A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) (15 page)

I cannot sleep, thinking of Gert.

Thursday, at lunch, I step out onto Queen for a haircut. I want to look my best tomorrow. In the barber chair, trying to calm myself, the scissors cleaning my neck, around my ears, I am filled with second thoughts. What am I doings- How old is she? What will people think?

Yet I cannot stop myself. Everything has a momentum, I realize. I am swept along.

Gert is here, Maggie is not: guilt, mixed with longing so powerful it is like a flood of madness. My mind races.

Another chance. I want another chance at life. I want it so badly, suddenly, that it scares me. The hands touching my nape, my scalp, are not the barber's. They are hers. They are Gert's. I am not forty-six. I am eighteen again, breathless, in the loft of the bam at Boyd's farm, a girl's mouth, her tongue touching mine.

Number 238 Gilmour Avenue is a reasonably new semidetached brick house with a wooden verandah on a pretty street. I meet Mrs. McNulty and Gert's older sister, Evelyn. I can feel it: I am back in a house among women who welcome me, would take care of me. All this after so many years of knowing that I was somehow letting everyone down.

Gert and Evelyn have cooked a meal of meat loaf, potatoes, peas, squash. Good china is set out, frail, with small pink flowers painted on its edges, along with proper silverware and white cloth napkins. We drink tea after dinner. An apple pie is produced for dessert. Alcohol never appears, bootleg or otherwise. I learn that Gert is twenty-seven years old, that Evelyn is thirty-six, does the same job as her sister—a switchboard operator—only for Bell Telephone. I learn that Patrick Kelly was Mrs. McNulty's husband's name, and that he died four years ago, that she and Gert and Evelyn moved in here because it was something they could afford and because it was closer to the girls' jobs. I hear that Gert is the youngest of six, that the other four are married— two more sisters and two brothers, that one or another of them is now living in Detroit. When they ask me how old I am I falter, then tell them the truth. I am forty-six, I say. Forty-six.

They are quiet. They already know, I realize. But I see something else: I have been tested and have passed. I wonder what else they know about me, wonder about the level of gossip that encircles me, about which I know nothing.

I tell them about my job at Simpson's, about Jack and Margaret, how well they are doing in school, and how my sisters—ten of them living in the city—help me take care of them. I am, after all, a widower, a man, and what do I know about children?

They nod. This, too, they seem to understand.

I cannot bring myself to talk about Maggie. Or Mike.

I ask them if I may light a cigar. They scurry, get me an ashtray, a box of matches. I glance at Gert, catch her eye, and she smiles in return, just for me. Twenty-seven, I think, not knowing what to feel besides a long-forgotten excitement. A second chance.

I have not dated a woman for eighteen years. I do not know what to do, what is acceptable anymore. Newspapers and magazines have placed the new verbal currency at my fingertips. I have read about flappers, Oxford bags, peekaboo hats, powdering your knees, have heard "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Baby Face." But it is not my world.

Gert is standing with me on the verandah.

Alone with her, I say something that I did not know I was going to say. "You don't want to get involved with an old guy like me." It just comes out.

She is quiet, then takes my hand. "Let's go for a walk."

The kiss, the first kiss, of course I remember that. But what I remember is the fingers at the back of my neck, brushing the clean-shaven skin, the realization of how badly I needed a woman's touch, of the void in which I had been living, of the kindness of her mouth, giving me back a piece of the life I have lost.

Forgive me, Maggie. Please forgive me. Less than eight months. I have always been so incomplete.

Oh, Gert.

I phone her the next day, Saturday, August 21, and we agree to go to breakfast again after mass tomorrow, then head down to High Park for the afternoon. I am like a schoolboy, dizzy.

Then I phone Jock, tell him I am seeing a woman. I can hear the surprise in the silent pause that hovers. Then: good for you, old man, he tells me. Get right back on that bicycle and keep riding. Come on over to my place. I'll pour you a special Ross ale, and we won't tell the government. Tell me all about it.

We sit in the backyard of Jock's home on Wallace, just off Lansdowne, in the shade of a drooping chestnut, drinking his homemade brew. He tells me that Ford is laying men off, that sales are down twenty-five percent, Chevrolet's up forty percent. GM's Acceptance Corporation, he says, has understood the importance of time payments, while old Henry has been dragging his heels, and now they're all paying the price. The Dupont and Christie plant is closing and moving out to Victoria Park and Danforth, way the hell out in the sticks, he says. How the hell am I going to get there? he says. I'll have to move, for God's sake.

Then: how old is she?

Twenty-seven, I say.

He seems stricken for a moment. Good Lord, old man, he says, finally.

I don't know what to say.

He is quiet again. He drinks his ale. Then he looks at me, says: I envy you. He nods.

I relax.

Remember those birds we used to chase? he says. That was twenty years ago. Before we started to lose our hair. I can't figure out what happened to the years. What's she see in you anyway?

I shrug. My big job. My Cadillac. My fabulous future.

We laugh.

I have not laughed for a long time.

High Park is a dream. She puts her arm through mine and we stroll languorously. The pond, the zoo, the trails, the ice cream. I touch her face, her shoulders, her hair. Twenty years disappear. They never happened.

When I come home from work on Monday and pick up the mail, I see the envelope. With a start things fall into place. It is addressed to Miss Margaret Radey and the return address is 39 Lockwood Road. It is from Mike. Every year he sends Margaret a birthday card, and even now, especially now, he has made the effort.

Margaret's birthday was August 21. It was Saturday.

In my head there is her voice on the phone, her hesitation:
Everything is fine. I'll look after
Jack. There's lots to do. I'll help Aunt Rose
.

I place the envelope on the kitchen table, sit, tilt my forehead into my fingers, close my eyes. I see myself swept along in a river, Jack and Margaret on the banks, their faces receding into the past. I do not know how any of this has happened to me, where I slipped into the current, why I cannot climb out, where I will wash up.

SEVENTEEN

1927

1928

RADEY—McNULTY

St. Cecilia's Church was the scene of a pretty wedding on Tuesday morning, when Miss Gertrude Christine McNulty, became the bride of Mr. Martin Radey. Rev. Father Colliton officiated at the ceremony and Miss Olive Dickinson sang "O Salutaris," and "Ave Maria." The High Altar of the church was lovely with many gladioli in rose shades and tapers were burning. The bride, who was given away by her brother, Mr. Anthony McNulty, wore a gown of peach crepe romaine and a black picture hat. Her flowers were Ophelia roses and lily of the valley. Miss Evelyn McNulty was her sister's only attendant and wore a mauve georgette frock with a hat of many shades of mauve. She carried tea roses and baby's breath. Mr. Jock Ross attended the groom. After the wedding, a reception was held at the home of the bride's mother when the immediate relatives of the bride and groom joined them at wedding breakfast. Mrs. McNulty was in a gown of black georgette and wore a corsage bouquet of Richmond roses. Later in the day, Mr. and Mrs. Radey left on a wedding trip for Detroit and Cleveland. The bride traveled in a smart gown of figured georgette in tones of blue and her coat and hat were in matching shades, and her shoes of the same tone. On their return, Mr. and Mrs. Radey will reside in Toronto.

The Toronto Daily Star

Wednesday, August 10, 1927

* * *

It is September 21, the first day of autumn. In my hands I hold a crisp black-and-white photo of Gert and I standing on the verandah at 238 Gilmour, with the wedding party of ten lined up below us at the foot of the steps, all squinting into that bright, early-morning summer sunshine. I am wearing my fedora tilted rakishly forward. There are Evelyn and Jock, Gert's mother, her brother Anthony and his wife and her sister Tess and her husband. That makes seven. Only three from my side of the family stare back at me—my sister Margaret, now in her sixties, her husband John Dickinson, and their daughter Olive, my niece, who sang for us as we walked down the aisle.

That is who I see in the photo. There are people I do not see as well. I do not see my other sisters or their husbands. I do not see my more than forty other nephews and nieces.

I do not see Margaret and Jack.

My fingers squeeze the photo and I notice how the veins stand out on the back of my hands, just like Da's did.

I give up the place on Margueretta Street and move in with Gert, Evelyn, and Mrs. McNulty. Margueretta Street is another transition point, something that belongs to the past.

Margaret has graduated from high school and entered the Ontario College of Art on a scholarship. She lives with my sister Mary and Mary's husband Michael Rossiter—now that all their own family has grown up and married—back at 38 Brookfield. Jack has left school. He lives with his cousin Carmen, Mike's son, on Lockwood in the east end, and does part-time work at the gas company with him.

Gert and I rarely talk about Jack and Margaret. It is a topic we cannot solve. She does not see how they fit into my life because they do not fit into hers.

They don't need you, she says. They're almost grown up. They've got their own lives, their own friends. We need time alone. They're still upset that their mother died. I'm too young to be their mother. Time will heal the wound. They'll come around. They'll grow up and understand. What about us? What about our life?

I will lose her over them if I persist, and I cannot face this.

In the night, I cling tightly to Gert, all that I have, feel her legs wrapped about mine, breathe her warmth wildly, lose myself, again and again.

Gert is incredible. The coolness of her skin, the softness of her mouth—I am crazy about her. I tell her we need our own place, away from her sister and mother, where we can be alone. She smiles coyly, but puts me off. Wait till the spring she says. I don't want to leave Mother just yet.

Your mother will be fine. She's got Evelyn. What about us? I say, using her line. What about our life?

She comes to me, slides her hands under my jacket, along my back, kisses my chest, my neck. Spring, she says, and the fire runs through my veins as her hair, silken, dark, brushes my mouth.

* * *

BIRTHS

RADEY—At St. Joseph's Hospital, October 24, 1928, to Mr. and Mrs. Martin Radey (nee Gertrude McNulty), a daughter (Evelyn Joan).

The Toronto Daily Star

Wednesday; October 25, 1928

EIGHTEEN

1929-32

1

Gert and I have the upper duplex at 2130 Dundas West, right on the corner of Golden Avenue, our own place, finally. Joan, our daughter, is one year and six weeks old, tottering about, my new glory. She is a miracle of tiny fingers, talcum powder, eyes that shine.

It is Friday, December 6, 1929. I am reading about the president of United Cigar, whose stock plummeted on the New York Exchange from $113.50 to $4 in a single day and who jumped to his death from the ledge of his New York hotel. United Cigar stores are like Woolworth's stores, A & P, Piggly Wiggly—they are everywhere. It says that there are thirty-seven hundred of them. The paper is full of such stories. I picture him falling, the windows going by, wonder what goes through his mind in his last moments.

The phone rings and it is my sister, Mary Rossiter. She has not spoken to me for ages, so I am surprised by her call.

Martin, she says.

I wait, listen.

Do you know about Margaret? Your Margaret? she asks.

Know what? She's living with you, isn't she?

I can hear her breathing into the phone, then sighing.

She got married last Saturday, Martin. She married Tommy Nolan, Eleanor's brother.

The president of United Cigar, falling . . .