Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  “Oh, just leave it,” Rebecca blurts out, exasperated; who can blame her? Jewel can be a piece of work sometimes, looking for the worst. “Leave it,” she says again, louder, batting her eyelids, “which is what I finally said, Ma, when she started on Bucky’s carpet. Banana peels stuck to it, would you believe? And glue,” and she demonstrates, pretending to pick some petrified gum off her chair. ‘“Seen a lot worse,’ Elinor said. That family she worked for?” she eyeballs Jewel. “Pigs, I guess.”

  “Takes all kinds,” he lobs right back. “You’d know, wouldn’t you hon.”

  That curmudgeonly streak of his—it almost reminds Lucy of Harry’s old crony, Edgar Boutilier, whom she’d rather forget. Was it something she did, raising Jewel? When he and Rebecca go on like this, she’d like to knock their heads together the way Moe does with Larry and Curly on The Three Stooges. Still, she has to wonder about Rebecca, hiring that woman. Even if she were lily-white, good as all get-out, there’s the real issue, bringing a stranger in to see one’s dirt. If she had someone in to clean, glory, she’d have to kill herself making the place presentable first; otherwise, it’d be the same as hanging out her dirty Hannas. Not that she’d hire that woman, or anyone who lived that way, certainly not to keep house.

  “Cleanliness is next to godliness”—it just jumps out of her, and now they’re all looking, as if she does have old timer’s disease. Really, it’s the thought of germs and filth popping to the surface—what else was Robert hiding in his rat’s nest, besides poems?—a monster mess taking over. A person could devote her life to wrestling dirt, and dirt would always win. So why not backburner cleanliness? Take a vacation from it. God himself probably wouldn’t’ve minded a break from godliness at times.

  Jewel grimaces at Rebecca, and she grimaces back; still Lucy can see that underneath it all they’re in cahoots, taking everything that pops out of her mouth as if she means it exactly. The flat-earthers! If they’d been around in Columbus’s day, they might well have told him, Don’t bother sailing. But since he did, to take advantage of the salt out there, more than a few grains in the ocean! Just as she thinks it, something else pops out, but this time it’s meant to tease them. “You’d think God has no sense of humour, you two,” she chides, “the way you behave.”

  Only it’s Robert who latches onto this, looking doubtful. “Yeah, Gran. A real funny guy. Where’s the spot on Laugh-In?” At that, Harry’s eye lights up; it’s not her imagination.

  Giggling, Rebecca says, “Well, speaking of the Bible,”—had they been?—“Elinor’s got this great book. How to Clean Everything. No shhi-sugar,” she grins like a pumpkin, craning over, suddenly pushing Robert’s curls back. “Ohmigod, what’s on your neck?” His hand flies up to cover whatever it is, and he reddens, mumbling about mosquitoes. “This time of year?” His mom rolls her eyes, letting them rest on the ceiling fixture that resembles a lone headlight. “Well, maybe it’s true,” she says, apparently to herself. “It is pretty comical, a friend of Benny’s being a cleaning lady. If you look at that boat.”

  “One big frigging cosmic joke,” Robert says sagely, tugging up the collar of his ugly old army jacket, as if only just feeling the chill.

  God in heaven, perhaps he’s written a poem about it, this kid who’d go out in a blizzard without boots. Funny all right, till she pictures him hitchhiking through the Rockies in sock feet.

  Eyeing him, Jewel mumbles something about Benny and tides and poo—“The ocean takes it away, I guess”—then, watching Rebecca, asks if Bucky’s girlfriend’s related to Dracula.

  But Rebecca’s not listening, her mind like a Timex under water, way offshore. “What’ll they do in winter, you suppose,” she says, “her and Benny in that floatin’ outhouse?”

  Calling them a pair of connivers, Jewel says not to worry, they’ll take care of themselves, “Like on this thing on TV, right? How after the rest of us are gone, the bugs’ll take over.”

  The likening of Benny and his friend to insects seems to perk Harry up even more. Not that Jewel or Rebecca notice when he rubs his head up and down against the pillow, nodding. Picking a bit of lint out of his hair, reminding herself of an ape, Lucy strokes his wrist. With any luck he’ll see his show again, slot back in, comparing folks to critters. Enough speculating, though; a girl in a hairnet rolls in a cart full of trays. Dinner. Lifting a lid, Lucy picks up the spoon. The food’s a mystery—greyish peas and fish mashed together?—the sight enough to drive people away. An excuse anyway, Robert shaking Harry’s limp hand. When Jewel does the same, she tugs his sleeve, reminding him to take the accordion. Rebecca blows kisses, Harry’s good eye following everybody out, like a fly on a lead, then fixing dully on his plate.

  “Open sesame,” she coaxes, and in the stuffy, sterile quiet—the smell of that dinner filling the room—he does what she says. And isn’t he like a baby booby, some rare type of gannet? “Good dear, good,” she pats his shoulder, saying keep it up and he’ll soon be home.

  13

  1929

  THOUGH SHE’D DONE EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to drill in the value of school, Jewel never took to it. Once, Sister Jerome made him write a hundred times: I will not allow distractions to disrupt my pursuit of knowledge. He’d swear at his homework; a girl would never have acted that way! More interested in dawdling, reading the paper one night he’d pointed at something. The prison was going to be used for storing ordnance. In the event of tampering, he’d read out, a detonation of benzene would be catastrophic. Her voice quavered, telling him to buckle down, get back to work. She wasn’t surprised, only alarmed, when Sister phoned one day to say he’d disappeared before a test, had possibly escaped out the window and down a tree.

  Through the cool June woods she’d searched, spying them below Boutiliers’ hill, which was ablaze with dandelions. On the rocks, not one kid but two, flat on their bellies. Bare feet, and the backs of knees. A fishing pole propped between them, Jewel jigged the line and the girl squirmed, her laughter teasing, You think babies come from where? As Jewel scrambled up, weighing the rod, Lucy threatened him with a licking and no radio for a year. But he crouched, pulling, the pole bent back almost overhead; and as he pulled, something surfaced, streaming upwards. Fringed with eelgrass, wool a greeny blue, it was a scarf—Samson’s, Lil’s girl shrieked. Lucy slipped as Jewel unhooked it. Something moved under the yellowy water, a huge bug trapped in amber? Trailing seaweed, its eye sockets were empty. Get Birdie, she’d heard herself holler, the pole riding a little wave. Before she could’ve stopped them, both children had seen. Flotsam, like a marble rolled down a hill, lost; the very worst, another child.

  She waited till after the burial to deal with Jewel, who blamed their playing hooky on the girl. It was all her idea, he said, stealing the pole from Boutilier’s shed. After that, she could barely stand to let him go swimming, hanging around to watch him cannonball off the rocks with the other kids. Something sickening about all that blue, and the thought of someone sinking in the drop-off, buried in water green as a cat’s eye. But it didn’t bother him. At home he kicked his wet trunks under the bed; once, when she went to retrieve them, a bottle rolled out, peat-coloured and foul with periwinkles stuck to it: one hundred-proof rum. A present for Dad—he was going to throw it back at first, he said—yelping, “It’s payment to Mr. Boots, for losing his rod!” as she poured it down the toilet. Payment, my eye.

  HIS DAD WAS NO HELP WHEN IT CAME TO LIQUOR, OR ANY OTHER PARTS of his education. What was Harry thinking that fall night before a math exam, when he asked Jewel to come along? Fishing, he said, in Artie’s boat; not many more chances, almost November and dark as your arse by six. What would they possibly catch at night? she’d wanted to know, marching to the front room, expecting Harry to follow. But he’d stayed in the kitchen, telling Jewel she’d gone off, praying. Or holding a seance. “A what?” Jewel boomed, his voice having deepened that summer. His father wheezing with laughter, saying it was when people tried dr
agging dead spirits back. Then Jewel had asked what Sister meant by x equalling y; Harry answering that Artie would put his nuts in a sling if they kept him waiting.

  She’d tried to stop them; she didn’t like him dragging Jewel along. Harry nearly jumped down her throat, saying if it made her feel better, Artie and Lil were properly married; she had the rock to prove it. As if she gave a tinker’s damn. They were going for a goddamn boat ride, Harry’d sighed, saying Lil got all out of joint if Artie saw too much of the boys, which was why he kept the boat way the hell over where he did. “Women, Jewel, they’re all alike,” he’d teased, saying Lil had better things to do than tag along.

  A draught blew in as they left. Throwing coal on the fire, she’d imagined the flames were blue poppies, trying not to think of that woman rubbing against strangers like a cat. Then she’d stepped outside, the night moonless but starry: the sky a hat pricked with holes. Somewhere in the harbour a horn blew, and the wind rose. She should’ve been sleepy, having spent the day scouring. But the dark felt restless, alive, and going back for her coat, she’d wandered out to the gate, where Mrs. Chaddock stopped and her terrier sniffed Lucy’s leg.

  Back inside, she put on “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the singer hiccupping through each thud till the record stopped. Then the radio played a drama about the Wild West. But when it ended, there was still no sign of them, and without knowing why, she’d dug out the rosary she’d squirrelled away. One Hail Mary, two Hail Marys: she’d worried the beads; even Jewel had started teasing that she prayed so much, wasn’t it crying wolf?

  She was on her way upstairs when they finally appeared. Harry’s face had looked blanched, beads of sweat above his lip. He kept rubbing his cheeks. Jewel’s eyes jumped, and as she went to hug him, there was a sourness—vomit? Harry shoved past to the kitchen; as she tightened her arms around Jewel, she heard him on the phone. Jewel slumped against her, such a big boy at almost twelve, already dwarfing her. It was Mr. Babineau, he’d whispered, Harry’s voice drifting in: “No chance, sir. No, sir—I don’t know what he was thinking. Enemies, sir?”

  A thickness inside her, she’d crept upstairs, saying above the thud of her heart that she was off to bed. Jewel at her heels, staying by the door; she’d heard him rifling through the closet. When she got up, his Meccano was all over the floor. And noticing blood on his boots, she’d gone numb.

  Harry let out a strangled sound at her touch, and in a dull voice blathered that they couldn’t see a goddamn thing; there was a shot and Babs took it. “Babs,” he called him, “like a bird picked off a wire.” They were right there, he kept saying, swallowing as if gagging; they’d seen the whole thing, and he’d told the Mounties everything he could, still they wanted more. Artie can’t die, her mind had thrashed: who’d keep Lil? But Harry’s bloodshot eye stared back, his whisper steely as he said they were in the boat, just offshore, hauling traps. She’d waited for him to start laughing, the whole thing a misplaced April Fool’s joke. But he grabbed her arm and shook her, saying it’d been just them in the boat, him and the boy and Artie.

  The constables looked too big for the kitchen, wanting a statement from Jewel too. Into the night she held vigil in the front room while he and Harry answered their questions. Worrying each bead of the rosary, she let Jewel’s murmurs weave through scratchy prayers in her head. He was lying there and stuff started coming out and Dad tried helping him but but but…. Her shock turned to rage. Harry was responsible: he’d transplanted her flower into a bed of weeds, Artie and his crowd—while she’d stood by, failing to cut them down or root him out. Be with me, a voice inside had begged, as the policemen cuffed Harry and took him out. Then she’d run Jewel a bath; impossible to look at him without seeing something sweet and dark and awful leaking away. While he soaked, never mind the hour, she’d pillaged cupboard and closet, pitching things.

  Dawn reddened the treetops by the time she’d piled Harry’s gains outside, the profits of his poker winnings. Knick-knacks, trinkets, silverware, and even clothes still bearing tags. The clouds were the colour of watered-down blood—the blood of Christ shed for sinners, Father Marcus might’ve said, sinners like Harry. The clank of cutlery brought back that of handcuffs, and Harry’s shamed, furtive look that of another prisoner, Mr. Heinemann, and, oh God, the perfume of spruce: her own sin.

  Swollen-eyed, Jewel fished pieces of Meccano from the pile as she made a sign: Free. Help yourself. Then she’d ranted, blinking as if the ceiling might open: she wouldn’t live with his scamming, not now, not any more. Though all this time, she’d never asked, and now he was up to his eyeballs in it. Work bonuses, my eye. She was through with his father, she told Jewel, did he hear? Through! All the while Be with me, be with me stinging her throat, and tears reddening the pimples on his cheeks, while she blazed inside like Christ’s heart in the image relegated to the cellar by Harry. Tossing his picture, she cleaned mildew off hers and re-hung it. Raving that if Jewel took after his father, it would cut her in two, and she’d break his head, so help her Dinah! A girl would never pull this on her mother; thank the good Lord Harry’s hadn’t lived to see this! She’d never seen the likes! It took till nighttime to calm down. By then neighbours and strangers alike had cleared off the veranda, barely leaving a thing for the poor box. It went without saying, she later supposed, that Jewel wished he’d never seen the likes either, but by then she felt she’d lost him too.

  HARRY COULD’VE BEEN CHARGED WITH trafficking, but wasn’t. It was a murder after all; his part in the bootlegging was small potatoes. He was released in time for Artie’s wake; “Aren’t you glad to see me?” he wanted to know. In a daze, she’d watched Mrs. Chaddock raking leaves, and he’d said, “Fine then, if you’re not gonna talk.” Then he’d turned to Jewel, saying the funeral parlour wouldn’t touch Artie, poor bugger; imagine.

  “No bootleggers, alive or dead,” she’d blurted out, just repeating what she’d heard at Mass. Then Harry’d looked around, distraught, as if the place had been robbed, asking what she’d done with his lamp, his tie-clip…“See my finger, see my thumb? See my fist, you better run!” she’d sauced back, saying he’d better not expect her to go paying respects. She’d relented though, baking squares for the wake, never mind the thought of darkening Lil’s door was worse than the butterflies she got before going to confession. Harry’d looked stunned but grateful.

  When Lil staggered out to greet them, the air behind her was already blue with smoke. “Artie loved a party,” she slurred, collapsing into the mob ringing the casket. It rested on sawhorses, Artie the centrepiece in a green suit with a red boutonniere, his head propped on a lacy pillow. His eyes glued shut, his cheeks powdered, and comb lines in his oiled hair, he seemed as solid in death as a hunk of granite. He didn’t look like he was sleeping, Jewel had whispered accusingly. He hardly looked like a person, in fact, but more like a big grey doll—though dolls were usually trim and smiling, and he’d appeared to be clenching his teeth. Lil had raised her glass, her eyes wild and distracted, drool on her chin. “Jesus Murphy,” she toasted Jewel drunkenly, “some tall isn’t he? Almost a man, eh.”

  Lucy’d set the squares on the table, nudging aside bottles. Standing as near the door as possible while Harry helped himself, she studied the muddy roses hooked into the mat as a squabble drifted from the bedroom: kids fighting. “Eat, drink and be merry, all of youse,” Lil crowed, tears glittering. “How ’bout a drink there, youngfella?” Jabbing at her eyes, she tottered to the ice box, handing Jewel a mug. Her mouth looked broken; then she’d leaned down and kissed Artie’s cheek. His voice cracking, Jewel had asked after her daughter, who was with her gran again, apparently, and had been for a while. “Artie wasn’t big on kids,” Lil juddered, leaning into the scrawny man beside her, who set down his glass and patted her head.

  “Clear out of there, you little buggers,” somebody’d yelled, “so Missus can lay down,” and as she staggered off to bed, they’d all gaped at the body soon to lie un
derground. Bedrock.

  Ashes to ashes, Lucy imagined the priest intoning. Lay up for yourselves not treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and thieves break in and steal, but the treasures of heaven. Towering over the other kids, Jewel had looked ill.

  Outside, Harry took her elbow, saying, “Don’t let it go to your head, dolly, but those squares were your best batch yet.” He winked at Jewel, but even in the dark his face looked sunken. Speaking into the wind, her heart a-flutter, she asked if they’d figured out who’d done it. Tripping on something, Jewel swore, and Harry sighed. Then something had snagged inside her: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those… It could’ve been Harry lying back there in that box. It was cold and it was late, and Jewel had school next day, but she stopped, leaning against a tree, and in spite of everything slid her arm round Harry, as Jewel griped about his missing penknife. Harry’d tugged her closer: “You know what they say, my son: spare the rod, spoil the child,” and then, to her: “Dolly, you didn’t just give the stuff away?”

  THE DAY THE GOOD NEWS comes, it takes them all by surprise. The hospital’s done as much as it can for Harry; he’ll soon be all hers. Rebecca makes dinner to celebrate, saying it’s Lucy’s last supper “as a swingin’ single!” All the talk these days about “swinging” and “swingers” makes her think of gates and hinges needing grease—and the fence, which everyone else seems to have forgotten. Too cold now for painting.

  Dinner’s more than just an occasion to mark the end of this fall of falls. Rebecca’s house has never looked tidier. To Lucy’s surprise, there’s another guest at the table, Robert’s little friend. She doesn’t look a bit happy to be here, Rebecca preening over her.