Dinnertime comes and Jack does not come home. It’s not fair to Joan, says Gert, and I agree. Joan has been waiting all day. We eat, light the candles, let Joan blow them out, tell her that Jack had to work late.
We are in bed when we hear Jack come in. We lie in the dark and listen to him go to the icebox, run water into the sink, visit the bathroom, close the door to his room.
Jack eats with us seldom, talks little. I think that we are making some progress, but Gert says that Jack does not like her. She thinks that he likes Joan, but he definitely does not like her, she insists.
Give him time, I say. He needs time.
I know that he is worth it. I know that the fault is mine. I know that he can sing and that I have never heard him.
It is Friday, November 28. I hear their voices as I climb the stairs to our store-top apartment.
Jack. Gert.
It is past six. I am home from work. It is the weekend. When I open the door, they both turn and stare at me, their sudden silence like a knife. In the middle, I realize again. They turn to me, in the middle, accusing. I can feel the tension.
I wait for someone to speak.
Jack glares at me, then at Gert, then goes into his room, slamming the door.
Joan is sitting in her high chair, watching, curved spoon wrapped around her hand, a bowl of applesauce before her.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Oh, Martin,” Gert says, shaking her head.
“What?”
“It’s Jack. He’s got beer. He’s been drinking.”
I’m still unsure what the problem is. I don’t know what I have walked in on. “Do you mean today? Now?”
“I don’t know about today. He shouldn’t be drinking in the house at all. He knows I disapprove. And with Joan here.”
I look at Joan, who smiles. She bangs her spoon on her plate.
“I don’t even know where he got it,” she says. “Is it that easy to get at his age?”
I think of Jock, of Pabst Near Beer, of drinking home brew on a bench at Sunnyside, beneath the branches of the chestnut in his backyard. “He’s almost twenty years old,” I say, finally.
“It’s against the law.” Her eyes flash. “I poured it down the sink.”
“Poured what?” I am not sure that I am following.
“Five bottles. I found them this morning at the back of the icebox.”
“Without telling him?”
“I don’t need to tell him.” Her voice hardens. “This is my home. My icebox. We have a little girl here. And he brings it into our home.”
“Gert—”
“You’re not going to stand up for him, are you? Drinking?” Her voice is incredulous.
Jack comes out of his room, stops, stares, then walks by us toward the apartment door.
“Jack, wait.” I keep my voice calm. I raise my arm, touch my temple as I try to think.
He stops.
“Where are you going?”
His hand clenches the doorknob. The muscles of his jaw work. “Away,” he says. Then he looks at me, ignores Gert. “It was a mistake, Father.”
No, I think. No, Jack, it wasn’t. Don’t go. Not now. It’s just starting. We need time. “These things happen in a family,” I say.
“No,” he says. “No, they don’t.” He looks from one to the other of us. “Not in a real family.”
“Gert didn’t mean—”
“Yes I did. I don’t want it in the house.”
Jack straightens, looks at me. “Mother would never have done this,” he says. “Have you forgotten?”
I am stung. It is as though my face has been slapped. I have not forgotten. I can never forget.
He looks at me, controls his breathing. “What have you done?” he asks, with finality. Then: “Why did you do it?”
I don’t know. I don’t know why anybody does anything, why anything happens. There is an actual physical ache in my chest. Parts of me are sliding away, breaking up. I feel his contempt, his anger, a wind blowing hotly. “Don’t be so hard on me, Jack,” I say. “Don’t be so hard on Gert either.”
“You’re not hard enough on yourself, Father.”
“Don’t be rude to your father,” says Gert.
Jack looks at her. “Rude?” he says, amazed. His eyes linger on her, puzzled.
Joan bangs her spoon on her tray. Her eyes are wide.
“Jack,” I say.
But the door opens, then closes, and he is gone.
2
[File Card, MOUNT HOPE CEMETERY:]
Anthony Nolan
died 11 March 1931
buried 19 March 1931
stillborn
St. Michael’s Hospital
funeral director Connors
single grave 46
section 10
range _4
* * *
Margaret’s son. My grandson. I think of little Patrick and Loretta, so many years ago, in the ground at Elora. And Sarah, Da, Gramma, Kervin, Liz, Ma, Maggie, Mike.
Anthony.
Jack.
Wednesday, March 2, 1932, the newspaper headline shouts:
LINDBETGH BABY KIDNAPPED
Taken From Crib
Wide Search On
A family photo appears below, showing the baby, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., surrounded by his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. A ransom note has been left. It is unbelievable. That anyone could do such a thing.
The world is crazy, I think suddenly. Someone is going into other people’s houses and taking children. They are just disappearing.
Margaret and Tommy and Anne live with Tommy’s parents. The Nolans have moved from Berkeley Street to a new semidetached house in the north end of the city, on Maxwell Avenue, near Yonge and Eglinton. Margaret has found a home, a life, made her own family with another family.
I am not sure what to make of Tommy. I have trouble talking with the man who got my Margaret pregnant before he married her. And he has trouble talking to me. His parents, too, have treated me coolly the few times I have visited, and I wonder what they have been told. Tommy plays guitar and banjo in bands all around the city, plays out-of-town jobs, plays in orchestras at the King Edward, the Palais Royale, plays jobs on the Island and with Romanelli’s Orchestra on the cruise boats that sail across the lake to Niagara and back in the evenings.
But Margaret has recovered from the stillbirth. She is pregnant again. There will be another baby in November.
Art school is a memory.
* * *
KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
HOLD SWAY AT ISLAND
Afternoon’s Big Event
at Annual Picnic
is Baby Show
More than 2,500 members of the Toronto council, Knights of Columbus, yesterday flocked across Toronto Bay to Center Island for the council’s annual picnic.
During the afternoon there was a long list of sports. Despite the heavy downpour, the afternoon was its usual successful self. One of the big events of the afternoon was the baby show, which was justified with some forty entries, out of which the judges had difficulty in awarding final results.
The grand winner of the sweepstake was Anne Therese Nolan, 2-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Nolan, adjudged the bonniest baby in the show. Anne was presented with a handsome sterling silver porringer.
The Evening Telegram
August 10, 1932
I watch as Gert shows the picture of Anne that accompanies the newspaper piece to Joan, who is almost four years old, and who is fascinated by the idea of a baby contest.
Joan’s finger rests on Anne’s face, against her cheek.
“That’s your niece,” Gert explains. “You’re her aunt. Aunt Joan.”
Joan looks at her mother, smiles. “Aunt Joan,” she says.
At Woolworth’s we buy a flat five-by-four-inch congratulations card:
On this happy occasion
I want to help you celebrate
by sending my Best Wishes.
>
On it is a house, sitting lushly amidst an array of chocolate and pink flowers. In the bottom right-hand corner, in fine print, is scrolled: Etching, Genuine Hand Colored.
Gert addresses the envelope to Miss Anne Nolan, signs the card “Joan Radey.” She lets Joan lick the brown two-cent George V stamp and place it in the upper right corner of the envelope.
Gert lifts her up as she drops it in the mail slot.
I watch in amazement, as she sends it across the city, to my daughter, my granddaughter. Children everywhere, I think.
Specters of Patrick, Loretta, Anthony float in some dark recess. Then I shake my head, trying to lose another image that has surfaced: it has been three months since baby Lindbergh’s body was found, decomposing in the woods some four miles from the family’s estate.
Margaret calls on October 24 and puts Anne on the phone to wish Joan a happy fourth birthday. When I get the chance, I make conversation, ask her if she’s following the Lindbergh story.
Isn’t everybody? she asks. It’s unbelievable. How could anyone do such a thing?
But I am not good at small talk, so I ask her what I am avoiding asking, what I carry around inside me like a stone. I ask her if she knows where Jack is.
She tells me that Jack is gone, that he and his cousin Carmen have left the country, gone to Detroit to look for work in the auto industry, that they heard there were jobs there. Don’t worry, Father, she says. He’s written a couple of letters. He moves around, but I have a few addresses. He’ll keep in touch.
On November 21, Margaret and Tommy become parents again—a brother for Anne. My grandson, Ronald Francis, is born in the back bedroom of the Nolan house on Maxwell Avenue. Margaret is fine. The baby is healthy.
Before Christmas, Gert and Joan and I move to an apartment atop stores at 3097A Dundas West, just east of Clendenan. The new place is a better fit, cheaper, since we no longer need Jack’s room.
I do not tell Gert about how I could see Constance Street from our front window, about how I could not stop myself from looking, about how it is better if we go.
NINETEEN
1934
August, 1934. Joan carries a box of her toys up the stairs beside me at 265 Pacific Avenue. She is five years old, almost six, has long black hair curling to her shoulders, a white bow tied at the top of her head.
“Which room is mine?” she asks, large eyes peering through the open door of the new flat.
“Last one on the left.”
She scampers ahead. I listen as the box is set down, hear the closet door being opened for inspection.
Gert, who has been climbing the stairs behind me, appears now at my side. Winded, smiling, she clutches my arm.
Our new flat is in a lovely, brick, three-storey detached house on the northeast corner of Pacific and Humberside. We are only eight blocks from Gert’s mother and sister on Gilmour, five blocks from St. Cecilia’s School where Joan will start grade one in September. It is tree lined, a residential street—the complete opposite of Dundas—where Joan can play more safely.
It was down Pacific Avenue that I watched Gert disappear that first day, that Sunday, before the streetcar pulled in front of me, blocking her from sight. Now Gert squeezes my arm, lets me know her pleasure. I look at her face staring up at mine, realize how pale and tired she seems. I put my arm around her shoulder, pull her tight, think how a man needs a family, how I need her.
“You did well,” says Jock, glancing around the new place.
“Considering,” I say.
“Pardon?”
“Considering my wages have been cut thirty percent. And that this is smaller than where we were by three hundred square feet.”
“Beautiful house, though. Beautiful street.” Jock pauses, thinks. Then: “Thirty percent?”
I nod.
“That’s a whack.”
“At least I still have a job. They say one in five is unemployed.” I look at him. “Did you hear that Metropolitan Life Insurance now claims there were twenty thousand suicides in thirty-one?”
Jock looks surprised, mulls this over. Finally, he says, “There’s talk of closing down the Victoria Park and Danforth plant.”
I turn and look at him. He is talking about where he works, the place he must travel to every morning, halfway across the city. This is the first I have heard of it. “What do you mean?”
“Just talk.”
“Anything to it?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know. I hear the talk, though. Hear that it’ll be phased out. Replaced as a Nash assembly plant.”
I am quiet.
“You seen the pictures in the papers of them Bennett buggies—cars hitched up to teams of horses, ’cause folks can’t afford to put gas in ’em?”
I nod. “I’ve seen them.”
“We laughed at first.” A beat. “Nobody’s laughin’ now.”
“You heard of Hoover blankets? Hoover flags?” I ask.
Jock waits, a wry smile.
“The blankets are old newspapers to cover yourself up with on the park bench. The flags are empty pockets turned inside out.”
We share a dry chuckle.
“Bennett, Hoover, Roosevelt. None of them can get the job done. None of them know what to do,” I say.
“Hoover was a Quaker. Pacifist. Didn’t know how to fight. Didn’t know what he was up against. Bennett’ll be out on his ass here next election. He only got in because Mackenzie King was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wheat prices were a disaster, and there he is, sittin’ in Ottawa, and everybody looks at him. King’ll be back, you wait and see. Roosevelt? Well, he talks a good game. They all talk a good game.”
We stand in the half-filled flat, collect our breath, think about the boxes and chairs and disassembled beds and lamps and even the washing machine still outside on the front lawn. Joan’s old wicker pram is in the corner, filled with small dresses, blouses, shoes, and the Shirley Temple doll Margaret bought for her after she took Joan and Anne to see her in Stand Up and Cheer. I take two cigars from my vest pocket and hand one to Jock. We light them, smoke them in silence, enjoying the moment, unable to see the future, as always.
“Why do I have to go to school?” asks Joan.
“So you can learn to read.” Gert is clearing the table, filling the sink with water.
Joan, lying on her stomach on the floor, has the funny pages of the newspaper spread open in front of her. “I can already read.” She points to a bubble of dialogue near her elbow. “What does ‘Leapin’ Lizards!’ mean?”
Gert turns to me. It is Friday, August 31.
I place my cigar in the ashtray, lean forward, look at Joan’s tiny finger pressed against the black and white of the comic strip. “Where is it?” I ask.
“It’s what Little Orphan Annie says all the time.”
“It’s just an expression.”
“Why do they have no eyes?”
“It’s just the way they draw them.”
Her feet are in the air, moving back and forth.
“You’ll make new friends at school. Tell her, Mother.” I turn to Gert.
But Gert is pale, clutching her stomach.
“Gert.”
She turns, looks at me. Her face is ashen. “Martin,” she says. “There’s something wrong.” There is a sheen of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. Her eyes are distant, pleading.
No, I think. I rise up out of my chair, go to her, hold her by the shoulders. Not Gert. I have seen this all before, somewhere. This is impossible. “What is it?”
Joan looks up, her face a mask.
“I don’t know. Something’s wrong. Stomach cramps. Pain.”
“Lie down. I’ll finish cleaning up.” I hold her by the shoulders, afraid to let her see my fear, my desperation. Afraid to let her go. Not Gert, I am still thinking. Please God. Not Gert.
Joan watches in silence. Her feet have stopped moving.
I am waiting in the kitchen as the doctor comes out of the bedroom. Joan is down t
he hall, in bed.
He sets his bag down on the table, looks at me. “I’m going to put her in the hospital,” he says.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“How old is your wife?”
“Thirty-five,” I say. “Why?”
“I think she’s pregnant, Mr. Radey. And I’m afraid something’s wrong.”
“Pregnant?” It is like a wind rushing over me. Another baby, I think. The wind is hot, then cold. My right hand clutches and rubs my left shoulder, kneading a muscle that has cramped. “I didn’t know she was pregnant,” I manage, finally, foolishly.
“I don’t think she knew either.”
Pregnant, I think. A child. I am fifty-four. “What do you mean something’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
“She might be miscarrying. She’s hemorrhaging. Do you have a phone?”
The questions dizzy me, come at me from an echo chamber: how old is she? do you have a phone? I have heard them before, in another life.
I point to the phone, speechless.
RADEY—At St. Michael’s Hospital, on Sunday, September 2nd, Gertrude McNulty, dearly beloved wife of Martin Radey.
Funeral from her sister’s home, Mrs. J. Mahoney, 75 Fairview Avenue, on Tuesday to St. Cecilia’s Church for Mass at 10 a.m.
Interment in Mount Hope Cemetery.
The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, September 4, 1934
* * *
What do you mean dead? I shout. How could she be dead? You don’t die from a miscarriage. This is impossible.
I knock the glasses off my face as I stumble about, thrashing at the hospital curtains surrounding her bed.
Where is her doctor? My voice is loud, too loud, but I cannot control it. I cannot control anything. The muscles in my bladder have had a momentary spasm and my leg is wet. The room is blurred. Gert is here, in this room, but dead.
Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 26
