but I guessed Carmelita Twohig had passed on some of her observations about Ev cooking and that. Perhaps Colpitts was too good a listener, just the type Carmelita would happily draw into her web of suspicions.

  “How did I? Oh I just stuck with it.” This was getting silly, I’d had enough. I gave a little laugh, stubbed out my smoke, and picked up my brush, my hint that our visit was over. I hoped he would take it. The paint on the bristles had started to harden in the little time I’d stopped for a break. The officer craned forward to take a gander at the board lying atop the newspaper spread over the table. It was kind of comical, him being almost at my level. The painting was half done, a picture I could’ve almost done in my sleep, of three black cats under sprays of apple blossoms.

  “That’s pretty nice. Guess I ought to leave you to it, then.” Except he made no move to straighten up and go, even when I sighed—he was right about me having my work cut out. It would take years and years to do up the trailer in style, like I had done up the house. Plus I still had Matilda’s portrait squirrelled away, crying to be worked on. Even if I started now—just between you and me, I’d turned sixty-six that March—who knew if I’d live long enough to gussy up the inside of the trailer. How the heck would I manage? By tackling it one bird, one butterfly, one cat, one blossom at a time, I decided, eyeing the constable. One riser after another was how I had done the stairs, well, the top four, before my back and whatnot gave out attempting the bottom two. Day by day, one minute after another, the same way you handle life.

  I gave Colpitts the stink-eye, a polite version of it, wondering if he would ever hit the road. Colpitts eyed me right back. “You know, while I’m here, I might kill two birds with one stone. I’d like to have a look at your stairs again, if I could. And I wouldn’t mind having a word with Ev.”

  Not this again. Just because I found Bradley Colpitts pleasant enough didn’t mean he wasn’t getting under my skin. “Well, he ain’t here.”

  “Good enough. But I’m in no huge rush, I can wait. You can tell me more about your paintings.”

  Laying aside his interest in Ev, in spite of myself I felt more tickled pink than annoyed. After all, here was a man with a lot bigger fish to fry thinking enough of me to pay a visit. For one fleeting moment, though, the fool notion dawned that maybe he had caught wind of the trailer on Ev Lewis’s property and worried it might’ve been stolen. Pretty hard to steal something this big, wouldn’t it be? Don’t be foolish, I told myself, Bradley Colpitts is too smart to think such a foolish thing, and since when did anyone prosper by assuming the worst and acting on it? Colpitts was so clean-cut, so straight-talking, it was hard to peg him as a person always bent on finding, no, borrowing trouble.

  If only Emery Allen had been so clean-cut, so straight-talking, all those years back.

  “Oh all right, what harm, I guess.” I stared down at the cement block the trailer had for a step, gripped the doorframe with both fists. Before I could work up the gumption to ask for help stepping downwards, Colpitts had his big strong arm around me, lifting me up and over the block, setting me square onto the grass. What a gentleman.

  “Sorry.” More than sounding embarrassed, he sounded like he meant it. I do believe he figured he’d done something amiss, or perhaps the sun had got to him, as he flushed and sweat stood out on his face.

  “What for?”

  But he didn’t say nothing, just followed real slow behind me over to the house. He held the door for me, stood patiently as I climbed over the threshold. It was hot as blazes inside—the leftover heat from the range hit us as we stepped in. “There, you can see for yourself, Ev ain’t home. He cooked my dinner then skedaddled, don’t know where he’s at. You might be waiting all afternoon.”

  Stooped over, Constable Colpitts took off his cap, fanned himself with it. He edged over to the stairs, bent low to peruse them. Of course I’d been more agile when I’d done them. Why, way back when, if a handsome fella like this had come round to find me perched on Ev’s chair reaching with my brush for the top riser, I’d have fallen off at the sight of him, busted myself up good. Sure, even in my better days it had taken all I had, painting the orange-and-yellow hearts of those blue forget-me-nots in the middle of that top riser to match all the hearts of all the forget-me-nots on all the risers leading up to it. I watched the constable run his big square hand over the board Ev had nailed up to hold the railing in place. His left hand, no ring on his finger. What was wrong with the gals in these parts, I wondered then, that no one had snared him yet? Why, if I was young and pretty and single, I’d have been all over a fella like that, over him like a wet shirt—in my head I would have been, anyways.

  “Have you been to Yarmouth?” It just popped out; I was thinking how Yarmouth was where all the fine folks lived, sweet young gals especially. />
  “Excuse me?”

  What had gotten into me, asking? There likely wasn’t a soul nowadays who had not travelled there and perhaps farther.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  The constable ran his hand over the stairs’ yellow paint. “Can’t be easy for you, relying on Ev. He carries you up, but how do you get down?” I just shrugged. I had to laugh, all these years later, remembering how Ev had come home to find me standing on his chair, painting, and near had a fit. “For chrissake, woman, take a tumble off that and you’d be done for—me too, what about me? I’d be done for too. You think a fella don’t care what happens to his woman? I’d be the one hafta get the ambublance to come. I don’t know why it ain’t enough that them stairs are yellow, yellow is good enough for me, like I done them. Ought to be good enough for you. Come to think of it, did I say you could paint flowers on them? You’d think you owned the goddamn place. What are folks gonna think, what kind of man lives in a place painted up like this, seeing how you’ve taken over? ‘That Lewis fella, he needs to get that wife of his in line. Next she’ll have him sleeping out there in the dog house, her acting the queen bee.’”

  The officer gave me a funny look. “What is it? You were going to tell me something about Ev?”

  “Nothing at all.” Oh put a sock in your mouth, I remembered thinking, looking Ev in the eye that time, all the while smiling sweetly at him. For in spite of his haranguing I had known Ev’s heart was like a sparrow with a broken wing. A bird that you wanted to keep someplace where no bigger, stronger birds could harm it, at least until the wing had a chance to heal so it could fly right. Even after thirty years together, it felt like waiting for Ev’s heart to heal from the life he had as a kid—his crowd, his mother, his father, his sister, and his brother all living at the poor farm—was like waiting to see a robin in December.

  The constable moved away from the stairs to peer at the big red poppies I’d painted on the range’s front and on its warming oven’s door. They were cheery and bright as clean, fresh blood. He shook his head like he could not believe the effort I had put into prettifying a stove of all things—effort better put towards cooking?