Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  Setting down her suitcase, Lucy fled to the dining room, her face tight as she grabbed the first record lying there, before noticing the Victrola was gone. Miserably, she’d followed their voices outside where it lay gutted, its thick black spring looped over the grass like a bowel.

  “That’s what happens when you wind ’er too tight,” Harry muttered, trying to splice the ends together. Goddamn kids.

  “Not Becky, though,” Lil swooped her eyes. “Becky wouldn’t—” Artie poked her and told her to can it, and Harry’d yelled at them both to give him a hand; maybe they could shove the whole works back inside? But Artie’d blown up, asking how many favours Harry thought he owed him, telling him to fix it himself. He and Lil had to peel the child off the sofa, judging by her screams.

  Lucy’d just knelt there, and let Harry stagger around with the spring, trying to replace it. “Might’s well pitch the whole goddamn thing,” he ranted, till she demanded to know what she’d been doing there. “The little one? Some handful, isn’t she?” he’d demanded right back, and then he’d jeered, his eyes hot: “So. Father Who’s-it pull the plug on things, or what? Or did he just give you a broom?”

  The Victrola ended up in the cellar. Easy come, easy go. Harry couldn’t understand why she hadn’t stuck things out. “You’re too damn sentimental,” he said, bowing along with the radio as she tried to explain how the train and the view and Mrs. Slauenwhite had reminded her of things too painful to stomach. “Those records were too fast to play to anyhow,” he said, turning up the volume, fiddling harder. Almost more than her lost opportunity, she missed those squealing clarinets and silly lyrics, the frantic glee pressed into the grooves. At least the radio threw up a wall between them, just high enough, bricked in with voices and music. Filling in where talk failed, for he’d started keeping queer hours again.

  Next door Mrs. Chaddock’s bulldog had died, so there was no warning the night Harry was off supposedly playing cards. She mightn’t have answered had she heard the wagon. It was hard to tell the traveller’s age as he stood there shivering, asking if she had anything that needed fixing. Harry’d been threatening to dump the darn Victrola into the Arm. When she asked the traveller if he could fix a spring, his eyes shifted. Smirking, he’d come right in; she’d let him go first down the stairs. “Beyond fixing?” she asked, as he eyed Harry’s tools hanging everywhere. She was stupid to let him in; Harry would’ve had a conniption. Nervously she’d slipped upstairs, and a little while later he appeared, his eyes following her to the pantry where she kept the money jar.

  Afterwards Jewel had hollered down from his room, asking who was there. Nobody, she’d said. Then, down below, she’d put on a record, turned the crank. Just a little resistance, then out had come a yodel gaining in pitch and tempo with each turn, and a thud every so often announcing where the spring had been spliced. When Harry came home she told him to move the thing upstairs where it belonged.

  FOR CHRISTMAS HE GAVE HER “BLUE RHAPSODY,” WHICH SHE PLAYED till the thud melted into the rhythm. Once again, for a while at least, it was as if his friends had fallen off the Earth. “Lil says bend over and that dummy Artie says ‘how far?’ Who needs it?” he’d chortle. But what was that look in his eyes? That New Year’s Day, she’d put on her new record and Harry’d got out his fiddle, its shrieks poking holes in the melody, pulling all its lovely threads. She’d held her tongue, though, till he started to massacre “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” Then she’d lifted the needle.

  There’d been snow and they’d been cooped up, and she suggested they go for a spin. Like it was spin weather, he objected at first, glowering as they piled into the Lizzie, Jewel perched on some blankets in back. Snow twirled down, everything padded white as if with quilt bat. On a whim she asked to go to the old neighbourhood. Gears grinded, and they skidded. Eyeing Jewel in the mirror, Harry’d rubbed her knee. “That hill will be a bugger in this!” his voice had chirred like the chains on the tires: “You would pick a dirty day.” Dirty, unclean, a preachy voice had piped up inside her, a shriller version of Father Marcus. Mind in the gutter. For the first time in weeks she thought of Lil.

  Above the shipyards Harry’d pulled in alongside a snowbank, and from the frosty cocoon of the car, they’d marvelled at the rows of new houses built of blocks like grey sugar cubes. A woman and her children had come along, one of them missing a leg. Rubbing a hole in the frost, Jewel pointed, and Lucy’d grabbed his finger, studying the ferns on the windshield as he kicked her seat. It had spilled out of her: “Sometimes, Harry, if I wait long enough, pray hard enough, I think…everything’ll just melt, and there she’ll be.” Their little girl, she’d meant, like something left out all winter, then revealed, come spring. Afraid she’d cry, she’d stopped talking and he’d patted her knee, digging for his hankie as Jewel complained about being “froze.” The snow swirled in blasts. Even when he’d started the car and the jingling chains helped lug them forward, the sadness wouldn’t budge. As Jewel whined that he could’ve been home playing Meccano, she curled her hand over Harry’s. Words caught in her throat: They’d never told him about her, had they, dear?

  Jewel blew frosty rings in the air. “Who?” And she’d imagined that mother and her family inside their sugar-cube house, that boy setting aside his crutches like Tiny Tim. “Your sister,” she said, “you had a sister once, you know.” She spoke as if reminding him about a test, and to do his best. Harry’d lit a cigarette, waving the match, mumbling that he wasn’t their only one. Only one what, saved by a dog? Who could spell “Musquodoboit” backwards? “I want to go home,” he’d whined as the chains whirred, making the same noise as the sewing machine she’d also found under the tree.

  She’d pulled at Harry’s hankie, spelling out Helena’s name, repeating that she’d be eleven-and-a-half now, eleven-and-a-half years old, and he’d said he wasn’t retarded, asking, “Hell-in-a—what, hand-basket?” And then: “Well. Where did she go?” The Lizzie’d lurched as Harry geared down, Lucy murmuring that she hadn’t gone anywhere, they’d lost her.

  As they skimmed along, the smell from the brewery filled the car. Pee-ewe!

  Harry tried to be funny, as if Jewel weren’t there. Saying how a little ale would do about now, and that he should’ve joined the navy; talk about a ready supply. “A bit of fun,” he’d sniffed, his voice hardening; they could use that. “You used to like fun, Lucy, didn’t you,” he said. “Wonder we didn’t end up with ten kids. Throw my pants on the bed, next you’re pregnant!”

  “The kind of fun Lil liked?” she asked, as if Jewel weren’t there, adding that she never knew he was so family-minded, and if he wanted more children…

  “Look,” he’d spat, “it’s no skin off my nose.” Her anger was stoked by the cold, never mind Jewel listening.

  “So,” she’d demanded, “how much fun is she?”

  And he’d sneered, why buy the cow when he had milk at home? But it didn’t stop there; the argument turned to religion. “Do unto others, and all of that!” he ranted. The way he saw it, she had two religions, the catlick stuff and her own blessed church of the divine Dutch cap! Or whatever she called it. If she’d take the opportunity to use it. That priest of hers knew the half of it, he said, she’d be excommunicated! “His holiness would chop off your—”

  What came next sliced closer to the bone; he accused her of upsetting the boy. “‘Not the only one!”’ he mimicked. “Like the sun don’t set except on him, then, boom!” And he blamed her for never unpacking her troubles, as if some saint would come and kiss things better. “Well it won’t bring her back,” he’d said flatly. “Nothing you can do or say. For the love of Christ, would you just let it go.”

  THE HILL BEHIND BOUTILIERS’ WAS perfect for coasting, no shortage of snow back then. Jewel wasn’t old enough to go on his own, so she’d shadowed him as he raced ahead with his sled, its red runners freshly filed. Jewel acting as if she were a bad smell; she should’ve been ho
me starting supper. Yellow ice hugged the shoreline as kids flew downhill on pieces of cardboard that snapped in the wind, then trudged lemming-style back to the top. Not a thing she could do to stop Lucas Embrie and Mrs. Slauenwhite’s grandson, Samson, grabbing the sled and taking off. Those runners flashed as Jewel pushed Lucas and dove onto his belly, all three boys wrestling. Give it here, you little frigger! She shook her fist, but no one noticed. As Lucas hurled a snowball, something moved in the woods; the chicken lady, he hollered, and Ida Trott limped from the trees, leaning on a bladeless hockey stick. Samson and Lucas piled onto the sled, shrieking as they shot downhill, zoomed past the rocks. There was a shout; she couldn’t hear what over the gulls’ yowling. But suddenly everyone was streaming towards the shore. Coasting on his stomach, Jewel got up and ran too.

  Ida hobbled out onto the ice, which made a kissing sound. Sweet Mother. Lucy’d stumbled closer, Jewel melting into the crowd. The ice dipped and shifted; farther out, beyond a crevasse, a hole had loomed. “For pity’s sake,” she’d breathed, as Ida knelt then started to crawl. Her stick a spar, she’d rolled like a patchwork seal towards something orange. The top of Lucas’s toque as he bobbed, then heaved himself up. Flattened there, Ida thrust out the stick. Children let out a sound like waves curling. Everyone’s eyes on Lucas as he wriggled, kicking, wallowing ashore. Samson! the shout had echoed as he vomited on the snow, Jewel crouching over him, wanting his sled.

  “Run to Boutiliers’,” she’d heard herself shriek, cradling Lucas before his red-headed sister pushed in. Birdie came running in her slippers, her bosom joggling over her apron, then ran back screaming, “Git the boat!” Lucy racing to catch up, gasping that it was the Slauenwhite boy—and Ida. Not Mrs. Trott—not Ida! Staggering out in his suspenders, half loaded, Edgar Boutilier had clawed at the snowy hump in the yard, the dory he used trapping lobster. His dog baying from its rope. “Get Babineau,” he hollered, saying the bastard must be good for something.

  Running, she couldn’t feel her toes. Artie’d taken forever coming to the door in his undershirt, Lil and some man in there playing cards. “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” blaring. “A child,” Lucy kept gasping. “Ida, too.” Fanning her cards, Lil had stared; she’d smelled peppery—was it lavender? “Not my girl?” she’d cried, panic in that velvet drawl. Telling Artie to move his arse, her almond eyes lit with fear. What in God’s acre had made Harry file those runners so sharp?

  Lucy helped drag the dory down to the ice. Children huddled, adults now too. Men kicking the snow. The boat was useless, little kids climbing in and pretending to row. Jewel had breathed in her ear that they’d come up, Samson and Mrs. Trott: “They can swim, you know.” She’d pictured the sled gliding like a fish with red fins as Father Marcus arrived, announced by his collar in the bruised, dusky light; the woman with him, crying: the one who’d organized the raffle. People hugged her, then Mrs. Slauenwhite herself had appeared. Jewel’s stomach growled, and Lucy tightened her arm around him, not looking as Artie shambled up, Boutilier, too. Shivering, he lit a cigarette, holding the match for Artie who roughed Jewel’s sleeve, and told him to get his dad. The more men, the quicker the search. Give the poor mother something to bury, at least.

  Above the sound of weeping, Father Marcus prayed. A look rippling over Jewel’s face. “What about the chicken lady?” he’d wanted to know, and Artie’d grimaced, “That crazy old twat, she’s down there too?” He’d whistled through his teeth, and said they’d better find her son; where the hell was he, that lunatic, Benny? Then Boutilier nudged Jewel, saying, “While you’re at it, tell your old man I got a mouth organ he might like.”

  POOR OLD IDA UNRAVELLED LIKE a sweater, bits and pieces of wool washing up here and there—though at first all that appeared was a mitten, on the spit near Artie’s dock. But all that winter and into the spring it was hard not to think of the boy and her under the ice, the glitter of eyes like plankton. The currents broke things up, Harry said, but anything the tide didn’t take, that spit would hook.

  “So where is Samson?” Jewel had wanted to know.

  Lucy couldn’t help seeing his fingers curled around the sled’s rope. “Safe now,” she told him, “out of harm’s reach.” But where did you go, he nagged, once you were dead?

  Harry, too, never knew when to stop. “Lobsters have a big feed,” he’d told him, saying they especially liked faces.

  Evil to speak that way of the dead, and for a whole week Jewel had woken up screaming. “It’s just a dream,” she’d soothed, over and over, but one night he started singing: I have a little sister, peep peep peep, she wades the water deep deep deep. Climbs the mountain high high high. Poor little twat only got one eye!

  As for Ida, her hens pecked the snow and then each other till the ground was nothing but feathers, and as it thawed, girls invented a skipping rhyme that Jewel brought home.

  Chicken lady, chicken lady

  Whatcha gonna do?

  Chicken lady, chicken lady

  Looks like stew

  One two three four

  Count the chickens at her door

  Five six seven eight

  Bones by her inkbottle laid out straight

  Chicken lady, chicken lady,

  Make me some tea

  Hush up hush up

  Wash ’er out to sea

  A small wonder no one set it to music.

  WAITING BY THE NURSING STATION, a woman blinks when she sees them coming, Jewel lugging Harry’s accordion. “That’s some fancy suitcase,” she remarks, as a nurse slips out from behind the desk, admiring the Don Noble’s finish. Lucy’s dusted and polished it to a sheen before letting them bring it.

  “It’s Pop’s,” Rebecca’s voice ripples down the corridor. “Occupational therapy!” The nurse makes a face; they should be used to her by now. The hospital’s become like home after all, a sterile, regimented home, with its film of cleanliness covering all the dirt and heartache settled in its corners. Just like in keeping house, though nobody says so, the fight for order is a losing battle. One still has to try; surely even Robert sees that.

  “Come on, Bucky—smile!” Rebecca goads him. To quiet her, Lucy says that it’s good enough he’s come.

  “Right,” Jewel mutters, saying they had to bribe him with the car, as if she needs to know. Then he yammers at the boy about checking the oil.

  “You’ll try a tune for your grampa, won’t you,” she says softly as they creep into the room. Robert looks embarrassed, muttering just because he plays guitar. Rebecca propels him towards the bed, never mind that he’s a foot taller than her and everyone else. Once a mother, always a mother, Lucy thinks; the same goes for a child, she tells herself, from a safe, almost watery distance.

  “Should’ve heard him serenading Shirley,” Rebecca moons.

  He corrects her: “Sheryl, Ma.”

  Whatever, says Rebecca, rolling her eyes: his girlfriend.

  “The latest attraction,” Jewel smirks.

  Greeting Harry, she hears herself call him sweetie again, peeling off her gloves. The weather’s turned; it’s definitely fall, and all of a sudden, too, giving a hard blue edge to everything. Carefully she smoothes Harry’s brow and his eyes open, his good one mildly curious. She tells him it’s Sunday; “Look, we’re all here!”

  That’s right, Rebecca says: “Party central.”

  Harry’s eye flashes, alarmed. Why the mass visitation? she imagines him thinking. What’s the bloody occasion?

  “Don’t worry, Dad. It’s not a wake.” Every now and then, it’s true, Jewel surprises her with his sense of humour. As she elbows him, a sound gurgles from Harry—a laugh? That eye of his lights up as Robert opens the glittery, lacquered case. Robert’s hair, cleanlooking today, reminds her of Shirley Temple’s. Shaking it out of his eyes, he handles the instrument as if it’s a dead animal. What now? his scowl says.

  “‘Yankee Doodle’? Give it a try, Buck,” his m
other jumps in. “That’s pretty easy, isn’t it?” He gives her a pained look, just like his dad at that age, but obliges, squeezing out a few wheezy notes. Harry’s hand comes up, his finger trembling, motioning down.

  “How’s school, anyway, darling?” Lucy pipes up quickly. He’s gone back, as far as she knows, for the time being. But a look yawns between Rebecca and Jewel.

  “Peachy, Gran. Groovy,” he drags out the word, his eyes darting. Lord knows what it’s supposed to mean, that stunned expression; it makes her think of records. Maybe that’s what he has in mind, putting one on instead of playing. His curls jiggle as he closes up the Don Noble; freshly washed, his hair’s a pretty reddish gold. Just a bit more red and it would remind her of goldfish. “School’s a blast,” he sighs unexpectedly. “Like I just can’t wait to get outta there,” saying all he wants to do is travel. With Sheryl, she guesses.

  “He wants to be on his own,” Jewel mimics, as if the boy’s already gone, not just from home, but to another city, saying what a deal he has, the run of the basement, the car whenever he pleases.

  “The basement,” Rebecca moans, fluffing her hair. “Elinor had a hell of a time down there.”

  “A heck of a time, Becky.” Jewel looks at her and then at Lucy. Has she missed something? Either it’s got lost in Rebecca’s chatter, or she’s getting old timer’s disease.

  “Who the devil is Elinor?” she has to ask.

  Rebecca smiles, amused. “Benny’s woman? Like I told you, Ma, she cleans? So she had a heck of time with Bucky’s room. Lucky he wasn’t—”

  “Wouldn’t trust that one as far as I could…” Jewel perks right up. Nothing these two enjoy more than gossip! “Stole from her last employers, that’s what I heard over at the store,” he says, repeating what Mr. Jimmy told him, how the people had to let her go; wondering why no one pressed charges. “People get away with murder these days,” and he gawks at Robert.