by test
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
The car in front of her slows down for the first light at the edge of the city, and Marsha debates turning into Tim Horton Donuts to pick up breakfast for the
Page 86
morning. Henry is likely sitting in the kitchen, no lights on, watching the sports. He will be drinking a beer, not thinking of supper until the moment his stomach growls. There are potato chips in the cupboard, he doesn't even have to leave the room. And then he'll watch while she opens up cans of soup, puts out bread cut in fours already buttered for him. He likes it when she puts cheese on a plate too, but not tonight, she doesn't feel like making another stop. Besides, somebody has to watch his cholesterol. The Sound of Music is on at seven, the same time as his game show. She could watch it downstairs, since she moved the big set to her own apartment. By her count, she has seen this movie eleven times, once every other year since she can remember The first time was at the theater, just her and Berta. They ate popcorn, and Berta cried when Maria came back to the convent, leaving the Captain to his Countess. Every time Berta saw it she cried at the same part. Marsha herself gets teary-eyed when the Captain sings "Edelweiss" with his family. The hospital she was born in is named for Christopher Plummer's grandfather.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Marsha accelerates past the left turn towards home. Instead, she goes straight on down the hill. A weird time to go downtown, just past six-thirty, when all the stores are closed and the early shows haven't yet started. Most of the traffic passes her in the opposite direction. Until a few months ago, she never came down here in the evening, unless it was to the mall with Berta on a Friday night, when it stays open until nine. They would have coffee at the restaurant across from Dominion, where Berta would have shopped for specials on meat and produce. It was kind of like being on a date, and once in a while they saw a movie. The Turning Point is one Marsha remembers, and a James Bond film that they both liked.
After she turns onto Queen Street, downtown proper, the street is more crowded, mostly with teenagers in their parents' family-type cars. Which hers looks like, if she had to admit it. She paid for it with her own money. She had bought the chocolate brown New Yorker new off the lot: pricey, but roomy enough to take nice drives on Sundays to see the fall leaves, or out for an ice cream cone after supper in the summer. Just last winter they put the car to the test: 2,500 km to Florida, and the same again coming back. They had left right after the new year, when Marsha had her three weeks coming to her She had just finished the most grueling part of the season: getting people home to their families for Christmas, helping out students flying standby, taking extra care with the Christmas presents that were checked through to southern Ontario. Some people might think it strange for a ticket agent at an airport not to fly on her own vacation, especially when she could travel just about anywhere in continental North America except Alaska and Hawaii for twenty dollars. She even
Page 87
knew the route: Air Canada all the way, nonstop from Toronto to Miami, only three hours in the air, complimentary cocktails and light lunch included.
But she lets people think what they want, they will anyway; and besides, it isn't anyone's business if she doesn't like the takeoffs and landings, when her stomach lurches and she feels her face drain of color. How can she explain this to Bob, who wants to fly her up north in his little plane this coming Sunday? He says he'll pack a picnic, he knows a lake where the fall leaves have already started to turn. Marsha likes the silver tubes coasting in outside the airport windows, and the people she meets who are traveling to and fro. Some are making connecting flights to Greece, or Africa, and for those people she has to stamp their documents before they can pass out of the country. The thought that she is the anchor, the one constant in all the bustle and importance of business people and world travelers, the one who gets them where they need to be, thrills her.
But when it came to her own parents, an even better way to ensure they arrived safely was to navigate and pilot them herself. Carefully she plotted their route, and watched the gas gauge, and drove with as much confidence as any son. Henry had grumbled at the whole idea, of course, but in the end he went along with it, he always did. He didn't much like his daughter doing the driving, but the truth is Henry's reflexes aren't what they used to be, and his impatience at any car doing the speed limit scared the women to death. So they put him in the back seat where he could spread the maps out and calculate mileages and the price of American gas compared to Canadian. All in all, gas was costing them almost half what it would at home. Marsha couldn't remember the particulars or the equations, but for the most part it had kept Henry content. After each stop he would reach forward and lock both the front doors, and Marsha would relax back in her seat, the cruise control set to the speed limit.
And Berta had been happy then too, or so it seems, even now, in retrospect. In the evenings, the women bathed in the motels they stopped at along the way. They would all rise early, about seven, and Henry would shower. Then they would drive an hour or so before stopping for breakfast at highway restaurants serving berry-flavored syrups instead of maple and whipped cream on the waffles. The waitresses would bring them big glasses of ice water without being asked to, and say "Have a nice day now" as if they meant it, their accents getting softer and prettier the further south they got. Berta, delighted, took to saying it back to them, and to the service attendants at gas stations, and if they stopped to buy pop at a 711. She said it made her feel like a nicer person just for thinking it, and maybe it made you live longer. Now, she says it still, to bank tellers and grocery clerks, and to her customers over clean piles of laundry.
After breakfast, Henry usually fell asleep. Not bothering to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius, the women would note how the temperatures warmed
Page 88
up with each passing mile. Berta would comment on the snow that must be piling up in the driveway back home, and how nice it was to wear only a cardigan instead of a heavy winter coat. She was glad Henry had a break from clearing the driveway; even with the snowblower Marsha had bought him, Berta worried about his heart. Marsha said how nice it was to drive, you really could see the country that way. They played the radio, and Berta liked it when Marsha sang along. Going through Kentucky and Tennessee they started hearing more country music, and pretty soon Marsha knew all the words to songs by Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton and the Judds.
After three days they got to Orlando, and Henry had to admit that the car rode really well. Just think, he would blurt out, turning on the air conditioning in January! Back home, old Werner Schmidt across the street would be plugging in his BMW at night just to make sure it started in the mornings. The three of them sat in the sun by the pool every day, and Marsha thought it was just about the best vacation they'd ever had. Henry loved Disney World and the Epcot Center. Coming back to live at home after her college course in travel agency was the right decision: her parents needed her, relied on her now, it was her turn to take care of them. Before they left Florida they bought a big box of oranges and grapefruits, the kind you shipped home that wouldn't get confiscated at the border, and for two weeks in the middle of winter Henry had fresh-squeezed juice every morning, and every morning he smacked his lips and said he wouldn't ever eat oranges from California again. On Marsha's birthday Berta surprised her with a little silver orange, a charm she picked up secretly on one of their shopping jaunts to Sak's.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
The cars cruise up the one-way street, and when she joins the flow of traffic she wonders if they think she is cruising too. It's not a part of town she knows well at night; she didn't even hang out much down here during high school.
And now her mother works here. Marsha pulls slowly past the laundromat/coffee-shop, where a dry cleaner used to be: "Wash 'n Nosh." Bright, the sign lights up the sidewalk out front where several kids are hanging around. Next door an arcade, dark and noisy from the music and video games, pulses out neon onto the sid
ewalk. All the dollar coins, the millions of "loonies" in these two buildings at once, there must be hundreds of dollars worth between them. At the airport, most people use credit cards.
Marsha looks inside, driving as slowly as she can, which is pretty slow since all the other cars are inching forward too, their passengers straining to get a view of who's out tonight. The laundromat splits in two: along the left-hand side is a counter top, with donuts under glass and bar stools set up; across the aisle washing machines and dryers go all the way to the back. Berta works
Page 89
in the laundry side, giving out change and doing the drop-off loads, thirty-five cents a pound. Marsha had never heard of such a thing before Berta started working here. How much does a towel weigh, or a pair of jeans, she asked Berta. Oh, honey, I guess maybe a pound, maybe not quite. It's a good deal, would cost you a dollar a load to wash them yourself, and fifty cents at least to get them all the way dry.
Marsha turns around the corner, circles the block to pass by again, unable to decide whether or not to go in. She has only done this twice before. The first time was that night, after Berta called to say where she was.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
The phone had rung in the dark kitchen. She was lying on her parents' bed, only semi-conscious, her face buried in her mother's pillow. The ringing roused her from stupor: at first she thought it was morning. The light glowing 7:31 from the clock wasn't the same as her own downstairs. It must be Berta, calling as soon as Henry's television show was over. Henry didn't pick up the receiver. He never did, so if Marsha ever called home from work and Berta didn't answer, that meant that Henry was likely sitting in the house somewhere, tuning out the sound. Once she had let it ring and ring, insisting that her call be recognized, it must have been thirty times. But her own multiple lines were lighting up, flashing a few times, then going dead again, and at last she could neglect her work no longer. The rings, ringing, her mother waiting for her to pick it up, calling from who knew whereMarsha couldn't see her at the other end, having no location in which to place her.
She had run down the hallway then, grabbing the receiver in the kitchen. Henry, blank in front of the TV, didn't turn.
"Mother," Marsha called into the phone. "Mother, is that you?"
Berta spoke calmly, as if calling from a great distance on a windless day. She instructed Marsha to pick up the pink pen hanging by the phone, so she could give her the new number. I have an apartment, she said, and in a few days, when I've got myself collected, I would like you to come and see it. Here is the address, write it down so when you hang up you'll know where I am. Marsha, nodding, did what she was told. And I've got a job, Berta added just when Marsha thought she was going to hang up, so you won't have to worry about that, you can spend your money on yourself for once. But there's plenty of time to talk about things. I just wanted to let you know everything's all right.
Berta had hung up the phone without asking after Henry, without even asking Marsha how she was, giving her no chance to say everything most certainly was not all right, not in its place. Not as if Berta didn't care, exactly; more like she was distracted, had other things on her mind.
Then her father had at last spoken. "She's downtown, she got a job, working
Page 90
at that laundry place by the old Dairy Queen. Near the bus terminal." He had turned to Marsha then, looked her full in the face for all the world with the eyes of a sore dog. Marsha wondered if he'd eaten.
Without a coat, she had gotten back in her car that night and driven down to the place, a storefront she'd barely even noticed before, at the end of downtown proper. The good storesFriedman's and Virene's department stores, Savoy's Jewelry, the fancy Italian restaurantrun out about here and only a few placesa used-paperback store, a coffee shop open 24 hourstrickle on until the bus station, which marks clearly the end of the city's center and the beginning of the West End. The hulk of the steel plant hangs on by the edge of the river, its trademark flame rising over the neighborhood. The houses down here have always seemed grungier and the bars too terrible to know about. She thinks that Bob lives down here, in a neighborhood where people paint their front porches pink and green, and plant gardens in the small square front yards with uncontrollable daisies and geraniums. This is the immigrants' section of the city, where they settled after arriving in the new country to populate the plant. There are even a few corner stores with chairs set up outside, men drinking coffee and speaking Italian. Henry at least had the good sense to buy a house on top of the hill. Berta's workplace was right on the border between a respectable section of town where ladies shopped and the disintegration of the city into the water. Marsha shuddered, pulled up in front, and marched in.
The smells immediately had reminded her of the airport snack bar: coffee and ammonia. A small color television perched on the corner of the donut counter, the sounds of a game show mingling with the whirring of the machines and people's chatter. Another older woman, about her mother's age, stood behind the cash register rearranging carrot muffins. She wished her mother at least worked in that part.
But Marsha saw Berta towards the back on the right-hand side. She was folding someone's towels, big red and white ones, not like the kind they had at home. When Berta saw her, she smiled as if she were expecting this. It was also a public smile, the smile she must offer to the strangers bringing washing.
"Your father told you where I was," she said. Marsha could feel the warmth of the laundry rising up.
"I want you to come home," Marsha said. Her mother's smile did not change. And aware of the petulance in her voice, the unforgiving and unrelenting accusation, she turned as suddenly and walked back out, afraid of knocking muffins off the counters with her hips. She was out of line, and out of place, asking for something she couldn't name, but without which she was afraid she would cease to exist.
"Mother refuses to budge," she told Henry. "And I don't want to hear her name again." Henry, not challenging her, shuffled directionless about the house.
"There's a mystery movie on TV tonight," she had called out to his back.
Page 91
"Won't you come downstairs and watch it on the big set?" She resisted adding "please." And he had turned and followed her down the steps, careful not to spill his beer.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
And so the two of them forged a new routine, rising early for work, eating porridge or corn flakes. Henry would head off in his work clothes as always, a meal packed by Marsha in his aluminum lunch box. After a week or so he took to making the coffee himself, so it was ready when she came upstairs, and he made enough to fill his thermos. Marsha could not remember her father ever making coffee before, or standing at the stove except to make wieners and beans on Berta's bridge night. He learned that she drank hers black, and she noticed he cut down from three spoonfuls of sugar to just one.
"Your mother drank milk in hers," he said one morning, a month or so after Berta's leaving. "But I like this half and half cream." And Henry served her up poached eggs on toast, a little runny the way she liked them.
It was that evening that Marsha had visited Berta for the second time. Even before leaving for work she must have been devising the plan, throwing a pile of Henry's dirty socks and work clothes, and an egg-stained T-shirt, into the trunk. When she got to the laundromat, she bunched up the clothes in her arms. Pushing open the door was easy: it was made to be entered by people with their hands full. She dropped the load on the counter in front of Berta.
"Here you go," she said. "I'll pay you to wash these."
Berta took the pile and began sorting through it, separating out the woolen socks from the cotton pants and shirts. The odor of Henry passed between them.
"I wish you would come over to my apartment some time," Berta said, dropping the laundry into a plastic basket. She weighed it. "A dollar seventy-five," she said. "Henry would like thatit must cost more just to heat up the water at home."
"But there you could
reuse it with the water-saver," Marsha said. The washing machine was one of the first things she had bought for the home when she started working. "If you come back, we'll pay you, Henry and I. Forty cents a pound?" She tried to crack her mouth into a smile, turn the sarcasm into a joke. She didn't really believe that domestic discontent explained her mother's departure, but she wanted to compel her to return. Berta shook her head.
