The Barclay Family Theatre

by Jack Hodgins

  I am beginning to hate this woman, thought David Payne. And discovered that he was crying.

  Carl was in one of his moods.

  He’d started out by drinking three beers before supper and another two with it, despite her warning. You couldn’t go to a thing like this smelling like a brewery. But he’d got glummer and poutier and redder and had barked at them both so much the kid finally got up and stomped into her bedroom.

  And now he was trying to get friendly. Drying dishes beside her, for Pete’s sake, something he never did. Sliding hands inside her dress. Saying let’s forget the show, Gladdy, and head for the bed. Kissing her neck with the old whisker bristles scratching. “Get away,” she said, and side-stepped, but he kept up until she threatened him with two soapy hands.

  “Shoot,” he said. “What fun is it?”

  Gladdy would easily spend the whole day in bed with Carl. She’d more than once stayed in bed with him through a whole Saturday, when Sparkle was away staying at a friend’s and it was more fun than anything, but never when he’d been drinking. Beer made him stink. She hated the smell until she’d had some herself. And it made him useless in bed, all he wanted to do was paw her and tickle her and get her all worked up without any hope of relief.

  Though on his good days he could make that bed rock. The first week they were married they brought it crashing down off its legs. Carl could bring a barn down if he tried. They left the bed where it lay, on the floor, solid and quieter than some squeaky thing up on flimsy legs.

  But when he got a few in him he couldn’t have got a hammock swaying.

  That was the first thing he told her about himself, when they met at a dull party thrown by a friend. She was hardly twenty then, working in Eaton’s office. “I can keep it up all night if I’m sober, I can outlast an elephant. But put a few drinks in me and I’m useless.” She told him she’d take his word for it, thank you, but she knew from her first look at those long-boned thick hairy hands that she’d be finding out for herself soon enough. She fell in love with his thick, cracked chewed-down fingernails. His left thumbnail was black, dead, ready to fall off.

  Some people thought she could’ve done better. Her sisters. “Better than what?” she said. “He’s a carpenter, a contractor. There’s money in real estate.” But he spends it as fast as he makes it, they said, on pleasure. On useless tasteless things, just to squander it. “He loves me,” she told them. “He’s crazy about me.” And they had only been able to cry that oh, but he was so red and hairy!

  That was what bothered her family the most. A man who looks like that, a man who can’t keep his hands off you even in public! More animal than human. Some day he’ll turn on you like a mad dog. But she had liked the attention he paid. To feel his hand going up the back of her leg while she was talking to someone. To have his hands inside her clothes while she was on the phone. To have him surprise her from behind when she was at the sink. Animal shmanimal, they could have their gentlemen with manners. She liked to be lusted after. She liked to have him keep every nerve in her body tingling with life, keep all of her alive and guessing. With Carl around there was never any question what she was.

  Even when his business went belly-up, even when they lost the house and he was feeling so bad, he never stopped wanting her. Or making her feel like she was the most important thing to him. That was the one thing that didn’t change in their life. He was as randy as ever. Not even her operation slowed him down, except out of respect when she was overwhelmed sometimes by a huge tiredness.

  Though there were times, like now, when it wouldn’t seem right anyway. Not when she was about to dress up and go to a high-class do. It was bad enough he got her into the ocean, ruined her hair when it was too late to do much but dry it and slap on one of her wigs. She wasn’t going to let him breathe his beery breath all over her. Or keep her from a nice hot bath.

  Over their heads a floorboard creaked.

  “Not gone back yet,” she said, and plunged her hands into water.

  “You think the police?”

  She closed her eyes, nodded. “Must be waiting just to be polite. One thing about the Mounties, sometimes they’re not as crude as you expect police to be. They’re just waiting for today to be over, so’s everyone can see what a fake.”

  “Still, if it happens.”

  “It won’t happen, hush up.”

  “Still, if it does.”

  “If it does you won’t see me for dust. You won’t see this old girl. I’d be scared to ever put my foot in this house again.”

  “But if it does, just think.”

  “Think nothing.” She threw him a scowl. “You must be getting soft in the head.” And tossed a whole handful of wet soapy cutlery onto the rack for him. “Can’t you tell a couple of loonies?”

  Carl chuckled. Sucked air through his teeth. He always did when she got arched, when the colour rose in her face and her voice strained.

  Though he knew it only made her worse.

  She stomped a foot. Tied here to the sink by dripping hands, she would like to have stomped out on him. The way Sparkle did. But he sucked air through the spaces in his teeth, laughing at her, and put one hand on her rump.

  “Off!” she said, and swung her hip.

  And “Off!” again, because it held on like a huge suction cup. She danced sideways, trying to lose him. But he held on, laughing, and put the other hand there too, on the other side, and squeezed.

  “Bastard!” She brought up the hands, red and dripping with soap bubbles, and swung on him. He tried to get a kiss down into her throat but she pushed both palms into his face and fanned them like windshield wipers to cover it all.

  “Ha!” she cried. “How do you like that?”

  He didn’t. Not at all.

  “Jesus, Gladdy.” And stepped back just long enough to finger soap off his eyelids, and look at her as if he was considering. A fist perhaps: he’d hit her before now, it wouldn’t be the first time. He hated to be pushed away, he always hit back. Bent over like that, his legs apart, she would have believed it to see him charge at her like a bull and drive his head into her stomach. That too had happened before.

  And still, she was glad she had done it. She picked up the dishtowel he’d dropped, wiped both hands dry on it, and dropped it on the counter. “It’s time for my bath,” she said, and dared him with her eyes to stop her. “I’ll just have time to get dressed. Your suit’s pressed and hanging.”

  “Pressed and hanging,” he said. “Screw the suit. If you think I’m going to that stinkin’ affair . . .”

  “Go or not, please yourself,” she said. “It doesn’t make any difference to me. I’ll be there.”

  But he blocked her escape. “Look, Gladdy, I don’t want to go to that bastard affair. What the hell business have I got in a place like that?”

  Upstairs, the floorboards creaked again. Footsteps passed over.

  “No business at all if you think of it that way,” she said. “But if you don’t go you’ll sit here and worry your gut out thinking about all those people seeing your picture. You may as well be there to look too. Sylvi told me the price on it would be eight hundred dollars.”

  “What?” he said, grinning despite himself. “Eight hundred dollars for this mug? Who’s gonna pay that?”

  “Somebody with money to burn,” she said. “Somebody who’ll put it in the basement to scare the rats away.”

  “Huh.”

  “Maybe your ugly face will hang in a gallery somewhere. For tourists to gawk at. They might even charge admission for the pleasure.” She cocked her hip at him and walked past. Then turned. “You and the bloody Mona Lisa.”

  He lunged for her but she stepped aside and all he got ahold of was the collar of her dress. But he yanked on it anyway, sent buttons flying, ripped the seam open. “God damn!” she shouted, and slapped at the arm. But he pulled harder, and tore a strip right down the front. An old housedress but one of her favourites.

  He was sucking air again, through
his teeth, but his face was red with anger. No one laughed at Carl Roote. Not if he didn’t want a poke, or the hard thrust of a shoulder.

  But she knew how to handle that. She put both hands on her stomach and grimaced. Groaned.

  “Gladdy?”

  She hunched across to the nearest chair and sat. Carefully.

  “Is it the operation?”

  She nodded. And indeed, now, she could feel the pain there. Throbbing. She put up her hand and he took it, held it tight.

  She didn’t even have to use her magic word, it was that easy this time. Sometimes she had to haul out the word the doctor had given her like a weapon and fling it at him to stop him dead. Hiss it at him. Make him leap back and turn away. But this time just the few groans, the doubling over, were enough.

  “Aw Gladdy, are you all right?”

  She was all right, yes. She nodded. And watched him. He was sober enough now. She’d scared the beer right out of him. Look at those eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll go. You get that dress on and we’ll go to their bastard art show.”

  She put her hand on his arm. The pain was worse, which served her right for conjuring it up in the first place. “Go get your suit on, you dumb ox,” she said. “I’ve still got the time for a quick bath.”

  It was true that Sylvi Wainamoinen spent a great deal of her time dreaming of pilgrims. They came to her door, in her dreams, wide-eyed and afraid. They came down to the door from their cars, from the tourist buses, from their taxis, they came whispering across the gravel on tiptoe as if what they walked on was holy ground, they came from all over the island, from all over the country, from all over the world, with breaths held and hands tight: just to see her, to see her home, to touch her things.

  So she dreamed.

  Oh, she was willing to admit it. To herself, and to Aili too, soft sweet almost forgotten Aili, momma, who smelled of the dairy and cinnamon cookies. Who lived, now, like the pilgrims, only in her dreams.

  She opened the door to them, she confessed, in the black rags of widowhood.

  It was true, certainly, that she was spending larger and larger portions of her days on the dreams, but it had never before occurred to her that when the time came for at least part of it to come true she would be too tired to care. That her cheeks would burn from lack of sleep, that her arms would ache, her eyelids droop.

  Yet she was expected to be a gracious hostess, once they got to this thing. The helpers would all turn to her for advice; she’d be expected to make it all run smoothly. And what did she know of such things? Really? Why were there helpers at all if everything, everything, must be told to her?

  She would be expected to check everything over. The paintings, were they straight? Were the helpers in their places? Were the programs out? The price list posted on the walls in several places? Eli would be up on the platform with the alderman, ready for the people. She could go home at that point, if she wanted, and it wouldn’t really make that much difference. Except of course to Eli. Except to insult him.

  She played with her wedding ring. Plain gold. A ring was a reminder that eternity was not impossible, he’d told her, that some things could go on and on so that you couldn’t tell beginnings from endings. A marriage was supposed to be like that.

  There were 250 paintings. A lifetime, hanging on those walls, and on the standing screens. Some were new, hardly dry. Half of them were borrowed from the owners. She could stand there in the centre of that hall and, by turning slowly all the way around, follow the seventy-five years of her husband’s life.

  And could, even if he himself disappeared. His life was broken up, reflected, mirrored in these 250 rectangles. Those people out there would see nearly as much of him as she’d ever seen. If he’d welcomed them naked he’d be no more exposed than he was already.

  Back home they would say, “Miksi Sina olet nun bidas.” What took you so long? Here there were some who said, “Are you sure you’re ready?” and “Is there any point? When you know that few really care?”

  “Aili,” she whispered, “can I confess you something once again?”

  I dream of myself welcoming pilgrims, travellers who have come from all parts of the world to our house, which has become a shrine. “You,” they say with emotion that closes the throat. “You are the widow? You knew the Wainamoinen? You lived with him all those years?” The house is owned by the government as a museum (can you imagine that?) and I show them through the studio, show them the unfinished canvases, let them touch the furniture in our home.

  It will be easier then, Aili, much easier. Of course, I never expected any of it to be simple, living with him, but oh, so much of it has been hard.

  “Oh you silly fool baby,” Aili would laugh at her. “You dreamer baby. Do you really believe it’s any easier for the rest of us? Can you imagine you’re the only one who wants to be a widow?”

  “Sylvi!”

  It was Eli, calling her from the open door. Outside, she could hear the car’s motor running. “Get your coat on, Sylvi. It’s time to go.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes.” And touched the hair at the back of her neck.

  “Before we go,” David Payne said, “we should stop in upstairs and wish them luck.”

  “Luck?” she said, and raised a perfect eyebrow. “What would a thing like that mean, coming from us?”

  “Still,” he said.

  She smiled. “To wish good fortune for someone else you should at least have demonstrated a little of it, yourself.”

  So if there was no doubt in her, he thought, there was at least some bitterness. Waiting was a strain, even waiting for something you were so sure of.

  He turned on the radio. “We’ll go, just as soon as I’ve heard the news,” he said. And sat back in his leather armchair in the corner. “If you insist on taking me back to that place.”

  There were ten minutes left, however, before any of the stations would be offering news and all he could find was music. He snapped off the switch. What kind of a union is it that falls apart this easily, he thought. Where was its strength if it could hold together through all the first twelve years of growing and planning and learning and then snap like this from the weight of its first real burden? What was the matter with him?

  “If you really believed,” he said, “you’d be full of joy and excitement.”

  She did not look at him. She spoke with her face turned away, in the direction of the window, the arbutus tree, the harbour. “Who are you to know what believing brings with it?”

  Wainamoinen sat back on his chair and crossed one leg over the other. Perfectly, carefully. No one must see an old man slouched down like a pouting child dragged here by his parents. Nor see bare white leg exposed above the stocking. This was a time for dignity.

  And it was too late to do anything about the red smear of paint along the side of his hand. Except to hide it, for now, in the left pocket of his suit.

  As people entered the ballroom, nervously, tentatively, he tipped back his head and closed his eyes. Now, now it was happening.

  Only One

  Life of us all

  open my eyes

  only to perfection,

  mine

  and theirs

  Why, why, they said, did you choose to hide yourself on that island? Frontier island on the far edge of a frontier country. When you could have had Scandinavia first and then Europe and finally all of the world. In a country that is only beginning to care, you hide out on an island that is not yet even aware of itself.

  It was because this island was a big enough country, he told them. If he were an Irishman he’d have a country not very much bigger and it would be enough, more than enough. In Finland, too, the country is small and yet as big as one man can identify with. Insist that he become a Canadian painter, or a North American painter, and he would panic. How was it possible to identify with anything so unimaginably huge except by induction, except by seeing the small first and knowing it so well it must include all
of the rest?

  Should he be like his son, who had gone south to America? To become a famous movie director. Who ever heard of him? What could he show that country of itself that they hadn’t had to show him first? Robert Arfie Wainamoinen, big shot.

  Caroline, on the other hand, had married a mechanic and moved up-island to help him run a broken-down crossroad service station. She was poor and bone-tired from bringing up those kids in a pile of discarded car parts but she knew every inch of that piece of land and could sing of it so that you’d think she’d seen the backyard of every wife in the world.

  Only One

  Life of us all

  open my eyes

  only to perfection

  What he opened his eyes to was a crowd of hushed people filling up the room, moving in close to the platform. Faces looked up at him. Frozen uncertain smiles. They might have been saying: Are you sure there is no catch to this? Are we really here for what we think we are here for? They moved in, more and more of them, closer gradually to the platform. Standing uncertain, then pushed ahead by still more coming in, then standing again. Waiting.

  Their eyes flickered across him, briefly, and strained to see all they could of the paintings around the outside walls of the ballroom. Trying to look as if they were only casually interested. Men, some men, gathered in clusters and spoke agitatedly, about work perhaps, or about politics, certainly not about him; they probably weren’t even quite sure why they were here, had been dragged here by their wives. Some wouldn’t even be certain of his name.

  There was still the red smear on his hand, which he kept hidden. This was not a crowd that wanted an eccentric. They would hate him enough for the platform, for the speeches. Age and dignity and quiet calm were closer to what was expected. An artist who was normal, who wouldn’t try to cheat, who wouldn’t be tempted to make a fool of you. They wanted to know that if they liked a piece of work there wasn’t somewhere behind it the kind of artist who was laughing, thinking: Fool, fool, it’s a piece of junk, I wiped my brushes clean on it!