I gulped and nodded. His books. That was the world he lived in. And not only what they contained, but the books themselves were important. Old ragged cloth or worn leather binding didn’t matter to him. The whisper of pages turning was for him what music was for me. On rainy or icy days—and a Montreal winter has plenty of those—the steep street banked with slush deterred customers, and Abram would lose himself in whatever world the print dictated.
Bit by bit, as I listened, I shed the skin I’d wrapped myself in all these years. I hoped the new one would prove to be a better fit. I wanted the little musty bookshop, where I could close the door on a hurtful world and be alone with Abram. And this is what I told him.
“If you’re sure,” Abram said, “then you won’t be upset tomorrow if things go wrong.”
“I’m very positive about this. What I want more than anything on earth is that musty old bookshop and you.”
Abram told me about Montreal “…intellectual and creative capital of Canada. Artists flock to it. There’s a keen interest in music, and…”
“And books,” I finished for him.
He nodded with utmost seriousness. “Everything in the shop has its proper place and designation. It’s all been codified: History, Biography, Reference, Fiction, and in the northeast corner, Classics, arranged by subject and under that by author.”
“I wouldn’t dare touch one.”
“Of course you’ll touch them and read them. If you get stuck, I can lay my hand on anything from the World Atlas to Macaulay’s Quotations. And our flat is directly behind the shop.”
“So I can be with you all day in the bookstore?”
“There’s a stepstool that slides along the entire back wall. That’s where you’ll sit.”
“While you explain this obsession you have for reading.”
“That’s easy. I’ll explain now. It’s a way of finding out what people make of themselves and to what extent they’ve figured out the world.”
“Have you figured it out, Abram?”
“Not yet.”
“By the end of your life?”
“Maybe.”
“When you find out, tell me.”
“I will,” he promised.
I was teasing; he was serious.
WEDNESDAY morning. That’s when I discovered that absconding was not the worst thing Mac had done. It seems he had neglected to renew my green card, or so Wendel Morris’s assistant told me—the great man himself was conveniently sick with the flu.
I knew Mac didn’t do it on purpose. He was never petty—he had his eye on the big things, the important things—and he just forgot.
Eleanor Cooke did not like me. I was young. She was old and dried up. Even worse, I was part of that suspect world of music and entertainment.
I was classified as an undesirable alien, and ordered deported to my country of origin. I don’t really think she, or anyone, believed for a moment I was a threat to the United States government, but they’d found the ammunition they needed.
I held my head high, looked her in the eye, and made the peace sign.
It was over. Over, over, over.
Abram was right, it was no punishment to go home to Canada. It was to be our honeymoon. So what if my career was in shambles, my fans hated me, and I’d lost my money? I had a new role to play in life as Mrs. Abram Willems.
I took Abram’s arm. He wouldn’t look for a back way. Together we strode out the double glass doors and faced the press. I blew kisses and called out that I was getting married.
Chapter Fifteen
WE went straight home and made wedding plans. That is, Abram made them and I said yes to everything. None of it sounded real. But I knew it was everything else that wasn’t real, and that this was. This was the life I should have lived, could have lived, long ago.
“We will fly to Montreal. You will stay with my friends the Wertheimers until we can fix the wedding day. They will stand up for us. We will be married in my church. And I think it would be nice if your father gave you away. Why don’t you write and ask him?”
“You think he might? That would make it perfect.” After a moment I plucked his sleeve. “Abram,” I said, “I want a honeymoon.”
“A honeymoon?” he repeated, as though this word were not in his vocabulary. Probably it wasn’t. Abram never had even a vacation in his entire life.
“I want to run away with you, just like we always said. I want it to be the way we planned when we were kids.”
I could see he was catching fire slowly, as Abram did. “I’d have to refigure things, calculate more carefully…”
“If it’s money, Abram, I…”
I saw his jaw jut out. “No, that’s out of the question.”
“Do you know what I was thinking of doing with the pittance Mac left me? I was thinking of starting a big bonfire and tossing it on.” I could see the thought of this was painful to Abram. “So instead, why don’t we pool it with whatever you’ve got for a real honeymoon, a honeymoon to remember! Please, Abram.”
“It would mean starting out without a dime,” he said considering it.
“Absolutely.” I was overjoyed. I’d dreamed of running off with Abram since I was eight. “That’s the best way to start out. Then we make everything we have together.”
“It means being poor. It’s been a long time since you were poor.”
“Was I poor?” I asked, laughing up at him. “I don’t remember that.”
A long kiss sealed the discussion.
Coming back to terra firma, I asked, “Where will we go?”
“What would you think of B.C.—Vancouver Island? It’s wonderfully beautiful from all I’ve heard. Then…” He stretched out the word and grinned.
“Then?” I said impatiently.
“Then on to Alberta to a little place known by you and me, and scarcely anyone one else, where you will visit your brothers, Jas and Morrie. And if you’d like, your friend Elk Woman. I will say hello to my parents and introduce you to them. And then…”
He didn’t finish; I’d thrown my arms around him and smothered him in kisses. “Oh Abram, will we really? Will we do that?”
“You think that’s a good addition to the plan, do you?”
I nodded. I couldn’t talk.
That evening I wrote my father.
Dear Father,
I hope by now you have forgiven me. I haven’t had much practice in being a daughter. I’m sure in time I’ll get better at it. You’ll be pleased to know I didn’t marry Jim. I’m going to marry Abram. I told you about him. Remember? Yes, he is the one I traded shadows with. The ceremony will be in Montreal where he lives.
If you’ve read an American paper recently, you know about the fracas here. I got deported, and I’m not guilty of anything except wanting to sing my kind of music. The press treated me very badly and my fans deserted me. Mac ran out on me. Can you believe that? He took a huge amount of money with him.
But I am as happy as any bride ever was. Isn’t that strange, considering. But I am. If you can possibly share my wedding day with me, and give me away, I will feel that we have truly found each other and will be father and daughter for the rest of our lives.
I love you very much.
Kathy
I dreamed our wedding plans over and over to myself. I wanted to devote myself entirely to Abram, to wonderful Abram, who had come to my rescue from Mennonite Canada to save my life and my sanity.
I thought it touching that his heart was now set on a honeymoon as much as mine, although I think he considered it in the category of minor miracles. “A honeymoon,” he’d told me, “when I married Laura, was out of the question. At that time I had nothing saved. And even now,” he said, by way of apologizing for his not very substantial contribution. “Still, a honeymoon is a fine old tradition; it’s served a lot of folks well for a very long time.”
“I suppose it gives people a chance to know each other,” I chimed in. “After all, most of them haven’t been in love since
they were eight.”
“Do you think you loved me then?” He was deliciously serious.
This time I was too. “I know I did.”
THINGS I had paid no attention to, or shrugged off as not important, now loomed large. For instance, what about the Mennonite church? Would I be able to take my place on the women’s side of the aisle?
What if Abram’s brethren in Christ didn’t approve of his choice? What if John Wertheimer and sister Lucinda didn’t? What if they expected another Laura? I remembered how eager I had been to defend Abram against insults and disparagements. What if the only person I had to defend him against was myself?
That night I had a nightmare.
I saw myself in a wedding gown, marching along a street that I knew was in Montreal. Church bells were ringing, and to either side parishioners made way for the bride and groom. But I kept my eyes averted. I couldn’t meet their glances. I tried to loosen the grip Abram had on my arm and run. He held me tight, and together we came to the white wooden church of my childhood. I had never entered it, and I knew I would not enter it now. I made an effort to communicate this to Abram. He didn’t hear me. He mounted the stairs, pulling me with him.
A group of elders stood before the doors, blocking the entrance. Abram confronted them. “Good day, brothers,” he said. “Will you stand aside? We are the bridal couple, here to be married before God and this assemblage, and we wish to enter.”
The answer pelted me like stones, knocking me to my knees. “There is no place for that woman in God’s tabernacle. We deny her entry.”
Abram stood his ground. “This church is not your house. It is God’s house.”
Oracular mouths opened to denounce me. I woke myself up to escape the nightmare. I was afraid to sleep the rest of the night, but kept my eyes open and fixed on the ceiling.
To erase the dream, tear it out of my mind, I brought the subject up with Abram as we breakfasted in the hotel dining room. I made it casual, as though it had just occurred to me. “Are you sure the Mennonite church will recognize a marriage with a divorced woman?”
“I checked that out before I came.”
“You mean you came with the idea of marrying me?”
“If you’d have me—yes. But to answer your question—until quite recently the church was intractable on the subject. But even the Mennonites have to give a little.”
I knew why I had dreamed that ghastly dream. There were things I needed to tell him that I still hadn’t. If I hoped to start my life in that murky little bookshop I had to make a clean breast of everything.
As he reached for a piece of toast, just for a second I saw him on the steps of the Mennonite church facing the elders.
“Abram, I was wondering. What do you think they’ll make of me at church?”
“They’ll love you, of course.”
“What if they don’t?” I leaned toward him across the table. “Oh Abram, I don’t think I’ll fit in.”
“You’ll fit in. Don’t worry about it.”
“But shouldn’t we have talked things out? I don’t think we talked things out enough, Abram.”
“What things?”
“How many children should we have?” I said desperately. “Two, three, four?”
“Kathy, do we have to settle that right now? Can’t we finish breakfast? By the way,” he added, “I want to phone John Wertheimer at three. Will you remind me?”
“Three. That’s prophetic. You said three, that’s a good number. We’ll have three.”
“Fine.” And by his expression I was quite sure he hadn’t any idea what he had agreed to.
I watched him butter his toast and add jam. I started to tell him—and couldn’t.
“You were going to say something?”
“I was wondering what it would be like to have a home. Home is just a word to me.”
“Home,” Abram said, “is something you make. We’ll make ours together.”
“I want so much to start my life in Montreal. I want to take long walks with you, go down to the docks, watch the fishermen unload the day’s catch. I want to skate in the winter on the little pond near the bookstore. I want you to teach me chess and read to me while I drowse into different times and different places. I want to do all the things you’ve been telling me of.”
He smiled, and I plunged on. “I want to sit on that stepstool that runs along one entire side, and slide back and forth looking at the volumes that make up your life. I want to start being Mrs. Willems.”
I received a kiss on each of my fingers for these sentiments.
I had come up to it again, and this time got it out. “I’ve something to tell you, Abram. I didn’t tell you before because, well, it’s difficult.”
“Spinoza said, ‘All things excellent are difficult as they are rare.’”
I knew that was right. Because what I had to tell him now was in the difficult category.
I moved my chair back so I could look into his face. “In the beginning I didn’t tell you because there were so many things coming at you right and left. Jim Gentle was my lover.”
Abram continued to look at me, and his expression did not alter. “I rather thought that was the case,” he said. “I’m glad you told me. But that’s in the past, before you agreed to become my wife.”
I marveled at this remarkable, brilliant, knowledgeable man, who was as trusting as a child. My hand found his across the table. “Did you miss me all these long years?” I asked.
“No,” was the surprising answer.
“No?”
“The reason,” Abram soothed, “has to do with photons.”
“What are they?”
He pushed back his chair. “Let’s take a walk and I’ll tell you. They’re the fundamental particles of light. Physicists have discovered a fascinating phenomenon: nonlocality. Which, in the case of photons, means if they’ve ever been together, even though they are separated by millions of light years, they communicate. Stimulate one and the other will react.”
“Really? Is that true?”
“It’s true.”
“And it doesn’t matter how far apart they are?” I thought that over and began pummeling his chest, right there for the passing world to see. It was a titmouse attacking an oak. “You’ve been holding out on me, hugging the greatest scientific breakthrough of the century to yourself all this time.”
He caught my fists, straightened and kissed them. Abram didn’t care either about the cars and trucks and traffic going by.
This made me unaccountably happy.
ABRAM looked up from a tourist brochure. He had decided on Tomahawk, a resort on Vancouver Island, with the Strait of Georgia lapping at its shore. I leaned over him studying the picture showing cabins at the edge of a wood, hiking trails and moonlight horseback rides. It resembled dozens of other colorful pamphlets promoting summer hideaways, but Abram saw something special in this one, and I left it to him.
The INS agent who escorted us to Immigration at the airport shook hands, wished us well, and before turning us over to his Canadian counterpart, asked for my autograph.
I STRAINED for a look at my new home—Montreal.
“A city of dichotomies,” Abram said, as the cab took us through it. “French and English, saintly and crime ridden.”
“Why crime ridden?”
“Its location. Europe has always been hungry for anything American: jeans, tape cassettes, cars, you name it. The St. Lawrence river flows west to east out of the Great Lakes connecting Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo with Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto, which invites smuggling. And there’s always been a brisk traffic.”
“Okay.” That question was settled. Now I wanted to know about the French influence.
“You mean the English influence. The French were here first. There was a French trading post in Montreal before the Mayflower landed.”
It was an island city of bridges and waterways dominated by a cresting hill, graduated and terraced. As I craned from the wi
ndow of the cab to keep it in view, Abram explained to the driver and me how it came about. “Montreal sits on a glacial moraine blanketed over by a volcanic flow. The lava hardened and trapped the debris in sheets of ice.”
Like me, the city was ice and fire.
“The main feature you see in front of you, Mont Royal, was named by Jacques Cartier, the French explorer. I’ll take you there for a picnic. From a number of vantage points you can look down on skyscrapers.”
But I was more interested in a great cross that seemed to bless the city. It was planted partway to the summit, as though, like Jesus, someone got tired of carrying it.
Our decrepit taxi struggled a bit on a hill. “We’re in what’s known as Old Montreal.” Abram felt for my hand as we turned into a cobbled street. “Rue St. Paul. We’re almost home.”
Once again I hung out of the window, straining for a look at my new home.
“There. There!” Abram pointed to a narrow building with larger ones leaning on it from either side. It had a curved window that faced the street, filled with books. I tried to take it in all at once, from its fieldstone facade to its dormer window. How familiar it was bound to become.
Abram bent his head and whispered, “I’m going to carry you over the threshold.” It did seem appropriate, as this was the first time I would enter the home Abram had brought me to.
There was a bell on top of the door that tinkled as he unlocked and opened it. The door itself had a large oval glass panel at its center, with a frosted design of leaf sprays. Abram flicked the sign from CLOSED and we were open for business. The main business being to scoop me up and set me down inside the shop. “Here it is.” He gestured broadly. “This is it. Pretty much as I told you, isn’t it?”
A pleasant little shop with rows of books, and tables with special books on display. He tugged at my hand; I’d only time to observe that past the books, by the cash register, there was a small display of stationery and a rack of postcards with scenes of the city and its bridges.
Kathy Little Bird Page 20
