“Well, these are difficult times.” He held his head down, not looking at her directly, as though he were a priest and she a confessor. It made her fear he might not grant her absolution.
“It’s just that I can’t pull myself together. My head goes round and round with the strangest thoughts. Dark thoughts. I can’t seem to stop worrying.”
“We all have our worries.”
“I find myself overcome with them, very nearly. Like I’m drowning.”
“What do you worry about?”
“Well, the sorts of things that everyone worries about these days. Money, shelter, poverty, destitution, starvation.” She heard a noise. Was he laughing at her? He must not be laughing at her! She couldn’t bear that. Her palms were sweating, and her thighs stuck to each other.
The Reverend blew his nose with a handkerchief that was none too clean.
“Things are not that bad, surely? We must trust in the Lord. He will provide. Have faith, Mrs. MacNeil.”
“I do try, Reverend.”
“Of course you do, dear lady.” He patted her shoulder. Then he turned his face toward the ceiling and began to recite. “ ‘Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.’ James 5, verse 7.”
“I try to be patient, but I’m not, mostly. I can be”—she paused, unsure if she should continue—“peevish.”
“Ah,” he said, and looked severe.
“I do try. It’s just that … sometimes …” She wanted to tell him about how lost she felt, how she knew the world was passing her by, how she was entombed in that little house.
“Yes?”
The conversation was not going the way Margaret wanted it to. She had hoped for solace, for comfort, perhaps even for a shoulder to cry on, just a little. She had taken such a risk coming here, telling him her secrets, but perhaps she hadn’t told him enough.
“I can be impatient, irritable with Douglas, my husband.”
“Does he beat you?”
“Heavens, Reverend! No, of course not.” His voice, his big, sonorous voice, was terrifying.
“Does he commit adultery?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Margaret felt a little dizzy and couldn’t catch her breath.
“Does he drink?”
“Well, yes, sometimes he does.” There was that, at least. Surely now he would soften toward her, drop his disapproving stare.
“I see. Well, although alcohol’s the Devil’s cordial, I don’t think your husband is an evil man, Mrs. MacNeil. It’s your duty as a Christian wife to obey him and create a place for Jesus in your heart and home. Your husband is in danger, but that is our responsibility, is it not? To bring in the lost sheep? Impress upon him the importance of God in his life. Impress upon him the benefits of living his life within the boundaries of the Church. You must bring him into the fold.”
“Douglas will never come to church. He’s not that kind of man.”
“Still, he is your husband and you must never stop trying. I believe you understand, Mrs. MacNeil. I will remember you in my prayers.”
And with that she knew she was dismissed. Almost on cue, the minister’s wife popped open the study door, and Margaret realized with horror that she had been eavesdropping. As she stumbled blindly to the front door her mind conjured pictures of the minister and his pigeon wife chirping with laughter at her as they sipped their tea. Back on the porch, her face burning, Margaret grabbed Irene by the arm and yanked her down the steps. It was only when the girl cried out that Margaret realized how tightly she was holding her. The red marks of her fingers were clearly visible on Irene’s wrist. She knelt down on the sidewalk and hugged her and murmured, “I’m sorry, so sorry” until they both believed it. The pebbles under her legs cut into her painfully and this was just as she deserved. She ground her knees this way and that. When she stood, blood dribbled down her legs, and the little pieces of stone that had torn her stockings were embedded in her skin.
How hard she had prayed that night, to keep her faith, to hear some small voice of reassurance, but her words fell lifeless from her lips. It must be her fault. Reverend Fuller was a man of God, after all. Her rage and unkind thoughts had been no more than hurt pride. What had she expected him to say? She knew Reverend Fuller was right. She must try harder. She must be a better wife, a better mother, a better Christian.
But why should she? Ah, there was the voice again, the small nagging voice behind her left ear, always ready to whisper evil thoughts in her head, always ready to argue. Why humiliate herself in front of a man who was convinced of his own superiority with no evidence to support it except a black suit and a white collar? Surely that was no sign of divine inspiration. And so the question repeated itself. Why? Why get out of bed? Why get dressed? Why bother at all? And on days like this, days that stripped off her flesh and left her exposed, a throbbing burst of nerve endings in a needle storm, on days like this, she agreed. Why bother?
She could have sworn she heard laughter, a dry rasping giggle from a corner somewhere. She wanted to slap someone, to feel the solid crack of flesh on flesh. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. Crazy, I’m going crazy …
6
Irene took her time getting home for lunch, even though there was a chilly, persistent drizzle and she had no umbrella. Rainwater trickled down the back of her neck so that her arms broke out in goose bumps. As she walked she mapped out a strategy for asking her mother if she could stay overnight at Ebbie’s.
She scuffed her shoes in the puddles and last year’s leaves clumped up by the sewer. She walked heel to toe. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back, she thought as she carefully avoided the fissures in the sidewalk.
The problem was complex. Should she ask directly, as though it was the most normal thing in the world? Should she try to provoke her mother into saying what a bother she was, and then offer to go to Ebbie’s for the night? She didn’t think that would be very hard. But then her mother might also be angry and say no to punish her. She thought of approaching her father first, but her father was never around these days. Perhaps Mrs. Watkins should call? No, that would only annoy her mother. Why did everything have to be so complicated?
She looked up and found herself in front of the house.
She stood at the door and chewed her thumb. She checked under the flowerpot for the key. Nothing. Irene hugged her history book tightly and thought. Perhaps she should wait for another day. She strained to hear sounds inside the house. You could tell a great deal from sounds. If the radio was on, that was a good sign. If the record player was playing Cole Porter, that was even better, unless it was “Love for Sale,” which was bad. The smell of cooking was also good. Now the house was silent, and the only smell was the floury scent of paste from her own notebook. The curtains to her parents’ bedroom on the second floor were pulled open, though, and that was a good sign. Maybe her mother was in the back garden. That would be good too.
She couldn’t stand on the front step forever. The neighbours might see her and wonder what was wrong. She tried the doorknob just in case, just on the off chance it might be open. It didn’t budge. There was no choice. She rang the bell.
It took what seemed like forever for the sound of her mother’s footsteps to reach her. They were the wrong footsteps. Her mother was wearing her tired old leather slippers. They made an uncaring slap, slap, slap on the floor.
The door opened. Margaret wore her plain brown button-up-the-front housedress. Irene knew she wore it only when she didn’t care what she looked like. Maybe she’d been cleaning? Sometimes she wore it for buffing the floors or cleaning cupboards. But she had a coffee mug in one hand and no rag, so that didn’t seem likely. Her mother’s hair had not been washed yet this week and she hadn’t bothered to put it in pincurls last night and so it was lank and flat on one side.
“Hi,” said Irene.
Margaret looked down at her for a moment, took a sip from the mug and without saying a word disappeared back into the dark house. I
rene stepped in and closed the door behind her.
She walked along the hall into the kitchen and sat at the table, swinging her legs but being careful not to make any noise by banging the chrome. Her mother stood at the counter. She picked her cigarette up from the heavy glass ashtray and inhaled deeply, her eyes narrowing against the smoke. Through this veil she looked steadily at her daughter, as though trying to form a conclusion. Irene studied the hem of her tunic, waiting.
Margaret turned her back to Irene and opened the icebox to get a bottle of milk. Irene watched her. You could tell a lot of things by how loudly doors were closed, by how carefully things were placed on a counter. Margaret cut up a tomato, slopped butter onto bread and made a careless sandwich. After pouring milk into a glass, she put the milk bottle back in the icebox. She closed the door and leaned her head against the cool surface. Irene could not see her face, but noticed the jerky movements in her shoulders, as she was meant to. Then Margaret turned back and looked straight at Irene, knowing Irene would be watching her.
Margaret was crying. She rubbed at her nose and then wiped her hand on the seat of her housedress. She looked at Irene as though daring her to speak. Irene hated this part, when the charge built like a thunderstorm coming until you could almost see sparks on the end of your fingertips.
Her mother picked up her coffee mug and drank. She picked up the cigarette and took another puff. Then she threw the cigarette toward the ashtray. It landed on the counter and rolled onto the floor.
“I cannot take this anymore!” she cried. Her hands knotted in her hair. Her voice was that of a seagull shrieking into the wind.
Irene’s heart was pounding. She quickly picked up the fallen cigarette and placed it carefully in the ashtray.
“I don’t want that!”
Margaret snatched it up and threw it in the sink. Then she grabbed the ashtray and tossed it in the sink, too, where it shattered.
Irene’s hands pulled up instinctively to her heart in small fists. “Are you all right, Mummy?”
“What the hell do you care. What does anybody care.” Margaret slammed the plate with the sandwich on it in front of Irene. “Eat your sandwich. I made it for you. I’d never expect you to make your own lunch. I have to do everything.”
Irene hated tomato sandwiches. The bread got all wet with tomato juice. She took tiny bites.
“What are you staring at? What are you staring at?”
“Nothing,” Irene mumbled and lowered her eyes.
“He drinks, you know, your precious father.” Her voice rose to a scream and her hands were back in her hair, pulling and tearing. “Weak and dirty, the bastard! Weak and dirty!”
Irene sat very still, while Margaret took another gulp from the mug.
“Well, cheers! This stuff’s not so bad, after all. I might as well join him. That’d be a fine how-dee-do, wouldn’t it? Both of us drunkards. If he doesn’t care, why should I?” Margaret leaned forward. “Or maybe I’ll kill myself. Then he can take care of you.”
Irene tried to eat a little more of the sandwich and kept her eyes on her mother’s hands, paying attention to what items were within reach. A wooden spoon. A plate. The bread knife.
Margaret sat down at the table across from Irene, banging down the mug. Irene could smell the liquor in it. It was sweet and sour at the same time, smoky and medicinal, mixed with the scent of the tobacco.
“You know, if it wasn’t for you I could be free,” Margaret said. She leaned back in the chair, her chin tucked coyly into her shoulder, a slight smile on her lips. But the look on her face, this tense but teasing look, did not match her voice, which was full of jagged ups and downs and uncontrolled cracks. It sounded as if she might spit glass. “If it wasn’t for you, I could be long gone.”
Irene kept her head down and said nothing. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say, and the kitchen pulsed with silence waiting to be broken.
“I want to ask you something, Irene. Look at me.” The hysteria was replaced with a slightly taunting tone, cool and low.
Irene looked up, warily.
“I’ve been thinking. How would you feel about going into the orphanage? Maybe you’d like that. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and think it might just be for the best.”
Irene felt all the blood rush into her face. Intuitively, she knew her mother would not send her to an orphanage, but she also knew her mother required something of her at this moment. She must respond to these words in a particular way, a way that showed she felt the same thing Margaret herself was feeling.
Their gazes met. Irene knew she would lose something if she let herself slip down this hole. She also knew that if she didn’t jump herself that her mother would push until she fell. She put her head down on the table, resting her forehead on her fist. She could hear herself, as though it wasn’t her at all, sobbing loudly. “I don’t want to go away! Don’t send me away!” Hiccups in the sobs. “Please don’t make me go away!”
“Oh,” Margaret said, and then again, “oh.” She placed her hands flat on the top of the table as though she needed to feel the cool surface to tell her where she was.
“I’m sorry, darling,” she said, and she came around the table and stroked Irene’s head. “What am I thinking? Don’t pay any attention to me. It’s just that I’m so mad at your father, you just don’t know. I wouldn’t dream of sending you anywhere. You’re mother’s little kitten. I just thought you might be unhappy here. You know I want you to be happy, don’t you? You know I love you?” She spoke quickly, the words so light they almost flew out of her mouth.
“I love you too, Mummy.” Irene’s breathing slowed. Her tears dried. “It’ll be okay. It will be. We’ll be okay.”
“Sure, baby. You and me. We’ll work it out somehow.” Margaret smiled, that glorious gleaming smile. She slapped at her hands, shaking off crumbs or dirt that only she could see. “Now eat your lunch. You were so late getting in from school, it’s almost time to go back.”
Just before Irene left the house her mother came up behind her.
“Listen, Irene, you and I have our little secrets, don’t we, even from your father?”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“And we don’t need strangers knowing about our business, do we?”
“No, Mummy.”
“Good girl. You come straight home after school, now. No lollygagging.”
Irene closed the door and heard the lock turn. She walked down the street, her tunic and hair still damp from her walk home. The sidewalk felt uneven beneath her feet, but she didn’t mind going back, because she could stay at school until three-thirty. Of course, she’d have to tell Ebbie she wouldn’t be able to come over on Friday. It was quite clear her mother needed her at home.
1930
No.
The word waits for David wherever he goes. No at the gate, no at the door, no at the path, the portal, the window. A thousand faces, a thousand inflections, but always the same word. No. And sorry. How sorry they all are, these people who will not give him work, will not give him shelter, will not give him food or warmth or hope or comfort.
The boy knows it isn’t that they will not, it is that these people can not help him, and he sees by the look in their eyes that it shames them to have to say no.
Sometimes he gets lucky, though.
“Any work I can do for you today, ma’am?” he says as he stands on the porch of the house, his hat in his hand.
“No work today. Sorry.”
“Chop wood? Fix the roof? I noticed you got a fence post tilting. Chicken roost looks like it leaks. I could fix that.”
“Can’t give you more’n dripping and bread.”
“I’d be obliged, ma’am.”
And if he does a good enough job, his head dizzy from hunger and his arms weak with fatigue, then maybe the woman will let him sleep in the shed or on the porch. He wakes up in so many different places that every time he opens his eyes he is surprised. It is hard, sometimes, to t
ell which is the dream and which the waking.
He grows to need things less. He pulls his belt tighter. Sleeps in the hobo jungles. Sleeps in ditches. Sleeps in the rail cars and the roofs of trains, tied down so he will not fall and be crushed beneath the steel wheels. He sleeps in barns and creeps away like a fox, with a chicken feather hanging from his cap, before first light.
If good fortune smiles, David sleeps on bedbug-infested mission cots, eats their watery soup and stale bread and is grateful for it.
“Are you saved, son? Are you a lamb of Jesus?” says the man in the uniform of Salvation’s army.
“Yes, sir. I am tonight,” he says.
He eats beans and bread and beans and ketchup and beans and beans from a hundred different relief houses. He learns to eat fast and as much as he can, as much as they will give him at one sitting, for he never knows when he will eat again. More than once he eats from trash cans behind restaurants, brushing away the flies from half-eaten baked potatoes and pork chop bones. His father will forgive him, he knows, but the disgrace in him is deep sometimes. Only the sight of other men forced by circumstance to live the same stray-cur life saves him from falling into the pit of wretchedness.
David has been on the road for five months. He has travelled east until the land touched the sea, and then turned and started back again. He thinks about going home, and then he passes through Manitoba. Sees the skeletal cattle, the skyscraper-tall clouds of dust, and he keeps on going west. He finds a letter waiting for him in Vancouver, general delivery, where he’s written his family they might catch him. Standing in the park at the corner of Hastings and Hamilton, the West Coast sky hanging iron-heavy and the air thick with humidity, he keeps his back against a tree to protect the ink on the page from the relentless drizzle and lets the tears spill from his eyes. Isaac writes there is another baby on the way and the land is cracking, mottling the earth like the back of a dying sun-baked turtle. They do not ask him to come home but send their love. His father says be careful. Be a good boy. He feels the weight of love behind those words. They mean he carries his father’s dreams with him. And his blessing.
The Stubborn Season Page 4
