How Loveta Got Her Baby

by Nicholas Ruddock

  He walked out of the room and didn’t say a thing. They always talked things out before. She followed him.

  “I can drive you there first thing,” she said.

  “Kiziah, I love you but I am never going back to that place, ever. I am not going to do it.”

  She could hardly breathe.

  “Jesus, Cecil, I’d lie down naked in front of City Hall for a chance for a baby.”

  “Well go ahead, just let me know if you do, I don’t want to be there.”

  He walked out the door. The Honda started up and drove away. It was true, she thought, you didn’t need much acceleration here on Empire Avenue, there was not much of a hill, not much traffic. Puttering around in the Honda was okay most of the time.

  She went upstairs and took her temperature. There was the little spike that showed ovulation. No surprise, she was like clockwork, day thirteen or fourteen of every cycle, pop out came the egg. She could have had a hundred babies by now, with the right sperm. Like the doctor said, her body was A plus-plus. She looked at herself in the mirror.

  Go for it.

  That evening, after a dinner of turkey with dressing and a pie she made herself, she said, “Cecil, I might stay out later than usual tonight.”

  “The card group?”

  “Mary Lou’s.”

  “Sure, honey, go ahead, I got this book to read. Oh, by the way, I made arrangements, I’m trading in the Honda.”

  “You are?”

  “I figured it out, the gas isn’t that great after all.”

  “No?”

  “No. A Mustang, that’s what we’re going to have. By tomorrow”.

  “More pep in one of those, right?”

  “That’s putting it lightly. It’s like a rocket. Pass anything, anywhere. The gas is surprisingly good too. That’s why I thought, I might as well.”

  She went over to him and sat on the arm of his chair. She bent down and kissed the side of his neck.

  “This A plus-plus body of mine, and thus this body of yours, too, Cecil, is, according to scientific measurements, ovulating right now. Time to test out those sperm of yours under ideal conditions. All we need is one little guy, you know, not a hundred million.”

  He kissed her. He slipped his hand under her sweater. They went upstairs to the bedroom and took off all their clothes. They were in a hurry, so full of desire they were. He fell on top of her and entered her and she felt him come in spasms.

  “I think we did it, Cecil.”

  He was still breathing fast.

  “I know we did, I know we did.”

  She wrapped her legs up and around him, holding him inside.

  “Stay in me,” she said. “Remember this date.”

  An hour later, she kissed Cecil again and went out the door for Mary Lou’s. But she didn’t go there, she stopped the Civic just before the corner of Empire Avenue and Rennie’s Mill Road and pulled out her cellphone.

  “Mary Lou? Kiziah. I won’t make it tonight after all. Cecil’s sick, I’m staying home. Call Cindy, she’ll pitch in. Okay? Sorry.”

  Then she drove to Duckworth Street and found a parking spot. She walked down the short steps to George Street. It was ten o’clock by then and the bars were hopping. She walked into one of them, any one would do. She could move on if she had to. She stood at the bar and had one drink and a second one, ten minutes later. Screwdrivers. That’s what she always had at Mary Lou’s. She felt nervous, almost the same as she did in the passing lane with the fog and the cement truck coming her way. But this time she kept her foot down on the gas.

  “One more of these here screwdrivers, please.”

  The man three down from her? About the same build as Cecil, maybe five years younger, by himself. He looked at her. He raised his glass.

  Was this bad for babies, all these drinks of alcohol, these screwdrivers? Don’t think so. Julia’s baby was perfect. Julia said she was loaded the night it happened to her. Couldn’t remember a damn thing. What’s she got now? A lifetime of love.

  The man down the bar came over to her. He touched her shoulder carefully and said something. She couldn’t make it out for some reason, the noise, the music, the chatter, harsh laughter all around them. Get it over, Kiziah.

  She put her hand on the young stranger’s arm, moved her lips up by his ear.

  “Barb,” she shouted, “that’s my name.”

  That was her name for the baby, if it was a girl. Barbara.

  Again he said something, again she couldn’t hear him.

  Undeterred, caution to the wind, she shouted again.

  “You know out the Battery, past the old guns?”

  He looked at her, he nodded. He must have heard her. He bent to her.

  “I know that spot,” he said. “Why?”

  She was getting used to the noise. His voice came through now.

  “There’s a nice patch of grass out there, if you’re game,” she said.

  So that’s how Kiziah Buffett got her baby. Sure, she loved her husband. In fact she loved him so much she took off her rose- coloured glasses, took off her clothes from the waist down and laid back in the wet grass past the old guns. And she never told anybody, never told Cecil, never told Barbara, blotted it out of her mind, and who’s going to condemn her for that?

  No one, not me, that’s for sure.

  the

  steamer

  SHORTLY AFTER CLYDE’S twin sister, that sweet girl, Meta Maud Grandy, left town for Halifax, Aaron Stoodley began to send her letters. He was in love with her but he didn’t know it. He thought he just wanted to talk. As for her, she never gave Aaron Stoodley a thought even when the letters started to roll in. That was because she never got a single one. Each and every letter was steamed open, read and tucked away by the man she’d moved in with. His name was Harold Butts, and he made seventy dollars an hour as a deep-sea diver, and that was more dollars per hour than all the Grandys, put together, ever got. Maybe that turned Meta Maud’s head a bit. He was a good-looking guy, Harold Butts, and when he pulled off his wetsuit he had hair all over his chest. Not like Aaron, who was skinny as a rabbit. Aaron did not write long letters but there was something in them anyway that bothered Harold Butts.

  Dear Meta Maud, Aaron wrote the first time. Things are good here for the most part. Every day I walk up and down Barter’s Hill.Clyde’s doing okay at the bakery so far, I think.

  Aaron.

  The deep-sea diver steamed open that letter with the kettle on low. Meta Maud was asleep upstairs. What could he have thought? That’s no love letter, he must have said to himself. Who’s this Aaron Stoodley anyway? After Harold Butts read it through five times, he sealed up the envelope again using a glue jar and a flat wooden stick that came from a popsicle. Then he went down to the basement, turned on the light, and he put Aaron Stoodley’s first letter away in the dark, deep down inside the oldest diving bag he had. She’d never look there in a million years, she wasn’t the curious type.

  That night, over fish and chips down the street at Al’s, he said to her, “What’s the names of all those friends of yours back home?” He was so casual, he still had food in his mouth. And Meta Maud said to herself, Why that’s nice, he’s never asked much. She could overlook the food. She said, “Well there’s Eunice Cluett who’s my best friend, and Eunice, her friend is Henry, and then there’s Aaron Stoodley.” “What’s he like?” said Harold Butts. “Who, Aaron?” said Meta Maud, “he’s just Aaron, he’s nice, makes you laugh. That’s all.”

  Dear Meta Maud, he wrote the second time. Things are good here. There’s lots of rain, which is no big surprise. Clyde’s first paycheck, he’s happy. There’s a waterpipe broken on Barter’s Hill, it made a real mess downtown. You’d have to wear your boots to keep dry.

  Aaron.

  Now what did Aaron Stoodley mean by that? Aaron didn’t know and neither did Harold Butts, who read it. But if you knew Aaron better than either of them did, that’s a love letter for sure. Barter’s Hill was the road he walked on
with Meta Maud Grandy every day, down to where she worked. Nights he’d meet her again, walk her back up the hill no matter when. Just friends they were, and Aaron said he liked the workout. They’d talk up and down the hill, mostly about Clyde. He sure had problems, Clyde did. Aaron never wrote one letter to Meta Maud without putting in it, somewhere at least, Barter’s Hill, and Clyde.

  Harold Butts steamed this second one open too and read it five times. Whoever this Aaron was, the letters didn’t make much sense. Sure wasn’t longwinded. He never said I love you lots, or Your passionate friend, or Miss you. There was nothing there like that, flat-out nothing at all. Harold knew who Clyde was, he didn’t worry a second about Clyde, her no-good brother, the twin who couldn’t do much. The deep-sea diver went down to the basement and put the second letter into the same bag. Those letters to Meta Maud, they cozied up in the dark against the picture magazines he had hidden in there. No harm to that, everybody had their magazines. Anyway, lucky for him, he had the kettle trick down pat, kept it on low and real quiet. Got real slick at it. Meta Maud, why he liked her lots. She read books, she talked up a storm, she made friends easy.

  Dear Meta Maud Grandy, this was Aaron’s third letter. I hope you don’t mind these, all the letters. Everything’s still fine and dandy here. Eunice and Henry, they’re fine, they don’t know I’ve taken my pen in hand. They’d laugh. No letters from you but don’t worry, one-way’s fine. Clyde’s okay at the bakery, but they’ve moved him down near the coffee machine. That might be a mistake. I’ll walk him down to work, remind him what we said about the job he blew, back at Tim’s, with the coffee. Hey Meta Maud, Barter’s Hill looks the same, still up one way and down the other.

  Harold Butts put the kettle on low again. That way, the whistle never came on and wouldn’t wake her up but what the heck, she slept deep anyway, you could shout and dance most of the time. Then he steamed open the envelope. First he laid the steam at one edge and moved along. The hard part was by the stamp. If there was too much steam put there, the stamp crinkled up and you could tell. Thirty seconds was all it took, he was fast. He wondered what the world record was, anyway, for steaming letters on the sly. Then he laughed at that and thought to himself, Never see that one in the Guinness Book.

  Then, after he read through the whole thing, it didn’t take long, he thought, that silly Clyde Grandy? Hopeless case, you ask me. Why bother writing about a loser like that? Worst thing about the letters, it was boring. Hey wait a minute, wait a minute, maybe they’re after pulling a fast one here, maybe there’s a secret message. Yours, that was new. He didn’t like that. Maybe there’s a K-I-S-S-E-S or a S-E-X in there, only she could see. The first letter in each word maybe, check it out. Harold laid the letter from the retard flat out and looked for clues. Then oh my, he heard the bed creak upstairs and there were footsteps. “Hi there, honey, the kettle’s on, you’re up too early, go on back to bed, you need your sleep, there’s nothing here, I just got the bills.”

  Jeez, that was close I must say. Always have a spare tank Harold, when you go down deep like that. There’s no buddies down here. Now. There we go, take the first letter each line. He picked up his pen with the purple ink and he circled the first letter in every line and he did that to all the old letters too. Now at least they looked good, full of colour.

  Twenty minutes later Harold Butts gave up. There was no secret message. No darlings, no kisses that he could find, and the way that Aaron Stoodley wrote, he was like a simpleton with no brains. Like that twin brother of hers, that Clyde, they made a fine pair. Down he went to the basement and put the third letter in the dark bag. He was a fox all right, he was a deep-sea diver and there was no telling how far down he could go. That’s what he thought to himself on the way back upstairs.

  Dear Meta Maud (letter number four) I don’t know about your brother now. Down the hill I went to the bakery, and there was Clyde making coffee. He had the sweat popped out all over him. Then he poured all the coffee out at once, all of it down the drain. Right away, he made a new pot. It was like at Tim’s all over again. He looked around, down the drain it went, surreptitiously. I was the only one who saw it, I’m pretty sure. Then he made up a third pot right away.That’s no good for Clyde. He hasn’t overcome that fixation of his. They find out, he’s gone. Maybe answer me this time please, Meta Maud.

  Best as always,

  Yours,

  Aaron.

  Fat chance she’d ever answer, thought Harold Butts.

  Three weeks later, he and Meta Maud went out to The Keg.

  They had a special dinner for what they called their two-month anniversary. By then he must have had twenty letters from Aaron Stoodley, all of them sequestered in the diving bag. That night at The Keg, he had a lot more wine than he was used to, but what the heck, she had the keys to the car, she could be the driver. Steak and baked potatoes and after that it was apple pie. What a time they had. “Remember the dance we met,” he said, “you was so shy back then.” And Meta Maud smiled and agreed and then the waitress came by and she said, “You folks want coffee?” and Harold laughed and said to Meta Maud, “Hey, honey, why not? Maybe your crazy brother Clyde fixed it up.” And Meta Maud said, “Fixed what up? What did Clyde fix up?” “The coffee, the coffee,” he said with a big laugh, “Clyde fixed up the coffee!” So Meta Maud laughed, sort of, and they drove home and at 2 a.m. she woke up with a chill in the middle of her heart and said, “Whoa, wait a minute, I never said anything at all to Harold about Clyde and coffee. Where’d he get that idea from?” “Harold,” she said, “wake up. Harold, where’d you get that about Clyde and coffee?” He was half-asleep. “You told me, you told me about the coffee. Meta Maud, go back to sleep.” So she did go back to sleep, and in the morning, first thing, she poured the orange juice for him and off he went down to the harbour. “Some big steel rods fell off the barge,” he said, “seventy dollars an hour for me. What’s twelve times seventy? See you in eight hundred and forty dollars.” Off he went and Meta Maud Grandy sat there. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell, she thought. Then: let’s figure it out. Phone home.

  Back on Fitzpatrick Avenue, Eunice Cluett and Henry Fiander were already in a bit of a funk when they heard the phone ring. The problem Eunice and Henry had, and they’d had it for some time, was none other than Aaron Stoodley himself, and the problem with Aaron Stoodley was that he’d turned into a zombie. Always on the couch. He lay there like a washed-up giant squid. Every time they walked by, they had to say, “Move those tentacles please, move those tentacles.” Then he’d shift a bit but otherwise, when they said, “What’s wrong with you, Aaron Stoodley?” he couldn’t seem to muster up an answer. He seemed to have no strength. This was a big change, because up till then he was a house on fire all the time. More likely they had to say, “Close the damper down some, Aaron, you’ll wear out like one of those supernovas.” Now, with Meta Maud gone a couple months or more, there he was, a zombie on the couch. Paralyzed. They had no idea that he’d sent twenty letters off to Meta Maud, and received none back at all.

  The phone rang.

  “Get the phone, Aaron, please,” said Eunice.

  She had Queenie in her lap, and a book.

  “I can’t. I’m de-oxygenated.”

  That was the word he used for the disease he figured he had, the one that made him tired all the time. A big medical book lay on the floor by the couch, and when Henry picked it up one day, it fell open to the page that said Leukemia. “This what you got?” he asked Aaron. “That’s it, I got it all.” Henry read a bit more and said, “You got loss of appetite, weight loss, sweats in the night and chest pains?” To that Aaron said, “I don’t have every single one of those, Henry, but I got most of them. And I’m deoxygenated. My oxygen bubbles are way too few. My muscles are thus starved of life-giving oxygen. It’s leukemia, I’m almost sure.” Then Eunice went over to the couch and snapped up the book from the dying man. She leafed through it a bit, gave it back and said, “Aaron, read this, right here. Where it
says Depression.” “Depression?” “That’s what you got, you poor guy, but that’s all you got. You’re pining away. I’ve seen it lots of times. Jump up and live.”

  But he lay on the couch anyway, he didn’t believe her.

  Eunice put Queenie down and ran for the phone herself.

  “Hello,” she said, and then she laughed out loud. “Why girl, you fell off the earth.”

  Then Eunice was real quiet, listening.

  Finally she said, “Things aren’t so good here right now, Meta Maud. Clyde’s gone and messed up and lost the job at the bakery. Aaron’s dying on the couch. Otherwise, we’re fine and dandy.”

  Aaron Stoodley stood up.

  “Talk to Aaron, though. He’s right here. He’s the one who really knows about Clyde. He kept an eye on him, for all the good it did.”

  She held the phone up in the air like it was a prize and waved it and said, “Aaron, oh Aaron, it’s Miss Meta Maud Grandy all the way from the big city of Halifax, just for you.”

  All of a sudden the man with the fatal De-oxygenating Leukemia Disease jumped up from the couch and came into the kitchen and took the phone from Eunice Cluett.

  “Meta Maud? It’s you?”

  He was so weak from Leukemia that his hand and his voice trembled.

  “It’s me all right. Aaron, what’s up with Clyde?”

  “He didn’t make it, Meta Maud, he didn’t pull it off.”

  “The coffee again?”

  “That’s it. Fixated on making it. It’d be laughable under other circumstances.”

  “Aaron, you should’ve let me know, we probably could have done something.”

  “I wrote you the letters, Meta Maud. There was nothing else I could do.”

  “Letters?”

  “Twenty letters.”

  “You did? That was sweet of you. But I didn’t get any.”

  They checked the address and there was no mistake there.

  “Well, we’ll deal with that later,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”