Brighten the Corner Where You Are

by Carol Bruneau

  Before I could get my shoes on, from my window I spied a pack of children from up the road cross over and sneak towards the backyard, some girls and maybe a boy or two. Ev didn’t like trespassers of any age, didn’t like sharing what was his by rights of the blueberry bushes growing right behind his property. I didn’t much like being stared at either, and kids, as we all know, like to gawk, especially with no adults to stop them. So I bided my time in the house before going out back, thinking I should be in the trailer mixing a bit of paint—not that I did much mixing, the way the colour went from the paint can into a sardine tin was pretty much how I used it.

  By the time I got down there, those kids had been and gone. Ev was setting on the ground with his pail half full. He had his pants half undone. “Look at that, I popped the goddamn buttons off my fly,” he said. He had a funny look in his eyes, kind of weary but satisfied—the look he’d had sometimes coming home from his night shift next door.

  “You had best do yourself up,” was all I said, “before something falls out.” I meant nothing by it but he took umbrage to my wisecrack: “What, a fella’s not allowed to take a piss?” I turned my back and somehow got down on all fours and picked and popped a few berries into my mouth. But the berries were disappointing with no sugar to help the flavour. They were best left for the birds, I figured. So I let Ev help me to my feet without saying another word, and got him to boost me up into the trailer, then shut myself inside.

  Well, it wasn’t long before the car pulled up—the black-and-white Barracuda car—and my friend the constable was rapping at the screen door. Long time no see, I wished I could have said. But I did not want to let him in, and turned away from his shadowy face in the window. When he called out I answered, like Ev would, “What can I do you for?”

  “I’m here to buy a painting,” he called out. “For my mother.” And he explained how his mother lived down Barrington way, how she had heard about me from a friend of hers in Woods Harbour. Then he started talking about Woods Harbour, Upper, Lower, and Middle, and about Shag Harbour being nearby, how just the previous fall, the same year our country had turned one hundred, people had seen a UFO fly overhead then fall into the sea just offshore.

  “A You Eff Oh?” I peeked out at him then and opened up.

  “You must have heard about it?” Constable Colpitts smiled like he could not believe I hadn’t. “You live just a hundred miles up the coast and you didn’t know about this?” He shook his head and he laughed—and in spite of everything, his laugh felt the way a cough drop would on a sore throat, it was a relief.

  I could not have cared less about a flying saucer. For all I could think of was Emery Allen, who, as you know, had come from down that way and who, as far as I knew, might even be buried there—in one of those Woods Harbours, Upper, Lower, or Middle.

  “So—” The constable practically doubled over to step up inside. “—Ev’s behaving, then?” He stood jackknifed over the table, hands behind his back, and admired the seventh painting of three black Fluffies I had done that week—with Ev’s help, of course, him tracing their shapes on the boards. “Seven times lucky,” Colpitts said when I mentioned this. “How much?”

  “Fi’ dollars.” I spoke without a second’s hesitation, for I had that Fletcher Markle’s question firm in my head: “If someone offered more than four, would you take it?”

  Friend or foe, you bet I would. Tell me one good reason why not.

  “Sold.” The constable pulled his wallet out of his pocket and I glimpsed the holster on his belt. It had no gun in it, and I thought, what is the use of that? He handed me a ten-dollar bill.

  “You got nothing smaller? I don’t have change.”

  “Keep the other five—a tip. For your trouble.”

  I thought of him visiting his mother and giving her my painting. Maybe the way I had imagined him sitting in a lady’s kitchen having pie was not so far off the mark.

  “Oh, I couldn’t.” I had good reason to be polite but it stuck in my craw. I sure could have taken the extra money, what was to stop me? But I thought of Ev saying how kindness could be turned against you, how you needed to keep on the good side of the law. Plus, you didn’t want to drive up the price of your work too high in case it put buyers off. “Here. Have two.” I shoved another painting at Colpitts, a poorly one of Lion and Bright that had not come out so good as the rest.

  “Well. If you’re sure.” There was that manly blush again that I had come to watch for. “Don’t want to shortchange you. But I know someone who would like that one quite a lot.”

  I wondered then, just for a second, if he meant himself. Or his boss, the mayor.

  “I just like to see them go to a good home, officer.”

  He looked at me a little askance, as if I was talking about kittens, real ones. I breathed in, wanting a smoke. “My paintings—I like to think they’ll bring someone a bit of enjoyment.”

  And that was it for his visit. Taking up his purchases, he left without saying anything or asking further about Ev, who I am pretty sure would have stayed hid in the blueberry patch if he had seen the car. Only I hope if he had come up from out back he’d have had his pants done up decent.

  By and by, seven years after my trouble, the birth of my dead son in the baby hospital, Father died. Seeing Mama going around the house in her widow’s weeds stirred up in me a bitter mourning, not just for Father but for the way death carried off people’s dreams, put the kibosh on things they held dear, their ties with other people. His passing away did something to my head: it filled it with such longing it made me look at things no longer as they were at all, but as I wished they could be.

  This raised up feelings I thought I’d laid to rest a while ago, about Emery Allen. Oh yes, I blamed that dead baby boy for driving us apart. In my heart I forgave Emery, though I would not forget the way he had ditched me. The summer after Father died I drew a picture of Emery and me together kissing on each other. Emery’s face was next to mine, his eyes were full of love for me. I knew it wasn’t true, was just a made-up scene. But it warmed my heart as I dipped the pen in the ink, moved the nib over the paper, and by the time I put my John Henry on it—M. Dowley, Yarmouth, July 1935—you could almost say I had forgotten the trouble Emery Allen had caused me. For drawing us as lovebirds fixed in my mind forever the notion of us being this way, just as an old photograph fixes forever the idea of what it shows. Otherwise my idea of love would have flickered and died, love being no different from a candle whose wick runs out. I figure it’s better to keep happy dreams alive in your head than harbour the sorrows life doles out.

  But then, not two years later, Mama followed Father to the grave. Before Father passed, the harness shop had gone belly up. By the time Mama got sick, there was little money left. The house was cold, more often than not the larder almost bare. Yet Mama and I soldiered on, as some might say. She more or less took care of things. Those ten years between my birthing a dead baby and losing Mama I barely showed my mug in public, except for those visits to Mae’s salon just up around the corner. I didn’t dare go to the movies lest I disgrace Charlie, my ruined reputation as contagious as my illness was in some folk’s eyes. But when Mama got bad, things changed. I had no choice but to venture out. Mama’s taking to her bed for good left me to do whatever shopping we could afford.

  The first time I went, Mama made shopping sound like a happy adventure, a hunt for buried treasure. “Go on up to Stirrett’s, see what you can find for our supper.” Like I was searching for a rare and special treat when her list said cabbage and the smallest joint of beef they sold, to do us all week.

  After being mostly housebound for so long, I felt timid as a mole shying from daylight, venturing uptown past Mae’s. It was a foggy day, thank the stars and the moon. Walking along Main Street was like stepping foot on another planet, but somehow a familiar one. Inside Stirrett’s I gave the soda fountain, where I had last seen E
mery, a wide berth, also the goods counter where Mama had once bought lace and silk and satin ribbon, all a vanity now. I made my way to the groceries, ducking people’s stares the way you duck rain showers. I crept up and down the aisles of tinned goods. At the meat counter, I pointed to some gristly meat and, saying little, Mr. Stirrett wrapped it in paper for me. I pointed to the vegetable bins and he came around from behind the chopping block and placed a cabbage in my arms. I cradled its roundness against my chest.

  Behind me there was a little scuffle. “Catherine Dowley!’ I heard. “You put that back—what did I say about candy?” It was funny to hear an oddly familiar-sounding name. Though I guess we had relatives scattered here and there, after Granny Dowley died our family were the only Dowleys in town that I knew of. But it was the first name that stopped me, so like my middle one, Kathleen. When I went to pay, Mrs. Stirrett was behind the cash. A lady and a little girl were in front of me. Maybe the girl wasn’t quite so little, was maybe eight or nine years old, by the looks of her. Mrs. Stirrett gave me an odd look but that was nothing unusual. The woman with the child turned and stared at me, then grabbed the girl by the hand. “Come along, Kaye—Catherine! Quickly!” Like I might up and bite her, for pity’s sake. Gazing back at me, taking me in, the girl had a funny look about her. She was a pretty thing with brown hair and dark eyes. I had a shivery feeling I had seen her someplace—impossible, as I had barely strayed from Hawthorne Street for about as long as she’d likely been alive.

  “I said, come along.” The mother stared at me with the strangest pained expression, not annoyed so much as panicked. Make a picture of me, why don’t you, missus? It might last longer,I wanted to say. But speaking would’ve drawn more attention. Bad enough being gawked at by a child let alone its mother like I had cooties, and if the mother didn’t put some distance between us, she and her precious daughter would catch them. That little girl would need her ringlets dipped in kerosene—shame, shame—and that would just be the start of a life gone wrong: next she would be running with men and doing what I had done with Emery, causing her mama more heartache than a house on fire!

  As the mama dragged the child out the door and onto the street, the little girl turned and gave me one long, puzzled look. She started to wave to me, until the mother grabbed that hand too and held onto it.

  When I arrived home, Mama called out from the parlour where she had set herself up on the old sofa, a quilt covering her. Her voice was chipper, the way it sounded when she was too sick to get up but pretended not to be. “Who’d you see on your adventure?” she wanted to know.

  “No one.”

  “You must’ve seen someone. Don’t tell me the store was closed? You got what we needed?”

  “’Course it wasn’t closed. And yes, I did. Got what you asked me to.” I set the things down on the piano bench, long enough to take off my coat. Then it came to me, where I had seen that mother before, the mother who’d been in Stirrett’s. Her husband had done business with Father, I remembered. I reckoned I had seen her and him at the harness shop once or twice. It felt good having something to report to Mama. “Seen the wife of one of Father’s old customers, don’t know her name.”

  “Guess if she was anyone important you’d remember it, wouldn’t you. Did she speak?”

  “Heck no.”

  “Was she by herself? Who else did you see? I don’t imagine she was the only one in the store? How were the Stirretts?” Even when she was sick, Mama was as sociable as I was shy. She needed to be in the know.

  “Had a wee girl with her.”

  “Oh? How old?” Mama tried to reach for the water glass on the table. This movement alone spurred a spell of weakness. She closed her eyes, waited till it passed. In case I hadn’t heard the first time, she repeated her question: “How old was the child?” Mama’s face didn’t look too good, though I had got used to her being pale. Her voice dipped low, “Wasn’t Mrs. Crosby, was it, and…and her daughter?” She breathed in deep and held onto her throat, waved at me to pass her the water.

  “How would I know? What difference, if it was or wasn’t?”

  “You didn’t catch her name, did you—the child’s, I mean? It wasn’t ‘Catherine’?” Mama closed her eyes. I held the glass to her lips.

  “Might’ve been. Her mama didn’t like her having a sweet tooth, seemed like. Nah, she wasn’t a Crosby, you must be thinking of someone else. She had our name—funny, isn’t it, having our name, not being related. Didn’t know ‘Dowley’ was so popular, did you?”

  “Oh, you know—Moods, Stirretts, Bakers, Dowleys,common as can be. Like MacDonalds up in Cape Breton.” Mama laughed, and took a coughing jag. She looked so bad I ended up calling Charlie and asked him to get the doctor. So much for that woman and her daughter, whoever they were.

  If Digby County was close to heaven, the trailer was a piece of paradise on earth. But nothing on your side of the veil comes without cost, even if it’s free. It was true what Ev said: having the Light & Power meant I needed to sell more paintings to earn more dough—that is, to work even faster. “You seen those paint-by-number jobs—they sell kits for those in town. Folks won’t want to buy your pitchers if they can pick and choose and paint their own, have ’em come out just as good if not better.” Even when he was in his cups, Ev was a smart cookie, don’t let a soul tell you different. As I’ve mentioned, he had his way to help me work faster, copying my bestselling subjects—oxen, cats, boats, horses and buggies—as a real artist would call them. It was especially helpful when my hands pained too bad to draw things by my lonesome. He would ask where we should start tracing almost before I picked up the pencil. “You knows best where stuff goes. You done this a hun’red times.”

  Or a thousand, ten thousand. Of course, only I knew where the lines and shapes fit nicest, lines and shapes and colours placed just so to catch a buyer’s roving eye, make it fix on a flower here, a bird there. Then get that eye to dipsy-doodle a bit, wander, then stop and look closer. “That’s how you put a smile on a stranger’s face,” I explained one chilly evening. The two of us were sitting in the trailer. The blueberries were finished for the season, with only huckleberries left to pick, and these were so few and far between even Ev said it was best just to leave them for the deer.

  I aimed to enjoy this time together under the trailer’s warm white light.

  “It’s the way you get people to look at a picture. Know what I mean, Ev?”

  “Nope. But who gives a shit so long as they hand over their dough.” He rose and fiddled with the switch, turned out the light, and left us in darkness. The dark and its chill were a foretaste of the months looming ahead. “If I wanted a lesson, reckon I would ask.” As he slouched across the table, his eyes had a pale gleam, not so much the twinkle I sought. I could smell liquor off him, not as strong-smelling as the stuff he concocted himself, but sweeter, a bit like apples. I kept my mouth shut about it, of course. It wasn’t worth riling him up over it.

  But, to me, the way a person looks at a picture was a matter worth discussing. Looking at pictures was different for everyone, I figured then and still do: beauty lies in the beholder’s eye. Just say, for instance, what grabbed their eye first were the matching snouts of a pair of oxen. The dangling hook chained to their yoke pulled that eye closer. The chain helped whoever was looking guess up the rest: the weight of the burden those beasts were hauling, the shouts of the driver behind them cracking his whip. The warmth of the oxen’s brawn, the smell of manure. You didn’t need to see the whip striking to know it would hurt.

  Sitting there with Ev in the trailer made me wonder how it would feel to speak face to face with a person who called themself an artist. In the dark or in the light. Someone to say, Yup, that’s how it feels. Someone who wouldn’t think I was full of baloney, flapping my gums just to hear myself talk. There was that John Kinnear in Ontario who sent me stuff and wrote me letters. I had written back to thank him for
his kindness, but I’d never talked to him. I don’t know what I’d have said! I figured Ev understood me as best he could, as much as I had a right to expect him to. I felt for him. Though he had started painting pictures of his own, more or less copying mine, for his own amusement, he said, or in case something happened to keep me from filling orders. But painting didn’t mean to him what it meant to me. It wasn’t his friend like it was mine. It hit me, not for the first time, that Ev was the loneliest person I knew. So even when he’d been drinking I could hardly give up on him now, could I?

  “Now, Ev. Do you ever suppose what makes a picture look pretty might be the parts of it you can’t see? The hardship behind it, I mean.” Ev might have been lonely, but he was smarter than folks like Constable Colpitts and Carmelita Twohig could know, or, for that matter, claim to be. Practical and canny as could be when it came to money, he was playing with the full deck of cards that I lacked. I couldn’t blame him for acting impatient.

  “Oh g’wan, quit talking bullshit. All talk, no action—that’s you.” He laughed, and there was that twinkle. As he sank into the bench, I caught it in the moonlight that came creeping in. Who wouldn’t get impatient, depending on strangers the way he did, people buying things they didn’t need. Pure luxuries, that’s what paintings were, he said. “Spending cold cash on something just to look at, something that won’t fill an empty belly for love or money.” He had a point, so it wasn’t hard to give Ev the benefit of the doubt, like they say. But now I’d started talking I wasn’t ready to quit.

  “Listen.” My voice cut through the pocket of silence we’d slipped into. Its strength startled me. “You don’t need to show ox keeled over dead to make someone ’magine their strength hauling logs five, ten times their weight.”