Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  Somehow Lucy wrestles open the window; a crack is as far as it’ll go, enough to admit the noise of cars and ships in the harbour, that drone of horns and engines. If God had a sound, she wonders, would this be it? Glancing off nearby buildings, the sun slants in, and across the bluer-than-blue sky a jet paints a path like paint from a roller. It does no good at all to cry; what would crying accomplish? Closing her eyes, she times her breathing with the respirator’s, that forced rise and fall, in and out; a balloon being blown up and leaking, till each of her breaths is oxygen gulped inside an airtight vault.

  There’s a whoosh of white, a fresh hand touching her arm. It’s Doctor Sheridan, the resident, he reminds her, saying he’s glad she’s here; there are things they have to discuss, decisions they’ll have to make. In surprisingly short order, Jewel and Rebecca arrive; they’ve even got Robert—who knows where and how they’ve found him so quickly. No one says anything about too many visitors.

  They gather silently around Harry’s bed; in her mind at least they all hold hands—she and Jewel, Rebecca and Robert. As if it’s a wake, or a seance, as Rebecca blurts out, blinking at the ceiling. And yet, from somewhere, part of her can almost hear Harry yelling at them to cut the gag, and come off it. “Good heavens,” she hears herself, her own voice farther away. Tears blurring the room. “If he comes to, he’ll think he’s dying. Look at us,” she tries to joke, “he’ll swear he’s a goner.”

  Rebecca rubs her shoulder so hard it hurts. Robert taps his foot as if to some frantic rhythm, Jewel looking stricken. Then, out of a daze, she realizes that he’s set up a tape deck of all things, a boxy contraption with reels rooted out from who knows where. He stabs at the buttons, and squirrelly squeaks and chatters burst forth, followed by shouting and music. Fiddle and accordion, a kitchen party someone’s recorded, with so much background racket she can’t make out the tunes.

  “Edgar Boutilier had the stuff kicking around his place,” Rebecca explains, as if it’s important. “A good blast of ’cordine,” she whispers with determination, “if that doesn’t get his blood pumping…” Her eyes jump and she swipes at them, making a soup of her blue mascara.

  “Shut up, Ma.” Robert’s attempt at being funny, or respectful, or whatever it is, falls flat, his Adam’s apple squirming in his throat.

  “Don’t talk to your ma like that,” his dad snarls, and Rebecca swats the air around her head as if shooing black flies, just as a nurse appears. She checks Harry’s pulse, takes his temperature, then tries to straighten the plastic snake poked into his mouth. It’s tied into place with gauze, as if he might try to pull it out. The nurse’s eyebrows remind Lucy of tiny, hovering wisps of cloud as she glances around at them all with a busy sort of sympathy, then rustles off.

  Spending no time on niceties besides how-do-you-do, the doctor tells them quietly that brain damage is to be expected. “It all depends…how…well…without the ventilator…” His voice too reminds her of clouds.

  “You mean he could stop breathing,” Jewel blurts, making a sound like wind scrubbing branches. The same wind tugging at Lucy, laying everything bare.

  “His feeding too; it’s all being done intravenously,” the doctor explains, his hesitation filling the room; if his voice had a colour, she thinks, it would be the shade of watery juice. Hunched there as if nursing a cramp, Robert taps his foot faster, if that’s possible, bouncing his knee. “If he does survive,” says the doctor, “you’re looking at a nursing home.”

  How can he say this? The insult, his presumption! “Doctor—” she hears herself plead, her haughtiness a shock. Saying she’ll feed him at home, of course. Breathe for him, too, for pity’s sake, if it comes to that. Her mind races, and suddenly her chest could burst, her heart pounds so. A world without Harry, one where even the bad wind forgets to blow. Looking tall and uncomfortable, a skeleton maybe, or just molecules of air or water inside that crisp white coat, Doctor Sheridan gazes at his well-groomed hands. He smiles around grimly, nodding, and then, exactly like a white Mr. Freeze or a Popsicle melting, evaporates from the room, quietly, invisibly, slipping out.

  “Ma,” Jewel murmurs aimlessly, sitting there, his jaw set. As her mind casts about for something, anything to hook itself to, she wonders when he last shaved. The lump in her throat could be a marble or Plasticine, yet they’re all looking at her as if she has the power to fix things. “Rebecca, dear,” she hears herself. “Please stop crying.” Reaching across her, she strains to pat Robert’s knee, the first in a tower of necessities, it seems, in putting back together what the doctor has wiped out. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, she thinks wildly. The boy’s skin shows through his frayed jeans; its warmth jars her. A thudding in her ears, she takes the five dollar bill out of her purse, tells him to get himself something. A burger. That amount would buy five; it doesn’t matter, though naturally Rebecca picks up on it.

  “What do you say, Bucky? Remember, Gran’s fence.” But the gift of gab fails even her, and Lucy lets it go, Robert’s awful nickname. Like the money, she gives it over to the room’s silence.

  Facing the window, she waves them all off, needing solitude: can’t they allow her that, a tiny opening to breathe? Slowly they file out, but not till each has murmured something to Harry, their muted goodbyes like ones on TV. Only when the room’s empty is it safe to turn. Goodbye, my darling. Au rev-war.

  She finds Jewel and Rebecca pacing in the dim little lounge several doors down the hall. Mutely Jewel takes her by the arm. Outside, they wedge her between them in the front seat, as if she is a child, or might try to do something silly like jumping out.

  “Where’s Robert?” she asks before they drive off. Rebecca rolls her eyes, beautifully liquid in the dim interior; movie star eyes with all that makeup, never mind how it’s run.

  “Oh, God,” she sighs, saying he couldn’t wait, and something about a girl that’s been hanging around him.

  “Jesus Murphy,” Jewel swears, as if it’s medicine. “Only a kid could think of that at a time like this.”

  Leaning forward to elbow him, Rebecca bumps her instead. “Life goes on,” she hears herself warble.

  “That’s Buck’s reaction, anyways,” Jewel says, but his sigh means baloney, or as Harry himself would thunder, Whatta loada buffalo crap.

  MAYBE IDA’S TEA LEAF-READING HAD bolstered her; more likely it was nerves fed by despair. Off she stormed anyway; she’d give Harry what-for, him chasing sin like a dog after steak. Then again, hadn’t the priest called despair a sin and of the worst kind, a failure of faith? So why go to the neighbours? If despair was a sin she had bags of it, if sin was what Harry wanted. Store up for yourself not the treasures of earth, but of heaven. Either way, despair—self-pity?—made her greedy for something, Jewel squirming in her arms as she banged on the door. Eventually Lil had appeared, sloe-eyed, dazed, and dressed in a velvet robe. Lucy didn’t beat around the bush: if Harry was there, send him out! Scowling, Lil shushed her, saying they were busy dealing, for chrissake. As if they hadn’t had their fill of poker the night before.

  Surprising herself, Lucy’d pushed her way in. The house was a disaster; nobody’d thought to clear out the bottles. Dangling from the antlers of the buck’s head on the wall was Harry’s cap, lipstick fresh as blood on the poor critter’s mouth. Passing a flask, Harry and his friend stopped talking, Artie leering up. As evenly as could be, she’d said dinner was on and he’d best come home. But the liquor had already started to work: Lily had invited him, and it’d be rude to scoot, and in front of everybody he’d boomed, “Haven’t I done my duty, while you gallivanted off to—” Mass, Lil tittered. But then his voice had warmed—slightly, though how could she trust it? “Can’t you see, dolly? We’re conducting business.” Then Lil had sniffed at the air, saying she smelled something burning, maybe next door, and if Lucy wasn’t so jeezly busy she’d have invited her, too. She’d even batted her eyelids, and not a hint of anything cooking on her filthy sto
ve.

  Jewel had started squalling. “Suit yourself then,” she’d jeered at Harry, hoping no one saw her tremble. Later, if she could’ve locked him out, she would’ve. “You’re such a killjoy,” he accused, shouting as Jewel napped. Bad enough that she couldn’t let go, he said, but she expected him to go down with her! “You’re dead a long time, girly,” he yelled, saying he aimed to enjoy things while he was able. “Frig knows what’d blow in tomorrow”—he wasn’t wasting it being on his knees, whatever the frig she’d have him doing! His liquored talk worse than a case of the back-door trots, on and on: “You wanna mope around, chasing wild geese with your nose up your backside, well, go right ahead—” He flopped down so hard the chair under him gave out, and he blamed her for that too. Then she’d shot back, “’Magine, someone so hopeless having that effect on you. Lord knows what Lil gets you up to!” Pounding the mat, he’d said to leave Lil out of it, hollering that there wasn’t a thing about Lil she needed to know. So, the gloves off, she’d demanded to know about his winnings, or were they losses? But he’d just sneered, “Wouldn’t you love to know.”

  AFTER THAT, THE LONELINESS JUST deepened, a mossy well to be climbed out of. Harry wasn’t much of a ladder. But, like a rope being dangled, didn’t despair offer the nugget of hope that came with having little more than a pinch of coon shit to lose, as Artie said?

  While Harry shaved for work, she’d pictured that strange man—the prisoner—foraging under the trees. If Harry could squander hard-earned money, it wasn’t a stretch to offer thanks, charity. Hunger was hunger; Kraut or not, hadn’t he plucked her that day from temptation, the ether of forgetting? Give us this day our daily bread. Throwing kippers and canned milk into a bag, she pocketed a spoon. It would do as a trowel for digging up lilies, and though not a fork or slingshot, would be better than nothing if the fellow came near.

  With Jewel’s weight pressed against her, she hurried past Ida’s, skirting the anchor. The orchard was dotted with starlings, crows screaming from the woods. Intending to leave the bag in a tree, safe from rats, instead she’d circled to the barn.

  Jewel pummeled her with his heels, when there was a scurrying—squirrels?—and a pair of eyes flashed above a rusted rain barrel, watching. Dropping the bag, she’d fled, but not before spotting a boot, filthy toes where the leather gaped. Jewel’s bellow like the whine of a torpedo trailing them through the woods.

  DAYS LATER SHE’D UNCOVERED HARRY’S old boots, the ones he’d had on when the soldiers dug him from the rubble. Lord knows why he’d saved them; the kindness of strangers had outfitted the homeless, and not just with south end hand-me-downs. She poked a tin of kippers into each boot, then stuck both on fence-posts. They were gone the next day when she took more milk and an old shirt of Harry’s, hanging it from a picket.

  For people left with nothing, there seemed no end to the stuff piling up in the cabin. Stuff Harry wangled or had palmed off on him by his new friends—in lieu of cash, for all she knew, those evenings next door. Drink turned him into a pack rat. “Easy come, easy go,” he’d say, “but you can’t take it with you.” Why would he want to? Sometimes it was hard being civil. But a week’s charity reduced the pile.

  “You meant business!” he’d slurred, trying to be funny. And then, “Good on you, since we’ll want to start fresh.” Fresh? He’d been thinking, he said. Thinking? Come spring, of breaking ground. You’re talking through your hat: it took every ounce of strength not to say it. But to his credit, he never asked where all his stuff went, and that week the war ended, out of the blue a halt. The eleventh hour, day and month. If it was that easy, why not sooner?

  There were cheers from the prison. Harry drank himself sick. Disgusted, she’d threatened to leave if he went off the deep end like that again; so fast, she said, even Artie’s head would spin. “As if I’d care,” he moaned, as if ducking bullets. She’d gone right on pumping water—water, in a place where drink was more plentiful, though the whole country was supposed to be dry. In the Grounds it rained liquor. And where exactly would you go, dolly?

  While he was at work, juggling Jewel, she took his good blue shirt off its hanger and up by the Big House tried tying it to the fence. Not easy, with the wind ripping fit to tear off shingles. With a ripple of guilt she’d imagined Harry rooting around, wanting to know where she’d put it, but she’d let the gusts push her towards the barn anyway. Brazenly she’d knocked.

  PULLING OUT OF THE HOSPITAL lot, Jewel slams on the brakes for a pedestrian who’s already made it to the curb. It’s hardly enough to cause whiplash, but Rebecca grips Lucy’s arm protectively, those nails digging in. “What’re you doing, hon?” she goads him. At a time like this! Squeezed there between them, Lucy thinks distractedly of deals, bargains. Daring herself, daring someone: God? If she can just have Harry back, even if only half the way he was, a slab of himself…

  As Rebecca adjusts her skirt, fluffs her hair, a memory stirs itself: she and Ethel when they were little, playing Queenie Queenie, who’s got the ball? And that other game. Knock-off Ginger. All the way down the street, rapping on neighbours’ doors, then hiding around corners and behind bushes. Dare you, double dare you, sissy.

  BRACED FOR HIS SHUFFLING, SHE’D waited. The barn would be drafty as a basket inside, she knew, but there’d been barely time to think about it as the door tipped forward. Those eyes had met hers, spools of light that emphasized the fellow’s gauntness. Her breath snagged. He was young, younger than she’d thought: like her.

  The door had swung wider. Neither moved. His mouth a grim line, in the shifty light his eyes were the colour of the Arm on a winter day: that brutally innocent blue.

  Shell shock? But the idea had crumbled like a sand-dollar in a pocket. Gazing steadily, she handed over the blue shirt as if he’d been waiting to have it ironed. The coolness of his eyes turned her limbs to taffy as he held it up. Smelling faintly metallic—of rainwater?—his breath had clouded the air.

  Danke. An accent, a word like the washtub being dragged and emptied outside.

  How long since he’d bathed? His face looked scrubbed, if pale, his hair in frozen spikes. The Huns, godless barbarian hordes. Fields mulched with corpses. Pictures spun through her, and the images of Helena’s pram, the ghost of her daughter’s warmth under her palm, and of Ethel bracing her feet against the oven while Mama bobbed her hair. The very last time she’d seen them…

  She’d been a map, the man studying her. His face glistened with sweat; from some fiery place the idea rose of spitting and raking her fingernails over it. But hatred curled up, shrivelling into pity. Barely aware of herself or of Jewel on her hip, she’d lifted a wrist to his cheek. Its heat a jolt, his eyes liquid as he’d clutched the shirt like a child clutching a toy. Harry could turn the place upside down searching, but the expression in those eyes would wipe away any guilt.

  Before she could move away he’d touched her hand, the warmth of those fingers a shock. Jewel straining against her, she steadied herself; and yet something inside had teetered and slipped—almost like when she’d seen Harry for the first time, Harry at that kitchen party, juggling his accordion and a quart of beer.

  AS JEWEL EASES INTO TRAFFIC, stopping then jerking ahead, she feels herself merge too, with Rebecca’s Tabu-scented warmth, and Jewel’s, except he smells of tobacco. She fancies herself the squishy filling in a sandwich. Except the thought of food turns her stomach, so instead, and for now, she’s an uprooted plant in a weedy garden, held up by others’ bracts and blooms… Whether tuna or daisy, isn’t she the soft, nurturing thing between them? Something Lucy never planned on, and even after years, she can never quite figure Rebecca out.

  “Come on, Ma,” she keeps nagging. “You’re not going home till we’ve at least fed you.” Is it pride, a daughter-in-law’s refusal to give up? Even jammed in like this, so close, she takes it upon herself to fix Lucy’s collar; the nerve, those nails like talons. Her breath is sour, too—sour as th
e hospital’s smell. Or maybe it’s hunger, since neither of them has likely eaten much either.

  THE MAN’S FINGERS HAD CURLED around hers. Under Jewel’s squirming weight her heart beat faster. Suddenly she’d felt exhausted—each day since that snowy birth a stone, the months a rocky, shifting beach. Longing only for softness, she’d wanted to sleep—there, on her feet, so much weight buoyed by the man’s desperate grip, a lifeline. Moving closer, he’d opened his mouth as if to speak.

  Shell shock. It was easier to abide than the truth.

  Jewel had flailed his little fist, and the man stepped back to let her inside. In the dimness pigeons flapped; the smell of droppings was like shoe polish. His eyes on her ankles, the hem of her skirt. There was a scar on his jaw, visible through stubble the colour of cattails. Against one wall had been a nest of spruce boughs. That scent of Christmas trees. She’d imagined lying down, the fossil print of needles on her cheek.

  Thoughts had brushed like wings. A married woman. One thing to be charitable, another to be utterly, unforgivably stunned!

  He’d hung the shirt on a nail above Harry’s boots, beside Harry’s ripped trousers. Her handiwork a kind of shrine, as if Harry himself had been spirited off. Then, faster than the fellow could lift his hand stifling a cough, she’d beat it out of there.

  What in God’s acre had got into her?

  The next morning snow sugared the ground. Harry’d woken her up, fumbling at her nightie. His breath was thick, her mind murky with dreams; there was a cistern, a pail without a rope. Harry interrupted just as she was trying to dip it, and even as he’d worked the flannelette over her hips she’d heard a mackerel splashing: the sign that the water was drinkable. It was a long way to the dresser and her Dutch cap, longer still to the kitchen chair where she’d hoist up one foot and try to get the thing inside. What’re you doing? Cooking a turkey? His breathing, that groping silence as she’d stumbled back to bed, Jewel chirping by now and shaking the crib.