Though Rita sat at the head table, Joe sat at the other end of the room, against the wall, with two couples from across the river, whom he did not know.
The bar was opened and there was champagne. Myhrra, who was pale, looked over at Joe when he toasted the bride. Vye kissed her, and everyone clinked their spoons against their glasses, and Myhrra blushed and looked again at Joe.
It was late afternoon. The sky was pale white, and large flakes of snow started to fall. Heart-shaped flowers with Myhrra and Vye’s names were pinned on the wall above the bead table.
When the dancing started, Myhrra and Vye, who was wearing a grey tuxedo with yellow cummerbund, danced together, and then as they stepped across the floor, they laughed. Then Vye danced with Rita. Rita blushed as Vye said something, and then she laughed. At this point Myhrra walked over to Joe and asked him to dance.
Joe and she began to dance, and Myhrra began to laugh, though Joe felt he had said nothing funny, and Joe felt he wanted to tell her something which would make her happy.
Adele sat the whole time looking about, almost as pale as Myhrra. She kept glancing at the little watch that Ralphie had given her for her birthday, although her birthday was not for two weeks. Ralphie could not get to the wedding because he had to work a twelve-hour shift at the mines.
After he drank four glasses of champagne, Vye went over to Joe. He sat beside him and told him he was sorry if anything was taken to heart. He looked sad. His nose had a curve at the front and his eyes blinked heavily. He told Joe that Rita was like a sister to him, and they were just friends.
“Now – what we have to do – is get you a job,” Vye said, suddenly becoming passionate about Joe and his situation. Then Rita came over and sat down beside them. She took a glass of champagne off the table and drank it, smiled – her teeth were crooked, which enhanced her beauty – and her eyes were dark and warm.
Joe, suddenly and without warning, wanted a drink so badly he could almost taste the rum. He said to himself: “If Adele gets off her arse and goes into the can – I’ll have a drink.”
Adele at that moment did get up, but it was only to tack a balloon back up on the wall.
Then she looked at Joe and for some reason looked frightened – a way she had not looked since she was eight years old with ulcers, that summer when they lived up by the station, and there was a smell of tar and the wind blew over the burdocks, and for a time the smell of burdocks and wind seemed to make him frightened when he drank. Then she suddenly went over to the far end of the room and sat down very carefully, as if she had just come into a restaurant.
Rita danced with Vye, and then with one of the men from across the river, and then twice with Clay Everette Madgill. Then she took another glass of champagne and danced again. The floor was filled with dancers now, and it somehow seemed ridiculous to Joe. He knew he looked ridiculous sitting in a corner by himself – but he could not bring himself to do anything. There were two chairs in front of him, and Simonie Bath, with her big breasts and her olive skin, was sitting with her father, Allain Garret. She was “the adopted one” – as they said. There were people from New Jersey – that patch of wood down river – where Myhrra’s relatives had come from. There were old ladies with powdered skin who kept popping their cups up for tea, and young girls of eleven or twelve, wearing training bras, and learning to dance with cousins shorter than themselves.
Joe was looking around, and what he was seeing was not so much the people, but the light fixtures and sockets, and he was listening to the pipes and the plumbing because he and Cecil and Maufat McDurmot had built this centre five years ago. He thought about the faint smell of wet bark in the grey twilight with its snow. The smell of the woods, and its dark trees wet and old. The smell of new snow falling against the end of last month’s storm; on the windows the last flush of twilight and the sound of passing cars.
This business of not drinking was horrible. He remembered the retreat and the kindly priest who had smiled at him – himself an alcoholic. But that, now, to Joe who had appreciated it, seemed nothing more than ludicrous. And the music? Everyone becomes someone else when they listen to music, Joe was thinking – they believe the music is for themselves alone even though it has nothing to do with them. Once outside in the snow and without music they would be completely different. Joe felt this.
And it didn’t matter how he wanted everyone to have a good time, once there was pain how could you concentrate.
Vye passed by again, and now, instead of speaking, he looked the other way, with his head down – as if they had spoken too much already.
The day got darker and snow fell, on the doors and windows and hoods of cars, and on the windows of the community centre, with its lights shining in little squares on the warm drifts.
“St. Patrick is here with his storm,” they said, and they all toasted it.
Myhrra drank very seldom but she’d had three glasses of champagne, and stood in the corner with a glass in her hand, smoking a cigarette with her veil tucked behind her hair. Then a plough passed on the road above and the building shook.
Standing in her white dress, Myhrra looked as if she had been married ten years ago – that it was foggy and that it had started to snow – just as now. That is, it looked for a moment as if the dress was alone in the centre of the room, and there was a drowsy scent from the roof, with its rust and tin – that three lights would beam out from the community centre, giving warmth, and that as a child she had once walked away happy amongst the blotted snowdrifts in the dark.
Once when she spoke, she looked towards the kitchen where the caterers were eating now, and then looked back towards the person speaking to her.
“And everything was done just right,” said the little woman from New Jersey, who was talking to her. “Yes,” said another woman standing beside them, who seemed to be uncomfortable.
“And the dance is lovely.”
“Yes yes,” Myhrra said, dropping her cigarette into an empty bottle and bending over just slightly. Her dress was so cumbersome that when she moved she had to pick half of it up to walk. Her high heels were white, and her meshed white panty-hose showed little squares of smooth skin.
There was a line-up at the door to the ladies’ washroom, but since most of the men went outside to the back of the building, Adele went into the men’s washroom. She was wearing a brown dress with a bright-yellow hood. Her face was quite white and her eyes were large.
She washed her face, took a paper towel and wet it, and put it on her neck. She began mumbling, as if she was talking in a foreign language. Then, calming herself, she went out again.
Adele came back inside and sat in the corner and stared at a beer cup. She looked at it for a time and then Milly came over and tried to sit on her knee.
“Go away,” Adele said in a weak voice. She stood and started towards the back door, stumbling slightly from side to side, and then holding onto the edge of the bar.
“Another Coke, is it?” the bartender said, smiling at her. She managed to smile and shook her head, and then walked a little further. The door opened and a man passed her. Snow blew in and she was hit in the face by the smell of evening ice, a wind in the trees and the naked, flat bay outside.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll just sit down for a moment.” She went back inside the men’s washroom and sat on the floor. Milly came in and was talking to her. Her Ritalin had worn off and now she was as “crazy as hell” in her little pink dress. She got to jumping back and forth over Adele as she spoke to her.
“Go away,” Adele said weakly. “Get Ralphie,” she whispered.
“I had cake,” Milly was saying. “I had pop – I had candy – I had pop – I had cake – I had Chiclets.” Here she chewed the gum with her front teeth. “Chiclets,” Milly said. She had a little bow in her hair, and she smiled. Then, looking at Adele, she screamed and ran out of the washroom.
Milly ran around the whole hall waving her arms and screeching, looked at Dr. Hennessey, who was sitting in
his suit and thin socks, with an expression of bright indifference, and then she disappeared back into the washroom. Then, since no one followed her, she came back out, running about grabbing at people. Rita, dancing with Clay Everette, saw her and tried to catch her.
“Wa – wa – wa,” Milly was saying.
Watching this, Myhrra smiled like a stern parent, while Milly, her left hand squashing four chocolates which she had been carrying, bounced up and down.
“Washroom washroom washroom!” she finally screeched. And then she turned and made her way back to the men’s washroom, with Rita following her.
A man stood over Adele looking at her with a sort of bewildered compassion, telling her it would be alright. And she tried to stand and smile, and kept looking about, and then said, “What – what,” and waved her hands weakly as if she was annoyed people were looking at her.
Rita told the man to leave and ask Joe to get Dr. Hennessey. Then she removed Adele’s clothing, and the two belts and girdle she was wearing to hide her pregnancy, and kept telling her to lie still.
Adele looked up and stared at the washroom light bulb. Dr. Hennessey came with Allain Garret’s adopted daughter, Simonie, who was a nurse.
Rita, sitting on the floor, held Adele’s head, her lips trembling.
“Everyone’s mad at me now,” Adele managed, “but I love you all.” For some reason there was snow and water on the bottom of her shoes.
“I’m mad at ya – ya almost bled to death,” Dr. Hennessey said. “Next time you decide to have one – tell us.” Then he looked furiously about, as if knowing people might object to what he’d said.
Milly stood outside with Byron. Byron, at this moment, showed a certain impatience with everything. The music had stopped and then started again and seemed to have created shadows in the hall that had not been there before. Byron held a huge bottle of Pepsi in his hand and paced back and forth, now and then putting his bottom lip over his top and shaking his head.
When it came time for Myhrra and Vye to leave, she had trouble with her wedding dress and Joe helped her down the steps. The wind was whistling over the top of a large snowbank near the road, which was flat and darkened. Myhrra pressed her face into Joe’s shoulder and then looked up at him and smiled. Then she asked him when he was going to go to the hospital.
Joe didn’t know what to say. He just shook his great head, as if he didn’t understand something. He did not know why he had stayed behind when the ambulance went up the road. He just had. The doctor, Simonie, Rita, they all had gone; everything had darkened, and the road lay flat. He remembered the doctor in his thin socks and shoes, stepping over a patch of ice, and then turning about knee-deep in a drift while the door of the ambulance was opened. Rita looked like Rita whenever she heard of suffering close to her. He could smell Myhrra’s warm breath on his frozen face. It smelled of champagne and chocolate.
“Tell me you like him, Joe,” Myhrra said, suddenly, as if she was about to cry. Vye stood in the door. He stood out of the wind, in the entranceway.
“Of course,” Joe said, stuttering slightly. “As long as you like him.”
“I want you to like him, Joe – I want you and Rita to like him.”
And at that moment Joe could not think of anything except that he did like Vye. And that suddenly, and overwhelmingly, perhaps because of the warm breath from her rounded mouth on his cheek, he loved them all.
“When we come back from our vacation, you and I and Rita and – we’ll all get together and be a family,” she said excitedly, as they stumbled into the blowing snow.
“Sure,” he said, “of course – sure.”
Then they grabbed Vye by the back of the knees and carried him to the car. They pushed the car, this way and that, until they got it onto the road – all of them waving goodbye.
And suddenly, Myhrra, waving out the window, said, “Joe – Joe,” as the car fishtailed and moved out of sight. For a moment everything was quiet. There were wet flakes of snow, and far off they could see the tail-lights moving away.
“I think she wants you to go with her,” one of the men said, slapping him on the back, and Joe suddenly looked about and nodded in complete seriousness.
Then when Joe sat down on the steps, sweat sticking to his chest and legs, he became quiet. He turned about, as if someone was talking to him, but no one was. He looked at the shovel in his hand and the carnation which had been covered in snow, and his pants which had a spot of Adele’s blood. He went to take a drink of water which was sitting on the side of the steps. But first he looked down at the bay. It was now freezing cold in his suit with the big pockets that he had borrowed. He would have to go to the hospital; and he thought of this as he sat there. Again he thought he heard someone talking to him, and again he found that no one was. He took the bottle of water in his right hand, and drank deeply. It was vodka.
“You drinking again, Joe?” Clay Everette said. “That’s vodka you got there. I thought you were on the wagon.” Clay stood beside him. Both men were about the same size.
Joe suddenly pretended that he had known there was vodka in the bottle.
“Not at a wedding – at a wedding I drink.”
“What happened to Adele?” Clay asked. “She get sick?”
Joe looked at him, puzzled for a second. The overhead wires moaned in the black night air, as did the trees in the dark beyond.
For a moment Clay and he talked about the exhibition, and who was entering horses in it, and the trappers’ convention last fall, which Joe did not go to.
Gloria came out to the entranceway. She said something to Clay about drinking – the band was still playing. She made an angry comment about something, and then quickly looked at Joe – and as always when she saw him, she ignored him but could not be indifferent. Joe asked Clay for the bottle. Clay, who could always act aloof with others, always tried not to offend Joe. They had almost come to blows twice – and though Clay didn’t fear Joe, he respected him.
“Of course,” he said, “the bottle’s yours.” And he smiled and went into the hall.
Joe walked back up to the truck and set off for the hospital.
If Vye had taken any other road he would have been safe. Route 8 and Route 11 were still passable. But the road he chose cut between them, and went through the middle of the woods.
Myhrra didn’t notice what he was doing, even when he crossed the bridge and crossed out along the gravel road. It was warm in the car, the heater was on high, and she was wondering if she had done everything she was supposed to. She looked over at Vye. He looked funny and pompous in his tuxedo, and his shoulders and body looked heavy. His hands were short, and his fingernails clipped to the ends of his red fingers. Vye was the type of man who had never been out of the province and yet remained pompous in his narrowness. He shrugged and looked about, and drove the car down over a hill.
The snow fell down on the path the headlights made. Far off in the distance they could make out a large white pine looming up. Myhrra remembered having seen that white pine before.
“How long is this road – before we get to the highway?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Vye said. Both of them at that second felt that they should turn back, and yet, strangely, on they went around a turn.
“Once I get out on the goddamn highway, I can get my bearings and probably stop in at the house tonight,” Vye said, talking about his brother’s house.
Just then the car shuddered, and went sideways for a second, and then around another turn.
They started up a hill and the car tires spun, and Vye and Myhrra laughed. He put the car in low, and made the grade. Myhrra bumped her head once going up, and was jostled a little. Then they started down the other side.
Halfway down the hill the car stalled. Vye managed to start it, and then seeing a drift had covered the gut at the bottom, decided to back up. But backing up the hill became too difficult.
“Goddamn,” Vye said. Then, taking a drink of champagne, and giving Myhr
ra a drink also, he tried to make it through the drift and lost control of the car. Halfway into the drift, snow came up over the hood and windshield. Myhrra grabbed him, and the car was pushed sideways by a force that was unexpected. The car slid down a bank about five feet deep and stalled again, with its front tires off the ground. There was a sudden smell of gas. Everything was silent, except the snow.
After approximately twenty minutes trying to start the car the battery wore down.
The lights dimmed and Vye turned them off for good. The night engulfed them and the road was silent and white. The trees creaked outside the windows.
“What are we going to do?” Myhrra said.
They had come five or six miles on the gravel road. The last house was two miles before that. Myhrra thought back to the time when she was told to leave candles in her glove compartment in the winter, and some salami as well. She had not been hungry all day, but now suddenly she was, and asked Vye if he had anything on him to eat. He handed her a small piece of groom’s cake that he had in his pocket.
Vye tried to make the best of it. He took the last drink of champagne, and threw the green bottle into the dark outside. It landed with a slight shhh sound on a mat of snow, and then clinked into a ditch.
Vye told her he would have to go back and find some help. Just as he said this, wind tossed the car back and forth, and it seemed to last for a long time.
“Keep the door locked,” Vye told her. Then he smiled. He was not prepared to walk seven miles in a storm, but he didn’t know this. Once outside the car, it did not feel all that cold. He thought that if a man could run a mile in four minutes (this is how he was thinking) he could walk seven miles in less than an hour and a half.
Nights Below Station Street Page 17
