Mystical Rose (9 page)

I miss that chuckle of Robbie’s. I’ve lived more without him than with him, but I still miss him. Whenever I think about it it makes me feel guilty. I could have loved him better.

Why are You shaking your head? What do You know about it?

Ice on my lips. Now there’s a memory. Ice chips. I remember following the cart down the Dale Road to the McAllisters, who had an icebox. Wood shavings and a smell of dampness and horse. Bix was the horse’s name; I can’t remember the man’s. He would saw a big block of ice and carry it with tongs, or else in his apron with his arms wrapped around it like a baby, a little ice baby. And when he was gone we’d — Gert and Jack and I would — steal ice chips from the cart. Well, they were going to melt anyway, weren’t they?

My family didn’t have an icebox. We used the back pantry as a root cellar. I remember Jack and I — wait a minute, where are these memories coming from? I haven’t thought about Jack Dupree in a very long time. He was a strong healthy boy, wiry muscles and thick dark hair, shoulders that tanned to the colour of cherrywood every summer, but that would have been a lot of summers ago. Seventy-five summers ago. He’s got to be dead. Not that I’m doing so much better.

Oh, Jack. The times we never had. I remember a note he sent, spring of eighth grade.
Behind the barn
. And that was all. As if
there weren’t thirty barns in the vicinity. But I knew which one he meant, as he knew I would. Thirteen years old, studying provinces and capitals and Christopher Columbus. And a note, slipped into an atlas —
Behind the barn
. Without a time. But I knew which time he meant, and which barn, and I guessed what he wanted to do. And do you know what? I wanted to go. I never told him. I’d like to have been able to tell him, I wanted to. To go to the barn and be with him. But I knew I couldn’t. Nothing to do with being a nice girl, I just knew I couldn’t. It didn’t make me feel any better about it. I was still sorry. Knowledge isn’t easy.

You know that, don’t you? You know everything. Maybe You could try to explain it to Jack. I’m not going to get it right.

Are we going to see Dr. Sylvester again soon? I ask Harriet.

I cough. My side hurts. Harriet wipes my mouth. The bells are still ringing.

Dr. Berman is here now, she says. Don’t worry, Mother.

I miss Dr. Sylvester. He’s such a handsome man. Don’t you think so, dear?

I know
you
do, Mother.

And his voice, I say. With that voice he could have been on radio. I loved the stories he used to tell me. Do you remember the stories he used to tell me, Harriet?

My daughter looks at me with that mixture of affection and anger that we reserve for the beloved ill. Do you really remember them, Mother?

Oh yes, I say. There was one about an airline. And another about a hockey rink. I think it was a hockey rink. And another one about a man with a pet who got lost. Or a car that broke. Something he had, and then he didn’t have it. Very good stories,
the way the doctor used to tell them. Do you remember them, Harriet?

She sighs, shakes her head at me. A tough time of life for her, the sixties. You don’t feel old, but everyone is treating you that way, and you start to wonder if maybe they’re right. I remember talking about young Jimmy Carter, and everyone laughing at me.

Who do you think is young, Harriet? I ask her. She stares at me. Doesn’t understand the question. Pierre Trudeau? I ask. That Russian with the eyebrows — not Nikita Khrushchev, the other one. Oh dear. First the hockey players look young, then the policemen, then the men in the newspapers. Then it’s time to pick another planet.

Mother, Dr. Sylvester wasn’t telling you stories for entertainment. They were part of the memory test.

I nod my head. Yes, sometimes my memory does seem to have holes in it. Like the bucket in the song. Do you —

I remember the song, Mother.

She looks away. I’ve probably mentioned the song before. We used to sing it all the time. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole. I can’t remember what comes next, but the song ends the way it begins, with the hole. Like everything else I know — me too, I guess. I feel like there’s a hole in my bucket, and dear Liza isn’t able to do anything about it.

The bells keep ringing.

Selfish. That’s what it is to be old. All you’re interested in is your feelings, your pain, your memories. And how lonely you are. And what a pain the other old people are. You’re sick of old people, sick of sick people, sick of sympathy. Unfortunately, you need every bit
of help you can get. You can’t look after yourself. Not even getting to the toilet. You’re a baby again, a mewling puking whatever it is.

What are You smiling at? It’s Shakespeare, isn’t it? You don’t have to patronize me. So I never matriculated, so what? You’re as bad as Harriet, with her oboe and her anthropology. But I was so proud of her. I cried when she walked across the stage to get her handshake. You remember that. I gave everyone who came into the shop that week a free camellia japonica —
surpassing excellence
.

“Are you sure, madam?”

“Yes, yes, quite sure.”

Mama’s upset. Her hands are cold.

“Steward, do you know — have you seen my husband?”

“No, madam. I have not. Shall I look for him?”

“Yes, please.”

I fret in my mama’s cold hands.

“There, there, sweetheart. Mama’s here.”

I never felt complete, as a mother. Nothing to do with fulfilling myself or personal achievement, I never felt whole, walking up my street with my baby in my perambulator, on my way to pick up pork chops or clothespins. There was a part of me that wasn’t real, that searched and did not find. And while some of me, the outside of me, was concerned about prohibition and electric power and trade unions, and how long the Depression would last and whether Robbie would be able to keep his job in Accounts Receivable, the inside part of me wondered if I was real. What was a mother, anyway? What was a wife? A daughter? Sometimes it seemed to me that I wasn’t any of these things.

I went back to Cobourg once. No, twice. How could I forget? Twice. The first time we stayed at Mama’s, Harriet and I. I remember her breath steaming through the scarf I wrapped around her little head. She’d have been less than a year old, born at home that spring, and she wriggled. A real handful, my stepfather called her. Bill met us at the train station in a big touring car with a big holly wreath hanging in the side window. That’s right, it would have been shortly after Christmas. Cold for southern Ontario.

Mama and Bill lived in the old Daniel place on King Street, a big house with a circular carriage drive. The roof needed new slates, and the bricks needed pointing. I knew about these things because our house needed them too. It was a solid establishment, not beautiful but dignified. Mama stood on the front porch to greet us. Her breath steamed too. She had a fur wrap against the cold. She was a respectable lady now. Like me. We’d both married well.

It was an awkward visit. Robbie was in Montreal, on business, leaving right after Christmas and not due back for weeks. But that wasn’t the awkward part. The awkward part was Mama. She kept, I don’t know how to put it and I suppose I might have had it wrong, but it seemed to me that she was always comparing herself to me. We’d both married recently, into wealthier families. We were both living better than we ever had in our lives before. We ought to have been happy for each other. But we weren’t. I wondered why.

The bells are ringing. I’m coughing. I see my daughter’s face. For a second she looks like she did when she was little, and curious. Shall I tell you about when you were born? I say.

What did you say, Mother?

It was the middle of the night, I say, and your father was asleep. And suddenly something happened inside me, and I woke him up.

What?

I didn’t know what was happening, I say. Neither did the doctor, exactly. But it was time for you to be born, my angel.

I can still see Robbie’s face, concerned and solicitous, What’s that? he kept asking. What is that on the sheets? Is that supposed to be there? Upstairs in our little room. The only upstairs room in the house.

He belonged in the house. He never belonged in the mansions in Philadelphia or Cobourg. He belonged on Waverley Street. You know how they say someone never had a chance. Too poor, too sick, too sad. Too much to cope with. Well, Robbie was rich, healthy, and happy, but he never had a chance. Until he married me, a serving girl, and ran away from his inheritance and went to work and came home to a little house with a garden, the best thing that ever happened to him, he said. This was the chance he never had.

We stared at the sheets. Disbelieving.

Call the doctor, I told him.

Are you in pain?

No, I said.

But that’s blood. Is it supposed to be there?

No, I said.

Can Harriet hear me? She pushes her chair away from my bed so that she can stretch. The plastic cup full of ice chips is at her elbow. The bells are ringing. Her eyes are remote, as if she’s listening to a story she’s heard before, or else just bitten into a doubtful tomato.

Bill Scanlon was a good and loving man. A banker, like Uncle Brian. I wonder if Mama thought about that. He was nothing like
Uncle Brian. I sat on Bill’s left at dinner, and heard what a nice day it had been, what a pleasant holiday season. They had received cards from forty-eight families, said Bill. Wasn’t that a pleasing sign of respect for a newcomer like himself?

Mama asked him to pass the cruet, and he knocked over the salt cellar. Immediately, he picked up some of the spilt salt and threw it over his left shoulder. Mama sighed. That’s a nice looking salt cellar, I commented, trying to make her feel better.

She sniffed. Just plated, of course, she said. I assume you have a solid silver one at home.

I smiled and couldn’t think of anything to say. Thank — well, thank goodness Harriet chose this moment to set up a cry. We had her in a cradle in the small room beside the living room. The parlour, Mama called it. On my way through the door I surprised a look on her face: fierce, angry, envious. I felt uncomfortable. I knew who she was upset with, and why.

Of course it was me. But not because I had married Philadelphia old money. Not because my father-in-law controlled a troubled commercial empire, at least that’s how the newspapers put it. She hated me because of Harriet. Because I had a baby and she didn’t.

Dr. Wilson lived around the corner. His children were always offering to mow our lawn or shovel our walk. I heard his voice in the downstairs hall, comforting Robbie, who sounded hysterical. Put some water on to boil, the doctor said. There’s a good chap. We’ll all have a cup of tea. He wore a shirt and pants over his pyjamas. He smiled down at me in a friendly way, asked how I was.

Is the baby coming? I asked. It isn’t supposed to be for another two weeks; you told me, doctor.

Maybe I was wrong. It happens, you know, he said.

There wasn’t very much blood. I asked if that was good.

I don’t know, he said.

And I don’t seem to be in pain. Not at all, I said.

He nodded, went away for a moment to wash his hands.

Well, not too much pain, I said when he got back.

His thinning dark hair was tousled and stiff with yesterday’s pomade. He needed a shave. He had a bulbous nose and glasses. His hands were warm.

But I didn’t come out yet, Harriet would say, looking up from
her bowl of soup. This conversation would have happened around the dinner table, just the two of us while Robbie was in the North Atlantic, winning the war. That’s what the newspapers said.

No, you didn’t come out right away, I’d say. With a grimace of remembrance. Not yet.

Robbie showed us pictures of the HMCS
Stadacona
, his first leave. Isn’t she a beauty, he said. Clean lines, narrow entry, turns practically in her own length. I could hardly look. So scared. Twenty-five knots top speed, he told me, 2800 tons displacement. Wow, said Harriet, peering. In the picture the seas were taller than the ship, heavy with menace. Where are you, Father? she asked. Somewhere under all that flying water, he said with a laugh.

Nineteen forty. It was like having a stranger in the house, a man I’d never seen before and wouldn’t see again. Not an adventure, though. And not romantic. I’ve never been more scared.

Was I waiting for him to die? Is that it? Or was I waiting for him to turn into Daddy?

He didn’t of course. Never got the chance to. But he wouldn’t have, I’m pretty sure. He was more alive in the war, not less. He talked about it when he was home, which wasn’t often — a week at a time, after three or four convoys in a row.

I’m scared all the time, he told me, walking in the park in the spring, smell of dog and new growth, Harriet at school. We’re all scared, from the captain on down. But we have a job to do, and the job becomes more important than how you’re feeling. Do you understand?

I said I did.

During Action Stations I run aft to my post as fast as I can, check all the depth charges, assign the men their duties, and
report to the lieutenant on the bridge. And then I wait. And the time passes in waiting. The waiting becomes the job. I’m scared, and so are the men, but even waiting is more important than being scared. I don’t like them telling jokes, because jokes make the waiting easier. I don’t want the time to go faster. I want to do a better job.