by Brian Moore
Days, I was Mackie’s Maria. Each night I went back to the Blodgetts’ and our bed-sitting room where I was Mrs James Phelan who badgered Jimmy into writing to his parents and to Dalhousie University so that something could be arranged and he could finish school at the University of Toronto, instead of spending the rest of his life as a packer at Loblaws’. And something was arranged. His parents sent what money they could afford, but the fees were higher in Toronto and everything they sent him went for books, tuition, and transportation. Jimmy quit Loblaws’, went to classes, and we lived on my salary. Dinners of Campbell’s soup and a tin of Heinz spaghetti. No cigarettes, no movies, no new clothes. Nothing. When I look back on those months they seem to have been a softening-up process designed to make us ripe for corruption. And yet, I, not Jimmy, was the one who wanted to resist it. I remember saying to him, at the very beginning, if there’s one thing I don’t want it’s for Miss McIver to know how poor we are. Why not, he said, it’s nothing to be ashamed of? Please, Jimmy, I said, I have to work with her, she’s one of those Lady Bountiful people, I don’t want any favours from her, do you understand? We were going to dinner at her house on Prince Arthur when I said it. I remember it was the first time we’d been invited there, it was our first evening out in ages. In those days, I spent most evenings sitting in the Blodgetts’ parlour, staring at television with Harry and Mother so that Jimmy would have the bed-sitting room to himself for studying. The gay life.
I remember how impressed we were, that first night at Mackie’s house. There was the house itself. Then she let slip that her father had owned a biscuit factory. Her mother died when she was twelve, leaving her an only child, daddy’s girl, living in that big house with her father until his death the summer before she met us. When dinner was served, it was brought in by a uniformed maid and the meal was standing rib roast with a bottle of wine, a trifle for dessert, and brandy with the coffee and you can imagine that after our months on Heinz and Campbell’s we fell on that food like the starving Asian masses, and Jimmy got high on the wine and two glasses of brandy and started answering all her questions, telling her about his life at the university, how he had gone back to school, how he felt like a struggling married adult among a bunch of feckless kids and, before I could stop him, he had blabbed our situation, how we lived on my salary, our lack of money, everything. Mackie refilled his glass, sucked in every word and, before we left, insisted on showing us over the house, leading us into unused bedrooms, pointing out that her father’s study was going to waste, saying how she was afraid of living alone ever since her father had passed away and how she had nightmares, how she wished she had someone else to stay with her besides the maid who was deaf and no use in an emergency. She let that idea lie with us, then invited us back to dinner again, ten days later, and this time she showed Jimmy a car which had belonged to her father, which she never drove, saying maybe he would like to use it to get to the university and then (bringing it out as if she’d just thought of it) saying how wonderful it would be if we moved in with her, we could use the rooms and the car and Jimmy could drop us women off each morning at Canada’s Own, then use the car himself for the rest of the day at university, then, perhaps, pick us up and drive us home in the evenings? Or would that be too much trouble for him?
Well, I looked at him and saw his mouth opening to say no trouble, he’d be delighted, so I cut in and said that it was very kind of her but we’d made an arrangement with the Blodgetts, we were more or less committed to it, etcetera. Anyway, I backed us out of it and, I remember, going home on the bus afterwards, Jimmy and I had a terrible fight in which I accused him of leeching off people, which was the worst possible thing I could say as he was touchy then about living off my salary. Which produced one of his deep sulks, so by the time we got home we weren’t speaking.
But next day, at work, Mackie went back to the attack, starting in on me all over again. And when I said no, she waited two days, then phoned the Blodgett house at a time when she guessed I’d be out and, under pretence of asking for me, repeated her offer to Jimmy, saying she wished he could make me change my mind, she really needed someone to stay there with her, her nightmares were getting worse, we really would be doing her a favour, etcetera. So Jimmy promised to talk to me again and did and he and I had a second row, an awful one in which the unhappiness of our life in and out of bed settled down on us and I cried and after we’d made up, I said all right, we’d go to Mackie’s, if that was what he wanted.
I see that I make it sound as though I didn’t want to go, but of course it’s not so simple as that. I had never been really poor before and living on top of each other in a place like the Blodgetts’ was, I thought, part of the reason we fought so much. On the other hand I had never been as rich as Mackie, and the part of me that likes luxury saw myself living in that house on Prince Arthur with maids cooking dinner and making our beds and, after Butchersville (after any small town), city life seemed grand. So, it’s not fair for me now, as it wasn’t fair then, to put all the blame on Jimmy. This is a story of how I lost part of my innocence, lost part of that Mary Dunne who left Butchersville and never can go back. It is a story of what money did to me. If I am to learn anything from past mistakes, then there’s no sense blaming it all on Jimmy.
At the end of that week, Jimmy broke the news to the Blodgetts and I told Mackie we would come. I remember that Jimmy went over to Prince Arthur and warmed up Mackie’s father’s big Buick and he and Mackie drove back to Gerrard Street to pick me up and install me in our new home. It was Saturday afternoon. The bags were all stacked up in the front hall and when the car arrived, Harry and Mother came out of their parlour, looking very solemn, and invited us all in, Jimmy and me and the lady who was stealing their lodgers away. Then, in a gesture as grand as declaring a national day of mourning, Harry turned off the television set. He produced a specially purchased bottle of gin (for he thought I’d said I liked gin), poured great glassfuls for me, Mackie, Mother, Jimmy, and himself, and made a little speech, saying that Mother and he would be thinking of us, they wished us all the very best of luck and every happiness, a family of our own (Jimmy and I avoiding each other’s eye at this), long life and cheers, down the hatch, God bless. Then Mother and Harry both came to peck my cheek and shake hands with Jimmy and the lady we were going to live with, presenting us with the rest of the gin as a going-away present, making us promise that we’d come and see them very soon.
But we did not go to see them, not soon, not ever. The following Christmas we got a card from them, a Jolly Santa and his Reindeer: ‘Wishing you all the very best, thinking of you, hoping to see you soon, Harry & Mother.’ We meant to send them a card but we forgot.
The next year there was another Christmas card. Jesus the Shepherd surrounded by Dear Little Lambs: ‘Wishing you all the very best, Violet Blodgett. P.S. Harry passed away last August 31st.’ I never knew her name was Violet. We had not written or phoned or called or even sent a lousy card. We were young: we had our troubles. If there is a hell it should be for selfishness.
But we had our troubles: we were full of them. I kept telling Jimmy the one thing we mustn’t do with Mackie is take things we can’t afford to pay back, so for goodness sake don’t drink her liquor, you had two drinks last night and two the night before, you can’t make a regular thing of it and who’s paying for the gas in that car, not you, you fill up the tank at Bolst’s and charge it to her account, don’t you? Don’t you?
He said, ‘Have you ever listened to yourself, Mary? You’re not even twenty-one yet and you nag like my mother, nag, nag, nag, now shut up, will you?’
I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to be beholden to her, that’s all.’ ‘Well, we are beholden,’ he said, ‘so relax. She has pots of money, she doesn’t know what to do with it. If it pleases her to act the fairy godmother to the pair of us, well then, good for her, I say. Let’s sit back and enjoy it.’
I looked at him and wondered how I could have married him. I’d thought he was like me,
but he wasn’t, I didn’t know him at all. When you came right down to it he had no morals, none at all. I’d made a mess of my life, an awful damn mess. Oh, Jimmy, please, I thought, please have some independence, don’t always take things, please, Jimmy, please, I want to love you, I do, I do.
But I did not love him. And he went right on taking things from Mackie, defiant, like a child making a noise after it’s been ordered to stop. And yet while I was righteously blaming Jimmy, wasn’t I just as bad, wasn’t I also eating Mackie’s food which our miserable rent couldn’t even begin to pay for, wasn’t I living in her house, riding in her car, and, worse, didn’t I know very well I was the one she wanted to please, everything she did for Jimmy she really did for me? And what did that make me but a person with absolutely no morals at all? Because I knew what it was all about, I sensed it almost from the start, I just wouldn’t face up to it. I mean, after that thing about my birthday. It was obvious.
Let’s see. I went to work on Canada’s Own Magazine, I think it was the second week of February. My birthday is the seventeenth of March, St Patrick’s Day. And that year it was my twenty-first birthday. But I did not want a celebration at Prince Arthur Avenue. So I said nothing to Jimmy, he wasn’t one for dates, I knew he wouldn’t think of it. A few days before the seventeenth, a present came from my mother and one from Dick and Meg. And, I remember, a present from my Aunt Martha. Anyway, I put them aside and said nothing about them, planning to open them myself, quietly, on the day.
On the morning of the seventeenth, I got up early and opened my presents in the bathroom. My mother had sent me a wristwatch. I forget what the other presents were. I remember I wanted to wear the wristwatch at once, but it would be noticed, so I put it in my handbag and decided to keep it there until the end of the week when the birthday would be safely over. Then I went down to breakfast, and sure enough, no word from Jimmy about what day it was. He didn’t even say it was St Patrick’s Day.
After work that evening Jimmy came around with the Buick as per usual and drove Mackie and me home. Still no word about the birthday. I remember I went upstairs, took a bath, and changed, and when I went down to the living-room there was nobody there. The lights were out. Which was peculiar. I thought a fuse had blown, or maybe a bulb, and so went into the room by the light of the fire and was going towards the big trilight lamp to check when, suddenly, the piano started playing in the next room and Gert, the maid, opened the sliding doors into the dining-room and there was Mackie sitting up very straight at the upright piano, playing ‘Happy Birthday to You’, and Jimmy standing by the piano singing it and the maid singing it, and on the dining-room table was a bottle of fizzy wine that Mackie was mad for, Asti Spumante, and what were, obviously, presents.
‘How did you know it was my birthday?’ I blurted out, looking at both Jimmy and Mackie as I said it.
‘You can thank her,’ Jimmy said. ‘You know me and dates.’ While Mackie smiled and came forward. ‘I’m the librarian, remember?’ she said. ‘I keep records.’ She kissed me, first on the left cheek, then on the right, like a French general, saying, ‘Many happy returns, my dear.’ And Gert, the maid, said, ‘Happy birthday, Miss Maria,’ and Jimmy came up and grabbed me and kissed me (sticking his tongue between my lips as usual). I heard the fizzy wine pop and at that moment I was glad they’d remembered. I wanted a celebration. I was twenty-one at last.
Then, the presents. There was a box of Laura Secord candies from Jimmy, which was just right: it was what we could afford and they were chocolate-covered almonds, my favourites. Gert had made me two things: a gingerbread man with red icing buttons and a pair of red wool mitts to wear with my winter coat. The third present, the one from Mackie, wasn’t as embarrassing as I was afraid it might be. It was a little gold bracelet, very thin, not too expensive, I hoped.
Anyway, something I felt I could accept. So I put it on and tried the mitts on and opened the candies and held my glass of wine, tears, happy tears in my eyes as Jimmy, Gert, and Mackie drank a toast to my majority.
And then Mackie gave me the envelope. ‘And this,’ she said, ‘is something extra.’ I remember I felt afraid and didn’t want to take it, I tried to hand it back to her, saying no, really, we were embarrassed, Jimmy and I, she’d been far too good to us already, isn’t that so, Jimmy? and Jimmy agreeing, but with no determination (the rat), and of course nothing would do Mackie but that I opened the envelope. There was a letter inside. It went something like this:
Mr Gil Cameron,
Canada’s Own Magazine,
Toronto
Dear Gil,
This is to acknowledge receipt of Miss McIver’s cheque for $200.00 tuition fees for Maria Phelan.
As you know, I have a high regard for your opinions on acting potential, but I am sure you will also understand that I cannot accept Miss Phelan as a member of my evening class without first going through my usual interview procedures. If you will have Miss Phelan call me, I will set up such an interview as quickly as possible.
With warmest personal regards,
Catherine Mosca
Catherine Mosca’s acting class was the reason I had wanted to come to Toronto in the first place. She was one of the founders of the New Theatre Group in New York and her class is the only good professional one in Canada. Back in Butchersville I had daydreamed that if I ever got to Toronto, I would work at any job and save every penny and as soon as I had part of the tuition fee saved up, I would apply for one of her ‘interviews’. Of course when we did get to Toronto, there was the guilt about Jimmy’s career, so when he went back to school, I’d put my plans off for a year until, hopefully, he’d graduate and be able to support me. And now here I was, staring at a letter in which the fees were paid and the interview arranged and it should have been like winning the Irish Sweepstakes. Instead, I thought of what had happened a few weeks back.
We were in the Canada’s Own cafeteria when Mackie introduced me to Gil Cameron, the magazine’s drama critic. I was twenty, I was stage-struck, I was excited to meet someone who knew the real stage and I remember I blurted out some question about did he know Catherine Mosca and he was nice to me, very gentle and said yes, why? and so I told him all about my ambition to come here, save my money, and get into one of Catherine Mosca’s classes and how I’d won first prize at the Dominion Drama Festival in Halifax and on and on. I blush, I blush, why didn’t I shut up?
Afterwards, I felt silly and said so to Mackie. I remember she asked if Miss Mosca gave evening classes and I said I had no idea, I didn’t imagine so. And that was all, I forgot it. Until this letter. Looking back now, I see that if I’d had the drive, the self-love, the hardness it takes for success, I would have gone over and kissed Mackie and thanked her for giving me this start. But, instead, I was filled with shame and hate, I saw her plotting it all behind my back, getting poor Gil Cameron to lie about my ‘acting potential’, phoning Miss Mosca to inquire about evening classes, writing out her cheque, then getting Gil Cameron to send it on with a ‘personal’ letter.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t take it.’
I put the letter down on the table, picked up my glass, and tried to drink the fizzy wine. ‘Now, Maria, that’s nonsense,’ Mackie said. ‘We won’t let you do it, will we, Jimmy? It’s not even a present, it’s a – well, call it a loan from me to you until you get on your acting feet. You can pay it back some day. Oh, Maria, don’t you see? We know you have it in you, we all do. Just take it and enjoy it, for our sakes.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But why, dear, why?’
How could I tell her, how could I tell her I felt betrayed? I had blurted out my secrets in public and so strangers had been going around involving themselves in my private dreams. Didn’t she realize that now I could never go to Catherine Mosca and apply in an honest, ordinary way? I felt like crying, I felt it’s my twenty-first birthday and I’m supposed to be an adult today but I don’t feel grown up, I feel ten years old. They’ve spoiled everything. I put the glass
down, said ‘Excuse me’, and turned to run upstairs to my room and, as I did, I saw the most unforgivable thing: Mackie putting up her hand to make Jimmy and the maid stay where they were, smug old Mackie ‘taking over’. Not this time you don’t, I thought. Not this time, damn you. I ran upstairs like a mad thing and locked the bedroom door.
Her voice. I can hear it still.
‘Maria?’
‘Maria, won’t you come and have some supper? Gert’s made you a birthday cake.’
‘Look, Maria, those classes aren’t a gift, you can pay me back. I promise.’
‘Maria, I was only trying to help. We’re all very glum downstairs. We need you.’
‘Maria, I apologize. I know now it was nosey of me and I shouldn’t have done it. But I didn’t realize that it was going to offend you. I am very fond of you.’
Then he came up.
‘Mary, for God’s sake.’
‘Mary? Oh, come off it.’
He began to sing:
‘Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Sulky,
Happy birthday to you.’
That didn’t work either. He went down and, I guess, ate his dinner. But she came right up again.
‘Maria, I’ve been thinking. I’ll get Gil to write tomorrow and say there’s been a mistake, you’re not ready to apply yet. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said.
