The Second Son (12 page)

I suspect my father spent the fifties trying to relive the forties. If someone wasn’t coming to the house on a Saturday night, he was after my mother to jump in the car and go to where the party was. I don’t know about himself, but he convinced me. I thought the good times were still rolling. I wasn’t old enough to recognize the shadows lurking on the sidelines, to see that my father was fighting a losing battle. The world was changing. He could complain about the blue suede shoes and the tutti-frutti songs on the radio, or lament the loss of good dance music with the demise of the swing bands, but he couldn’t stop it from happening. He could complain that nowadays people were more interested in keeping up with the Joneses than they were in having a good time, but he couldn’t change it. He tried, though.

Company . . . he always wanted company. When the parties and the dances started to slow down, he tore out the wall between the parlour and the dining room so he could have a big crowd in and roll up the rug for a dance. He’d bring people home with him at all hours of the night and expect my mother to get up and play the piano for them. Every chance he got, he’d line up the liquor and the glasses on the dining room buffet, setting the altar for a celebration of life in a small town. The family gatherings were the best.

In the early fifties Alexandria was still the centre of our family’s life. The uncles and aunts and cousins that had moved away to the city all came home for seasonal celebrations and vacations. In those days most people couldn’t afford cars or fancy holidays. Coming home on the train for a week or two in the summer, that’s what ordinary people did, counting themselves lucky to have a week or two off work. The really big parties happened when the far-off relatives would make the long journey home in the summer, staying for weeks at a time.

The action would always start at the train station, where Andrew and I would go with our wagon to meet the visitors arriving from Montreal or Toronto and beyond. The piercing whistle of the engine would be heard in the distance and we’d hurry our last few steps to the station. The anticipation building, the crowd would cluster on the platform, trying to guess where the passenger cars would stop, searching for familiar faces in the windows rolling slowly by. The big iron wheels would screech to a final stop and we’d scamper between the adults, straining for a look at the first people down from the cars. When the relatives finally did alight, effusive greetings and happy chatter wouldn’t stop until we had them and their luggage back at the house.

The excitement would build all day as people gathered at our house on Elm. When the Gervaises were involved, you could be sure we’d end up down at the farm. And there’d be plenty of tears to go around — when they arrived and when they parted. My cousin Annette used to laugh and call it the “Gervais waterworks.” They weren’t shy about wetting their whistle, either. It was never long after lunch when someone would announce it was late enough in the day for a drink, to work up an appetite, of course. Then there would be a long and boisterous meal, followed by a
digestif
or two, just to get the evening started.

“
A Wee Deoch and Doris
” was not just a song for our clan, French and Scot, it was a way of life.
Just a wee deoch and doris afore ye gang awa’, a wee deoch and doris, that’s aw. And if you can say it’s a starlicht, moonlicht nicht, then you’re alricht, ya ken
— that was my father’s theme song for getting the party going. And for keeping it going, he had, “
prendre un ’tit coup, c’est agréable
.” That’s when I remember feeling most like I belonged to something, this big family sharing its memories in song and drink, arms around each other as they gathered by the piano, my mother playing the traditional songs. That’s when my heart glowed with pride for the two cultures I had been born into, as “
en roulant ma boule
” and “coming thro’ the rye” were belted out with equal enthusiasm.

But the song my father loved the best, the one he always asked for, was the lament of a small-town guy longing for the home he had left behind. My father’s face would glow with happiness when he sang about the country boy and his dream of going back to live and die amongst the people and places he loved so much. I guess in a way he had fulfilled that dream himself, coming home to live his life in the town where he was born. And I suppose if the parties he hosted were the celebration of life in Alexandria, that song was the special prayer he offered up each time, reaffirming his faith in the choices he had made.

One thing I’m sure of, Ed Landry lived for those gatherings, with friends and relatives reminiscing about the good times they’d had, convincing themselves of the good times yet to come. That’s why he worked so hard at keeping the party going, long into the night, urging everyone on with more drinks and more song. Even as it wound down, there had to be “one for the road.”

And then, after the last drink was taken, there was still lunch. For no one was allowed to leave your home in Glengarry without partaking of the lunch. Sometime between midnight and two in the morning, when the women sensed the wind going out of their men’s sails, they would drift out to the kitchen and set about making the lunch. Mostly it would be whatever roast they had on the go — beef, ham, pork — or egg sandwiches. There were always eggs to be had. At Christmas and New Year’s it would of course be turkey. And in summer it was always tomatoes — tomato sandwiches, plates of cukes, and bowls of radishes fresh from the garden.

I can still see them, my mother and my aunts and my cousins, out in the kitchen, laughing and talking as they bustled about, making sandwiches and setting out plates of food, while I worked hard at staying awake, waiting impatiently for the lunch and the sweets that would come with it. If the evening had been planned, there were cakes and pies baked earlier and set aside. If not, there were baked goods of some kind, like donuts or date squares, kept away from the kids in readiness for such a requirement. Things like “boughten” cookies would only appear as a last resort — together with an apology. And of course there would be coffee, plenty of coffee to wake the men up for the drive home.

I had lots of time to think about those nights and my father’s addiction to them, and to regret the loss of those faraway yesterdays when family was everything. That was the world my brother and I grew up in. We’d get to stay up late, or at least sneak down to sit on the stairs and watch the action. Andrew was more likely to be in the thick of it. He inherited my mother’s ear for music and could sing, I mean really sing. As for me, my monotone wailing was enough to make the dog bark, so I tended to sit on the sidelines and listen. I was content, everyone thought, just to be there, soaking up the good feelings, waiting for my share of the lunch, for my share of the fun.

Sometimes I look back and think the family could have been my salvation, that belonging to that big happy family could have been enough. I’m not sure why I held back. Maybe I thought if I gave myself to them completely, it would mean I had accepted second place in my mother’s heart, as though accepting the consolation prize meant abandoning all hope of first prize. Maybe I just didn’t feel worthy. Or maybe it wasn’t me at all. Maybe the damn family wasn’t even there for me in the first place.

One thing for sure, everybody’s world was changing in those years. As the fifties moved inexorably toward the jolt of the sixties, those family gatherings were fewer and further between. Those aunts and uncles and cousins moved farther away, got better jobs, bought cars, took real vacations, found less and less reason to come home to Alexandria. Of those who stayed, only some were able to keep the extended family together, only some were able to keep that special feeling of belonging to a clan rooted deep in the soil of Glengarry. And as the old man found out the hard way, only some of them would put family loyalty ahead of their pocketbook.

Of course we couldn’t know all of this at the time. Like a lot of families, we were in the eye of the storm, fighting by instinct to hold it together, to keep the dream alive. There will always remain a difference of opinion on how well we survived those forces of change. For me, the answer was obvious. For Andrew, the question itself was the enemy. Small wonder, given how much he had to lose.

IF EVER A BOY WAS BORN
to eat up the world it was Andrew. He had his mother’s good looks and his father’s strength. From the day he started school, he was the darling of the nuns, easily taught and eager to please. For years our parish priest was convinced Andrew had a vocation for the priesthood. Everybody loved him. Maybe that was why he grew up loving Alexandria, just like our dad.

Alexandria was paradise for a young boy. In summer there was a park for swimming and teasing the girls. In winter there were hills and ponds for sliding, skating, and just plain old showing off. And all around town was farmland and bush and rivers and creeks, perfect for all manner of games, trespassing, and general hellraising. Come June and the end of school, the kids were in heaven, wandering the streets all summer long, gangs on bikes, playing chase, riding out to the river to go skinny-dipping, hiding under the bridge to go smoking, glad to be alive and looking for fun or trouble or both.

Those long July days were the best, when tarred roads bubbled under the noonday sun, mosquitoes retreated to the shade, and daylight stretched late into evening. No one ever worried where their children were or whose company they were keeping. If they weren’t behind the station playing marbles, they were swimming at the park, or in someone’s cedar bush building a tree house, or on someone’s back porch trading comics. It was a small town, where everybody’s parents knew everybody’s kids and trusted them all.

And what happened with Andrew and me? It was really all about Alexandria and the kind of life you lived in a town like that, before we had television and shopping malls and something called a global village. If the human heart longs for a place to belong, the small town can be that place. But as much as you might wish for it, there has to be room in your heart to accept it. There must be room for a quiet walk up Elm Street, to Dominion, then over to Main, past places and people you can hold in your heart for the rest of your life. As there must be room in your heart for a few old geezers with three days of white beard waiting around for the hotel to open, tipping their hats to the ladies passing by and saying a big hello to the children with them. There must be room, too, for a few old maids, even one who throws her coal cinders on your slide where it runs past her house. Just like there has to be room for a few fat kids, weird kids, and pesty kids. Because you grew up with them and that’s just who they are, people you know.

And there must be room in your heart for an ugly water tower, a big puddle in the middle of the mill square every time it rains, and a tired old police officer who can’t move very fast anymore but it doesn’t matter because who would ever think of running from him in the first place. There also has to be room for three or four religions, some Jews and some Syrians, and even some Hungarian refugees who hardly speak English or French. All they have to do is love Alexandria as much as you do. And if you really work at it, there should even be room in your heart for two languages. In fact a lot of people might be proud of it.

Andrew seemed to understand all of that, right from the start. For me, it wasn’t so easy. Maybe some people need to get love before they can give it. Or maybe some people just take for granted they’re entitled to love, and some don’t. I’ve never figured that part out. I just know we were different. To understand what life in Alexandria was like for Andrew and me, you only have to go along with Lorna Landry to the annual St. Finnan’s Parish Social.

Just follow her around on a warm summer evening in 1950 as she spends a few hours working her way through the crowd that fills up the schoolyard beside the church. Watch her as she slowly makes her way past fiddlers and Highland dancers on a makeshift stage in the middle of the grounds, as she stops by booths selling homemade cakes and pies, knitted wool sweaters, and hats and mittens in matching sets. And watch her as she passes by games of chance, like crown and anchor, a bingo tent, and a blanket booth, where they’re offering tickets on five of those beautiful woollen plaid car blankets in matching carrying cases with convenient handles.

The first thing you’ll notice is how little progress she makes. And it’s not because little Andrew is pulling her toward the fish pond run by Mrs. McDougall the neighbour lady, at the same time as little Michel is dragging her the other way toward the maple fudge being sold by Mrs. Brodie who lives just around the corner on Dominion Street. The real reason it takes so long to get to any of the booths, or maybe buy a couple of tickets on that new electric stove the Knights of Columbus are raffling off, is that their mother can’t go two feet without bumping into a friend, a neighbour, or a relative. There’s the McKays from the Eigg, the MacKinnons from the Eighth, or the Gagniers from the Fourth, all of them with news to share and enquiries to make.

“Isn’t it a lovely evening? I’m so glad the rain held off,” the conversation might start with. Then, “And how’s your Aunt Gertie, dear? Oh, do tell. I must buy one of those rhubarb pies of hers. We had one last year and it was so good. And how has Bessie been keeping? And what about Angus? Have you heard from him lately? And, oh my gosh, is this your oldest? How fast they grow, and such a handsome lad. Looks so much like your brother Andy, doesn’t he? And who is this wee dark fellow hiding behind his mother? Oh yes, he’s Ed Landry’s boy, I can see that, now. Michel, is it?”

It seemed like my mother would have that same conversation with half the people in Glengarry, stopping each time for a wee chat that could last five minutes or stretch into twenty, depending on how long it had been since she’d last seen them. And she would be sure to offer extended hellos to the other half, with the two of us swinging all the while from each hand, alternately stopping to listen in on the gossip, or pulling her closer to our favourite booth. A small event by today’s standards, perhaps, but the church social was deep, deep in belonging, deep in friendship, and deep in Glengarry. Especially for Andrew.