“You are lovely,” he says, “so lovely.”
And she does not turn away but lies down in the hay and pulls him to her and runs her hands under his shirt along his stomach and chest and he begins to disappear from the wasteland where he has been wandering. Everything around him in the barn slides out of its disguise and reveals itself to be a thing of wonder. The bit for the horse, the shovel, the lantern hanging from a nail. The cat in the corner with her kittens mewling for milk. All are numinous, glowing and flawless. He is afraid he will cry, for he has been lonely a long time and haunted and with her breath and tongue and fingertips this woman washes off the crust he has baked around his skin. He is newborn next to her.
And when they are finished they are smiling at each other and then they are laughing and then they are crying, for both of them have held their emotions tight beneath a weighted lid for many a sleepless night.
They talk then, of their losses and their wounds and their anger, and then they touch to soothe and swim again in the sea of each other’s skin. And finally they sleep and wake believing they might go on another little while and perhaps the world is not so hard a place, not completely hard, after all.
And she does not ask him to stay, and he does not ask her either, for he is a Jew and she is a Catholic and a Jew is good enough to stand on a plank just above the waterline in a broken well and trust the woman to keep the line from the block and tackle taut in case the plank gives way, and a Jew is good enough to seal the stones in the well so the water is sweet, and this Jew, this one man, is more than good enough, is perfect in her arms, but a Jew cannot stay and live in this place with a woman named Maria.
19
June 1936
Irene kept seeing Harry’s face, hearing his voice, the slow music of his speech. The image of his fine hands, his fingers interlaced, or straightening the rim of his hat, or handing her a sprig of lilac, his nails polished, his fingers long. Thinking of his hands, his fingers, sent a thrill of warmth right through her.
There were only two small shadows on the day. One was her mother. Would she behave herself on Sunday? Margaret had grilled her every day since Irene had told her Harry was coming. “Have you let him kiss you yet? I’ll bet you want him to kiss you, don’t you? That’s how it starts. Letting them paw you. You be careful you don’t end up on the streets.” And then she would suddenly talk about baking cakes and having Harry in for tea, perhaps even asking his family. Irene would like to trust her mother, would like to sit at the kitchen table and pour out her heart and her worries, but her mother could turn in an instant, nodding encouragement one minute, accusing her of being a tramp the next. There was no telling what she’d be like on Sunday.
The other dark spot was Ebbie’s inferred warning. Maybe, she thought, both women were just jealous.
She’d gone to the library and found a book of poems by that man Harry was forever quoting, T. S. Eliot. Irene wasn’t sure she understood it all, in fact, she was quite certain she did not, and yet there was a music to the words that settled inside her and did not require full comprehension. She had studied poetry in school, Tennyson and Byron and Shelley. They hadn’t meant anything to her then, dry and twisted in the mouth of Miss Sargeant, who read while waving a perfumed hanky about like a flag of surrender. But these poems touched Irene. Mr. Eliot, she decided, understood despair, and understood being trapped. He wrote about being drowned in odours, and roots that clutched at a person. The idea that she was sharing such emotions with someone who was at that very moment alive, breathing, walking about out there in the world and expressing these very emotions on paper was the most extraordinary feeling. It was like having a stranger walk up to you on the street, look directly into your eyes and say “You are not alone. We are the same, you and I.” It made her want to cry and laugh all at the same time.
Her mother asked what she was reading one night when they were sitting across from each other in the living room, each under her own yellow pool of lamplight, but she’d said, “Oh, nothing. Just some silly old poems. They’re not very good.”
She read The Waste Land and in it found a voice that could be her mother’s own, a voice full of circular sentences and impossible-to-meet demands. There was a world out there, and in it were people like her who had to live with people like her mother, had to find a way to protect themselves, to let out the hot stale air of someone else’s craziness. She had looked over the top of the book at Margaret. Irene read on and for a while floated on a benevolent sea of words, drifting away from the sound of her mother’s voice (“Are you listening to me? What is that noise? Don’t you agree?”) coming from what seemed like an ever-receding shore. Irene smiled. She was falling in love with poetry and she wanted to talk to Harry about this. Wanted to thank him. She thought she would never be able to wait until Sunday, that most blessed of all days.
It was just dawn, but the sky looked clear as sea-glass. Irene was puzzling over what to wear. None of her clothes were as pretty as she would have liked; the one good skirt she had, blue and slimming, with a side opening and three covered buttons on the hip, she couldn’t wear to clean in, so she put it into a satchel with a sheer white blouse and a pair of shoes. They were not the delicate summer shoes she wished they were. They were black and a little too solid to be pretty, but they did make her ankle and calf look tidy, she thought. She slipped on her old flowered work dress and hurried out the door just as her mother was getting up.
“Don’t forget to come back here and get these sandwiches,” Margaret called from the top of the stairs. “Irene?”
“I won’t, Mum. Thanks very much.”
“Don’t be disappointed if he doesn’t show up, now, will you, dear?”
“‘Bye, Mum.”
She hurried to the shop, anxious to get a good bit of work done before lunch. The activity would keep her mind off worrying about exactly what her mother had said, because of course it had occurred to her: what if he didn’t show up?
Loaded with an arsenal of cleaning products, Irene took stock of the place: two good rooms. A tub in the kitchen. A toilet in a little closet. Why, she could get any number of tenants. The first thing was to see what was really in the place. The hall closet held nothing more than some old paper bags and newspapers. She picked up one yellowed and fragile sheet and read from a page dated February 1912. The British secretary of state had visited Berlin to offer the Germans support for their colonial ambitions in return for an end to the naval arms race. The compromise had been soundly rejected and further German aggression was feared.
It seemed they were playing the same old game all over again. She shook her head and tossed the paper into the bin. She would not think of such things today.
The kitchen table was all right and there was a solid wooden chair. Heaps of old magazines and empty boxes. What was her father saving them for? There was an old bedspring in the sitting room, but the mattress was beyond help. She crinkled her nose and wrestled it down the stairs to the alley. The kitchen she tackled with bleach and vinegar, and found two whisky bottles tucked in the back of a cupboard. She threw them in a box to be taken out to the garbage.
Irene had hoped that somewhere in these two small rooms she would find some evidence that her father had lived a larger life than she had imagined. But no clues were forthcoming. It seemed he might have used these rooms as a sort of nest from time to time. She could picture him sleeping off too much whisky, lying on the stained mattress, his face turned to the wall, his hand between his knees. She swept the picture into the dustbin along with the cinders and the scraps.
Before she knew it, it was twelve-thirty. Irene thought she’d made amazing progress and soon she’d be able to show the room. Perhaps a coat of paint wouldn’t hurt; she wanted good, respectable people living here. Most of the people in the neighbourhood who could afford the better rooms were prostitutes, and while she had nothing against them personally, almost considered them part of the working class, she didn’t think it would be a good idea to have on
e living above her newly respectable store. Irene wanted someone who would make her feel more secure, working by herself down below, but single men could be risky too. They might be all right, or they might bring their friends to live with them, as had happened over Mr. Han’s laundry. The little man had had an awful time with them, their drunken brawls and parties, and finally had to ask the police to evict them. But someone would come along who was right. Of that she was sure.
She had to hurry—what if Harry was early?
She went into the kitchen and quickly washed and changed. She peered at herself in the broken bit of mirror on the back of the cupboard door and ran a comb through her hair, smoothed her eyebrows, noting with irritation, as she always did, that the left one had a perfect arch while the right one lay stick-flat above her eye. She dabbed colour onto her lips. Painted hussy! Irene could practically hear her mother’s voice. She took a tissue and wiped most of it off. She pulled out her precious bottle of gardenia water and splashed a little under her arms and behind her ears.
It was nearly one o’clock. Surely he’d arrive at any moment. She stifled a nervous giggle. Her first real date was about to begin.
As she entered the shop she was filled with a rush of pride, as she was each time she saw it. If only her mother would come down and see what she had done—but then, what would it mean to her, since she hadn’t seen the way it had deteriorated? In fact, her mother hadn’t been in the shop for almost four years now.
Irene sat at one of the tables. But then she thought this might look too eager and she didn’t want Harry finding her like some spaniel poised to pounce on him the minute he walked through the door. She glanced at the clock. Two minutes past one. She got up and stood behind the ice-cream counter, but unless she started cleaning the already glossy surfaces, there was no real reason to be there. Attempting to look busy, she took the order book from below the shelf and ran her finger over the dates when she’d last ordered goods from her various suppliers. Her finger stopped and she stood there, gazing down at the page without seeing it.
The clock said nearly 1:10.
He had said “about one,” hadn’t he? Not “exactly one.” When did “about one” begin and end? “About one” could be as early as a quarter to one, couldn’t it? A person could definitely say “about one,” arrive at a quarter to one, and not be considered too early. Which meant that if someone arrived at one-fifteen, they could still be considered on time.
What if her mother was right? Irene turned the pages of the order book but didn’t get very far; as the book was new, only the first page had writing on it. If he didn’t show up, she’d say he had. The thought of facing her mother was unbearable. She could go up the street to the lunch counter, but no, that wouldn’t be open on a Sunday. The museum would be open. She could spend the afternoon looking at the fossils.
She began to make deadlines. By the time I count to one hundred he’ll be here, but not before I get to fifty. One, two, three … no, too fast. Start again. One … two … three … When she hit seventy-five she looked out the window. One hundred.
One hundred and twenty-five.
Oh, let him come, please let him come.
She went into the stockroom and looked at the shelves, neatly stocked, alphabetically arranged. She decided she would begin a projection of expected earnings based on the past weeks’ receipts. That sounded very official and just the sort of thing the proprietress of a business would be doing. As she took the heavy leather-bound book off the shelf she thought, Maybe I should have gone to church. Maybe I’m being punished. But she hadn’t wanted to go to church. In fact, since her father’s funeral she hadn’t wanted to set foot in a church at all. She was carrying the book out into the shop, a frown on her face, just as the bell over the door rang and Harry walked in.
Harry, so beautiful in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled back and a tobacco-brown blazer slung carelessly over his shoulder, the crease in his linen trousers sharp. Harry with an easy grin on his face. Harry, who, even now in the earliest of summer days, looked sun-kissed and healthy. Harry of the golden hair. Harry who could have any girl he wanted, she supposed. Harry who was here to walk with her, just her.
“Not still working?” he said, smiling. “Thought you’d be waiting for me. Did you think I wasn’t coming? Got my wires crossed, I guess.”
Irene didn’t understand until he held out a basket with a familiar woven pattern and leather strap: her mother’s basket.
“I must have misunderstood. Thought I was to meet you at your house.”
“But how did you know where I lived?”
“Called Ebbie. She told me. I should have got the address when I saw you, of course, but it slipped my mind.”
“You saw my mother?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing much. Surprised to see me without you. But I think I managed to charm her. In fact, I think she was rather taken with me. Took me a while to convince her I was your friend, but then …” He chuckled. “Well, I would have been here sooner, except she insisted I come in and taste her pie. She said, by the way, that you’re not much of a cook, young lady.” He wagged an admonishing finger.
Irene stood blinking at him. The news of her mother inviting a strange man into the house and offering him food, never mind being “taken” with him, was more shocking to her than if he’d said Margaret had run him off with a rolling pin.
“A pie?” she said, because just at the moment she could think of nothing intelligent to say. She was worried only about what he thought of her mother and their tattered house, the eaves in need of cleaning, the porch with a list, the ghastly red paint in the kitchen, the smell of something musty about the place, like unwashed feet.
“Your mother has made a strawberry pie.”
“Yes, I know, I bought her strawberries yesterday.”
“Well, there you are, then.”
“Was she … my mother … she didn’t …” How could she ask Harry what she wanted to ask. Did she look crazy? Was she dressed? Did she say anything embarrassing? But Harry was here, wasn’t he? And her mother, no matter what had happened, had not scared him off. That was enough. Irene’s shoulders dropped from their perch around her ears. “Oh, never mind,” she said.
“Are you ready, then? Shall we be off?”
“I’ll just get my things.” She went into the back and picked up her purse and gloves. When she came back Harry was standing with his back to her, framed in the bright light of the day. He filled up so much space, his broad back and shoulders, the wide stance of his legs. She was shy of him then, the breadth of him, the maleness and assurance of his way in the world. Sensing that a man such as Harry Madison would be bored by little-girl bashfulness, she desired to be sophisticated and at ease.
“All set,” she said and ran the fingers of her right hand along the fingers of her left, settling the cotton of the gloves into place.
They set off up the quiet Sunday street. The shops were closed, and across the street, people sat on their front steps and two boys hunkered on the sidewalk playing jacks.
They crossed to the north side of Gerrard Street, and passed houses that once must have been quite respectable but had taken on the shabby dust of the times and were, for the most part, broken up into boarding houses. The voice of a woman yelling at a crying child fell like splinters from the open window of a house with torn curtains that moved listlessly in the warm air. A ginger cat with a shredded ear sat smugly on the sill.
Irene felt tongue-tied. She wished Harry would lead the conversation, but he was reserved and contained, as though he were walking along the street without her.
“I went to the library and got a book by T. S. Eliot,” she said.
“Did you? Which one?”
“The Waste Land.”
“That’s a rather heavy-going introduction. What did you think of it?”
“I think it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever read.”
“Not many would use the word powerful to describe poetry. Interesting.”
“I wanted to thank you for telling me about it.”
“You’re welcome. Poetry is the bread of life, or at least, if not the bread, certainly the gooseberry jam.”
“I’d like you to teach me more about it,” she said.
“I’ll give you the names of some more poets, shall I? Hart Crane and Rilke and Whitman, of course—you must know Whitman.” He transferred the basket to his other hand and offered her his arm to take as they crossed Sherbourne Street and then the park, to the grand entrance of the conservatory.
“Shall we take a stroll through the Palm House first and lunch after?” he said.
He steered her into the close warm wash of air in the circular, light-spilled glass room of the Palm House. The air was rich with the smell of wet earth and humidity. An older couple passed them, stiff and proper in corsets and waistcoat. The man tipped his hat at Irene. She nodded. The smiles the older couple gave them showed they were considered a couple, a young couple in love. Irene held her head a little higher.
They walked first around the perimeter of the room and then along the path leading under the dome where the largest of the palms grew. Irene bent to read a plaque.
“ ‘Chinese Fan Palm, Livistona chinensis, from the sub-tropical woodlands of Ryukyu,’ ”—she hesitated over the unfamiliar word—“‘and Bonin Islands, the Volcano Islands and Islands off Kyushu, Japan.’ Imagine! All the way from there.” She gazed up at the tips of the tall palms, the watery light dripping through them. “Do you ever want to travel to faraway places like that, Harry?”
“I have no doubt I will, and in the not-too-distant future, too, I should imagine.”
“Really? Where?” No one she had ever known had travelled farther than her uncle Rory, whom she considered an impossibly exotic creature just for having ridden the rails from coast to coast.
The Stubborn Season Page 21
