Blue Moon (9 page)

I was not interested in having a similar relationship with a boy. Rosie thought this unwise and unnatural of me, but, if I am honest about it, her descriptions of sex frightened rather than intrigued me. Even the tender glow of love—so-called natural desire—offered me nothing. I thought I was cold, “queer” (to use Mother's word), to have absolutely no wish to investigate this realm of experience, which Rosie held dear despite the humiliation it brought with it.

Later, classmates at Loretto—when grilled by reporters from the
Hamilton Spectator
or interviewers from radio station CKOC—would recall how strange I was. “She was very beautiful,” one said, “in an exaggerated way, almost like a film star. But she was not popular. Quite the contrary, no one liked her. Mind you, what makes this strange, is that no one envied her good looks. She was shy to the point of rudeness. She never had anything to say and when she did speak, she never talked the way we did. She never fitted in.” Another, in breathless tones, confided: “Evelyn was not Catholic. This made everything difficult, certainly at first. But she never showed any willingness to become a member of the Loretto family.”

As a teenager, I had nowhere to turn. On the surface, Rosie and I remained close friends, but I had started to study her as some sort of object lesson in wrong turns. I was fascinated by what she told me of her strange relationship with Stephen—I even quizzed her on all the intricacies of her sex life. I became the voyeur to whom Rosie happily confessed her intimacies. In the process, I was doing absolutely nothing to mollify my impatient mother. If I could not marry a wealthy man, exactly what did I propose to do, she asked me, with my sorry existence?

In the countless interviews with my former schoolmates, the reporters uncovered another thread. “Evelyn was always giving
presents to the most popular girls, especially those a grade or two ahead of her. She was obviously trying to buy protection, perhaps affection. It was awfully pathetic. Sad, really.” Another old chum offered this opinion: “The gifts were really expensive. She once gave me a set of pearl beads. I still have them. Not cultivated pearls—real ones. Worth a fortune now. She must have shoplifted them.”

According to this wag, my criminal career began in earnest at an exceedingly early age. I was not that precocious. The gifts were purchased from Lady MacLean's fund by my mother at Birk's, Hamilton's most resplendent jeweller. Mother, after quizzing me on the power strata among the girls, determined the lucky recipients of this largesse (one receipt was for $2,761, a very hefty sum in those days). My parent, obviously a person whose conscience was easily bought off, did not realize that teenage girls might be of more independent frames of mind. What is of more interest is the intriguing question: what about the young girl whose only protector is her greatest enemy?

Even from the relatively safe vantage point of the past, I remain obsessed with my mother. She has been dead over forty years, and I loathe her. As a youngster, I did not have the luxury of hindsight. Precarious though it was, she was the only lifeline I had.

Since about the age of 8, I shared her bed, my father having been banished to the basement years before. Despite the frequent lashings out of bad temper, Mother's was the only constant presence I knew. I could, God help me, always count on her to be her bad-natured self.

I was a deprived child who came to depend upon my depriver. Then, it did not seem so simple. I am not sure, on the other hand, that it was all that complicated. A child has to count on her mother
for something. My mother may not have wanted to harm me, but in her increasingly twisted way she could not help doing so.

I had to make something of myself. She continually informed me. “You have to become someone important.” Today, she might sound like some sort of proto-feminist. In reality, I had to become significant because she had never achieved prominence. I was her daughter, destined to achieve that of which she had been incapable.

Yet, there was no way for me to obtain the status she hankered for. We were poor. I had not done particularly well at school. My mother wanted to re-make me, to create a daughter she could admire and whom the world admired. As far as she was concerned, few options presented themselves. She did not have the resources of a wealthy bachelor like Henry Higgins.

There were moments of tenderness, especially when she joined me in bed, the sheets of which were of the finest Egyptian cotton. A huge, silk cream-coloured puff rested on top, as if creating an island of serenity in a turbulent world. “If you can't be comfortable in bed, you'll never be comfortable anywhere else” was one of her many truisms. In such moments, my mother would actually relax, sometimes allowing a wan smile to cross her face.

“Pet,” she would plead, “you're such a good reader. Read a story to me. A nice one.”

“Nice stories” were not usually of the passionate variety. They had to have quick, sudden turns to them as in O. Henry's “The Gift of the Magi” or they had to have an air of menace and comedy fused together as in the little Saki mysteries she adored. Since her attention span was limited and would not allow a narrative to be carried over from one day to the next, I was happy to chance upon the
Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
I read these to her over the course of many years because it took months to get through the whole lot, at which point Mother would have forgotten everything that came before.

In many ways, I became the perfect
lectrice.
As I came to know these stories intimately, I allowed myself to enter the world of the secret underground caves, hot desert sands, and forbidden harems. The voice of the resourceful Scheherezade became mine. Like her, I was trying to save myself from a depraved tyrant.

“You are so clever, darling,” Mother would sometimes proclaim. “You read with such feeling, as if you had written those stories yourself.
You put so much of yourself into them.” I nodded appreciation in the direction of my despot.

In addition to the
Arabian Nights,
my loving tyrant was most addicted to fairy tales. First, we read Hans Christian Andersen, then the Brothers Grimm. Perhaps I could not help seeing my own plight reflected in the fate of Hansel and Gretel, outcasts of their family home in the wake of their mother's death and consigned to wander the forest in the wake of their father's weakness and their stepmother's cruelty. I rejoiced when they outsmarted the witch who contrived the enticing gingerbread house in order to destroy them. Perhaps, like them, I hoped one day to get the best of my oppressors. I certainly saw my own plight reflected in the torments to which those two exceedingly resourceful children were subjected. Music is said to soothe the savage beast but, at an early age, I learned the power of the written word to accomplish this task.

I may not have looked like an Ugly Duckling, but I was made to feel like one. In every conceivable way, I was a disappointment to my mother. Since the prospect of alliance with an offspring of a wealthy Catholic family had come to nothing, I had to find some sort of employment. Hamilton was not fertile ground if one did not wish to work in a factory. I was constitutionally lazy. Or, to put it more accurately, since there were no interesting prospects, I became indifferent to my future.

I worked for just over three weeks at Westinghouse, winding coils for refrigerator motors. Two hundred and twenty women there had to deal with over thirty-two million feet of wire for transformer
distributions. Unfortunately, I was not the wizard at winding demanded by the company; my fingers were much too slow.

My life seemed even more humdrum after I became a telephone operator—a much lower paying job. I was one of sixty women lined up in a row connecting callers with each other. Often I would hear frustration in a voice that was having trouble reaching its destination and thus pleading for my assistance; elation sometimes followed when I provided the correct information. At times, the voices were filled with terror, loathing, fear, apprehension, even disgust. Since I was party only to the request, I had no idea of the subsequent conversations. I heard many emotions, made the connections and then vanished from the ensuing scene.

Most days, I would meet Rosie at her place of work, the Hemming Brothers Travel Office in the Sun Building on James Street South. She always sat glumly at her desk, her long-handled telephone and typewriter her only accessories; glamorous photographs of ocean liners filled all the available wall space behind her. How often we fantasized about taking one of those huge ships to France or even sultry Morocco. Rosie never sold a single ticket that would carry someone aboard those streamlined, miniature cities. Her lot, she informed me, was to sell train tickets to Buffalo.

One Saturday she and I took turns riding in one of the small twin-engines at East Hamilton Airport. I remember screaming in delight and horror as the flirtatious pilot dive-bombed the city he was supposedly giving me a sedate aerial view of. He chortled when one particularly malicious swooping curve turned my face green. Rosie and I became well known at all the hot spots: the White Towers Snack Bar on Burlington Beach, at the Wonder Grove, the outdoor dance floor and bandstand in the east end, and at the Alexandra Ballroom and Roller Rink on James Street South.

There were some red-letter days. I remember seeing King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at City Hall on June 7, 1939. The King stuttered badly when he spoke; the Queen had a gentle, reflective smile. She waved directly at me when leaving the platform, our eyes locking together for a second or two. I attended the Victory Bond Rally in October 1944—I even overcame my customary shyness by selling bonds door-to-door. I was one of the sweating, screaming thousands who gathered together at Gore Park to celebrate V-E Day.

These events were momentary distractions. My lite centred on the films at the Tivoli and the real life adventures of the stars. My eyes feasted on the black and white and Technicolor images that flickered on the screen. I greedily devoured each issue of
Photoplay,
seeking excitement in the glamorous existences off-screen of my various heroines, such as Rita Hay worth, whom my mother contemptuously referred to as “that red-haired tramp” because of her quick real-life turnover in lovers and husbands. I was intrigued by how Rita, who began life as Margarita Carmen Cansino, a cousin of Ginger Rogers and the leading player in a series of frightful B-pictures, transformed herself into a siren. Not able to decipher fantasy from reality, I believed in the world Rita inhabited. I did not wish to be bothered with a succession of lovers, but I was bewitched by the jewellery, the furs, the clothing, and the fairyland California haciendas.

After the excitement of seeing the latest film at the Tivoli, everything around me seemed extraordinarily lacklustre, streets of broken dreams. Rosie, my companion on such outings, and I felt banished from the real world of Hollywood. We would wander down to Gore Park or, if we were in a particularly desperate mood, we would stroll into a pub, where we had to give the barman precise instructions—gleaned from
Vogue
—on how to construct a martini; and we had to always insure our drinks were served in the proper glasses. Our adulation of screen heroines also took us in the direction of imitating their clothing. Since we could not afford anything expensive, our best efforts consisted of realtering—and sometimes ruining—the dresses, skirts and blouses we purchased at Eaton's or Robinson's, the city's two main department stores.

Rosie continued her recitation of her various sexual adventures with Stephen, whose reading, confined to the Marquis de Sade, was assiduously put into practice. Despite Rosie's pleasure in any kind of sexual experience with him, he made any kind of orgasm forbidden to her. If, on the few occasions he penetrated her vagina, she gave any sign of experiencing pleasure, he would quickly withdraw. Stephen's cruelty provided her with a frisson all its own.

I have always been an overly tactful person, but I once or twice offered Rosie my opinion on Stephen.

She was defensive. “You simply don't understand. He's such a thrilling person. Always something new.”

“But he's always hurting you.”

“No, no. You misunderstand. He's wonderful to be around. I never feel bored. I can't live my life like yours—at a distance.” She paused. “You are very beautiful. Yet you've never had a boyfriend. Stephen thinks you're a lesbo.”

“He can think what he likes.” I was not going to provide Rosie—and thus Stephen—with any information about myself, “Better a fantasy life than the reality to which you're addicted.” Rosie would pout for a half hour or so after such an exchange. Then, we would gossip and speculate about the amours of the screen stars we adored.

Mother considered the girl talk between myself and Rosie a complete waste of time. “There is no sense in living in a dream world. Harsh, cold reality. That's what you need a touch of, Evelyn.” Mother mouthed those words at the very same time she assiduously followed—and aped—the dress fashions in Hamilton. This was a strange undertaking.

As Mother discovered, staying abreast of the latest trends in the Steel City was a difficult task. First of all, most of the women of wealth bought their clothes in Toronto, which was always two or three seasons behind New York and Hollywood. So Hamilton had no genuine trend-setters. Eaton's department store in Hamilton was always a year behind Eaton's Toronto because the dresses not sold in the larger metropolis were simply sent sixty miles down the road to be offered a year later.

Much less sophisticated than Toronto, the smaller stores in Hamilton—realizing that their clients had less disposable incomes—would tend to imitate fashions a year or two out of date by rendering them in cheap materials. For instance, poor quality muslin would be turned into outfits meant to be made of raw silk. The refined angles of high heels intended for genuine Italian leather were manufactured of rough-looking, heavy rawhide.