“Well, I’m not going to eat it.”
Myhrra, who was drinking a coffee, and looking out at the cold, flat, and somehow at that moment spiteful-looking field, told him that he’d better eat it. The smell of the egg, the flat sky, the barren field – all of this depressed her.
He upset the egg and stomped out of the room.
Myhrra didn’t bother with him. She got ready and went out to the car and started it.
But when she came back in Byron had his old clothes on and was feeding his guppies.
“I have to drive you up to the church, Byron – you have to be there in a half-hour.”
“Not going.”
“You are so going.”
“Not.”
“Are so – you’re an usher for christsake.”
Myhrra, who hadn’t wanted the wedding to happen, and hadn’t wanted Byron to go to it, now found herself struggling to get him ready.
Finally she told him he wasn’t going to the wedding – and once she told him he wasn’t going, he got ready, and ran out the door towards the car, while she followed him with his cuff links and a brush in her right hand, taking swipes at his hair.
When they got into the car Byron held his arms up for her to put the cuff links on, and as she doubled his cuffs and yanked his sleeves down he looked at her.
“You haven’t fixed my hair – you just made it all messed up,” Byron said to her.
How could he say what he did to her, she who loved him more than anyone else – who had given birth to him?
Vera and Nevin had managed to buy a farm using their own savings and a loan from Thelma. Though very stern and practical, Thelma had another common trait – she could not stand not to be a part of her daughter’s life, and tried to help her when she could.
One day in December Vera took a walk over her land. It was cold, and snow blew against her face. The trees were white and naked, and the grass seemed to be fierce and cold. Little paths ran off the sides to walls of bleak alders, and above her she could hear the highway as she walked.
Vera came in to visit the doctor, with that assertive step she believed was very new for women. This was the step that had characterized her since her university days, and seemed to make her lankiness more noticeable. She took giant boot steps across the room.
She began to talk about her house down on the shore and how it should have been kept up, but the family who lived there before weren’t the type to keep it up. She was unaware that the doctor, as well as everyone on the road, knew and liked this family – she was only sure that with her there, things would finally get done.
Vera was one of those people who is normally infuriating because every new opinion is suddenly hers – and hers alone – and in another year or so she will move on to something else. The very things that in 1968 she argued for, were now vehemently argued against.
After she opened her coat – Vera also had to show that she “dressed for the climate,” not like those “other women” who dressed insubstantially – she got the doctor to feel her coat, and then reach down and feel her furry boots.
Then Vera began to complain about Christmas and how it seemed to her to be ridiculously commercial. Whenever she said anything she smiled and then frowned so quickly the person she was talking to was never sure if they’d seen a smile or not.
Finally Dr. Hennessey said – in that polite way he had which made you sure he disliked someone – that he thought Christmases were good, and that he himself was a walking Santa Claus. Vera simply smiled, and frowned once more, and looked about his kitchen. He had a clothesline strung above the sink, and was drying a number of pairs of woollen socks. The radio played, half-static country and western music, and an old tin of sardines lay open upon the table.
“I just get more and more Christmasy every year,” the old doctor said, and obviously at that moment, as he stared at Vera, he believed it and would continue to believe it until Vera left his house. The doctor would usually do this when he felt that someone believed they knew who he was or what he was about Since Vera believed that she alone (or to the doctor it suddenly seemed this way) had found out about Christmas he would not give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her. The doctor knew no moderation in anything and already had decided that he did not like the way she lived or the way she thought.
He’d had to go to town one day last week with his sister-in-law Clare, and while he was there he went in to see Ralphie. Nevin had been there, walking about. The doctor tripped in the doorway, and his hat had come partially off, and he felt that Nevin thought he was quite a foolish old man – and the feeling that Nevin would think this infuriated him.
This was the case more and more with the doctor, as he became more and more unwilling to agree with anyone. With his short grey hair and thick shoulders, with his chest bones jutting out, he was strangely imposing. In one way he looked rather pompous and careful, but in another, with his large hands, his penetrating gaze, he always struck people as being formidable and angry.
He generally disliked cruelty of any sort For example he secretly disliked horse-hauling. He had never gotten used to it. Yet if a person he did not respect thought horse-hauling was cruel, he would be all for horse-hauling. If a person complained that a horse was hyped up on tea, then so much the better – the horse should be hyped up on tea – what was tea for if not to hype up horses. If a person said he wanted to quit drinking because he had a vision of the Virgin Mary – the doctor would say that if he had a vision of the Virgin when he was drinking he would bloody well be a fool to stop.
Vera smiled as she spoke, and with her big calm eyes, looked at him, as if she knew he would not be able to believe all of the brand new things she was now doing. Though she was not consciously trying to impress him with all these new things, she could not help mentioning every detail of how her life had changed. Every time she said anything the doctor nodded, or cleared his throat.
Then, after finishing her apple cider, she put the glass down, stood abruptly and, still smiling, said that she had to go. And this too seemed to explain everything she now was. The doctor gave a start, because he knew that Clare would be waking from her nap and would want to see her. Clare was Vera’s godmother. She had taught her to play the piano, and she loved Vera more than she loved anyone else. But since Vera had explained that she was now in a hurry to get home and start supper, the doctor would not ask her to stay.
He hasn’t changed, Vera said to herself once outside. He hasn’t changed at all. The smell of the road, and the pinkish light shining from Madgill’s garage made her suddenly feel happy and elated. Everything was more solid at twilight Up a side road some children played. She did not realize that she was feeling the greatness of the river that she was once again upon. The very trees and houses made her feel this way.
With her hands in her pockets she took some assertive steps towards the lower fields, her hair blowing behind her and her large ears bare.
The barn was dark at the end of the field, and Vera often went out there after dark to check on the horses. She had bought an old horse and she would not admit she had made a bad deal. Sometimes Ralphie would come down to help her pile wood in the cellar, and hear the horse coughing in the stall. There was some dry hay, so the horse was always coughing, and the smell of frozen dung. Far across the bay on a clear day you could see the tip of one of the nearest islands. Above them, but still far away, there was the church – one of the oldest Catholic churches in the province where Aunt Clare went to church every evening at seven o’clock. Ralphie had to put the eight-foot wood on a sawhorse and cut it. Then he had to split it on a splitter. It was then loaded into a wheelbarrow that was made out of slats of rough pine, not unlike a trough. Vera pushed this wheelbarrow to the window, and with leather mitts on her hands and her arms scratched, she unloaded the wood into the cellar. Even though it was cold, they were sweating. The sun was pale, and there was the look of milk in the woods. The stream that ran down to the small pond was frozen, and the wood
road was hard with snowy mud and sloughs. Vera teetered and stumbled under her burden, her thin legs staggering and her mouth clamped shut.
“Well, what do you think of Nevin?” Vera said one day when Ralphie was wiring her bathroom. She was wearing a scarf about her head, and her granny glasses sloped down on her nose. She had worked for five hours straight, without a rest, to try and insulate the inside of the house. Her shirt was torn open and he could see one of her breasts, with a mole on its side. Some white winter light came in on those glasses and made them reflective. She wore an old orange shirt that had once belonged to Ralphie. She had a pair of black slacks on, which hung off her skinny hips and made her bum look small as she walked about, and, noticing this, Ralphie felt sad and looked puzzled.
“He knows what I’ve gone through, and he would never let me down. …”
And drawing on the false notion, since the letters of 1967, that she and Ralphie were very close – and in fact she had taken Ralphie and Adele under her wing – she smiled.
“He’s alright,” Ralphie said, blushing. Ralphie was on his haunches and his boots were untied, and four screwdrivers stuck out of various pockets, while a pencil rested behind his ear.
“I knew you’d like him,” she said quickly, and she too blushed.
It was a practice of Vera’s and Nevin’s to separate Adele and Ralphie, so as to speak to them. When they came into the house, Vera would often ask Ralphie to come into her room, which was just off the porch. Seated in a deep chair, with her granny glasses on, and looking (or trying to look) older than she was, she would ask Ralphie to sit down and talk to her. Ralphie would sit down for a moment, on the edge of his seat Vera had little to say to him, and Ralphie would sit there patiently for fifteen to twenty minutes. Then, walking out into the other room, he would see Nevin sitting down by Adele, speaking to her, about world problems. Adele, her eyes big and wide, would be nodding. Then Nevin would turn about and look at Ralphie and smile. Vera would come out of her room and smile – and then they would all sit together for a while. Everything about Nevin was forced, everything unnatural, and yet Ralphie was too polite to say anything. Nevin simply assumed that Ralphie felt as he did and this was the best way to feel.
At times such as this, Adele looked as if she wouldn’t hurt a fly – and as if flies were her best friends – and as if she was filled with the same “non-aggressive” tendencies she had come to believe characterized these new and special people in her life.
But when Adele and Ralphie were alone, Adele would be nervous. She would ask Ralphie a hundred times what he was going to do next year, and if she didn’t get the answer immediately she would fly into a rage and tell him that he never cared for her. Then she would bite him or something.
She’d walk about like a ghost and refuse to see him when he called for her. But then she would call him up and tell him she had a present for him. She would look at him, and using the same expression as Vera had, she would say: “Why is it, do you think – h’m Ralphie – that only women are interested in the causes of peace?”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Ralphie would say.
“Men have created all the wars – and try to blow things Up – HAVEN’T THEY?”
“Well, Ralphie,” she said one day, when she was particularly angry, “everyone knows how wrong you are, and everyone just takes advantage of you. I can see it in this here apartment – people always did whatever they wanted to, and you never put your foot down one little bit, did you!” She left the apartment and sat on the steps outside.
“What in hell are you up to?” he said, coming after her.
“Don’t worry about me, Ralphie – I am fine. Just because my father is a drunk I am fine. Just never mind me. Just because he forgot me on a river bank and I almost drowned – never mind. Just never mind, Ralphie –”
She sat there stone stiff on the steps, and yet every now and then glanced about to see if he was watching her.
Joe’s back had taken a turn for the worse again, so a great comedy of sorts took place in the house. Adele had to help him up and down stairs on a number of occasions – that is, both Adele and Rita, with Milly following up the rear. Then they would collect all the pillows in the house and put them around him. He would sit his bum carefully on a cushion, and they would place one at the small of his back, another behind his head, and another on his left foot.
In the middle of the night Rita would awaken to find Joe lying on the living room floor, or pacing up and down. He had the prescription Dr. Savard had given him but still hadn’t filled it. And one night Rita came down and sat in the chair in the corner:
“Joe.”
“What?”
“If you are in pain – I wouldn’t mind if you had a drink.”
“I know, Rita, I know.”
He was silent for a moment. Under the light from the street his arms were white and she could make out the tattoos on his arms. His body was still strong and thin. His shoulders were large and seemed larger in proportion to the rest of him. He had once carried a piano singlehandedly on his back up Myhrra’s stairs and he had also picked up an engine block and moved it across the lawn from its tripod. He also had been a diver and used to help take cars out of the water after accidents. His chest bones seemed to jut out in the light and there was a smell of cigarettes in the room. A pale-yellow half-moon shone on the snow, and branches struck out clearly on the trees a ways away.
“If I take a drink, I’ll still wake up to the pain,” Joe said and then optimistically he added that he’d heard Tate Reed’s back was much better and so he just had to wait this out.
In fact he didn’t take a drink, and the next morning his back was improved enough so he could walk about and smile, and eat a good breakfast.
One particular evening, Ralphie brought over a game called Risk – a game where everyone had a certain number of armies and tried to take over the world. Ralphie, with his usual excitement over things, wanted to get everyone to play – they would take sides and form strategies. And he was sure also that he and Adele could take over the world, if they just got lucky.
On the other hand, Joe was certain he could take over the world, that he and Rita had always planned to take over the world, and now it was time to do it.
Myhrra, her cheeks rouged, and her eyes with new eye liner, said that she could take over the world but she didn’t want to. The doctor had come to play, with a huge box of assorted candy under his arm, ready for this new challenge.
“What’s this game?” he said. “Let’s get at it – does it have tanks? I want tanks – destroyers. I want destroyers. …”
He handed the candy to Milly, kicked off his toe rubbers, and walked into the kitchen.
The game, with its pieces, and the board, with its eccentric map of the world, lay open upon the kitchen table. Chairs had been brought in from the living room and had been placed around to accommodate everyone. Myhrra stood at the back of the kitchen against the wall, under three pieces of Indian corn, smoking a cigarette, and staring gloomily at them all.
“I’m not sure I want to play this game. I’ve come down – but I didn’t know it was a game like this.”
“Like what?” the doctor said immediately.
“Well – you know – a game that depends on aggression.” Then she blinked.
Ralphie sitting at the table began to explain the game.
“Now we all get a certain number of armies, and we all go about in rotation placing our armies on the board, taking territories, until all the territories are taken. The best way to go about it is not to spread yourself out but consolidate yourself so you’ll be able to withstand attacks, and then from that position you’ll be able to attack others.”
“And who’s going to attack me?” Myhrra said, as she sat down. She looked first at Ralphie and then Adele, and then over to Rita and Joe.
“It’s just a game,” Joe said.
“I know it’s just a game, Joe – I’m not stupid.”
As t
hey set up their pieces, both Myhrra and Adele said they were being discriminated against, because it was the doctor and Ralphie who set the pieces down for them, since they were their team members.
“Here, Myhrra, you put the pieces down,” the doctor said.
“Doesn’t matter – let’s start over.”
“Yes, and I don’t want United States – I want Europe,” Adele said. “Let’s start over.”
Joe said nothing. Rita shrugged, and kept flipping an army from one hand to another.
Then Adele and Myhrra started to put the pieces down in rotation with Rita.
“I was going to put a piece here, Myhrra,” Adele whispered, standing over the board, wearing a loose top and a big pair of black corduroys that had caught a whole bunch of lint. “Do you mind?”
“Well. …” Myhrra said. “Okay, go ahead. I was going to take it – doesn’t matter.”
“Okay, I promise not to attack you on that side if you don’t attack me on this side,” Adele said, putting the piece down.
“Rita, Rita,” Myhrra said. “You have all of Africa.” She lit a cigarette quickly and stared at the board.
“Well, no one else seemed to want it,” Rita said, looking about as if she had done something wrong.
“We should all take parts of countries and no one take a whole country,” Myhrra said.
“At the apartment when we play. …” Ralphie started to explain.
“Well, you give me a part of Africa and I’ll give you a toe hold in South America,” Myhrra said. Adele was still standing over the board, blinking her shortsighted eyes (she refused to get her eyes checked, because she was scared she would have to wear glasses).
Finally when they had the pieces all placed, and their armies faced each other, Joe had first roll of the dice. Since he and Rita’s armies were closest to Myhrra’s, Joe turned to her.
“Pick up your dice there, Myhrra, and we’ll go to war,” he said.
“Why me?” Myhrra said. “Why not attack Ralphie?”
Nights Below Station Street Page 11
