My Famous Evening

by Howard Norman

  Marlais Abernathy

  “Take note,” Mary said, “that my sister signed her first letter Marlais Abernathy, and signed every one of them the same. In her mind she’d divorced Alfonse at the earliest possible moment, eh?—or went back to a time before the marriage.”

  After I set down the first letter, Mary said, “My sister really had no reason to write letters before. Everyone she knew lived nearby. As far as I know, these were the only letters she ever wrote in her entire life!”

  Mary closed her eyes. “I can sleep sitting up like this,” she said. “Carry on with your reading, then.”

  My dearest sister,

  I might well suppose that by now the authorities have delivered the dread news that my husband Alfonse is killed. He was not killed directly by my hand but indirectly by my inability to calm him in front of The Baptist Spa, where he waved a revolver and shouted, “You are my wife!—” followed by cursing so violent that my fear was tempered only by the familiarity of his bellowing voice, though the circumstances were not now familiar at all. He had somehow located my whereabouts—on what funds did my husband travel down, I wonder, as he was not a man to borrow money—and waited for me on the steps of The Baptist Spa, immediately to bellow marriage complaints. In Halifax at that time of evening at this time of year apparently fog rolls up from the harbour some nights so thickly all walking the street may as well carry a blindman’s cane, and I’m told that that is little exaggerated. But the fog was only beginning up from the harbour when I was confronted by my husband. Dear dearest sister, I had just left The Baptist Spa to walk down to see one of the new Birney cars, which I very much wished to see. Birney cars run on tracks. I intended to invest in a ride on one no matter my finances. And there stood Alfonse. Or I should better say there he stood but not stood still as he was shuffling like erasing a chalk hopscotch game with his boots on the sidewalk as in the one we saw in the magazine you had displayed at your house, Mary, remember? At first he could not meet my eye and then he met it with the Devil’s eyes not his own which I imagine was due to drink. He smelled of drink and he actually said as much, he said, “I’ve been at the bottle!” You yourself have seen him at the bottle you know what that means. “Put the revolver away, Alfonse,” I said. I said “I won’t invite you in but we can sit on the steps or walk or anything you wish!” “You won’t invite your own husband in? Then who am I to you?” I knew I had chosen the wrong words and the curses started up then and there he was convicting me of all manner of transgression and selfishness as a wife and I hadn’t even gotten to street level yet. Oh my Lord my very soul felt precarious and I did not know my husband at all, Mary, not at all. I did not know him as if the fog had moved across and erased him from my life and perhaps I wished somehow for that to happen, Lord help me, I won’t be forgiven for that thought will I? Obviously our shouting drew the attention of two policemen not more than a hop skip and jump away and the good policemen did not shirk their duty and approached us. Alfonse might better have thrown his revolver to the ground and pointed it out there and said “Good fellows, this is my wife and this is an unfortunate private matter mistakenly out in public,” but instead he waved it and shot it into the air. There immediately ensued in a blur and a curse a terrible scuffle and Alfonse perhaps innocent at all costs in the ways of the city might better not have resisted. In these terrible moments my face was bruised and I fled, a cowardly act of which I am not a little ashamed and running heard a pistol shot ring out. I feel that my unhappiness in marriage and impetuousness in travel had contributed to my husband’s death at that very instant and my children became half orphaned. And yet I am still on to New York and having so continued in this endeavor, my dear one, what chance does my soul have for Heaven? I have the dress coat shoes and the rest that I am wearing. They are my only ownership. My suitcase is on the bed in my room at The Baptist Spa and I don’t dare retrieve it. All other worldly belongings consist of the clearest sight of you my dear sister and my children in my mind. I have told you something here that I wish were a dream but is whatever the opposite of a dream may be. What is the one thing good in my nature which is my love of books has put me it seems in the worst of circumstances. I am selfish in all regards except for my love of you and my children which sustains me. Please kiss them for me as I expect you would anyway without my asking dear dear dearest. I am selfish in all regards except for my love of you and them. In all regards to be sure, but I felt that after twelve years of contentious marriage my stalwart reading habits mocked at table, losing two children before birth it was all this and more and the possibility of experiencing a moment of the highest spiritual order outside of church—hearing Mr. Conrad, that had allowed me to cast aside all best notions of redemption and now look at the consequences, my children half orphaned, father gone, mother unmoored, aunt saying nightly prayers with them. Now look at me, your sister, I am on the lam. All angels previously disappointed in me since girlhood are now ten-fold now more and fully vindicated in their disappointment. In persistent memory and love,

  Marlais Abernathy

  As it turned out, Alfonse merely had a bullet lodged in his thumb. After the bullet was removed in hospital, he spent two days in jail, during which time he had contact with no one but his jailers. Finally, he was severely reprimanded in front of both policemen, fined a modest amount for the equivalent, I suppose, of disturbing the peace, then sent packing to nearby Whale Cove in Cape Breton Island. There he retained—whether by some legal procedure or otherwise, I do not know—custody of his children. In the ensuing years, Alfonse, according to Mary, “continued employment as a jack-of-all trades, a carpenter generally hired out. Not entirely a lazy man, Alfonse, but not all that hardworking, either.

  “But now he had a wife with a shameful past—or his past had a shameful wife. I think he saw it both ways.”

  Dearest Mary,

  Please kiss my children for me I had finally booked passage, the ship is called SST Hoag carrying freight and mail and I believe there are several motor cars aboard and four small rooms for passengers aside from crew. “Weep into the rainy sea-wind/for the rainy sea-wind is discrete for private weeping—” remember that verse mother would read when we became upset over something or other? It was indeed raining much of the morning, this. The ship docked for repairs or whatnot in Portland Maine and myself and others debarked for ten hours time, we were told we could go on into town and stay the night as we were guaranteed the repairs would take that long at least. I know that a Mr. and Mrs. Rhineman purchased a room for the night just up from the modest wharf. I found a place to have tea and soup and then was happy for it being balmy because I would be up awake in it all night. I found a church not of our denomination but its door was open and I went in, the pews were comfortable and I slept fitfully but slept, a blessing to be sure, having the church to myself till morning. Yet much to my embarrassed surprise it was then a Sunday morning and I was awakened by a parishioner and so sat through the service, which was foreignly pleasant. No matter how familiar or not the type of sermon, I always get spent in church. I recall certain Sundays I was exhausted by merely the normal goings-on nearly to the point of fainting—just the sermon itself, just people standing up or sitting down, the sameness. I have generally always loved the sermons but have always since childhood I think reserved a contentious attitude toward them and what they attempt to persuade us of our natures. As for sin, what, for instance, did my children ever do to deserve such a mother, but be born and begin a life? What, Mary dear, did you ever do but be born and have a life? Born sinner, born sinner—yes, perhaps that is me, perhaps it is, but I’m more convinced of that particular trait on days of ill temper than happiness. On bright sunny days I have tended to think that we all were born innocent and the first blanket laid over us in our cribs were woven of possibility rather than Fate. Oh I don’t know what I think just now, anyway, except my back hurts terribly from sitting up in the hard pew. Anyway, townsfolk surrounded me in church this morning, all seemed gentle and
sincere in their prayers and hymns and as the hymns resounded around me I wondered if Alfonse Quire had already been buried and wept over yet. I suppose he had already been borne up to those disappointed angels already, if that’s where he was borne up to in fact. I used to laugh to myself about his name—Quire—and would often have a play on words in my mind, saying, “Oh he’ll never sing in one, not at least a Heavenly choir!” Our last quarrel which was our last truly married night in the kitchen of our house haunts me up to and through this very moment, dear sister, and shall I imagine well past it. It often more or less uncoils in my mind, how I was pleading what harm is done that I should hear a great man of literature read from his works if it were possible to do so? I would simply travel out and back on my own fortitude my wits about me, and out and back and be done with it, and if I were only to have this wish fulfilled why would not a husband help fulfill it, wishing for the same on my behalf. Looking back I no doubt simplify things—no doubt!

  Alfonse, as you know, could not read but further he did not even enjoy my summaries of books I had read, during he would sit there hunched in a chair as though receiving blows. To each his own, I suppose, but in marriage certain separate passions may come about and mine was scarcely tolerated and now look at me in a few short weeks your sister has become a woman sleeps in churches, washes in public washrooms and who presently suffers a chill and posts letters from far away. Naturally and in good taste I write only to you, Mary, and I trust the address is not too much labor a walk and that word from the window Mrs. Gale that a letter has arrived is not part of gossip but of private arrangement as she promised. I trust that is so. I went to the public library here and found that Mr. Conrad has written even more volumes than I previously knew! but they will have to wait. But I shall get to them. In the library I read poetry and one poem in particular whose subject was a lost soul, which read in part—“Sea-faring the pure and righteous one could survive on a crust of bread and the air of hope and certainty of God/but I of The Other Path/ Of hardened heart, have stolen a loaf of bread from the bakery” and reading this, I was startled. This is me. I am of The Other Path. Having stolen from my church box. I think, truth be told, I am seeing things through a fever now, because a short while ago I thought I saw Alfonse himself, but look at me, look at me, writing to you of ghosts! It is because I am so tired almost to the point of sleeping standing up as Mr. Merriman Potts did at your birthday party, remember? I miss my children beyond any and all other concerns, I hold myself to them fatherless children now. Perhaps you might tell them I have made mistakes and I am a flawed person in the world but my love for them is not flawed in the least. I naturally refer to the love of a mother for her children. In plainest meaning I am your adoring sister who loves you—I post this in tears.

  Marlais Abernathy

  Epistolary intimacy can prove to be revelatory and disturbing in equal measure. Even after just three letters, I felt self-conscious to the point of worry if I wasn’t myself participating in a kind of ethical transgression. I said to Mary, “I don’t know if I should be reading these.”

  “You aren’t the first,” she assured me, “you’re just the first from come-from-away.” She meant outside of her immediate family, let alone outside of Nova Scotia. I read the next three letters straight through, as Mary sat with her eyes closed again, her hands around the cup of cooling tea.

  Dearest Mary, my sweet sister,

  I am writing this listing on a ship that lists terribly. I am in fever in chill and shall consider it just punishment, nor more or less than that, and as there is no apothecary on board I’ll only have as medicine the admixture of sweet constant thoughts of you and my children—and the bile of everything else. The joyless posture of mind naturally results partly from my being in such tight quarters, the press of the walls and that the dark stain of murder in my heart cannot be laundered clean simply by daydreaming, as I have tried, of a childhood romp to the sea—you and I, dear sister, remember?—running to the sea, the summer roses fragrant in memory cannot rid the air below deck here of staleness. If our entire childhood should laugh at once its great amount of laughter I’m afraid it could not drown out the ringing in my ears just now, nor the corresponding harassment of pipes clanging, or something clanging against pipes as though I am in a dungeon. What comforts me, if anything does—please hold my hands in prayer—is the odd thought that surely Mr. Joseph Conrad suffered far worse weather, oh my Lord he must have ridden out gales and monsoons and other storms of Biblical proportions and intent, storms on which perhaps through the fog he saw the ghostly outline of Noah’s Ark! As ever, I am afraid that just now my mind only corresponds with itself, though I see my words and touch the paper they are written on, I, who always prided herself on her cursive example. What is now most real to me my dearest sister, is knowledge that this life is not a rehearsal though at times I still believe in an afterlife—I must! Yet if there is an afterlife, I most certainly will not be in Heaven but in that Other Place for my Devil’s work in Halifax against my husband, accident or not no matter. However my life even if plagued by foolish decisions of late is not to be wept over—I am aboard ship, mind and heart striking discordant bells, but still I am on my way to what I set out to do. Someone has just now called down to say New York is five possibly six hours. I slept a moment ago and what came to mind upon waking and why I do not know, the list of visiting churchwomen who traveled up from Halifax with you. Why I should recall their names is quite beyond me, but I recall a Mrs. JT White a Miss AE Silleck and Mrs. H Miles a Miss Irene Couch, a Miss Emily D. Esty, a Mrs. L Weston a Miss Ann Naudzius. All were very pleasant women as I remember them. Their names fairly flew into my head—what desperate entertainment a fever offers. The most love possible for you and my children.

  Marlais Abernathy

  Dearest Mary,

  Please, dear one, be discrete in which details you relate to the children to give the general impression of my good health good spirits and well being and by all means do please be direct in saying that my letters do not in any way betray A FRIGHTFUL PURSUIT. At any rate, Mary, I am arrived to New York. Through Customs, what a curious inspection of body and belongings and quite unpleasant—quite. You have done this from England of course, to and back. I asked a pleasant seeming woman about lodgings, she seemed to know such things, and was advised of a place that fit my circumstances. The room has its modesty. I unpacked and folded out my few clothes bought in Halifax into a dresser drawer. I lay down and slept three hours! The wash room is down to the end of a corridor and is shared. Lying on the bed I heard children’s voices from out on the street and naturally thought of mine. There is steam in the pipes for heat. I lay staring at the ceiling as I have since I was a child. Finally there was a street map to purchase. Later I was back in my room and stared out the window a long time. I am not very far from the docks, and thought My Lord, if Halifax was too much for Alfonse how this place would have done him in! Mary, I have done something I regret and since the confessional mood has struck just now again, here it what it was: Since I do not know a soul here, I was compelled to approach a policeman and in the course of conversation told him “I wanted to be a nurse.” Where oh where had that come from I shall never know. But I said it and he replied, “And where was that, ma’am?” boldly inquiring, I think, if I was a foreigner, to which I replied, “In Nova Scotia,” to which he said, “In Canada, then?” naturally having a policeman’s curiosity as was his nature and obligation. “And you’ve come to visit and see the sights?” Yes, and then I mentioned wanting to see the great Joseph Conrad and he asked, “A relative of yours?” No, no he is the author of great works to which he said Lady, I’m just an Irish cop or something close to that and do I have an address while staying in our city? When I pointed out my lodgings he said, “I’m on my way, then.” Such a thing to say, that I wanted to be a nurse. I never did want that. I simply wished to tell him I’d once had a notion of usefulness of purpose, I suppose. Watching him walk away I felt small. Remember the joke
Alfonse used to tell—oh I so hated it!—a man was a heavy drinker and one night he comes home and falls over in his garden, his wife dresses up in a sheet and comes out to him thinking to scare him something awful. And when this man looks up through his stupor he says Who are you? and she says I’m the Devil! “Shake hands—” he says—” I married your sister!” Now looking back I think he told that joke so often because it was about me, what he most deeply thought of me. I am not feeling perfectly well. I could use sea lilies for this cough. It always works wonders, doesn’t it or teaberry and molasses. I hope it doesn’t move on to pleurisy. It can, you know. That would be just punishment, being struck down by pleurisy—away from home, no serene convalescence for me, your sister. Perhaps homesickness is a real illness not just of the mind. I might well have shouted into the policeman’s face I partook of a moment that killed my husband! What a fine separation from marriage I have made, what a fine example for my children! Whether he knew it or not I am the one Alfonse’s joke was about. He was not a brilliant man, now, was he and not around the house enough to display fatherly talents and attentions—now that certainly is true! But his children loved him and I have helped deprive them of their father. He would not have followed me had I not left and how could it be seen more clearly than that? REMEMBER ME IN PRAYERS. REMEM-BER ME IN PRAYERS, my dearest one. We will be together. I must believe the heart and what it feels is one’s only true provenance, isn’t it, and mine remains with you at home.