A few days later, Ivy sat on the toilet seat as Clara parted her blond hair, picking at the nits with a fine-toothed comb. “I’m sorry you’re missing the party at Sault Collegiate,” Clara said. “The hat with the fringe must have contained lice.” She tightened the thick cotton cap reeking of kerosene on Ivy’s bowed head.
CHAPTER 6
Ivy knew there was no point in arguing with Clara, so she lied to her mother. “I’ll stay at Lily’s after my New Year’s Party.”
Clara assumed the party was in the east end where the Barnabys lived. She was unaware that Ivy had accepted an invitation from Irma D’Agostina, a classmate who lived west of Gore Street. The party would be held at Marconi Hall, the social hub for Italians located a few blocks from Irma’s.
“My mother bootlegs in our basement, and the kids sleep on the top floor,” Irma had said upon issuing the invitation. Ivy had understood the admission of Mrs. D’Agostina’s work as a friendship test.
“I know a bit about bootlegging,” Ivy had replied. “I grew up in the Galt Hospital in Lethbridge three blocks from the brothels where men went to drink during prohibition.”
“I thought your mother was strict,” Irma had said.
“She was, but she couldn’t stop me from seeing what was going on. I used to look at patients’ charts when the nurses were busy elsewhere. It surprised me how many upright citizens had drinking problems.”
“On New Year’s Eve, the liquor stores will be closed and business will be brisk. Mama sells to anyone. She lets the wife deal with the drinking problem!”
Both girls had giggled at their mutual revelations.
“Why are you taking a suitcase?” Clara asked, interrupting Ivy’s recollections of her conversation with Irma. “I thought you had an entire wardrobe at the Barnabys’.”
“I’m going to change it,” Ivy lied, not looking at Clara. “That’s why I packed my suitcase.” She hated deception with her mother who was truthful to a fault. “I hope you win your bridge tournament,” she said to change the conversation, giving Clara a peck on the cheek and rushing out the door, grateful that Lily wasn’t late.
Clara stood on the porch, which had been cleared of snow by Sergeant Stuart. “It bothers the neighbours when you honk,” she called to Lily.
Lily waved cheerily. She, too, knew better than to argue with Clara. As soon as Ivy jumped in the car, Lily sped away. “Did you tell Clara what I’m doing?”
“Of course not,” Ivy answered. “We’re not bandits.”
“I know, but your mother won’t appreciate the deceit.”
“Mum has misgivings about Italians because she believes they waffled before joining England in the war. She is fiercely loyal to her homeland.”
“Those weren’t Soo Italians,” Lily retorted, driving faster.
Ivy pulled her sleeve as they rushed down Bruce Hill. “Slow down!”
The hoodlums policing Gore Street jumped to the side when they spotted Lily’s car. She passed them without a glance and pulled up in front of Marconi Hall where Irma stood beside her brother, Dominic. Having quit Sault Technical College after his father died, Dominic had applied for a job at Algoma Steel. The company had laid off younger labourers, keeping jobs for men with families. Dominic, a single man of nineteen, was lucky to be hired as a railway maintenance man. A family friend had apparently used pull to get him the job because he was now supporting the family. Dominic’s goal was to be promoted to a job inside the plant before spring.
Lily opened her window, and Irma stuck her head in, landing a kiss on each cheek. “We’ll look after her,” Irma promised.
“How do you know my aunt?” Ivy asked after she got out of the car and said goodbye to Lily.
“I see her at the library on Saturdays.” Ivy’s eyebrows showed her surprise at this revelation. What does Lily do there? Ivy wondered, but there wasn’t a moment to ask.
Dominic put his hand on the girls’ backs, hustling them inside. “Cops are driving around looking for Italians they can arrest.”
The hall was thick with cigar smoke. A stout man inside the door took their coats and Ivy’s suitcase. “You should leave around ten,” Dominic told them, heading farther into the room where the men had congregated around the bar. A short, broad-shouldered fellow whose belly strained the buttons of his suit came forward to greet him. He raised his glass of wine in salutation. Dominic beamed. Joe Mancini was the foundry foreman at Algoma Steel and was considered very important.
“Are you twenty-one?” the bartender asked Dominic. He was wary that on New Year’s Eve the police might raid Marconi Hall. The new chief of police, Dan Roswell, had boasted he would clean up the Soo. It was understood that meant Italians. The previous chief had distinguished between the amateurs selling to the locals and professionals peddling liquor to the United States. Roswell was a three-hundred-pound moralist who used his bulk to intimidate. The bartender passed Dominic a glass of wine with a warning. “Be ready to dump your drink if the cops arrive.”
Dominic moved around the room, thanking men who had been at his father’s funeral. Irma pushed Ivy through an observation gallery of stout matrons seated against a wall. They pinched Ivy’s cheek as if testing a piece of fruit at the market on James Street.
“Ivy’s a relative of Lily Barnaby,” Irma said, not exactly certain of the relationship.
The ladies responded chorus-like. “She learn us English to speak with our grandchildren.”
“Lily gives English classes at the West End Library on Saturdays,” Irma said.
“But you already speak English,” Ivy said, surprised. “Why would you go to Lily’s classes?”
“I don’t, but I can borrow books from the library, and sometimes if things are chaotic at home, I do my homework there.”
“Are they all widows?” Ivy asked once they had passed the seated ladies.
“An Italian dies every week, so black is convenient.” Irma raised her arms with palms up in resignation. “There’s only one ladies’ dress shop on James Street. It sells white for confirmations and black for funerals. The fashionable dress shops are downtown. Italians don’t buy from Jews. They won’t set foot in Friedman’s Department Store.”
“I guess everyone needs someone to hate. In Lethbridge, it was the Chinese. They made them live in a separate area.”
“Like the Italians,” Irma said with a note of sarcasm.
The conversation changed when a lady asked, “How’s your mama doing, Irma?”
“The liquor stores are closed tonight. Otherwise she’d be here.”
The “elder ladies” appeared collectively downcast when Irma led her friend to the other side of the room where a parade of younger women placed dishes of Italian cuisine on a thirty-foot table. It was covered with a white tablecloth and decorated its entire length with plastic flowers. Any nearby matron scolded young children trying to snatch goodies. The men lined up, plates in hand, and the ladies on the other side of the grand table heaped food on the extended plates, listening carefully for requests.
Men with their plates in one hand and cutlery in the other wandered the hall, searching for tables with friends. The tables had been set with crystal glasses and hand-embroidered tablecloths worthy of a banquet. Dominic sat with a group of men who had been friends with his father. Once the men were seated, the ladies liberally replenished the glasses, carefully tipping up the wine jug to avoid spills on the fancy tablecloth.
Ivy was astonished that none of the men seemed drunk. “Don’t the women eat?”
“They eat while they’re cooking the meal,” Irma replied. “The real pleasure is seeing the men enjoy the food.”
The eating portion of the evening lasted until nine o’clock, the men demanding seconds and complimenting the ladies who served them. Then a band of dark-haired, tawny-faced men played music and couples danced. Children with arms outstretched whirled around in their own orbits. Tables were cleared and set up for cards. A few cigar smokers lit up, and wine continued to flow. The
girls helped in the kitchen, donning white cotton aprons to protect their dresses.
“Is your mama still running the restaurant?” a lady at the sink asked.
“She’s a great cook,” Irma replied tersely. Speaking behind her hand, she explained, “That woman’s husband runs a rival establishment, but she can’t boil an egg. I think we should leave now.” They fetched their coats, and Dominic joined them.
Fog had drifted in from the river, and Ivy gripped her suitcase, ready to wallop anyone who stepped in her way. Despite Dominic’s presence, she was nervous and wondered if coming to the west end was a bad idea. He flicked his cigarette onto the ground as two young women, arms linked and purses hung off their shoulders, walked past. They were scantily dressed despite the freezing cold.
“Have any cigarettes?” they asked.
Dominic removed a package from under his coat and handed each of the girls a cigarette.
“It’s dangerous for them to be out on the street,” Ivy remarked. “In Lethbridge, there was an area segregated where prostitutes could work without violence. The intent was to keep the girls off the street.”
“How do you know so much?” Dominic asked.
“The segregated area was next to the hospital where my mother worked.” The conversation ended when a man, obviously tipsy, grabbed the arm of one of the girls who had passed by. Her companion slid the purse off her shoulder and began whacking the man. He hit back.
“You don’t have a right to hit that girl!” Ivy shouted.
“Shut up, or he’ll hit you,” Dominic hissed, holding Ivy’s and Irma’s sleeves until they reached the D’Agostina house. He knocked an irregular pattern, and his mother opened the door upon hearing the secret knock.
Sal smiled at her son, who had taken the place of her husband. “Now that the girls are home, you can go back to the party,” she told him.
CHAPTER 7
Irma’s home was different than Ivy had imagined. She had expected it to be more like a bar salon. The living room had nice furniture, some covered in plastic. The kitchen appeared unused.
“My mother has a small kitchen in the basement,” Irma said.
“Where does Dominic sleep?”
“There are two bedrooms down there. Sometimes my mother rents them out. If that happens, Dominic and my mother sleep on the living room sofas.”
“Does she rent if someone has too much to drink?”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes it’s an American who’s missed the last ferry looking for a place to stay overnight.” Irma shrugged. “It all works.”
They tiptoed upstairs to the children’s bedrooms. Once there, Irma put a finger to her lips and lifted the corner of one of the mattresses to show where the extra liquor bottles were kept.
Ivy smiled. “That’s a marvellous trick, hiding the bottles in the kids’ room.”
Laughing, Irma said, “My mother has another trick. She knows men like to drink when they’re eating, so she feeds them.”
Ivy admired Mrs. D’Agostina’s cleverness.
“Our plan to move to a bigger house ended when my papa died. The girls are in this room and the boys are crowded across the hall.”
Ivy slipped into a set of clown pajamas covered in balloons.
Perched on the side of the bed, Irma snorted. “I just sleep in my underwear. You’re the first WASP I’ve invited home.”
“A wasp is like a hornet. That doesn’t make me sound very nice,” Ivy added, uncertain if she was being insulted.
“It means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Italians are wops.”
“And that means?”
“Some people say it means ‘without papers’ or ‘without passport,’ suggesting that every Italian is an illegal immigrant. My father actually told me the word came from our own language — guappo or guappu — something many Italians new to this country called themselves. It means ‘dandy’ or ‘swaggerer,’ but it got shortened to guap by non-Italians and became a bad word for us. Papa was still called a wop, even though he did have papers.” Irma made a funny face. “We’re wops until a WASP comes to buy our alcohol. Then we’re EYE-talians.”
Ivy laughed, though she wasn’t sure it was a joke.
“Some people are hypocrites,” Ivy offered. “You don’t want them as friends.”
Dan Roswell and two armed constables leaned against a paddy wagon waiting for the Nicolet Hotel to close. Just past midnight, two of the hotel’s customers stumbled out the back door, crossing the laneway to Sal’s to continue their revelry. Roswell had to catch Sal red-handed to lay a charge. He believed arresting the most successful bootlegger in town would be a demonstration of his authority. The guns in the constables’ holsters were meant to intimidate.
The chief of police raised his hand, and the constables leaped from the wagon, ready to bash down the steel door with a discarded telephone pole if Sal failed to answer. The men thrust forward, not waiting for Sal, and the door flew open.
Sal stood at the bottom of the stairs, arms outstretched. “You wouldn’t!”
Roswell shoved her aside and did what no other police officer had done — he rushed up the stairs two at a time and entered a child’s bedroom. Ivy in her clown pajamas and Irma in her underclothes stood agape as he ripped back the mattress, kicking the liquor bottles to the floor. The sound of breaking glass brought the little boys to the doorway. The smell of liquor was overpowering. There was a scuffle as the two inebriated men from the Nicolet Hotel scrambled up from the basement so they wouldn’t be caught in the pandemonium.
“Ignore them!” Roswell shouted. “It’s the woman we want.”
Sal didn’t resist, and Dominic arrived home to see his mother in handcuffs. They hadn’t even given her time to put on a coat or galoshes.
CHAPTER 8
Clara first met her neighbour, K.G. Rossiter, when he arrived at Shingwauk for a meeting of the school trustees. He popped into her office while he waited for the other gentlemen to arrive. The Rossiters owned the grandest house on the wealthier part of Hilltop. K.G. was a paradox, a man who mastered Ojibwa to communicate with his Native crew and yet had patrician manners.
“I understand your husband was a Royal Engineer in the communications division,” K.G. said. “It was a rough job crawling through those muddy trenches laying down lines, but it kept thousands of us alive. I was sorry to learn your husband didn’t survive the gassing.”
“He did return to the front, but it wasn’t long before he was on his way home with intractable pneumonia. Unfortunately, he didn’t reach England before he died.”
K.G. nodded sympathetically. “You’ve carried on well, Mrs. Durling. My wife, Jessie, tells me you’ve earned your master points at several bridge clubs. We’d like to invite you over for a few rounds and maybe dinner to follow.”
The thought of playing bridge at her neighbour’s posh residence pleased Clara. “Reverend Hives suggested you’re a most valuable trustee because of your scholarship around Indian folklore.”
“I learned to speak Ojibwa,” K.G. replied. “While I surveyed up north for the hydro lines, I was completely dependent on the Indians’ knowledge of the inhospitable bush and its inhabitants.” He chuckled. “We ate some strange food.”
“The children are comfortable with you.”
“That’s because I laid down the hydro lines vital to mining communities alongside their fathers. It was those summers in the bush that paid for our lovely house. I valued the loyalty that kept the Indians from hopping on the nearest train to go back to the reserve. They could make more money trapping and selling furs than surveying.”
The headmaster poked his head into Clara’s office to inform K.G. that the other trustees had arrived. Before leaving, K.G. reiterated the possibility of a bridge party. Clara reflected on how cards had brought her into Lethbridge society soon after she arrived. Then another thought popped into her head: Right after the war, British nurses were held in very high regard and my card-playing prowess might have been less important.
Hilltop residents knew Clara was British and assumed she would be interested in Jessie Rossiter’s experience following the war. “Jessie,” a neighbour confided, “resided at Cranston Towers in Great Windsor Park hobnobbing with Royals while K.G. stayed in Paris with postwar deliberations.” The “neighbour-informant” smiled. “Perhaps the Rossiters built riding stables to remind them of horses in the park.”
It wasn’t until December that Clara received the Rossiters’ invitation to play bridge. “I’ve planned a New Year’s Eve card party with neighbours and friends,” Jessie wrote. “I’d be delighted if you’d join us. Perhaps Ivy can come along and visit with my daughters.”
When Clara wrote back, she told Jessie that Ivy was pleased at being included but had accepted a previous engagement. It occurred to Clara that the Rossiter family driver could take the eldest girl, Anne, to Ivy’s New Year’s party, something she would propose.
Clara was covered in snow when Jessie opened the door with her uniformed maid ready to take Clara’s worn fur coat and galoshes.
“First storm of the season,” Jessie said. “Our driver will take you home at the end of the night.”
“I enjoy walking,” Clara said.
“Well, not in this weather,” Jessie replied firmly. She escorted Clara into the mahogany-panelled library where the other guests stood close to the fireplace with drinks in their hands. K.G. introduced her as the nurse-matron of Shingwauk School.
Jocelyn, the wife of Arnold Clement, the financial officer for the steel plant, remarked, “It’s unusual for women to take work when so many men are unemployed.”
“I don’t know of any male nurses,” Clara said with a smile.
“Of course,” Jocelyn said, reddening.
“I was the superintendent of the Galt Hospital in Lethbridge for ten years,” Clara said. “I moved to the Soo for health reasons.” She accepted a Scotch, “with plenty of water,” and turned to strike up a conversation with James and Dorothy Francis. James ran St. Marys Pulp and Paper Mill. He had moved to the Soo from Cleveland to marry Dorothy, the daughter of a doctor at General Hospital.
Patchwork Society Page 4
