Annabel (24 page)

22

Fabric and Notions

T
HOMASINA HAD WRITTEN
Wally Michelin a different kind of postcard from Bucharest than the one she had written to Wayne. By the time she wrote Wally’s card she had been in Bucharest for months. She no longer liked the chaos, the noise and dirt, or the old concrete-block buildings, and had decided to book a train and a boat to England.

“I want to go and sit in the park in London,” she wrote. “I can stay at the Cale Street Hostel for August and half of September for practically nothing, and when I get sick of the young Australian backpackers I intend to try and get room 118 at the Cadogan Hotel on Sloane Street. It will cost nearly a hundred pounds a night but I want to spend at least one night in the room where Oscar Wilde was arrested, and then I might go to another hotel near Poet’s Corner and go visit the monuments to my old friends the Brontë sisters, and Wordsworth. I wish they had a monument to Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy. If no one is looking I might leave a small memorial to her in some old crevice or another. A petal from one of the Queen’s roses, or a violet from one of the gypsies in Trafalgar Square. Someone needs to leave something in memory of Dorothy.”

Wally Michelin had not loved Tim McPhail, the boy who had taken her to her high school prom. She had loved the French composer Gabriel Fauré, and she had loved her music studies. When she arrived in Boston to work in her aunt’s shop after graduation, her aunt had been kind. She gave Wally a room that had belonged to her grown daughter, and she had bought Wally her own record player and told her she could go down to the Berklee College of Music bookstore on Boylston Street if she wanted to buy books or records. It was at that bookstore, on the bulletin board, that Wally read about the Harley Street Voice Clinic in London.

Her aunt Doreen’s shop was a fabric and notions store on Brattle Street, and Wally liked it. She liked the precision with which she learned to cut yards of linen and jersey from big rolls, using a yardstick on the long counter. She loved it when her aunt taught her how to pull a single thread from the weave so that the line marking its absence became your guideline for cutting. That seemed like a neat, graceful trick to her. She also liked the wall on which hung a collection of mysterious tools: bobbins for Singer sewing machines, long pins, and pearl-handled awls for punching holes in paper to transfer patterns. She liked Boston itself, so sedate and shadowed. It would have been sombre, she thought, were it not for the students who spilled into its streets in late August, enlivening the red brick and sharp angles of the sun as they swarmed Harvard Square and the surrounding streets with their armloads of textbooks and their young, intense faces that held adventure and studiousness alike.

In her years of high school, Wally Michelin’s teachers and the guidance counsellor had tried to show her university calendars and had given her tests that showed she had academic aptitude in all kinds of directions. They had not done this for every student but they had done it for the ones they felt had the intelligence and the money to go places. She had resented this, and wondered why they had singled out her and a few others such as Tim McPhail when students like Wayne Blake were ignored and left to fend for themselves. One of the teachers had asked Wally to write a list of the relatives she had in Boston, as if they were part of the qualifications that gave her special academic ability. She had replied that she had no relatives in Boston, just to shut the teacher up, and it had worked that day: the teacher had walked away disappointed. What the teacher had not known, and what Wally had not told the guidance counsellor or anyone else, was that if she could not study music she was not going to study anything at all. She would work in her aunt’s shop and would learn how to tell the difference between French and American ribbon, and to discern which buttons were long lasting and valuable and which were cheap, and in her spare time she would turn on her record player or go to free student concerts and listen to the music other people made.

Wally’s mother and her aunt Doreen were sisters, but Wally thought her aunt looked happier than her mother. She had her hair done more often, and she had pedicures too. Her toenails were painted a warm pink. It was nothing for her to go out to a restaurant three times a week. Wally had heard her mother say that Doreen’s shop and her husband together made more money than Doreen knew how to spend, and now Wally wondered if it were just that Aunt Doreen was more prosperous or whether she was happier by nature. The living room had a bay window, and in the bay part was a basket lined in satin, and on the satin lay a white mother poodle and five puppies. There was a piano in the living room, and on a shelf Doreen had a collection of dolls that were not toys but were dressed in elaborate garments. Wally knew from a catalogue her aunt kept in a drawer of her china cabinet that the dolls cost more than a hundred dollars each, some up to three hundred and beyond. Their shoes alone were little works of art.

But it was not just that her aunt had a piano and purebred puppies and her shop and the dolls; her aunt Doreen was interested in things. She knew when an operatic star was coming to town or when a new Italian film was on at the repertory cinema, and she loved to get any kind of news, and to think about it and talk about it in a lively way. After the quietness of Croydon Harbour, Wally loved the bustle and activity of Boston, as well as this lively way her aunt Doreen had of making every ordinary thing in life an event. When the mail brought a postcard for Wally from Thomasina in Paris, then another from Bucharest, Doreen made an event of standing it on the table in the hall, against the vase she kept filled with carnations and white iris. There was music in the house, and there were books, and there was always a cake in a box from the Modern Pastry shop on Hanover Street.

Aunt Doreen was a person to whom you could mention things, and the day Wally saw the notice about the Harley Street Voice Clinic at the college bookshop, she told her aunt about it. The cake in that day’s box was a Swiss roll spread with jam and studded with coconut, and Wally marvelled at its sponginess as her aunt cut them each a piece to have with tea in English teacups.

If you did not know that Wally had had an injury to her voice in junior high school, you would think she was a girl with a slightly softer than normal voice. You might think her voice had a beauty, that it crumbled in a way that sounded inviting to the ear. In a world of harsh voices Wally’s injured voice was quiet, but this was no blessing to Wally herself, and her aunt knew it.

The Harley Street Voice Clinic, Wally said, was not on Harley Street at all, but on a street called Wimpole Street. It had a team of doctors who did nothing else on this earth except repair vocal cords that had nodules on them or that had been strained or torn or otherwise injured. They did it for people who had devoted their lives to singing but who could not sing because something had injured their instrument. Their voices were their instrument. Wally told her aunt this, and her aunt — who had wanted to play piano but who had not been taught it when she was young enough — this aunt understood what Wally was telling her. Her aunt knew all about Wally’s injury, about what had happened to her at Donna Palliser’s party years ago. Everyone in the family did.

“I suppose,” Wally said, “it’s expensive to go have that done. And it’s so far away. Maybe there’s a place in Boston.”

“If there were a place in Boston, the Berklee College of Music would not have information about the place in London on the bulletin board in the bookstore. They have it there because they know that is the place to go.”

“I wish it wasn’t all the way to London. If there was something like that here, I could get on a bus and go visit it and see for myself.”

“If we knew anyone in London we could ask them to go and have a look. Then you would know. You would know what kind of feel the Harley Street Voice Clinic has. If they have a serious atmosphere, if they are able to do what they say they can do.”

“Thomasina Baikie said she was going to London in her last postcard, remember? She was tired of Bucharest and looking forward to going to her favourite part of London and eating fish and chips and staying in that hostel and that other place.”

“Get her postcard off the table.”

They read the postcard again.

“She’s there now,” Aunt Doreen said. “If she did what she said she was going to do, she’s still there. She’s at that hostel or one of the hotels. We can phone them and leave a message for her to call us.”

“Call us from England?” Wally could not imagine imposing on Thomasina by asking her to make a telephone call over thousands of miles of ocean. But her aunt was excited. She was a woman who became enthusiastic about things, and now she took three of the puppies in her arms and fed them pieces of cake.

“Collect, silly,” she said. “We’ll leave a message asking her to call us collect, and we can ask her to go visit Harley Street.”

“Wimpole Street. The Harley Street Voice Clinic is at number thirty-five Wimpole Street.”

“Wimpole Street then. And she’ll go. This woman will do that for you. She’ll go and check it out. We’ll talk to her and give her the exact information that is on the records your doctor sent when you came here from home, and she can show it to those doctors on Wimpole Street and they can tell her what they think. And then you’ll know.”

23

Franchise King

F
OREST ROAD STARTED OUT ELEGANTLY,
though it bordered the penitentiary and the defunct stadium. It was lined with three-storey houses that had dormers, stained-glass porches, and dragon door knockers; fall crocuses, winterberries, and Bell Island slate. It had railings, old yews, and silence. But it opened out; it spread downhill towards Quidi Vidi Lake, and on this disappointing bare stretch Chesley Outerbridge had built his apartments of featureless brick, where call-centre employees lived and many apartments were vacant or used for spaces that were anything but homes. In the parking lot Wayne noticed a for-sale sign on a white van whose door read
STOCKLEY'S: EXCELLENCE IN PEST CONTROL SINCE 1971
. Behind the building ran the lake trail, supporting earnest joggers, disheartening algae, and geese maimed by fish hooks and road salt. On Wayne’s third night in the building, a pizza he had not ordered came to his door.

“Echoes?” The man from Venice looked at his notebook and squinted at Wayne.

“No.”

“What’s the name?”

“Wayne Blake.”

“Could I take a look at that?” Wayne’s telephone book lay on the floor. “Yellow Pages,” said the man. “Under Escorts.”

Though he shared Echoes’ landing, Wayne never saw anyone emerge. He heard men come up the stairs, and wondered about them. He spent days sitting on his carpet beside his open suitcase. In the suitcase was everything he had brought from Labrador: his jeans, a couple of favourite shirts, a binder into which he had put his bridge sketches and Thomasina’s postcards, and some work socks from the Hudson’s Bay store.

“Make all your socks the same colour,” Treadway had said. “Then you won’t have to fool around with pairs in your laundry.” This was the sole piece of advice his father had given him on leaving home.

In the binder with his postcards and sketches he had put a black-and-white photo of Wally Michelin from his high school yearbook. The caption, chosen by Donna Palliser and her yearbook committee, read, “They say love hides behind every corner. Well, then, I must be walking in circles!” He sat near the suitcase and looked out the window at blueberry bushes on the hills.

The hills were an example of how brutal something can be when you do nothing to make it softer or more beautiful. This apartment, Wayne’s mother would have told a daughter, was just about the worst apartment a girl could have if she were living in St. John’s for the first time. To a daughter Jacinta would have said, “You might as well check yourself into the Waterford.” But she would not have said this to a son. A son might stare at the hills but he would buy boots with felt linings and see what he could do about buying that van in the parking lot. He knew he had been right to leave Gracie Watts behind, but he wondered if it would be all right to call her now, just to see what she thought about the idea of him buying that van, and to cut through the loneliness. If he had brought Gracie with him she would have helped him find something to hang at his windows. She would do something about getting a few dishes. Cheerful ones with wheat on the rims. Red cups. A salt shaker instead of pouring salt into his hand out of a box the old tenant had left behind and throwing half the handful down the sink. He knew he could not have brought Gracie, but he wished he could talk to her now.

Every morning a bird’s voice came through the Forest Road window like a needle. At night the carpet chafed Wayne’s face and moonlight blared through his eyelids. Why hadn’t he just walked the streets when he reached St. John’s and found an apartment on Gower Street, or above the Tan Tan takeout on Colonial Street? Somewhere with cats on doorsteps, and window boxes. Even if the boxes contained straggly lobelia and daisies strayed from vacant lots. At least daisies were something. Each day he rose from his floor, poured himself a glass of milk, and ate a few of the chocolate graham squares he had bought at Caines. Mr. Caines might know the corner grocery business but he did not know how to direct someone to an apartment that felt anything like a home.

He did not want to phone his mother and make her worry, but he had to talk to someone, and finally he called Gracie. He called her at night, when he knew she would be studying her paramedic books and her mother and father would be out of the kitchen.

“Gracie?”

“Wayne? How are you doing?”

“I’m thinking of buying a van.”

“Have you got a job yet?”

“You can work for yourself if you’ve got a van.”

“So you haven’t got a job?”

“People who don’t have vans don’t realize the potential. Is it all right if we talk on the phone for a few minutes?”

“I have to study, Wayne.”

“What are you studying tonight?”

“I’m studying how some bacteria have their own minds.”

“They have minds?”

“They can think independently. They can start new ideas on their own. They have brains.”

“That’s something.”

“Wayne?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to study. Really hard. I can’t be on the phone just chatting, you know?”

“Okay.”

“And I have to protect myself. I have to act like I’m a person in charge of taking care of Gracie Watts, and do things that will make sure she’s okay. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I guess.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound all right. Have you made any friends? And what about money?”

“That’s what I’m saying. I’m hoping to work with the van.”

“I can’t talk about vans, Wayne. Not right now. Did you call your mother?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, you should. She phoned my mother at one o’clock in the morning looking for your address. My mother says she didn’t realize what time it was.”

“I sent her my address.”

“Well, she must have lost it. My mother said she shouldn’t be left alone, Wayne. She said she was carrying a bag of potatoes from the store on Saturday in her summer dress. It was freezing and she had no coat on.”

“My mother doesn’t need potatoes. She has a whole root cellar full of blue potatoes for boiling and Yukon Golds for French fries.”

“Well, she bought a twenty-pound bag on Saturday and carried it home in her bare arms. Maybe you had better call her.”

Wayne called his mother’s number but there was no answer. He ate a Mars bar and looked out the window at the van. He thought about it some more on one of his walks to the edge of the city. By the fifth mile of a walk like that you forgot where you were and how you had got there. If you had the right boots and clothes, it could rain and you could still walk and think and work out where your life should go, now that you had left things behind that confused you, that defined you as a man when you weren’t a man. Not the son your dad wanted. Not a son who kept up family traditions. Not a Labrador trapper, strong mettled and well read, solitary but knowing how to lead a pack. Instead you were ambiguous, feminine, undecided. You had even had a baby beginning to grow inside you, and you kept wondering to what size it had grown before it died, and thinking about its eyes. Wayne was glad Gracie had not tried to stay on the phone. Glad she was stronger than him, though he suspected she had forced herself to say she did not want to talk to him.

Walking miles through the city, past the downtown neighbourhoods, beyond Rennies Mill River, up Kenmount Road to the neon signs, the car dealerships, the sound barriers, the chain restaurants selling ribs by the bucket and coleslaw by the pound, you could decide how to make a living in a new town where no one knew you. This was one of the ways in which he thought like his father. Treadway had influenced him early with the idea that you had to be self-sufficient. Wayne passed lines hung with blue and silver flags snapping in the wind. Chevrolet, GM, Ford. Used or new. You were independent if you had a van. You could sell something out of it.

Wayne ended up in places no walker should attempt. This drainage ditch between the Wonder Bread factory on O’Leary Avenue and the Avalon Mall. This was more than a ditch, it was a whole system of wasteland, chain-link fences, yards filled with lumber awaiting construction, unidentifiable boxes, Quonset huts, coils of insulated wire, landfill, piles of asphalt, and sinister-looking rubble. Wayne walked through this waste-scape and into Donovan’s Industrial Park, where he found Frank King, who was looking for a driver to sell hams, ground beef, pork roasts, racks of lamb, and a scattered cod fillet door to door among the big houses downtown. Frank’s warehouse door was open; Frank shouted through it at men lifting pallets of chocolate-covered cherries. A poster on the door advertised Tunnock’s Teacakes. Puddles all over the parking lot reflected a robin’s-egg sky with puffy clouds moving fast. A couple of tractor trailers idled and the air stank of diesel.

“Wayne Blake. You have your own vehicle?” Frank King’s office was the colour of ballpark mustard.

“Yeah.”

“Where?” Frank looked at Wayne’s head, shirt, pants, and boots. He looked closely at Wayne’s face, as if it were odd, and Wayne wondered what Frank King saw. Frank King did not appear to be the most observant of men, but sometimes an unobservant person could surprise you with a piece of startling insight.

“I’m in the process of buying it.”

“Clean?”

“I’m getting it repainted this week.”

“Inside and out? You want a spotless vehicle, Wayne.” Frank King was egg-shaped. His skin was glossy and his hands jewelled. He had a moustache whose ends he kept clipped. He wore a gold chain, and when he wanted to make a point, he pointed. “I’m not putting any of my refrigeration units in a less than hygienic situation. They don’t call me the Franchise King for nothing. I regard each of my drivers as a franchisee. All franchises, my friend, have standards. That is what makes a franchise a franchise, Wayne. Standards.”

Wayne took the number seven bus home. Six Ethiopian men got off at the
Evening Telegram
building. A woman in the front seat held a pink comb with half its teeth missing. She combed the first few inches of her hair. The rest looked as if it had not been combed since she was a child. When the bus got to Empire Avenue, she pulled a cap over the combed part of her hair, covering it completely.

The pest-control van was fourteen years old and had three flat tires. Its sign said
INQUIRE AT TONY'S AUTO TECH BEHIND ELIZABETH DRUGS
.

Tony rolled out from under a Buick on a set of mech-anic’s wheels. “That Vandura,” he told Wayne, “belongs to my brother-in-law. I can tow her into the shop. You’re going to need at least a new floor in her and a timing belt, and brake pads and probably a couple of ball joints if you’re going to pass inspection. It’s liable to cost you five to seven hundred to get her roadworthy.”

“I need ‘Pest Control’ painted over. I’m thinking of using it for meat.”

“You need the whole body done?” Tony looked as if he thought painting over “Pest Control” was frivolous.

“How about you do whatever you can for this.” Wayne fished in his jeans and handed Tony half a dozen hundred-dollar bills.

Tony sat up and looked them over. “Where did you get these?”

“Bank of Montreal, Goose Bay.”

Tony held one against the caged bulb that lit up the Buick’s transmission. He looked Wayne in the eye. It was a look no woman normally gets to see. “You seem like a decent enough fellow but I had to ask.” He shoved the bills in his jeans. “I know guys who have garbage bags full of hundreds that are worth no more than twenty each.”

Wayne took the time to learn about the meat he sold from the van. Ribs were his most popular item, and after that pork roasts and lamb shoulder chops. Old women rattling around by themselves in the biggest houses on Circular Road wanted lights, hearts, tongues, and livers, and Wayne convinced Frank King to let him sell those instead of sending them to Morrison’s factory on the Southside to be mixed with fish offal for pet food.

It grew colder, and Wayne had to carry ribs, chops, and hearts along paths the householders had shovelled, carry them in his arms like children, only they were not children, they were slabs of flesh and blood: red, marbled with fat. He wondered if anyone besides himself saw the meat as he saw it, raw and powerful, having the power to keep living bodies hot in the wind and ice. He carried meat past black railings, past a wreath on a door, past lights strung across a bay window. Women took the meat out of his arms; they embraced it and took it down hallways to the lit hearts of their houses. He wondered what it was like to be such a woman. They roasted it and ate it and gave it to their husbands and babies — did they think of the meat as powerful and important? From their faces Wayne thought they did not, and he felt more alone than ever, so he went to Water Street.

He walked to Bowrings and bought a stainless steel food mill, like the one through which Jacinta had milled cooked apples to separate the applesauce from the seeds and core. He visited Woolworth’s, past the sad-eyed man with his sooty
Telegram
bag slung on his shoulder, past the bubble-gum machines where children begged their mothers for nickels so they could win the black gumball, past the orange booths and Formica tables where you could get fish, chips, and coleslaw or a Woolworth’s Special Steak-Umm Sandwich. He reached the place where you bought dishes and Tupperware bowls and graters and egg whisks, and he bought himself a small glass salt shaker made in France.