A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) (10 page)

Sincerely yours,

Peter Sterling (President)

In the envelope, with the letter, are five ten-dollar bills.

I walk north to Gerrard, then east. It is a long walk, but I know exactly where I am going. When I reach the southwest corner of River Street, I enter the Shamrock Hotel, seat myself in a comer, order a pint of Guinness and a Blue Union Label cigar, and slump into the shadows. It is, after all, St. Patrick's Day, and there are only five more days until the temperance forces will close down the Shamrock, the Winchester, the Nipissing, the Rupert, the Dominion House, the Avion, and all the other workingman's pubs. The King Edward, the Queen's, and their ilk will survive, somehow. But not the Shamrock, I am certain. Not the Nipissing.

The Guinness, dark and smooth, disappears, and I order another. With a second Union Label, I sit back, drink, smoke, stare through the blue air, letting the odors penetrate, cling to me, avoiding going home.

I have no plan.

The place fills up, the noise grows, and I sink gratefully into the haze, let the hours slip by.

At eight o'clock I give the waiter a ten-dollar bill, accept a five back, wave off the change, and find myself standing on the street outside, collar turned up against the cold. I walk south on River to Queen, then west through Irish Cabbagetown.

Sumach Street, then Sackville.

At Sackville, I pause. This is where my sister Bridget and her husband Charles and their four children live. Bridget, I think. Only four years older than me, whom I seldom see anymore. Like Rose, only two years my senior, now with Neil and their three on Sherbourne Street, which I will pass in a half-dozen blocks or so. Rose: the Nipissing comes back to me, odors, textures, as does a sudden flash of even earlier images: Kate, Teresa, Bridget, Rose, and I crossing the Grand River on our way to St. Mary's School. Miss Lecour. Bridget, Rose, and I, huddled beneath heavy blankets in the same room: the sound of their breathing, of Rose coughing.

Maybe it is the Guinness, the blarney about St. Patrick that floated through the pub, but I begin to think, as I note the faces on the street about me, that perhaps I belong here. I think of Peter Sterling, an Englishman, who employed me, paid me for eighteen years, yet never knew me, never wanted to know me. Who let me go. Who let us all go.

I walk on.

At Power Street, I stop: another memory.

Lillian. Eighteen years ago. The hayloft at Boyd's farm, the woods beside the Don River.

I turn down the street, stop outside Osgoode Dairy, number 82, wonder about Lillian, her mother, her three brothers, if they are still there, atop it. Then I see different people moving about through the windows, in the gaslight, and I know that they are not, that they are gone, like so much else. Eighteen years ago.

At my back is St, Paul's Roman Catholic Church. I cross over, push through the creaking wooden doors, slide into a richly lacquered pew near the back. It is warmer inside, and there is the church smell, the incense. At the front, over the altar, is a painting of the Last Supper; above that, in the domed recess, is a large mural of a man dying, whom I take to be St. Paul, amid warriors, angels, and rays that part the clouds. Between the two paintings I read the Latin inscription
Sauk Saule Quid Me Persequeris?
which I do not understand. I count nine more paintings, from front to back, adorning the ceiling, high overhead. I glance about at the three- dimensional carvings that are the stations of the cross, at the cloth-draped confessionals—remember kneeling in ones just like them as a boy.

I do not know how I came here. I do not attend church. Margaret was baptized in St. Cecilia's, Jack in St. Helen's. Soon there will be Margaret's first communion. Places for rituals only, I think, where we are assigned roles. Nothing more.

Yet sitting here, in shadow, I am drawn to the flickering tiers of votive candles behind colored glass, red, green, the possibility of contact, of help. I rise, walk to the side altar, light a candle, drop a nickel into the brass box, watch the wax begin to flow, to settle. I think of Kervin, Mike, Ma, of John and Bill, boys, covered in mud, clutching rifles somewhere in Europe, of Gramma in a blue nightgown, propped against a white pillow. I think of my father, a blacksmith, leaving Elora, leaving his trade, living and dying in a city he did not know, that did not know him, thousands of miles from his birthplace, and folding my hands I stand there and say what I hope is a prayer.

I am on the sidewalk outside Don Valley Pressed Bricks, staring at the stone facade of the building. I think, again, about eighteen years. Then I walk to Berna Motors and Taxicabs at Victoria and Adelaide, flop into the backseat of a cab, light another cigar, and tell the driver to take me home, take me to Lansdowne Avenue, to Maggie, Margaret, Jack. When we arrive, I pay the driver two dollars, tell him to keep the change, stumble inside, up the stairs.

The door opens easily. Maggie is waiting for me, fear in her eyes. I go to her, hold her hands, drop my head, shamed. The children are quiet, watching, listening.

She looks at me.

I shrug my shoulders. I know I smell badly, of beer, cigars. Then I realize: I am doing it again. This, I think, is how I first came to her, those many years ago, in Simpson's, my hat lying on the counter between us.

I am tired, cold. I am about to disappoint people again. But before I do, before their faces turn from me, I take the envelope out of my pocket, with my letter, with forty-three dollars left, and hand it to Maggie, my offering, all that I have.

2

151 McDougall Ave.

Detroit, Mick

May 7, 1916

410 Lansdowne Ave.

Toronto, Ont.

Dear Martin,

Got your letter last week with the news of Kervin's death and your being let go at work. Things don't sound too good but don't despair as things always pick up. Please give Cora and my sympathy to everyone. Cora is worried about her own brother (Morris) because he has enlisted in the army and it just seems like a matter of time before the Yanks too will be going abroad for this bloody war so these things visit us alt.

I have some news of my own. Cora is now pregnant and we are expecting the baby in November. But here's the other news, by November we'll be back in Toronto as Ford is opening a plant there at the corner of Dupont and Christie and I applied for a promotion there and got it! I start in September. It didn't hurt any that I was born and raised in the city and knew important people like you! I'll sure miss some of the folks at the plant, like Walter as we go back a long way, and Cora and his wife Mary Alice have become quite good friends. There's something about going home though that I find irresistible and Cora remembers her trip to your wedding so fondly that she didn't take much convincing. The only one she is close to in her family is her
brother Morris and I already told you about him.

Say, are you interested in seeing if you can get on at the plant toot J can look into it if you'd like, just let me know.

Tootin my horn,

Jock

* * *

410 Lansdowne Ave.

Toronto, Ont.

June 11, 1916

151 McDougall Ave.

Detroit, Mich.

Dear Jock,

Great news on both counts—that you will be a daddy and that you and Cora will be coming to Toronto. Congratulations twice! (And a promotion, what a big shot.) I look forward to getting together again often.

My news is that I've got a new job. I'm working in the Receiving Department on the 7th floor of Simpson's. Yes Simpson's. Maggie worked at Simpson's, as you know, and Mike has always worked for them, so they found out about the opening and put in the word for me. If they hadn't done so, I trust that I might be working for you underneath a flivver at Dupont and Christie pretty soon. By the way—they are selling Model Ts here for $360 now. Can you believe it? But my chances of ever getting one are still slim and none. Oh well.

But the real sad news is that you cannot get a beer anywhere decent. There are bootleggers everywhere, but the bottled stuff that's been hoarded is worth a king's ransom. It's the story of my life that I didn't even think about putting away my own stash the way so many others did. The rumor is that it's just a matter of time before the temperance ladies get organized south of the border and it hits you there too, especially if your boys all leave for the fighting in Europe, so tell Cora to have her family stock up. It could be the door to a wonderful opportunity.

See you in September, old man. And as for the blessing of the baby, get ready to never sleep in again. And remember, the only way we'll get to have a beer together is if you bring lots with you, and pack it so deep under your belongings that the customs boys will collapse of exhaustion and boredom rather than keep digging.

Yours, with a dry throat,

Martin

3

Gramma has a terrible cough, harsh, a feeble bark. Her nose is running. She is pale, her hair uncombed. Today, she does not drink the tea I offer her in the thermos lid, has no interest in it. Her head sinks into the white pillow, her mouth open, her eyes glazed. Unmoving, her hands lie like bleached driftwood at her sides, palms down. The bottle of Lourdes water sits on the bedside table.

It is February 4, 1917, and the cold of winter seeps beneath every baseboard, pours silently through the panes of every window, penetrates to the bone. It is impossible to be warm, even with the coals glowing in the stove nearby.

I touch the skin on the back of her hand, as cold as the room, and wonder again how old she is. Eighty-five? Ninety? And then I wonder about a life that stopped in 1845, that has atrophied in shock ever since, letting the world swirl around it.

She coughs, sudden, hoarse, rasping, gasps air back into liquid lungs, and I know, without knowing how, that I am fortunate to be here with her now, at this moment, in this brittle room, where there are only the two of us.

"Margaret," I say. "Margaret Loy."

The eyes, milky, perhaps blind, turn to me. Her lips are cracked, dry.

"It's me. Martin. I'm here." Then I say it the old way: "Mártain." I hold her hand. "I am fine."

Then her mouth makes the
o,
feebly, one last time, and I smile while I feel her fingers tighten on mine as I hoped they would, as she hears her husband's name, her son's name. As I try to give her this.

The priest comes later that afternoon and anoints her with the holy oils, as he has done so many times before. After death is better than not at all, he tells us, bending to his task, to the administration of the sacrament: her eyes, her mouth, her ears, her hands. He weaves the rosary beads through her still, thin fingers as he talks: I am not too late, he says. God will accept her.

I look at Ma. Her face is a mask, pulled tight. I put my arm around her shoulder, feel her go rigid, think to myself what I have often thought since that first time I helped her with Gramma, helped Ma lift her back into her bed, that I am touching her, that I want to touch her before she too is gone.

TWELVE

January 1920

RADEY—At her late residence, 38 Brookfield Street, on January 19, 1920, Ann, widow of the late John Radey, in her 75th year.

Funeral Wednesday at 8:30 a.m., to St. Francis Church. Interment St. Michael's Cemetery.

The Toronto Daily Star

Tuesday, January 20, 1920

* * *

The priest takes the crucifix from the top of the casket and hands it to Mary, who, white faced, clutches it in both hands. Elizabeth and Kate are holding one another, crying.

Ma is lowered into the ground. With Da. It seems impossible. They are still alive in my head, always. I will talk to them forever. The sky is gray, the wind biting. The two of them, I think. Born across the ocean and buried so far away, in this frozen, snowy ground, sixteen seeds scattered.

I will be forty in June. At the grave's edge, my parents in the earth, I now understand what it means to be the youngest in a family of older parents: I will experience all the death around me sooner than my siblings did, everyone will likely go before me, this will happen to me more often than it will to the others, this standing at a grave's edge. I am in a different place. My life will be different.

And I am an orphan.

My brother, my sisters. We are all orphans.

Loy, I think, is the Irish for shovel.

A flock of starlings rises up against the bleak winter sky, heads east.