Lily's Story (75 page)

“
Lily, as God is my witness
– and I’ve never stopped believin’ since I was a kid – I’ve never
been with another woman since I married Sophie MacGregor thirty
years ago. No one. All those weeks an’ months on the boats and in
the bush, an’ not one woman, though the squaws an’ hooers was lyin’
all around us – quarter a throw. Not one goddamn time. Then I got
to find out from my own daughter that her mother’s no better than
those pitiful hooers on the streets of Port Arthur. Only worse. An’
worse than that, I go an’ slap my daughter around – the child I
loved the most in the world – ’cause I know she’s lyin’; and every
time I come home that summer I slap her again, for nothin’ at all,
’cause I’m ragin’ inside. An’ so she leaves, an’ then I find out
she’s been tellin’ the truth. That girl ain’t spoken to us in ten
years, we don’t even know where she lives ’cause Burton won’t
tell.” After a while he added, as if it were somehow essential, “We
was so happy once, but nothin’ turned out the way we planned
it.”

Lily leaned over and touched the back of
Stoker’s hand. “Most of the time it don’t.”

A sharp groan from the other room broke the
deep silence that had fallen between them. “I got to go to her,”
Lily said.

“
It’s all
right.”

As she hurried towards Sophie, Lily heard
the front door open and then the sound of Stoker’s heavy body
slumping into the wooden rocker out there.

The left side of Sophie’s face was blue and
so swollen she couldn’t see out of that eye and her speech was as
slurred as a harelip’s. For a while, seated on the edge of Bricky’s
bed, Sophie pretended not to notice Lily’s presence beside her,
letting the moonlight bathe her bruised flesh and breathing
asthmatically through a slit in her mouth. She paid for every
breath with measured pain. To this, eventually, she added the sting
of words. Against the ear, they were gentle and evocative. Lily was
not prepared for what she was about to hear from the woman she felt
she knew so well.

“
When I was Sophie
MacGregor I was the cat’s meow, an’ gloried in it. We lived in a
brick house in Goderich overlookin’ the river. My Dad was a lowland
Scots who dabbled in land an’ was sometimes rich an’ sometimes
broke. He had a laugh that would crack granite. Mother was half
Irish an’ half Chippewa, though she did everythin' possible to hide
that honour. I spent every summer on the Kettle Point Reserve with
my Grandma, a daughter of Chief Wawanosh, soakin’ up the wild ways
my mother hoped a lot of schoolin’ would soon cure. Funny though, I
liked school, too. I read every book in the common school an’ every
tome in my dad’s library. So when I was twelve, it was decided I
ought to be shipped off to a proper school where there’d be enough
books an’ smart teachers to keep me from gettin’ too uppity. My
dad’s maiden sister, Aunt Harriet, lived in London, so that’s where
I landed, on Princess Street a few blocks from a private grammar
an’ continuation school for would-be ladies. Soon I became their
star pupil, every teacher’s pet, and I played it to the hilt. When
I complained of being lonely, my mother sent me a new dress or
money to have one made. I still managed to get a couple more wild
summers in before Grandma died, but by then I’d decided to like
both city-life and education. I sailed into my third year with
straight A’s an’ dotin’ teachers an’ frantically jealous
schoolmates. My head was bulgin’ with math an’ literature, but so
were certain curious parts of my body. I was sixteen but whenever I
started to take public notice of my best parts, I got frowns an’
horrified stares from my elders. So I plunged into my studies. I
had it in mind to sit the normal-school exams an’ become a teacher.
I fancied a country school of my own where I’d be a queen-bee and
empress an’ lady-saint all rolled into one. In March of 1847, when
I was just a year from gratuatin’ an’ was headin’ for another
semester of honours, I met Morton Potts. He’d come up from Windsor
to cut timber for the proposed railroad; I’d seen the wagons one
mornin’ pickin’ up the men at the end of Princess Street. Mort was
boardin’ with a great aunt a few blocks away. He spotted me right
off. On wet days when their work was cancelled, he’d follow me home
from school, and of course I pretended I was too good to pay any
attention to the likes of him. Aunt Harriet saw him talkin’ to me
at the corner an’ threatened him with the constable. He laughed in
her face, and I probably loved him from that second
onwards.”

Lily wanted to say something, touch some
part of her friend’s sorrow, but she dare not. The voice
continued.

“
Oh, he was a handsome,
clever, devil-take-the-hindmost man. When he kissed me behind the
bushes or against a snowbank, the promises I made to my Aunt turned
to water. He loved every part of me, it seemed, especially those
parts I was so shy about an’ so curious to know the meaning of. He
made me laugh an’ he made me talk a blue streak an’ he made me feel
good all over. I felt like Lochinvar’s bride. Of course I didn’t
really know as much about love an’ life as I thought I did, so when
Mort cooked up a scheme to get us alone for a whole weekend, I said
yes right off. I told my Aunt I was goin’ home for a few days to
visit a sick friend, and I
did
plan to do that but not for the five days I told
Aunt Harriet about. When the stagecoach reached Lucan, I got off
an’ practically fell into Mort’s arms. He put me in a cutter an’ we
whisked off into the nearby woods to a cabin that belonged to a
chum of his. We stayed there two whole days before I got back on
the stage for Goderich. It snowed all the time we was there. Mort
kept a glorious blaze goin’ in the stone fireplace and it was warm
as toast all the time. Which was a good thing because we didn’t
spend much time in our clothes. I can close my eyes this very
minute an’ see an’ hear an’ feel every speck of them days – as if
it was snowin’ outside right now and I was as round an’ innocent
an’ clear-skinned as I was at sixteen years of age, when my lover’s
eyes popped like mulberries every time I turned over a new way or
let his hand find a new surprise. We loved an’ talked an’ made
eternal promises an’ loved some more, we gloried in our bodies an’
we cared for nothin’ that didn’t agree with the feelings we could
only make when we were together. We pledged our faith.”

Lily wanted to tell Sophie something of her
own, but again, held back. After this, she knew, there would be
time, lots of time.

“
Of course, my mother and
Aunt soon compared recipes an’ found us out. My God, what a row
there was! I was locked up an’ chaperoned an’ tuttutted over day
an’ night. If I hadn’t been the star pupil I’d’ve been thrown outta
school as ‘damaged goods’ sure to corrupt on touch. For a while I
may have believed, just a little bit, that they were right – I
really was seduced an’ drugged an’ led astray by an accomplice of
the arch-fiend himself. But not for long an’ not very much.” Lily
heard the wince of a chuckle, some stinted breathing, then: “Stoker
never gave up for a minute, he knew what kinda passion he’d stirred
up in that snowy cabin. They’d got a judge’s warrant to keep him
away from me; they’d have charged him with rape if they thought
they could’ve survived the scandal, but we managed to meet within a
few weeks when I ran off from an Arbour Day outing an’ we made wild
love in the clover that was scarcely green enough to smudge our
bare bottoms, but it was so good an’ Stoker was big enough an’
strong enough to beat the world off if he had to. I was hooked – on
sex and all the wonderful sideways feelings it sent bubblin’
through me. Lily, I loved that thing between his legs so much and I
wanted it so bad, I’d have kissed a parson’s arse for it. I
would.”

Lily felt the jiggling of Sophie’s mirth up
through her tears, the hurting purge of her unique laughter.

“
I gave it all up – my
books, my family, the life I dreamt ahead-of-myself. I cut them off
like a turnip-top and I never looked back.” When she had retrieved
enough breath, she said, “So that oughta tell you why I’m the way I
am.”

2

By the time Lily dragged
herself out of bed and back into the laundry shed, Violet was
starting the second round of washing. The first was flapping smugly
in the last breeze of Indian summer. Lily had slept well once she
had reached her bed shortly before dawn. Though she was still
groggy and somewhat enervated by the trauma of the night, she found
it easy to smile for the faithful Violet and pick up the rhythms of
the workday with a fresh buoyancy. By noon she was humming and
tattling away to Violet about the crazy time Maman LaRouche set
about baking a gingerbread man for her and little Guy and
convincing them that she had put one of the Millar boys inside the
dough for being
un bébé fou
until Guy started crying and Maman laughed and
cuddled him, soothing him with
Ah, Ti-Guy,
mon pauvre bébé
, and then accidentally
saying
mon bébé fou
which sent him into such hysterics he let Lil eat the entire
cookie with Billie Millar baked alive inside. They laughed about
this through their brief lunch at the outdoor table. They were
suddenly stopped by a loud, clear voice that could only have been
Stoker Potts’: “Don’t you ever throw Marlene up to me again, you
hear!” Nothing audible had preceded it and nothing followed, though
the women sat deathly still for a long minute. Lily got up and
peered around the corner of the house: she could detect no sound or
movement over there. After a bit, Stoker waltzed out of the
woodshed, a bundle of trash under his arm and, whistling a
sea-shanty of sorts, headed for the refuse fire out by the
flats.

Lily and Violet worked extra hard that
afternoon to take advantage of the good drying weather. Lily was
just pegging the last of the sheets from The Queen’s onto the line
when she heard the thud of running footsteps, a heavy body crashing
through the dead-stalk and wizened burdock leaves. She whirled in
time to meet Stoker Potts as he plunged blindly into the yard –
dishevelled, his face smeared with soot as if he had just crawled
out of his engine-room, his look deranged and feral. But the voice
was a little boy’s – pleading and frightened beyond guilt or
reason.

“
I didn’t mean to, Lily, I
didn’t mean to, oh Christ-in-Heaven I didn’t mean to, it was an
accident,” he said in a singsong cadence wholly out of tune with
his flailing arms that were begging someone
anyone
to come and help.

“
Where is she?”

“
Hurry, please.”

“
Where is
she?
”

“
Out back, oh Christ, we
gotta hurry.”

“
What’ve you
done?
”

“
Nothin’, she just fell, I
didn’t mean for anythin’ to happen,” he babbled after Lily who was
already racing across the lane towards the river flats, her heart
in her throat, flapping and nauseous. “
I
love her!
” he shouted at Violet as she ran
past him. “
I love her!
” he screamed wildly up and down the Alley, till his legs gave
out and he sank to his knees, choking on his own sobs.

“
Get back, Vi!” Lily yelled
as she neared the trash-fire and spotted something grotesque
twisting in the dead grass. “Go get a doctor,
anybody!
” But Vi stood frozen in her
own fear a few feet away.

Sophie’s huge body lay in the weeds which
were still smouldering from the impact of her blazing flesh.
Charred swatches of orange cloth had welded to the jellied muscle
of her back and buttocks. Lily could see where the pink skin had
shrivelled, then puffed, then dissolved, leaving the raw red flesh
to thicken in the air. The body seemed to be shaking from within as
if the bones had just felt the shock, and Lily heard what sounded
like a prolonged sigh on a single note, as if that one sound would
have to make do in expressing whatever grief or rage or goodbye
were needed. Lily shuddered at its intensity, this pelvic hiss that
might in other circumstances have been taken for a woman’s cry of
elucidation at the apex of love. Then with a gasp of greasy smoke
and a stench of singed flesh, the body rolled part-way over and
slid bonelessly into the cradle of the grass. Lily looked for one
horrified second at the dead face. Stoker’s bruises were still
visible on the skin of both cheeks now swollen into two ghastly
sacs about to burst. Between them the mouth was rigidly ajar, lips
stretched back over the lunging teeth, the tongue bloated and
immobile – the last grimace of lockjaw, the death-grin she had seen
so often on the faces of muskrat or beaver caught alive in one of
Papa’s traps. Sophie’s eyes, buried in the flesh that had never
been able to contain them, said nothing, not even for Lily.

31

1

It was the largest
funeral the village had ever seen. Not that it was meant to be, for
none of the local ministers would consent to give Sophie Potts,
infidel and blasphemer, a Christian burial in the
non-denominational cemetery, and most gentlemen of public esteem
(and ambition) publicly announced their support for the clergy’s
stand. However, the son of the Methodist minister who had baptized
Sophie and ferried her through Sabbath School in Goderich agreed to
come down and hold a service in the Potts’ home and to superintend
the interment. The good weather prevailed, despite the odds, and
luckily so, for the several hundred mourners who drifted in one by
one from the township, hamlets, backwaters and (thinly disguised)
from the respectable avenues of the village were pleased to stand
in the sunshine and hear the sacred homilies tolled once again for
one amongst them so rudely taken away. Reeve-elect Dowling was
there, and even walked solemnly behind the horse-drawn hearse all
the way to the gravesite where the closed coffin was lowered with
earnest gentility into the wide earth. It was noted that there was
an unduly large number of women in attendance. Some puzzled notice
was also taken of the native people who, although not appearing at
the service, did show up at the cemetery where they stood quietly
among the fallen leaves, and watched. As Lily was being led away
between Hazel and Winnie, she looked back long enough to see the
Chippewa men, gray-haired and austere, slip out of the shadows and
across the grass to form a ring about the grave. She was sure their
lips were moving, as in song.