How Loveta Got Her Baby

by Nicholas Ruddock

  “Simple enough. The first few days Clyde was fine. He made the coffee right, he walked away. He swept up the floor. He cut the bread. He tied on the little tags for the jam. Just like we showed him. But then he started to watch the coffee all the time, a bad omen. Like he did at Tim’s. I warned him over and over. But you know Clyde, he’s weird now and then. That was it.”

  “That was it?”

  “Pretty much. One day he made twenty pots of coffee five minutes apart, pouring most of it down the drain, when he thought no one was looking.”

  “He did that on purpose.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He didn’t want that job.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know what we can do.”

  “It’s nice to hear your voice, Meta Maud.”

  “He still seeing the doughnut girl?”

  “Yes he is. That’s going fine. How’s your diver, Meta Maud?”

  Aaron knew she had a deep-sea diver now because, in the one post card Meta Maud sent to Eunice, she said so. It wasn’t easy to ask.

  “I’m not so sure about him, the diver,” she said.

  Then Meta Maud, before she hung up the phone, said something like, “It’s nice to talk to you again, Aaron Stoodley.”

  That’s what he remembered of the phone call.

  “You sent Meta Maud Grandy letters, Aaron Stoodley, you fox, all behind our back?” asked Eunice.

  “Someone had to keep her up to date. But she didn’t get them.”

  “My, who’s in love with who, I wonder now,” said Eunice.

  She said it real softly so no one could hear, but later on that day, when they were all alone, she said to Henry Fiander, “Aaron’s in love.”

  “Meta Maud?”

  “That’s the one. He’s been sending her letters, and he can’t breathe or move when she’s away.”

  “Too bad he’s got the fatal De-oxygenating Leukemia Disease, beyond the help of doctors. That’s bad timing for him.”

  “You saw him run out of here after that phone call?”

  “I did, he had his tentacles going in the right direction, for the first time in weeks.”

  “Oxygenated. I tell you, he’s cured by a miracle.”

  After she hung up the phone, Meta Maud Grandy sat there at the kitchen table in Halifax. Nice condo they had, that’s for sure. Harold Butts, he was gone for the full twelve-hour shift. He was probably, right now, pulling on the wetsuit and putting on the big helmet before he pushed off backwards, off the Zodiac. She’d watched him do it. Down he went with the big chains. He said you could hardly see down there, in the murk of the harbour. That’s what he called it, the murk of the harbour. “Like going down into a dark basement, honey, you can’t see zip down there. Mostly you hear yourself breathe in and out, and you feel your way around a lot with the gloves, they’re big and thick.” Apparently, they lowered lights down there to penetrate the murk of the harbour. Hours, it took hours to wrap the chains on whatever they had to pull up, to do it right. Today it was iron bars. You had to be a certain kind to do that, and that’s why they paid him so well.

  “Ha-ha-ha,” that’s what she remembered, the night before at The Keg.

  “Ha-ha-ha.”

  The way he laughed out loud.

  “Maybe it was your twin brother, Meta Maud, maybe it was your Clyde made the coffee. Hey, I’ll have some of that coffee, sweetie.”

  And that was the waitress he talked to when he said that, when he said sweetie. Only one way he could have known about Clyde and coffee; he must have read the letters that were meant for her. What did he do then, burn them up? What was he? Some kind of creep like on TV? What did she know, she was only eighteen years old. Hair all over his chest, so what, screw him, she thought.

  Well what the hell, Mister Harold Butts? Gone twelve hours now, that’s for sure. Where are the letters? Gone for good? He kicked around a lot in the basement. She could do that, she could dive down, rattle some chains, and penetrate the murk of the harbour of the creep. Might find what he called zip, might find lots, you never knew.

  She got up and she flicked on the cellar light and down she went, clump-clump, she heard her own footsteps in the quiet, dead as night. There wasn’t much down there. “This won’t take long, Meta Maud,” she said.

  Over there, a set of golf clubs, over there, the bags she brought from home. Then there was a set of filing cabinets, and in the far corner a loose pile of bags—sports bags and luggage bags and diving bags all in a clump. The filing cabinet was empty. All it did was wobble and creak. Goldilocks, I’m like her. What now? The bags, the diving bags of Mr. Deep-sea Diver, that’s next, so she moved them with her foot and what do you know, one of those bags was full. This one here, buried at the bottom of the pile. She picked it up and loosened the thin rope that kept it closed at one end, and she put her hand inside. Well, Goldilocks, let’s go upstairs with the evidence. Clump-clump, up into the morning light she went, and two miles away, Mister Harold Butts adjusted his mouthpiece. Time for the very first dive on what looked like the finest kind of day.

  First thing she did, Meta Maud, was to pour herself some orange juice in a glass, and then she emptied out the diving bag, all of it, onto the kitchen table. Then she sat down and looked. Naked magazines, he had plenty of those all right. They made up most of the weight of the bag. But then there was a pack of letters tied up with a big elastic, the kind of elastic you get on the mail sometime.

  Let’s see.

  Sure enough, the little packet, and every envelope was the same. It said on the top left corner, From Mister Aaron Stoodley, 7 Fitzpatrick Avenue, St. John’s, Newfoundland. There you go, judge and jury, guilty as sin. The twenty letters, why, it looked like they’d never been opened. That made no sense. She took a closer look; the edges of the envelopes were all smeared with glue. She put her hand down farther into the diving bag and felt around and out she came with a small glue jar. Elmer’s Glue, like they used to have in kindergarten. Whatever made him do this? He’d gone and piled up the letters meant for her, smack up against his dirty magazines. You want to stay with a man like that, Meta Maud? Someone who opened your mail? Someone who glued it up again? She took her letters and examined them; they were all numbered in purple ink on the outside of the envelopes. That’s his work, he owned a whole slew of those coloured pens. “These never leak,” he’d said. She opened one of the envelopes at random. Even more weird, he’d gone and circled the first letter of every line with his purple ink pen. Then he’d made a list of all those single letters, trying to make up words, as though solving a puzzle. He’s looking for secret messages. My God.

  Meta Maud had all day, she had no classes till late afternoon. Down in the harbour, he might be up by now, off the air tanks. “Never stay down too long, that’s the secret,” he said. Not the only secret he’s got, apparently. Make your own secrets, Harold Butts, instead of stealing mine.

  She read the letters one by one, in order.

  The last one: Dear Meta Maud, Clyde’s home three weeks now with nothing on the horizon. We’re wracking our brains, and that’s not easy. We need you, Meta Maud, to give us a call. We need to pick your brain. We need to find a solution to this vexing situation.

  Yours from Barter’s Hill, half-way up or half-way down, take your pick,

  Aaron.

  Next thing Meta Maud did was to pick up an ordinary pen and she wrote a letter. She started it off to herself. Dear Meta Maud, it said, and she wrote it pretty fast. She was good with words, she was smart that way. All the Grandys had brains, even Clyde had brains. For Clyde they didn’t fire off right, yet, but she knew they would. When she finished, she phoned up Eunice Cluett.

  “How’s Aaron? He’s not dying anymore, he’s oxygenated again? That’s good, let me speak to him.”

  “This is Aaron Stoodley.”

  “Aaron?”

  “Meta Maud. It’s you.”

  “Aaron, I’m sending you a letter at last, but it’s to me.”

/>   “To you?”

  “To me.”

  “I don’t get it. That makes no sense.”

  “You’ll see. What you do is this. When you get my letter, copy it out in your own handwriting. Each line exactly the same, even the start of each line the same. Exactly, but in your hand. Then you mail it back to me the same day. End it up with this: Your lover, Aaron Stoodley. You got it?”

  “Your lover? Did I hear you say that, Meta Maud?”

  “That’s what we’re going to write.”

  “Your lover. I’m not your lover.”

  “Just copy it out and send it back, the same day.”

  Then Meta Maud Grandy went downstairs into the basement and put the letters and the magazines back into the diving bag. She found her suitcase and took it upstairs and packed up everything she had and called a cab. Then she phoned up her old friend from school, Germaine, and she said, “Germaine, I’m staying with you a few days?” and Germaine said, “Sure.” She didn’t ask why.

  Then Meta Maud Grandy walked out on Harold Butts and never left a note. Nothing.

  Three days later, Harold Butts still couldn’t figure it out. He’d come home after a real fine day and she was gone. Like she was never there, ever, and the condo was back just the way he had it before. The first thing he did, he went down into the basement and there were the letters and the magazines, still in the bag. She never found them then, that was good. The next day, he phoned in sick for the first time in ten years. To hell with them, he had plenty of sick pay coming. “Touch of the flu,” he said. “You sure? We’re shorthanded.” “Try throwing up in your regulator, that’s no fun.” “Okay, Harold, see you when you’re better.” He was the best man they had there underwater, he knew that, he could do whatever he liked. Then he sat there for three days staring at the walls and the mailman came by and dropped a letter in the box. When he picked the letter up, it was for her, from that same loser. To hell with the kettle, he ripped the letter open with his fingers.

  The letter said,

  Dear Meta Maud, how fine to hear

  a voice that’s

  really you on the phone, the

  lovely times we had

  in English Harbour, the

  night sky, the lightning bugs, the

  ghosts in the shadows, the walks on

  Gower Street and Barter’s Hill

  I’m the man for you

  remember me the way it was. Your

  lover, Aaron Stoodley.

  He took out his purple pen and circled the first letter of each line.

  Darling girl.

  She knew Harold Butts’d figure it out. He’d get the bends from it, the sweetness sliding through him in the kitchen. It was the last thing he’d ever steal from her, this letter.

  She felt strong, like now she was the one breathing pure oxygen.

  clothes-

  pin

  I KNOW YOU’LL never think of me again but as this shy boy, smitten, a mote, brush-me-away as ordinary as a picket fence, as long grass, and you can easily forget the wedding where, by forced circumstance, you danced with me, incongruous, our ages risible; I was nothing but a clothespin on your dress, a dragonfly, harmless and ornamental, as inconspicuous then as now, when, within another crowd, you take your last walk down to the boat bound for Halifax, your body angulated by the suitcase, hand-me-down, your new shoes dusted up in gravel, your last wave dispensed to all, and the small boats in the harbour, disused, orchestrated now by a shimmer of breeze, swing upon their tethers, and the canted hills bend seaward, bruised, protective, so concerned to see you go.

  the

  eye

  CYRIL SAVOURY WAS born with one weak eye. It was the left one and it wandered out the same way, to the left, drifting.

  “What a fine baby,” they all said. “But what about that eye, Rosetta, what’s that about?”

  In answer to that particular question, Rosetta said, “Well, I guess that’s just Cyril’s eye, that’s the way it is.”

  No one could comment with any certainty on the genetic contribution—to the wandering eye—made by Cyril’s father, because he’d only been in town once, for two weeks, and then he was mysteriously gone.

  “I remember,” said somebody, “he had brown hair, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t remember,” said somebody else, “but this baby of Rosetta’s, he’s either got dark hair or he’s bald.”

  Rosetta was out of the room when they were talking.

  “Rub your hand on there,” one of them said, “on top of his little head, you’ll feel frizz—watch out for the soft spot—but look, there’s some dark hair down there, on the nape of his neck. Five fingers, five toes, everything else you need.”

  Then Rosetta came back into the room and they said, “Too bad about the eye, Rosetta, but it doesn’t matter because otherwise, but for the one eye, that’s some cute baby.”

  When she put on the knitted baby hat, the thrum cap—the one she got from her aunt—when she put it on Cyril, it made his eye look worse. How could that be?

  She took the cap off and she held him up by the armpits like all her relatives did, like they did with all babies, and she turned him this way and that, and spun him around, and he really looked fine— especially if she turned him just far enough that she could see only one of his eyes at a time. Then he was perfect. But when she tied Cyril’s new hat back on, using the strings provided, the weak eye jumped out at her like an arrow to the heart. His eyes, the hat, they were the same blue colour. Maybe that was it, they reflected back upon each other, magnifying the problem. Forget wearing hats at all, she figured. So she let him go through the early months bare-headed, unless they went outside in the bitter cold.

  Tell the truth, she was a bit torn up by the eye. There was a tight feeling in her throat that came and went of its own accord. Everybody wants everything perfect all the time, and I guess I’m like that, she thought. Then, when he was ten weeks old and he started to smile with pleasure, and gurgle and laugh, she almost forgot about the eye. She didn’t look at it, or it became such an accustomed part of what she saw, day in and day out, that she hardly noticed it anymore, when they were alone. But everybody else noticed it.

  “Kootchee-kootchee-koo,” they said to Cyril, chuckling him under the chin, but as they chuckled, they looked at his eye and wondered how Cyril would do in life, how he’d get along with an eye like that, one that wandered out into left field with a mind of its own.

  They took him to St. John’s to see the specialist. To do that, they had to take the coastal boat and then the taxi from Terrenceville. Her mother and father came along for the ride to help her out, the three of them together with the little bundle that was Cyril. They took turns holding him, and, for a baby, he seemed to like the trip. He looked around in his own fashion. He was easy-going all the time, and, naturally, they wondered what he saw.

  “Maybe he sees as much as we do,” Rosetta said, “maybe even twice as much.”

  “Maybe he sees less,” said her father, “or the same amount as we do, but blurred. You know, if you leave the eye like that, it goes blind.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Rosetta’s mother, “that’s why we’re here in this taxi. Rosetta, let me hold the baby now.”

  They stayed overnight in a rooming-house downtown, and early the next morning they went to the doctor’s office. All three of them got to go in with the baby.

  “Hi there, Cyril Savoury,” said the doctor, but then he introduced himself to Rosetta and her parents and shook their hands, one by one, looking at each one of them directly in the eye. As though that was part of his examination. To Rosetta, he looked to be as old as her grandfather. That’s good, she thought, here’s a doctor who in his lifetime has seen a lot, so he’ll know what to do.

  “Put the baby down there, on the examining table,” he said.

  Then the doctor left the room and a nurse put drops in Cyril’s eyes and Cyril cried for five or ten seconds and the nurse said, “Let’s wait fifte
en minutes now, so those eyedrops, they have time to work, okay?”

  “Okay,” they all said at once, all three of them.

  They waited and finally the doctor came back and loomed over the baby with his light. Cyril squirmed away but didn’t say anything, or cry anymore, even though the old doctor was bent over close enough that their cheeks touched. Then the doctor wiggled his fingers in front of Cyril’s face. He picked the baby up and rotated him back and forth, just like Rosetta had done when he was wearing the blue thrum cap. Then he gave him back to Rosetta.

  “That’s a well-behaved little boy you got there, you’re doing something right, with this boy.”

  “Well,” said Rosetta’s mother, “thank you, he is a good boy, but what about the eye?”

  “There should be no surgery for an eye like this,” the doctor said, “not at this age. You could do a lot more harm than good. The best thing for him, for this boy, is the patch, the pirate’s patch.”

  “The pirate’s patch?” Rosetta asked, “what’s that?”

  “It’s a shaped piece of dark cloth, that’s all. We cover up the right eye, the good one, with it. It’s black, it blocks out the light. You leave the patch on, Miss Savoury, over the good eye, half the day every day, and during that time the left eye, the lazy eye, it’s on its own, it’s forced to do all the work. It tracks you round the room, it sees the trees, the birds, the spoon, the bottle. That way, it learns to see on its own and it does not go blind.”

  “Oh Doctor,” Rosetta’s mother said, “that’s such good news.”

  Rosetta’s mother had tears rolling down her cheeks, as though she were alone in the room, as though she had no shame at all, to be displaying such emotion in front of strangers.

  “Where do we get the patches from?” Rosetta asked the nurse, after the doctor shook their hands again, formally, and bowed and left the room.

  “Why, we’ll give you some, we got lots and lots.”

  She went over to a drawer and opened it and inside were hundreds of little black patches stacked into each other, like Dixie cups.