Growing Up Ivy

by Peggy Dymond Leavey

  So it was settled — Charlie would go to high school. Of course, there still remained the problem of how he would get there, but he was confident that, sometime before the first day of school, he’d find a way.

  19

  Shoes for Charlie

  At a ball game in early September, Delbert Coon told Charlie that Stickle’s General Store was selling running shoes for twenty-five cents a pair. Seeing the sign in the window, Delbert had gone in and bought some for himself. And because Charlie had been playing ball all summer in his grandfather’s old boots, he knew his friend would be interested.

  “No kidding? A quarter is all?”

  “Yep. Stickle’s got a whole box of them,” said Delbert. “I even bought two pair.”

  Charlie looked down at the canvas shoes his friend was wearing. Even on Delbert’s big feet the shoes looked pretty flashy, and Charlie just happened to have a quarter. If he could buy a pair of running shoes like that, he’d be sure to impress Mary Alice. Why, his feet would burn around those bases so fast they’d be smokin’.

  The next day Charlie walked in to Larkin and straight to Stickle’s store. He’d been here before with Mr. Fennell to buy feed, and this was where he’d bought Aunt Rena a glass pickle dish last Christmas. Besides feed and flour, dishes and glassware, Stickle’s General Store carried gasoline and oil, paint and wallpaper, boots, shoes, and a few basic groceries. But not so many as to put Coon’s out of business.

  After sorting through the entire box of running shoes at the back of the store, Charlie discovered that all the twenty-five-cent pairs were too big.

  “What about a coupla extra pairs of socks?” Mr. Stickle suggested, and he dangled a pair with red heels and toes. “Ten cents for the two of them.”

  “All’s I’ve got is a quarter,” Charlie said. “Anyway, I’ve got to be able to play ball. I’d be falling all over the place in shoes this big.”

  Mr. Stickle snapped his suspenders and walked away. “Can’t help you then. Oh, hang on a minute. The salesman told me, in case I sold out, that he was leaving another box of these in town. No idea what size they might be.”

  “At another store?” Charlie was hopeful.

  “At his mother’s place, I believe. Over on Arthur Road, Number 54. You know the street next to the tracks? The salesman had this funny looking wagon. Never seen anything like it, like a circus wagon. You see a big grey horse and that wagon, you’ll know you’ve got the right place.”

  Charlie dropped the running shoe into the box and pulled on his old boot again.

  Mr. Stickle watched him tie the frayed laces. “You know, I hate to see a man down on his luck,” he said. “So I said I’d take this box of shoes off his hands.”

  Charlie stood up and began edging toward the door.

  “He should’ve known better than to take a horse and wagon out on the road, selling anything,” Mr. Stickle said. “Them days are over. But I guess you really can’t fault a man for trying to make a few dollars, can you? Now, you take my friend Melvin …”

  The door opened to let another customer in, and Charlie slipped out.

  He walked the length of Arthur Road, following the railroad tracks as far as the switch where the short line went through the fence to the canning factory. Then he retraced his steps. There was no sign of a wagon anywhere.

  Number 54. He stood out front of the skinny grey house with the picket fence, frowning. He remembered this place. This was where he’d come last spring to clean out the henhouse for the lady. And Aunt Rena had made him go all the way back to the riverbank to retrieve the box of soda biscuits he’d forgotten there.

  A girl was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. She was bent over something in her lap, the pencil she held moving furiously. A small, bluish-grey cat perched on the railing. Charlie hadn’t seen any girl here last spring when he’d shovelled chicken manure.

  “Are you wanting eggs?” The girl’s voice startled him. Charlie hadn’t realized she’d noticed him.

  “Naw.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back onto his heels. “I heard there was a man here selling shoes.”

  “Not any more,” the girl said. “But he took a big box of running shoes to a store downtown.”

  “I just came from there. They sent me here. In case you had any more of them. Those pairs at Stickle’s were all too big.”

  The girl got up from the rocking chair, setting aside whatever she’d been doing. “Come around to the back,” she said. “You can have a look in the box we put in the shed. Just go along the side of the house.”

  Charlie made his way to the yard behind the house and met the girl coming out the back door. He wondered if the lady was inside, watching him. She’d surely kept a suspicious eye on him the last time he was here.

  The girl unlocked the door to the shed at the end of the yard. “My grandmother’s over at the church,” she said, as if she’d read his mind. “She helps the priest with his program for the poor.”

  The lady’s flock of chickens occupied the other side of the shed. Charlie could hear their muffled clucking as he and the girl stepped inside.

  “What size do you need?” the girl asked. She proceeded to drag a large cardboard box to the middle of the floor.

  “I don’t know, for sure,” Charlie said.

  “Well, what size are you wearing?”

  He shrugged, looking down at his feet and feeling foolish. “These were my grandfather’s boots. The size is all wore off.”

  “Oh.” The girl eyed him critically. “You’re pretty tall, so I’d think you probably wear a size ten. My father only wears an eight and a half.”

  “Ten would be about right,” Charlie said, wishing she’d stop inspecting his feet. “The box at Stickle’s was all elevens and twelves.”

  “I’m sorry,” the girl said. “I guess we didn’t divide them up very well.”

  When Charlie had found a pair of black and white running shoes that fit comfortably, he pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Hope that’s right,” he said. “That’s what Stickle’s was charging.”

  “That’s fine,” the girl said, and she dropped the coin into the pocket of her blouse. “Whatever we get for the leftover shoes goes to my grandmother for my keep.”

  Charlie gave her a curious look. There was something familiar about her. Although for the life of him he couldn’t remember ever meeting her before.

  She had large brown eyes under thick brows and a small turned-up nose that showed her front teeth. He thought her face was kind of plain, compared to that of Mary Alice Flint, which was how he measured all female beauty these days. But he liked the way this girl had fixed her dark hair to one side, in a heavy braid that hung over her shoulder.

  She followed Charlie back between the houses to the front again. He was wearing the new running shoes, his old boots tied together by their laces and slung over his shoulder.

  “I hope you like them,” the girl said, sounding as if she meant it. She retrieved the cat from the porch railing. “My father and I travelled all through the countryside this summer, selling shoes. We had lots of interesting things happen. I’m writing about one of them right now. I write all the time.”

  Charlie strolled out to the street. For the first time he noticed, below the sign that advertised eggs for sale, a second sign tacked to the fence post. “You have a horse for sale?”

  The girl came to the gate, stroking the cat. “That’s right. I want to keep her, but Grandmother says we can’t.” She cast a glance back at the house. “As you can see, there’s no room here for a horse. Her name is Dora, and she’s over at our neighbours’ right now. Sometimes I can see her from the back bedroom upstairs.”

  “Well, is she for sale, or not?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid she is. Papa couldn’t keep her in the city, and when the man with the brea
d truck offered to tow the caravan back there, Papa left Dora here for us. Wasn’t that kind of the bread man? He didn’t even know my father. People are like that sometimes. Absolute angels.

  “Anyway, Grandmother said, ‘Where am I supposed to keep an animal that big at this place, let alone feed her?’ Our neighbours, the Jenkins, are true angels because they are letting her stay at their place for a while.”

  “Can she be rode, do you think?”

  “Oh, yes. She’s very gentle. She’s not a young horse, by any means. I was with her all summer. I love her dearly, so I’m very particular about who buys her.”

  Charlie couldn’t help himself. “You sure do talk funny,” he said.

  “I do?” The girl looked puzzled. “I just speak the King’s English.”

  “Where you from, then?”

  “Toronto,” the girl said, enunciating all three syllables.

  Charlie nodded, figuring that likely explained everything. “I need a way to get to high school this year,” he said. “So far, I’ve been walking in from the farm. But I might come back later, to see about that horse.”

  PART THREE

  Home

  20

  News at Last

  Ivy Chalmers took it as a good sign that her letter to Johnny Dracup, the Toronto baker, did not come back stamped “unknown” or “not at this address.” But no reply came, either.

  Weeks passed, and she started school in Larkin. Every day she waited for news of her mother’s whereabouts.

  Maud Chalmers had discovered, to her chagrin, that she’d missed Ivy over the summer while she was away with Alva. The girl had proved to be a bright little thing to have around, even if she was a bit peculiar.

  Over the months that followed the girl’s return, as she watched Ivy struggle to understand what could have happened to cause her mother to stay away so long, Maud’s harsh attitude toward her granddaughter gradually softened. It worried her to see the change in Ivy, to see how the cheerful, talkative child had become the withdrawn, quiet young woman who lived with her now.

  Ivy did everything Maud asked of her and more, but she’d lost her spark. Even after she started school she seemed to have no friends, other than her cat. She spent all her spare time lost in the books she got from the library. Or, now that the weather had turned cold, up in her room writing, hunched over the old washstand she used as a desk. It just wasn’t normal, in Maud’s opinion.

  If Maud could get her hands on that self-centred Frannie, she’d shake some sense into her.

  She had disapproved of her daughter-in-law from the first time she’d laid eyes on her, when she and Alva had come out here from Toronto in a motor car with a friend. Alva must have thought, because he’d neglected to do so after his first wedding, that his mother should meet the bride.

  She could tell even then that Frannie had stars in her eyes and feathers for brains. Why, that woman had knocked poor Alva off his feet. And him still getting over that farm girl he’d married — the one with the ready-made family, the one that up and died on him so fast. That one was supposed to have been from around here somewhere, too.

  Maud Chalmers was a firm believer in the old adage that you reaped what you sowed. One day, wherever she was, Frannie would be sorry for walking out on her only child.

  ***

  Ivy finally learned the name of the boy who was buying her father’s horse, on the day that he came to Maud’s with a small down payment.

  She remembered this Charlie Bayliss. When she’d sold him the running shoes, she’d recognized him at once. He was the boy she and Gloria had seen collecting golf balls along the Larkin road last June. But he obviously did not remember her.

  Maud agreed to sell Charlie the horse and to accept his method of payment. She couldn’t expect the neighbours to keep the animal all winter. She sent Ivy with the boy to the Jenkins’s place to fetch her.

  After Charlie had led the horse out of the gate and down the street, holding her bridle loosely and letting Dora set the pace, Ivy raced home to the upstairs window, where she watched the pair till they were out of sight. Her throat hurt as if she’d just swallowed a stone.

  After that, Charlie Bayliss would appear at Maud’s front door from time to time with another dollar to put toward his debt. And on each occasion, as Maud grew to trust him, he was invited a little farther into the house.

  ***

  Early in the afternoon of New Year’s Day, 1932, the priest from St. Basil’s-on-the-Corner made his careful way between the snowbanks along Arthur Road to the house where Maud and her granddaughter lived.

  He’d waited all morning for the dump truck and the team of men with shovels to clear the road in front of the rectory. After yesterday’s heavy snowfall, it was a relief to see the sun shine so brightly, even though the temperature overnight had plummeted.

  Ivy, who was standing on a chair in the front window taking down her homemade paper decorations, saw the priest coming and called out to her grandmother. “I think you’re going to have some company.”

  “Oh, my good heavens! And this place smelling of the soup bones I’m boiling.” Waving her apron in an attempt to clear the air, Maud opened the front door. “Come in, Father. Come in.”

  The priest entered in a cloud of freezing vapour, rubbing his hands together and stamping the snow off his galoshes.

  Maud invited him through to the kitchen where the teakettle was already on to boil.

  “I’m afraid I can’t stay, Mrs. Chalmers,” he said. “I had a telephone call earlier this morning, and I need to have a word with your granddaughter.”

  Ivy flung the paper chain onto the settee and met him in the hall.

  With Ivy hanging onto every word, the priest told them that a Miss Gloria Klein had called long distance, hoping that Maud Chalmers would turn out to be one of his parishioners. When he assured the caller that she was, indeed, Miss Klein had explained that she wanted to talk to Ivy and would call again at three that afternoon.

  “She has some news of your mother, child,” he said.

  At last! Ivy clutched her hands to her pounding heart. “Is she all right?”

  “I only talked with Miss Klein, so I couldn’t say. She had called the Presbyterian church in town first, and she was relieved when she found out that I knew you. That’s all I can tell you.

  “Now, I’ll be on my way, Mrs. Chalmers. Such a blessing to have a granddaughter. An answer to your prayers, I am sure.”

  “Thank you, Father,” said Maud. “It was good of you to come all this way in the cold. Mind those steps out there. I’ll have Ivy sprinkle some ashes on them.”

  Clutching the railing, the priest descended the stairs. “Three o’clock then,” he said.

  Ivy had no idea what kind of news Gloria would have for her, and she felt almost sick with worry. She was grateful that her grandmother offered to go with her to the priest’s house.

  Bundled in coats and scarves, the two made the trip as quickly as Maud’s bunions would allow. The air was so cold that the snow squeaked under their feet.

  After relieving them of their coats and galoshes in the rectory’s vestibule, the priest’s elderly housekeeper showed them into a small parlour. They sat and listened to the hollow ticking of the clock until, several long minutes later, the telephone rang.

  Ivy leapt to her feet at the sound, hardly able to contain her excitement. The housekeeper reappeared, tottering along the hall to answer it, and only then summoning Ivy.

  “Gloria!” Ivy pressed the receiver to her ear and stood close to the mouthpiece. “Is everything all right? You’ve heard from Momma?”

  “Everything’s fine, Ivy.” Gloria’s warm voice was reassuring. “How are you, dear?”

  “I’m all right. But tell me about Momma. Is she back home? I got only one letter from her, ages and ages ago. And it was mai
led right here in Ontario. I’ve been so afraid that she might be sick.”

  “She has been sick, but she’s getting better now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Cross my heart,” said Gloria. “Frannie’s here with me.”

  “Oh, let me talk to her!”

  “I don’t mean here, right now,” Gloria said. “I’m calling from the bake shop. Frannie’s living with me, at my place.”

  “How long has she been there?”

  “Ever since she got back from New York.”

  “So, she was in New York.”

  There was a slight hesitation on the other end of the line. “Of course. You knew that.” Gloria sounded puzzled by Ivy’s statement.

  “Gloria, you know how Momma is. Always pretending? I thought she might be making believe that she was there.”

  Gloria sighed. “She wasn’t pretending about New York, Ivy. She had a pretty hard time there.”

  “A hard time?”

  “She told me it all happened very fast, Ivy. That man, the director, dumped her almost as soon as she got there. Never mind all the promises he’d made. Frannie says New York City is full of girls trying to get noticed. And there she was, with no job and no money.”

  “So she came home.”

  “Not right away. She lived with a couple of other actresses for a while, and she tried to find work. She was lucky to land a cleaning job. But before she got started, she heard of a ride back to Canada. Naturally, she jumped at it.

  “By the time she found out that the ride was only going as far as Syracuse, it was too late. So that’s where she ended up. Eventually, she somehow managed to borrow enough money to get back across the border. And then she showed up at my place.”

  Ivy turned away from the mouthpiece on the wall to send Maud, who was waiting in the doorway, a look of relief. “I’m so thankful you’re her friend, Gloria,” she said.

  “Frannie knew your grandmother would be taking good care of you,” Gloria continued, “but she wanted to let you know she was thinking of you. So she wrote that letter from my place, to say everything was fine. She didn’t want you to worry. That’s why she told you she was still in New York City. She’ll tell you the whole story when she sees you.”