The Age of Cities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

  He handed that heavy volume to Mrs. Pratt, who flipped through the pages intently. An instant later she snapped her fingers. “Perhaps we could comb through the books and type up our own booklet, one that’s suited to our needs here. It would certainly not be costly. And that way there’d be no extraneous material.”

  “Are you volunteering your time?” At that moment, it was obvious to Winston that Cameron McKay joined committees because he was a bully. His natural prey were sheepish do-gooders like Delilah and Betty Pratt, gentle women, he imagined, who wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

  “If we worked together, it’d be done in no time,” was her spirited reply.

  Delilah thanked Winston for his efforts. She spoke to the others and then told him that they had some decisions to make. “Now’s when the fun begins, Winston. Naturally, you may stay if you like, but I have the feeling that we will be burning the midnight oil.” Her face pinched for an instant as she settled her eyes on Cameron McKay. She’d give Winston the inside story during her recess in the morning, he could guess.

  “As much as I’d welcome the chance,” he said, sliding from the bench, “I should get home, check in on Mother. I’ll get those books back from you tomorrow. There’s no rush, though, if you’d like to keep them a while longer. Good luck.”

  J[une 19]59

  In the first week following his visit, Winston was a dedicated student of the specialist’s thumb press technique. Arriving home from school each afternoon, he’d eagerly take off his shoes and socks filled with the hope—ridiculous, and he knew it—that the doctor’s hazy prognostication would correspond to some visible change: mind over matter. When that fleshly material proved resistant, he decided that as a diagnosis Time heals all wounds was sketchy enough to become the byword for turbaned clairvoyants at midways near and far; they could adopt it as a handy alternative to “A loved one is concerned about you.” Really, what was the use of saying it? Death would drain his foot, no doubt. And that was only a matter of time. Anything and everything was a matter of time.

  After that one obstinate foot failed to obey his will, he began to give the pair of them a nominal inspection in the morning. Practical choice won over speculative hand-wringing: he’d discovered that he could avoid discomfort altogether by wearing his usual black wool sock on the normal foot and a silky one, thin as onion skin, on the other. Weeks later, daffodils and narcissus having bloomed and wilted, the difference between the two remained exactly the same, ropy and skeletal on the left, bloated as a drowned man on the right. The doctor had said in so many words that what he saw was barely worth fretting over, and now Winston resigned himself to that learned opinion. There were many worse problems in the world, he lectured to himself. This one was peanuts. He felt relief when he thought how different it would be if he had woken up with a face that was half inflated. Or suffering from a blinding headache that kept him secluded in a sunless room.

  Winston dutifully swabbed on pungent salves until Alberta became resigned as well. She tried out a few new combinations—an odd ingredient like catnip or fish roe swirled in with the standard dollop of mustard—and then snorted at her fruitless determination: “Ha! What’s next, prayer? A visit to a faith healer?”

  It was a perplexing condition, but her mirthful fancies about it induced a bout of laughter. While rifling through her herb drawer—you really ought to organize this godawful jumble of envelopes, jars, and paper scraps, she repeated the resolution for what might be the hundredth time—on a May morning filled with the threat of a scorching summer, she poked fun at the idea of them making some Old Testament-style pilgrimage to a wind-whipped canvas tent. Her vision relocated them to an endless dry grass field in the Prairies rather than a desert in the Levant, and arriving by bus.

  She piled up the details: they’d have to wait in a long queue and talk to other travel-cramped desperadoes—a tired, lank-haired woman with a heavy-set, simpleton daughter; a recently married couple whose only child had been paralyzed by polio—about their pain and anguish and pretend to have faith in their capricious God, who had first stricken them and then offered up an unlikely map back to health that had led them to a scorched plain in the middle of nowhere. She’d have to hold her tongue, she imagined, yet she’d be granted the rare opportunity to watch her son being forced to pass the time in dreary talk with complete strangers. Chewing the fat. Crops, weather, sickness, and God: Oh, how he’d squirm.

  As Alberta widened the vision’s scope, its mugging vaudeville callousness faded; she concluded they’d be on the first bus to Reverend Whatshisname if her son became sick and no one could help him. It was a mother’s right. Why wouldn’t she? Chiding herself for such mawkishness, she thought, I’ve grown into a weepy old woman. She blanched when she pictured herself as one of those fussy Orange Pekoe-sipping ladies who spend their long days looking with wistful, tear-brimmed eyes at old photographs and whispering of war and fateful, misery-bringing letters from the government. Stuck so deep in the mud of the past, she huffed.

  Alberta abandoned her brewing of remedies and talk of shoring up her store of knowledge. There was a time when you stopped darning holes in a sock, after all, and threw it in the bin. And, besides, there was nothing left to use in that musty drawer. No alchemical combination. She held fast to her conviction that a cure was out there, hanging on to that certainty without qualm, and spoke to Winston now and again of holding a pow-wow with the Indians who sold bargain salmon at shadowy cottonwood groves along the river’s bank. It was just that there were better ways for her to spend her mornings than fretting about proportions and herbs. With her gardens, for instance.

  Besides, it wasn’t as though her son’s malady was any more serious than the various aches and swellings that afflicted her each and every season. She had long since given up on remedying her patches of scaly skin—even after valiantly trying grandfather Wong’s remedy of abstaining from potatoes for two entire months, during winter. (“Too much heat” was his slow-coming explanation.) Now she would do the same with a swollen foot. Oh well, what can a soul do but try? It didn’t warrant all her doting—she believed that living through children like some kind of leech was no better than staring mournfully at dusty old photographs. The whole she-bang was in fact easy to forget about: he didn’t limp or complain and was not in the habit of parading around barefooted.

  “C’est tout,” she said to Winston one morning when he asked about the contents of her latest concoction. “I’m about to make a batch of cheddar scones, so it’s flour in the bowl this time. I thought I’d make your coffee first. That okay?” Winston was surprised that Alberta would admit defeat so soon. He thought to feel slighted—his own mother giving up on him, was nothing sacred?—but reminded himself that he had no real faith in her brand of medicine.

  “I wonder when,” he muttered. He crossed the room and ran an index finger along the days of the kitchen calendar. Having finished percolating Winston’s coffee, Alberta was measuring leaves for her morning pot of tea. Grendel was stretched out at her feet; Alberta had dropped him a few dried catnip leaves, and after a spasm of activity the cat had settled into a euphoric slumber.

  Winston spoke to her from across the room. “Mother, this is going to be another permanent feature on me, like weak eyesight or dandruff in winter. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t change, it’s simply there. Nevertheless.”

  “That’s what I said when my hair began to thin out. ‘It’s just there,’ or not there in my case, I suppose. Anyway, you’ll always notice it,” Alberta held up an imaginary hand mirror and squinted. “I’m just a Gorgon without the snakes.”

  “Oh, Mother.”

  “You’re going to take another trip to the city?”

  “I may make a weekend of it. See a show or two. Get you some more of that Lapsang Souchung, even though I can’t fathom why you drink the noxious smoky stuff. Say, why don’t you come along? We can make a weekend of it.”

  “Now there’s an idea, though it’s spring and I’ve made the sw
itch out of Lapsang. Of course.” Her tone was snappish, suggesting that Winston was dumb as an auk. “But you’re right, we could make a weekend of it. It’s been too long since this old girl has done anything except slave at the stove.” Winston thought his mother was tart and vinegary this overcast morning.

  With lips pursed and arms crossed, he turned to her. “You poor so and so. Well, I hereby grant you manumission. For one weekend only, mind you. Today’s your lucky day.” Winston realized that it had been years in fact since he and Alberta had spent a frivolous weekend away from the Bend. They talked of packing their luggage and taking a train or bus somewhere, but the actual trip never seemed to materialize.

  Alberta improvised an African genuflection. “O massuh, you da bestest massuh evuh.”

  Fully grinning, he returned his attention to the calendar. “I’ll have to make a long distance call to the hotel and doctor this time. Let’s hope there’s a space in his appointment book.”

  She walked to the sink and stared out the window. She exclaimed, “Well, I’m going to have to air out my glad-rags. At the very least. They’ve been stuffed in a corner of my closet so long they are as wrinkled as all get out—I don’t even have to look. Let’s hope there’s no mould and that the moths haven’t had a field day.”

  “You’re turning into quite the city slicker.” He looked up to see Delilah at the library’s front door.

  Delilah’s being finished earlier than him was a rarity. She arranged regular meetings with students in order to keep up to date with their progress. It added an extra half-hour to her daily schedule, which Winston usually reminded her of when he was leaving for home. Today, he’d needed to spend some extra time on book orders. The restrictions of the budget had him feeling tetchy.

  “I bet you’ve found some sweetheart,” she said with a false smile.

  “Yes, you’ve figured it all out, Miss Marple. Congratulations. You’ll be the first to get an invitation. We’re thinking of a spring wedding.” She’ll be a spinster in no time if she doesn’t watch herself, he thought after she’d quietly shut the door. Exposure to city life might do her some good.

  During April’s trip to the city, Winston had scarcely looked up from Memoirs of Hadrian over the two hours the train took to reach the spectacular Pacific terminus. He’d known what lay beyond the coach’s window; the salmonberry bushes, cow pasture, and muddy river water were as unremarkable as zucchini in August. And he’d encountered gossips like the pair of downtrodden scavengers who’d sat across from him often enough to appreciate the value of a book. It acted as a charm to ward off evil. He’d considered those women in their faded calico, and concluded that the hero of his novel really was a deity. Publius Aelius Hadrianus. Now there was someone with a story worth paying attention to. He’d thought it was sad that dignity and heroism were so easy to locate in literature and yet such a rarity in daily life.

  Travelling with Alberta, though, he would not be given a chance to read anything, not even a newspaper. She said as much, the excitement seeping from her voice: “You’re not going to read now, I hope?” They sat facing one another. Alberta had placed her bags and gloves on the adjoining seat; Winston’s folded coat and hat were covering his. The novel rested on his lap; his index finger was wedged in where he’d left off.

  “Since you made us trudge down to the station like hobos, planting myself here and relaxing strikes me as ideal. Sheesh, how many miles was that?” Winston fixed his attention on the book’s cover.

  “But there’s so much to look at.”

  “What do you mean? There’s nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary.” He swept through the scene outside with a quick dismissive glance.

  “Look at the trees. They’re luminous, as green as they get. And the river is more swollen than your foot can ever be.” Alberta was speaking from memory apparently, because she was bent over removing her shoes.

  “Yes, O Empress of the Wild. Maybe Princess Stop and Smell the Roses should spend less time with her Indian friends. Besides, there was plenty of nature in ancient Greece. Olive trees, grape arbours, and hemlock galore.” He waved the book at her. Winston could think of nothing he’d prefer at this instance. He’d moved on to The King Must Die, but was still finding Theseus a bit stagy. All those pages of Attic speechifying, it was hammy. The novel was bound to improve.

  “To raise such a cynic of a child. What ever did I do wrong?” Having finished unfastening her shoes, Alberta’s face remained fixed on the outdoor scene.

  “You didn’t keep me in your papoose long enough, I suppose, Mother Nature. We’re going to be incinerated by the sunshine in about five minutes, so maybe we should just pull down the blind.” He stood and began to reach for the dangling cord.

  “Don’t you dare! So cheeky!” They were both smiling. The bantering was their comic routine—as old as any of their shared memories. They both relished it and exaggerated their differences for the sport.

  “You know, whenever I’m on the train and it’s level with the water and the water is leading toward the sea, I always imagine this place before we were here.” Having lost the contest of wills, Winston had already placed the book on his coat.

  “The Wilson dynasty? Or are you referring to the time before Cook and Vancouver and grubby gold rush miners?”

  “I mean when animals ruled the world. Nobody else. Well before the age of cities. It’s something of a mix-up because a few mammoths are roaming as well as some dinosaurs—I have a peculiar fondness for the brontosaurus, so always throw in a few. No people, though, not a soul. It all seems majestic…” She stood up to get a better view of the scene outside the window. “…and awesome.”

  “So much poetry and so early in the day, Mother.” He understood Alberta’s point but did not feel it. “I’d rather see a painting of it, something by Emily Carr maybe. In an art museum. Anyway, Oscar Wilde said that art is an improvement on nature. If I were stranded beside you in your prehistoric wonderland, I’d be looking for the nearest exit out. There’s something about wide-open spaces swarming with reptiles that has me craving art and craft—central heating, a cozy armchair, and a good novel.”

  “Oh, you. Small wonder we never go camping. Biscuit?” She reached into her embroidery bag and began to unfold a waxed paper parcel. Their car rolled by vibrant stands of salmonberry and cottonwood.

  Winston decided that it was Alberta’s enthusiasm at leaving the Bend that had been the catalyst for her impromptu lecture about life before apes and civilization. It was a romantic, noble-savage diorama she drew for him, but minus even the savage. Truly, she had painted a big primitive pastureland, one with far more grazers than predators. Edenic—for a cud-chewer.

  “And how do you imagine surviving in this place, Mother?” He tried out her idea; removing the links of log booms from the river, he imagined something like an Ogopogo heaving its sleek eel’s head out of the muddy current.

  “That’s not the point. It’s a bit like visiting a ranch. Only I am invisible—or at least nothing spots me—and just watch them peacefully go about their business. Lovely.”

  “Lonely, I’d say. And anyway there’s no intelligence there, Mother. Animal instinct only! And that means there is no culture. It’s all packs, flocks or prides, and being led around by some elemental pulsations: go forth and multiply. Eating, sleeping, mating until they’re feeble and then melt back into the earth.” Winston was intrigued by her creation. His need to respond was habit rather than dismay.

  “Porter.” Alberta spoke out over her son’s head and raised her hand to wave. Winston watched her silver bangles slide up her forearm. An elderly man, stooped and turtle-paced, made his way toward her. “How long will it be before we arrive?” He checked his pocket watch, and was sure to explain that his answer was “an approximation.” Winston pictured a troupe of porters in a train station office being given a pep talk by their higher ups, explaining how they must use that phrase so that nobody could complain if the train was running late.

  He r
eturned to his station at the end of the car after asking, “Is that everything, Madame?” Alberta was triumphant: “You see! He answered me because he sensed that I am higher than he is in the pack and should be obeyed. There was no intelligence there, just instinct. Ha. That’s your civilization. It’s nothing except that, but it dresses itself up, puts on airs. La-dee-da.” She made the hand gestures of a fine lady lifting her skirts to take a step.

  Alberta turned to look at the porter—now unmoving, statuary hands resting on the countertop. She said, “Speaking of which … I believe that man ought to bathe. He’s wearing enough aftershave to make a bear stop dead in its tracks. I’d guess that he’s trying to cover up his ripeness. Maybe we should leave him a discreet note: ‘Sir, it will be to the benefit of all that you wash yourself. Signed, A Concerned Passenger.’ What do you think?”

  “Well, no, Mother. Or, yes. No aftershave, I agree. But bathing? I think if we want to honour your vision and return to our prehistoric former glory, he should tear off his uniform and revel in his stink. We all should. Your mighty brontos didn’t wear any trousers, did they?” His mother’s visions were grand, Winston had seen, and fuzzy; she didn’t care too much about details so long as it looked poetically just. Winston thought she’d regret yet that she’d raised a details man. It would be Alberta’s enduring lament, the final word on her epitaph.

  “Very well, you win. Read your damned book, then, young man.” She was grumbling but already laying out framed cloth, thread, and needles—the tools for her embroidery. Winston was fond of his mother’s pillowcase abstractions, which were always received with such expressions of puzzlement by the Women’s Auxiliary. Of the donated helter-skelter chunks of livid silk and mossy wool thread, she’d say, “I call it ‘Children on May Day’” (or “Washington Crossing the Delaware” or “Louis Riel at Batoche”), as though it was a perfect replica of a nostalgic Currier & Ives plate. The women, some decades younger than their benefactress, would politely encourage the senile biddy as though she had handed them a clod of earth and claimed it was brilliant 24-carat gold. Each time they carried in the selection of pillow covers, they’d chime, “Why, thank you, Mrs. Wilson, you’ve been so busy lately” with a nurse’s pragmatic insincerity.