by Terri Favro
Better than feeding him food from the supermarket, thinks Ida, still aghast at what passes for insalata in Canada. Dandelion leaves make a bitter salad, requiring plenty of olive oil and salt, but they’re still much better than watery iceberg lettuce covered in bottled orange dressing. Ida gags slightly at the thought.
As she straightens up, the pedal pushers fall low on her hips, the crotch down between her knees. “Oop-a-lah!” she says, yanking up the waist. “Your mamma, she bigger than me.”
“You look like a clown!” laughs Lily, dancing around Ida.
“You’re the clown,” answers Ida, grabbing her hand. She likes walking hand in hand with the girl, but Lily wrenches away from her.
“You’re weird!” she yells. “Let’s go to the office. It’s time for Mamére’s story.”
“I meet you there. First, I put the cicoria in the tub to soak.”
“Blecch!” says Lily, sticking her tongue out. “Just don’t make me eat any!”
As Lily runs to join her mother, Ida goes to her cabin and places the bowl of weeds in the bathtub, fills it with cold water, and collects her rubber gloves, rags, and pail. She’ll need them to clean cabins Eight and Eleven after the story is over.
To finish her work at the Seahorse before check-in, she has to rise at six—noon, Italian time. Back home, her brother Rico will be fixing lunch while Zara coaxes hung-over guests out of their rooms so she can make the beds.
The dusty ceiling in the cabin Ida shares with Marcello is the same grubby eggshell colour as her bedroom at Ca’Rosa. True, there are no putti in the corners, no dusty oil painting of the Grand Canal on the wall, no Zara pounding on the door shouting, Ida! Muoviti! Vieni subito qui, pigrona! But a chambermaid is a chambermaid, no matter where she’s scrubbing toilets.
In the office of the Seahorse Motor Court and Housekeeping Cabins, the television goes on at 3:55 p.m. sharp every weekday, right on time for General Hospital. When Ida walks in with her cleaning things, Jeanie is already on the high stool behind the registration desk, tapping the ash off her Chesterfield into a seahorse-shaped glass ashtray, watching one of her favourite commercials. A manicurist places another woman’s fingertips in a bowl of green water.
Dishwashing liquid?
You’re soaking in it!
Jeanie snorts. “Mon Dieu, that Madge, she’s got a mouth on her!”
Ida settles on the orange vinyl love seat, the oversized pedal pushers puddling around her like deflated balloons. “What happens with Nurse Jessie?” she asks about her favourite character, the show’s long-suffering head nurse with an unrequited passion for the hospital’s chief surgeon.
Jeanie takes another drag on her Chesterfield and shakes her head, a pitying smile on her candy pink lips. “That nurse is a loser. So good, so perfect! What does she get for it? Pfff! That bastard, Phil.”
Lily sprawls on the floor with a box of fashion dolls, religious statues, and superheroes. She likes to act out General Hospital with Barbies and Skippers for the nurses, a plaster Saint Anthony as Nurse Jessie’s awful husband Phil, and a Superman doll as the chief surgeon, Dr. Steve Hardy. “Kiss me you fool!” croaks the girl, pressing the dolls’ faces together. “Smooch, smooch! Why can’t Nurse Jessie just marry Dr. Steve and live happily ever after?”
“This is a good question,” agrees Ida, looking at Jeanie. The stories in these shows are as crazy as opera libretti, if not worse.
Jeanie takes another drag on her Chesterfield. “If everybody was happy, it’d be a pretty boring story.”
Ida would love to be bored and happy. That morning, exasperated with the watery excuse for coffee that Marcello made from boiled water and Nescafé, she had said: “I will never get used to Canadian food. Never.”
Marcello slammed his cup on the counter. “Basta. Enough. You know I’m working hard to make you happy.”
Ida looked at his face, sad and handsome, so tragically in love with her. No matter how much she provokes him, he absorbs her criticisms like a boxer taking punches. Why, for once, can he not simply let himself get angry? Had he become too Canadian even for that?
“Some things cannot be fixed, Cello,” she told him. “Not even by you.”
For a moment, Marcello looked as if, finally, she had found a way into his anger, to the blank knot of regret that they never talk about but which squats in the corner of every room with them, crawls into bed between them at night, eats meals at the table with them: the one time Marcello spectacularly failed Ida. They never talk about it, so the two of them continue to live as three: Marcello, Ida, and The Past.
“Don’t talk like that,” said Marcello, trying to pull Ida into his arms. A foot shorter than him, she ducked out of his embrace and threw open the screen door, letting it slam behind her as she headed to the edge of the lake. She dropped into one of the splintery deck chairs to watch ducks peck garbage out of the waves. With her back straight and chin up, she forced herself not to turn around to see if Marcello was standing outside the cabin.
He finally came up behind her and mumbled: “Mi dispiace. I’m sorry, Ida.” Then he kissed her hand and left for work.
After he was out of sight, she bent over and wailed loudly enough to frighten the ducks. Fortunately, no one was around that morning to see her blowing her runny nose into the tail of an old work shirt Jeanie had given her. She sat for an hour, snuffling and staring at the lake, more like a sea really, vast and often stormy. Wild, like the landscapes she had become accustomed to in other parts of Canada they’ve passed through: Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Prince George, Nanaimo. It’s when she turned her back to the water that she wasn’t sure where she was anymore, disoriented by the ugliness of the elevated expressway, the ridiculously-named Buena Vista Motor Hotel on the other side of Lakeshore Road, and the industrial smokestacks and billboards north of the Seahorse. She used to think that “north” meant clear skies and forests full of animals, but here it means factories and cramped red brick row houses, greasy diners and sagging storefronts full of drab goods. Ida is never quite sure where Toronto starts, exactly, even though she’s told she’s living in it.
No matter how much her restless eye looks for beauty, she fails to find it in the stern skyline. The only spot of colour for miles is on a billboard advertising SunQuest Travel: beneath the words Fly Away to La Dolce Vita! a canary yellow sailboat floats on a blue ocean. In her shapeless hand-me-down clothes, she stares at the billboard and wonders what exactly she has flown away to, and why.
Rubbing her eyes to push back the tears, Ida forces herself to stop thinking about her fight with Marcello and pay attention to the show. Today’s episode opens with Nurse Jessie at home in a bathrobe, worrying that she’s pregnant by her ex-husband, Phil. Just when it seems that Jessie and Dr. Steve Hardy might get together —this! Phil is delighted; anything he can do to weasel his way back into Nurse Jessie’s life and make her as miserable as possible is fine by him. Jessie puts one hand on her stomach and closes her eyes.
Quella povera, povera donna! thinks Ida. The poor, poor woman. She knows exactly how Nurse Jessie feels. Confused, frightened, violated. Ida rests a hand on her belly.
The show moves excruciatingly slowly; the only time anything new happens is on Fridays, the day when someone inevitably turns up with amnesia or finds out they’re not who they thought they were, cases of mistaken identity being extraordinarily common in the city where the story takes place.
Ida knows something about mistaken identities, she and Marcello having changed theirs several times. In Prince George, they became Mike and Irene, so as not to stand out; Marcello was anxious that someone might be looking for them. Now that five years have passed and they’ve moved to Toronto, they have taken back half their identities, Italian first names being as common as dirt in Ontario and held in about as much regard. Out of an abundance of caution, they used a new surname, Umbriaco, which Marcello had pulled out of the air somewhere
in Northern Ontario.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire, as the Canadians like to say.
After General Hospital, Lily goes outside to play on the rusty swing while the two women launder towels and bed linens. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you and Dreamboat thinking about having kids?” Jeanie asks as they fold sheets.
Ida doesn’t answer right away. The unexpected question has put her in a bad position. She tries not to lie to Jeanie because she claims to have something called a bullshit detector, a supernatural sixth sense that allows her to tell instantly when a guest will try to skip out overnight without payment, or a lover will never call her again. Jeanie’s instincts for truth and deception are unerring, almost supernatural.
“This is not a good time for children,” says Ida carefully.
“So what are you doing to prevent it? If you don’t want to end up like Nurse Jessie, it better be more than the rhythm method.”
Ida keeps her eyes on the linen. “My Marcello he, you know, removes himself. He uses self-control.”
Jeanie snorts. “Ah oui, self-control! That’s exactly how I ended up with Lily at the tender age of eighteen, sweetie. You should go to the doctor, be measured for a diaphragm. Better yet, go on the Pill. I’ll write down how to get to the Free Clinic on College Street. They’ll fix you up.”
“I don’t know what Marcello will think—”
“Dreamboat doesn’t have to have the babies,” points out Jeanie, lifting her shirt. “Want to see my c-section scar?”
Ida holds up her hands in surrender. “I go tomorrow while Marcello is at work.”
“Smart girl,” nods Jeanie, unsteadily lighting a fresh cigarette off the tip of the old one. Jeanie’s hand is trembling. Ida has noticed this slight tremor before. Jeanie occasionally even drops things—dishware, laundry baskets—yet she’s robust, a tall woman with fiery red hair and green eyes, the embodiment of an Amazon warrior. The tremors seem odd in someone so young. Ida almost suggests that Jeanie come to the clinic with her, get checked out herself, then decides: No. She has to start dealing with this city on her own. Maybe she’ll even find a decent mercato. Somewhere in this city, someone must sell arugula and rapini, maybe even parmigiano that doesn’t come out of a cardboard box.
The next day, after Marcello drives into town to stand on a street corner with a bunch of other men, waiting for a job—there being a big demand in Toronto for young guys with strong backs who don’t mind dirty, dangerous work—Ida takes the Queen streetcar east to Bathurst, then catches the bus up to College Street, following Jeanie’s directions scribbled inside a matchbook. The women’s clinic is inside a building with the ridiculously unimaginative name of Doctors Hospital. Who else’s hospital would it be? wonders Ida.
She wears some of her nice clothes from Italy: the first time she’s been able to dress up in a long time, although she knows the outfits she brought to Canada in 1969 are out of fashion. These days, hems are longer and colours earth-toned—harvest gold, avocado, mud brown, forest green. In her pink miniskirt and paisley print blouse, Ida looks like she is stuck in the swinging sixties rather than living in these sombre, nervous times.
Twisting and twisting the dull gold band on her finger, she tries not to make eye contact with a vacant-looking blonde girl on one side of her, her pregnancy a protuberance on her slender body, like a root growing out of a potato. The girl thumbs slowly through a magazine, humming to herself. On the other side of Ida sits a toothless man, his long hair a ratted tangle, aged anywhere from eighteen to eighty. He could use a bath.
When the girl drops the magazine on the table with a sigh, Ida picks it up. The pages are as shiny and colourful as candy, full of photographs of healthy American girls in blue jeans and smock tops. It’s called Seventeen. Ida starts reading; the articles all seem to be about boys and dating and dieting. She finds herself absorbed in a quiz called Is This Boy “The One?,” mentally ticking off boxes with Marcello in mind, when the nurse at the front desk sings out, “Mrs. Oom-bree-yako?”
The nurse leads her to a windowless beige room, decorated with posters reading VD DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A LIFE SENTENCE! and PREGNANT? SINGLE? YOU’RE NOT ALONE, BABY!
The nurse tells Ida to remove everything from the waist down, pull on a dingy cotton gown, and lie on an examination table in the middle of the room. A pair of ominous-looking steel clamps at the bottom of the table remind Ida of torture devices. She stares at them distrustfully.
“Once you’ve got the gown on, put your feet in the stirrups and wait for Dr. Stevenson,” the nurse tells her, then leaves.
Ida carefully folds and piles her clothes on a chair, ties on the gown, and climbs on to the high table. Carefully she rests her heels in the steel stirrups; her knees automatically fall open, as if she’s astride an invisible horse. Legs trembling, she stares at the tiny ventilation holes in the ceiling. Even though it’s warm outside, the room is very cold.
The door opens suddenly and a man in a white coat strides in, smelling of tobacco and fried onions. He gives off a whiff of impatience, not smiling or saying hello, not even looking at her, just glancing over the sheet she filled out in the waiting room. “Mrs. … Umbilical?” he mutters uncertainly, peering at the sheet.
Ida sighs; why does everyone have so much trouble with this simple name? The doctor sits on a wheeled metal stool, which he propels to the end of the examining table. “When did you finish your last period?” he asks.
Ida counts backwards in her head to that last time she bought a box of Kotex. “Fourteen days,” she tells him. She can hear the clink of metal against metal.
“A little pinch,” the doctor mutters.
Ida feels a hard object, stingingly cold, pushed inside her, and hears the sounds of screws being ratcheted open. She holds her breath.
“Relax, love,” mutters the man, scraping away.
Ida starts to tremble uncontrollably. She cries out and tries to press her legs together; the doctor pushes them apart again, his hand cold against the insides of her thighs.
“Be a good girl,” he mumbles.
Looking toward the end of the table, she can see the man’s head framed by her flexed knees as he peers between her legs, the light glaring off a mirror strapped to his forehead.
“How long since you gave birth?”
Ida feels a bubble of tears and shame rising in her throat, mixed with something else. Anger. No, not anger: what would be the correct word?
Rage.
“I am not a mother.”
The doctor snorts. “You do remember having a baby?”
Ida remains silent. Closes her eyes. She hums a song in her head, that insipid tune she hears drifting down from the car radios on the elevated expressway: Tie a yellow ribbon...
The doctor makes a small noise that comes out like a grunt of surprise. “Somebody did a slapdash job on your episiotomy. You have it here or in the old country?”
Ida stares up at the tiny ventilation holes. She notices how much they look like tiny black mouths gaping at her from the beige ceiling. She closes her eyes to make them go away and sees Margarethe’s wind-burned face, an explosion of veins bulging from her nose like la befana, the witch, even though she turned out to be kind. She even refused Ida’s money. “Nothing I can do for you, dear, you’re too far along. It could kill you. Better go home and pretend it’s your husband’s kid.”
I think it probably is, Ida wanted to say, then thought of Kowalchuk’s face leering at her, her wrists crushed under the weight of his hands. Marcello burst in too late to prevent the worst of it, but managed to send Kowalchuk to hell. Still, he could never burn away the fact of Ida’s violation. That’s why Ida couldn’t be sure whose child she was carrying, Kowalchuk’s or Marcello’s. In Margarethe’s back room, she had started to cry, twisting the old woman’s hand in hers. She must be sniffling in this room, too, under the little black gaping mouths, b
ecause the doctor says, “Get a grip on yourself, Mrs. Oom-Bree-yak-oh.”
“It happen in Prince George,” she whispers. “How you say it? A birth without life.”
“A stillbirth. Uh huh, that explains it,” mumbles the doctor. “Should’ve been on your chart.”
He unratchets the device. Ida breathes again. The tiny mouths above her turn back into black dots. She thinks about hitting the doctor over the head with the instrument of torture he’s using on her. Or, if she could get her hands around his skinny neck, she might be able to strangle him, maybe use his tie as a makeshift garrote. She imagines this with some satisfaction.
“According to this form, you came here for the birth control pill. I’ll be honest with you, Mrs. Oom-bree-yak-o, I don’t think you need it.”
Ida wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why you say this?”
“Because I can see you’ve been damaged,” says the doctor. “I doubt you’ll conceive again, dear. I’ve been delivering babies for over thirty years so I know my business. Whatever backwoods MD attended to you, he botched things up. I’d like you to see a specialist, a man over at Women’s College.”
Ida shakes her head. “No.”
“What?”
She finally turns to face the doctor. He’s a pink-faced man with thinning blond hair, his surprised blue eyes swimming behind thick glasses.
“No special man at the College of Women Hospital,” says Ida. “No further examination. Just the Pill, please.”
The doctor clears his throat. “You should go home and discuss this with your husband.”
Ida imagines the tragic look Marcello would give her if she tells him that she probably can’t have any more children but wants to be very careful not to get pregnant anyway.
“All right, I go to see this other doctor,” she agrees.
“Good. You can get dressed now,” says the doctor, propelling the stool over to a desk and pulling out a white paper pad. “You take one pill every day at the same time for three weeks. Understand? You stop for seven days. That’s when you get your period. Then you start all over again. The days are all marked on the pack so you can’t make a mistake. Unless you want to, of course. I see a lot of gals like you who secretly want to get pregnant. Otherwise, you’ll need some other form of contraception until you finish one full cycle. Condoms and spermicidal foam. Not that I think you’ll need it, but just to be on the safe side.”
