Margaret felt a great separation from the rest of the world, and never more exquisitely than now, as she watched Irene walk away from her with a man. It was only with Irene, flesh of her flesh, that she could feel the flow of one into the other, one person becoming two through the small exchanges in daily life. Irene would get her heart broken, no doubt about that, but it didn’t mean she had to fall into a bad marriage as a faulty cure, the way Margaret had.
Perhaps if Irene was hurt it would make her more receptive to the peace that could be found in a world populated by just the two of them. Serenity was Margaret’s shining goal. Who needed love? If she could not have it, then companionship, calm, security would do. For that she would keep up the fight against Mad Margaret. Make the dinners, sweep the floor, brush her teeth.
Irene would have to learn the hard way, of course, because she was stubborn, just like her mother. But with Margaret’s guiding hand she could be spared much misery. They had to stick together. It was best that way. After all, look what happened to those Chinese fellows, one dying just three hours after the other. Just couldn’t live apart. Simple as that.
Irene and Harry sat in the dark theatre, their shoulders touching now and then. Harry smoked a cigarette, Irene munched on wine gums (she would have preferred licorice, but she didn’t want black bits in her teeth) and watched the newsreels. The Spanish Civil War had begun a few weeks earlier when General Francisco Franco led an uprising of army troops based in Spanish North Africa. German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels was shown at a rally of thousands, proclaiming Max Schmeling’s victory over Joe Louis a triumph for Germany and Hitlerism. “Schmeling’s victory,” the announcer translated Goebbels’s words, “was not only sport. It was a question of prestige for our race.” People in the theatre booed, and Harry threw a wine gum at the screen. Next was the dedication of the Vimy Memorial by King Edward VIII and pictures of athletes training for the Berlin Olympics and Miss Amelia Earhart preparing to be the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States later that summer.
Then the stories turned to local news. The relief camps had been closed, although many of the men had been reassigned to temporary seasonal work. The screen then filled with the words “MAD GUNMEN HUNTED.” Two Toronto boys, Marion Faggio and Sam Brown, had escaped from the Penetang Mental Institution, a brief vacation that ended in their being shot dead on a concession road after a high-speed chase.
“They’re not giving you half the story,” said Harry. “The two had been sent to Penetang after they’d gone crazy up in the Kingston pen, the conditions are so appalling. They met at the mental institution. And all for what? Less than twenty-five dollars in Faggio’s case and some liquor and cigarettes in Brown’s, which he’d been hoping to sell so he’d have money to buy food.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I read the papers, my dear. I make it a point to stay informed.”
If there was a rebuke in this, Irene decided to ignore it. She had been to the movies only twice in her life and she thought that sitting on the velvet chairs watching the smoke drift up into the beam of light was as close to heaven as she was going to get this week. She left her hand dangling on the armrest between them, in case Harry should want to hold it, but when he wasn’t smoking he kept his hands folded across his chest or leaned both elbows on the armrest and interlaced his fingers. Irene was aware of every movement of his body and willed him to put his arm around her or take her hand in his, but he did not. Several rows behind them a couple loudly kissed and giggled, and Irene was relieved when someone hissed at them.
When the film ended she cried and Harry laughed at her and called her a very silly girl indeed, but he was smiling when he said it and let her use his hanky. They left the theatre and walked along Yonge Street. She sighed now and then, content to just be there, walking with him on this lovely night. She chattered on about the movie and how beautiful she thought it was.
“I didn’t know Runyon was such a sentimentalist,” said Harry. “Bit disappointing, actually.”
“Do you think so? I thought it was swell.”
“Well, you girls are soft about these things.”
They walked along in silence. Harry didn’t take her hand or put his arm around her shoulders. Irene tried to hold on to the joy of a few moments before, but it began to slither and slip away and she couldn’t catch it. She wanted to share emotion with Harry, who was so smart and who, loving poetry the way he did, could be so moved by words. Perhaps by weeping over a silly movie she was showing that she was unsophisticated, uneducated.
“Oh, look,” he said, “there’s an ice cream vendor. Do you want one?”
“I can’t face any more ice cream.”
“I forgot, you’re around it all day. I think I’ll have one, though. Have an ice, at least. Strawberry?”
And so she agreed, as she did to everything Harry suggested.
Before going home in the evenings, if Harry wasn’t coming by, Irene would take a quick run up to the library and pick out a book of poetry by Rilke or Auden or Beaudelaire or Blake. After her mother went to bed she sat in the window seat in the living room memorizing snippets that particularly moved her. She was happy to find that, although she had first turned to poetry as a way of feeling nearer to Harry, she returned time and time again for no other reason than that it pleased her so. She found herself lost for hours in the words, and it was a great comfort to her. It made the walls of the house seem wider, the air less stifling, and herself less isolated.
One day Ebbie insisted she put her poets back on the shelf and come with her to the Canadian National Exhibition. The CNE was attracting record crowds that year, as most people couldn’t afford to go away on vacations and were looking for a little diversion amidst the horses and the garden shows and the wonderful Automotive Building. After much pleading one Friday evening, Margaret finally agreed to be alone for a few hours. Irene and Ebbie took the streetcar to the Princes’ Gates and walked along the fairgrounds. They ate cotton candy and hot dogs. Ebbie tried her hand at the pitch and toss and lost twenty-five cents before she quit. They watched a strongman with a handlebar moustache and a striped leotard pick up four giggling girls sitting two each on the ends of a pole slung over his shoulders. Then they wandered over to the dressage event in the Horse Pavilion.
“Our own local Olympics,” said Ebbie. “Without the swastikas and the Heil Hitlers.”
“Wasn’t Jesse Owens amazing?” said Irene.
“And then Hitler refusing to acknowledge his victory because he’s a Negro! I tell you, I don’t know where it’s going to end. Dad says we’re going to war for sure.”
“It can’t be as bad as that, can it?”
“Come on, let’s go to the freak show,” said Ebbie, dragging Irene along.
They paid their nickel to the fat lady at the tent door and went in. Every few feet the tent was partitioned into little alcoves where the freaks sat on stools displaying themselves. They saw the Pillow Man, whose body and head were the size of a small oblong cushion, the Bearded Lady, the two-headed calf and the deformed babies in jars. Ebbie would have stayed to see the man who could hammer nails into the side of his head, but Irene said she couldn’t stomach any more and insisted they leave.
Irene wanted to talk about Harry. If anyone knew what was going on with Harry, it was Ebbie.
“So, how’s Mike?” she said.
“Fabulous. I met his parents last weekend. Darling people. Of course, you know what that means!” Ebbie waggled her pale eyebrows at Irene and grinned.
“Do you think he’s going to ask you? Really?”
“Maybe not right away, but he’ll get around to it. If he can ever get his nerve up. I may have to do the asking, for heaven’s sake.”
“I wish Harry would take me home to meet his family soon.”
“What do you want to meet that bunch for? Dry as twigs.”
“Harry says his mother’s very refined. She does all sorts of charity work, doesn’t she? An
d anyway, well, I’ll have to meet them eventually.”
“Do you want to go on the Ferris wheel?” said Ebbie.
“Harry says when I meet them I’ll have to call his father sir. He says even he calls him sir. Do you call him uncle, or what?”
“Harry said that? When you meet him?”
“Yes. But what do you call him? And her? Do you call her ma’am?”
“I don’t see them very often. Don’t even see Harry that much, to be honest. Now, come on, let’s go on the Ferris wheel. Pleeeease? Pretty please?”
“Oh, all right,” said Irene. And she laughed at her friend, although she wished Ebbie wouldn’t sidestep her questions about Harry. She and Ebbie might very well all be family one day, after all.
“So, did you have a good time last night?” Margaret asked, the following Wednesday morning. She spread marmalade thickly on her toast.
“I had a wonderful time.”
Irene wanted to remember the bright sparkle of the night and not how it had ended. “You should have seen the floorshow. The singer was marvellous, she was all the way from New York, and we danced. Oh, it was grand.”
“Tuesday night seems an odd night for going clubbing to me.”
“It’s very modern, Mother, we’re not locked into all your generation’s old rules about things. We’re different.”
“If you’re talking about courtesy and respect, I’ll agree with you there. It just seems to me that Harry might take you out on a Saturday night like a regular person. Don’t you ever wonder what he’s up to when he’s not with you?”
“He’s busy, what with the business and everything. He’s going to take over for his father completely one day very soon and he has to be ready. And his father’s very demanding. Things will be different when he’s his own boss. And I expect that day won’t be long off. After all, everyone says the Depression’s nearly over.”
“So why do you look like Chief Thundercloud? I know it’s about that boy. A mother can sense these things. I’m on your side, Irene. I don’t make a fuss when you leave me alone to go out with him, do I? I don’t complain. Have you had a fight? I’ll bet you have. I’m sure it’s nothing—after all, every couple has little spats.”
“We didn’t have a fight.”
“A disagreement, then.”
Margaret felt pleased. She was growing closer to her daughter, saying the right things and seeing things clearly. She’d given a lot of thought to Irene and Harry while she was alone the evening before. That was her least favourite time of the day, as night approached. She always felt nervous then, but along with the anxiety sometimes came flashes of insight. Small prisms of clarity, where she could peer right down into the heart, the truth of things.
“Look, Irene. Sometimes boys get nervous when they really like a girl.”
“Do you think so?” said Irene in a small voice, and she looked so hungry, so hopeful, so vulnerable. And so it has begun already, thought Margaret. Oh, my poor daughter, and she doesn’t even yet know the way a pain can burn like acid, never stopping until it reaches bone and then not stopping yet but going clean through a person like a tunnel where a cold wind blows and you are never really warm again. I would spare her this if I could, I truly would.
Margaret took a bite from her toast, savouring the thick sticky sweetness of the marmalade, rolling it around on her tongue before swallowing. Let it be, she said to herself, let it be. She put her hands under the table and squeezed them together. She made herself concentrate on the taste of burnt oranges and sugar until the Other Margaret hushed herself. Good girl. Good girl.
“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”
As Irene walked to work she tried to come to a decision. So much hinged on the right strategy. She tried to concentrate on the dilemma, but her mother’s words haunted her. How had she intuited that something had gone wrong last night? Why was she suggesting Harry might be seeing other girls? His father expected him to accompany him on business dinners at their men’s club on Saturday evenings. That seemed reasonable.
“But I get so lonely without you.” She knew she’d sounded sulky. It was just the sort of thing her mother would say, but she couldn’t seem to stop her lips from moving.
“My dear girl, you mustn’t wait about moping, you know. It’s not attractive. Don’t go all wan and droopy on me now.” And he had chucked her under the chin, just the way she didn’t like at all. “There you go! Look at the flash in those eyes. A fellow likes a girl with spark.”
He leaned over and ran his hand along her thigh. She wore a bias-cut burgundy satin dress, made over from one of her mother’s old dresses. She let his hand stay there, and instantly she was all liquid and boneless. They sat in a booth with a back like a scalloped shell, a round table in front of them draped in a fine white cloth. His hand was hidden from view and he began to inch her skirt up little by little, smiling at her all the while as though nothing at all were going on beneath the table.
His hand was on her knee. His fingers twirled gently. It had been so unreal, his hand on her there, the waiters milling about, a girl with a gardenia in her hair on the stage singing about lost love. Her entire world had been pinpointed at the end of his fingertips.
It had been all she could do to refuse him at the end of the evening, when he had tried to persuade her to get a room with him. He was becoming more and more persistent about sex and it was becoming harder and harder to say no. She knew what became of girls who gave in to desire before they were safely tucked up in the marriage bed. But still, wouldn’t a man like Harry, worldly and sophisticated, expect the woman in his life to be just as modern, just as devoid of what he called “petty-bourgeois” morality?
And more to the point, she’d been on the verge of surrendering to him, and would have if only he hadn’t spoken just then. They had been out in his warm dark car, and his hand slipped under her coat, cupped her breast and she had pushed him away and then let him come close again, sighing out the last of her resistance, when he said, “‘A little still she strove, and much repented, and whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’—consented.’“ He had said these words with his lips up against her own open mouth and then had added, “Byron, the Don Juan poem.”
She pushed back and glared at him. “Thank you for the lesson, professor, but don’t you think your timing’s a bit off? I’d rather not have bloody Lord Byron in the car with us just at the moment, if you don’t mind.”
His face had gone cold then. She’d never spoken to anyone like that before.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she’d said. “Please don’t be mad. Please don’t be.”
“Why would I be angry? You’re quite right to say the moment for poetry is lost. And the word is angry, dear, not mad. I’m not mad. Mad is what your mother is.”
“That’s a mean thing to say, Harry, a very cruel thing. Sometimes I don’t know why I even like you so much.” She’d begun to cry.
“I can’t imagine,” said Harry, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke out through his nose.
“I just want you to respect me. I want to be something special to you. But if it’s that important to you …” She would have gone with him then, she would have, but Harry said he’d better drive her home, and he had, without another word.
When they pulled up in front of her door she found she couldn’t stop crying and she didn’t want to leave him but at the same time she wanted to get out of the car and slam the door and run up the street and keep on running.
“Please, Harry …” she hiccupped at him, “please, Harry.”
“Irene, stop crying. Don’t carry on so. It’s not the end of the world. Everything’s fine. I’m not angry, see? I’m not.”
He put his arm around her and drew her against his chest where she snuffled, careful not to muss his coat.
“I don’t ever want you to be cross at me, Harry, I can’t bear it.”
“I know you can’t. I know. And I’m not cross. A fellow just gets all worked up, that’s all. It’s not
good for the system, if you know what I mean.”
“I want it to be special, Harry. I want to wait until the time is right, you know what I mean.”
“Listen, Irene. You’re a sweet girl, a pretty girl. You can’t blame a man for wanting you. But run along now. You have to get up early, don’t you? I know I do.”
“I don’t want to leave angry.”
“No one’s angry. Give us a kiss.” He’d turned her face toward his and kissed her tear-wet cheeks, first the right and then the left and then he’d kissed her mouth, and it was a long, lovely kiss.
“I love you, Harry,” she’d sighed into his breath.
“Sleep well, Irene. I’ll call you.”
Of course she had not slept well, with her mind racing on what had gone wrong and what she could do to make it right. Her mother couldn’t be right. She was Harry’s girl. She had to find some way to prove it.
Irene now passed a man slumped in a doorway. She’d seen him before, one of the many homeless, jobless men down on their luck and letting themselves fall asleep in the last place their tired feet had led them. She pulled the sandwich her mother had made for her out of the brown paper bag and put it down next to him. The man jumped and looked at her, wild-eyed.
“It’s just a sandwich,” she said.
“Oh. Thanks, thanks a lot,” the man said and began to eat it right away, bits of wax paper clinging to his lower lip.
We all live so close to that line, she thought. I can’t let myself get caught. What if the store fails? So many have.
A life with Harry would be a life free of worry. A life with Harry would be one long, elegant, gracious dream. She couldn’t lose Harry. Why did her mother have to ask her awful questions? “Who does he see when he’s not with you? You don’t think he has other girls?” There were decisions to be made. Harry would call. And by the time he did, she would have made her decision.
1936
David has been told to look for smoke coming out of the chimney of a garage on the outskirts of Winnipeg. The garage has the words FREE FOOD painted on the side. The smoke is clear in the frigid morning air. He and Emil pick up the pace. It is so cold their breath forms little crystals that fall on their chests. Emil’s gloves are full of holes and he keeps his hands under his armpits.
The Stubborn Season Page 23
