Lily's Story (90 page)

“
Herbert
positively insists I go straight to Walker’s an’ order up the
fanciest dress in the store.”

“
It’s only New
Years once a year,” said the Widow generously.

“
And it is the
biggest ball in town, sponsored by the railroad an’
all.”

“
How’d you
come by that invitation again?” Miss Spence prompted.

“
All the
veterans was given one, as is only right considerin’ Herbert risked
his life for all of us.”

“
Usually only
the bigwigs an’ some railroad people’s invited,” said Miss Spence
in awe.

“
I don’t
suppose anybody knows this but my dear Harold was a fightin’ man, a
grenadier he
was, an’ left me
a widow almost twenty-two years ago, battlin’ them nigger-people
over there somewhere near Egypt.”

They did know.

“
Niggers,
Indians, Frenchies, what’s the difference?” asked Miss Spence, her
eyes pinned to the last row of Senior Book Four. “Can’t stop ‘em
from fightin’, they love it. It’s born in them.”

“
Poor
Harold.”

S
he was doing the
laundry, well away from the boisterous revels in the parlour. It
was snowing again and the heat from the kitchen stove could not cut
the damp cold that hung everywhere, stiffening the sheets and
forcing her to fetch fresh pails of boiling water. Twice she
scalded her left wrist. The sudden steam rushed hotly over her face
with its illusory warmth, and soaked her hair – that coiled
wherever it was struck. She thrashed the scrub-board to beat the
blood to the surface of her skin and back again to the chill in her
leg-bones. The sheets froze solid against the clothes-horse like
opaque window-glass. The rollers nipped her right forefinger, but
she didn’t feel the pain. Till later.

Long after she heard them
clatter out of doors, she slipped back into the kitchen, pulled a
stool in front of the stove and sat their motionless, without
thought, without the compunction to commit a single redemptive act.
Her tresses thawed, tattered, dripped. The fire swallowed its lone
sound.

“
Excuse me,
ma’am.”

She turned around.

“
Pardon me for
interruptin’, but I assumed you was finished your work.”

She felt her hand in her
hair.

“
My name’s
Burgher. Lucien Burgher. The fellas call me Luce.” His smile
carried his mouth, his eyes and some further part of him with
it.

She felt beads of sweat in the
tiny hollow of her throat. She was wiping her hands on a towel.

“
Of course my
mother wouldn’t approve. She prefers Lucien. I tell them that, but
they don’t pay no attention to me. No respect.”

“
I thought you
had –” she began.

“
I waited for
you,” he laughed, flashing his grin full upon her, then dropping
his glance for a moment.

She watched his hands. They
seemed shy but strong; at this moment they looked as if they could
commandeer the world. One of them reached into the pocket of his
engineer’s tunic.

“
Would you
like to dance?” he said.

She backed up a step, the heat
surging behind her.

“
What I mean
is, could I have the pleasure of escorting you to the New Year’s
dance?”

She let his eyes, at last, have
hers.

“
I can’t tell
you exactly how I come by it, but this here’s an official
invitation to the Grand Trunk Ball tomorrow night. Naturally,
thought I’ve tried on occasion, I don’t dance too good by
myself.”

She reached out with her left
hand, exposing the scalded wrist, now blistering painfully.
Confused, he pushed the white card into it.

“
What’s your
name,” he said gently.

She hesitated for a long
moment, the invitation poised between them. At length she replied:
“Cora.”

It was at the
very moment of his asking that she had discovered what it was she
had been trying to quit forever. A picture had sprung fully-formed
into her mind: she was lying in Southener’s arms and the
Pottawatomie tom-toms were sounding through the smoke as the girl
named White Blossom was transformed, by the dance of her elders and
the dance inside her, into her new being: Seed-of-the-Snow-Apple.
The seed-core.
Cora
. Beginning
again.

“
Cora,” he
repeated. “Beautiful name. An old and sacred name. And?”

“
Does a last
name matter?”

“
Not to me,”
he grinned. “You’ll go then?”

She nodded.

Cora

41

B
y mid-April there was
barely a trace of snow to be found anywhere in the village. The sun
thawed, stirred, reminisced with the earth. And in the memorable
warmth of the afternoons, workmen of every shape and ilk came to
help with the making of Granny Coote’s cottage: a mason, a joiner,
a sawyer, several carpenters, a lather and plasterer, two roofers,
assorted painters and paperers, a clandestine electrician, a
legitimate plumber, and countless helpers, apprentices, and
sidewalk foremen. And each one, novice or seasoned hand, was
watched over by the still figure outlined in the front window of
the miserable shack across the street – a pale, disinterested ghost
looking for new ground to haunt. Not once did she wave, nod, or in
any other wise break her silent superintendence.

The workmen might have
been relieved to learn that the supervising wraith behind the glass
did not spend all of her watching time minutely observing their
amateur, though enthusiastic, performance. True, she never left her
post, but on most days, shortly after noon, she would cast an eye
up or down the street to catch the eccentric stride of one or more
of the young men en route to the site, and begin to trace its
advance until some moment of sudden recognition occurred, as it
inevitably did. Ah, that’s young Mike, Maggie Hare’s lad, she would
think; Bunny, they used to call him and he’d come running home
bawling and quivering with hurt, too tiny to fight back, to cast
off the name that would dog him all his days, but I would always
put down my mop and making sure Maggie was out of earshot, I would
let him fling his eight-year-old arms around me and butt me in the
stomach as hard as he wanted till he’d slow down real gradual and
just hug me, and I’d reach into my apron, as if I’d thought of
something special, and pull out a peppermint – like a prize for a
clever strong boy who would never again let the bullies call him
Bunny. He doesn’t remember that anymore. It was a long time ago, of
course, and she and Maggie did have a falling out shortly after,
and she had been, after all, a lifelong Alleywoman. By the time
Granny looked up from such thoughts, the studding for a bedroom
wall or a new doorway would have mysteriously come into being
across the street. For Sunny’s sake, she did try to watch, but it
was very, very hard.

There’s Slowboat Saunders,
Eliza’s youngest. She was too old to have any more and she paid for
it. Slowboat could drive a nail through his thumb and then wonder
why he couldn’t pick his nose. Poor dear soul.

I’ve wiped that nose many a
time after Alf got his leg crushed in a coal-tender’s bogies and
Eliza went back to school teaching. He waves at me and grins, but
I’m sure he can’t connect what he sees here behind glass with those
days before Arthur, before Eddie, before the catastrophes of age.
Even the Army wouldn’t take Slowboat – flat feet, they said. To her
surprise, the last of the roof-boards – magically – had already
been put in place. She could no longer see inside. I didn’t even
hear the hammering, she thought.

Moments later she saw Sunny
Denfield climb down from the roof, stand for a while with his arm
on Slowboat’s shoulder, then detach himself and walk across the
street towards her gate.

“I
guess you remember the day when my
father came lookin’ for me. He got the police out by tellin’ them I
was under eighteen an’ pullin’ some strings in the government.
Naturally they expected that, bein’ a young lad accustomed to money
and pleasure, I would run off to the fleshpots of Montreal or
Detroit. It never occurred to them that I might be runnin’
away
from those very things. To be honest, I didn’t know what I
was doin’ except findin’ some room to breathe an’ think an’ sort
out my life. I suppose if I’d had a mother, I’d have stayed away
just long enough to give them all a good scare, but I didn’t. To
this day I haven’t a clue as to who tipped off my father that I
might be livin’ in some little dump of a railroad town called Point
Edward. Probably one of the big shots stayin’ at The Queen’s where
I had that room near the back annex, you remember. Unfortunately
I’m the spittin’ image of my father. Anyway, as you’ll recall, it
was only a month after I’d settled in at the sheds – in September
of ought-one – when he comes scoutin’ after his lost son.” He
dunked one of Mrs. Carpenter’s cookies in his tea. “The whole
village knew somethin’ was afoot,” he laughed.

Granny had written on her
slate. She held it up: ‘We all heard him’.

“
So did
everyone in Port Huron and Sarnia. Imagine, comin’ to fetch a
runaway back home in a horseless carriage, firin’ off sparks an’
fartin’ bedlam in every direction, deafenin’ dogs an’ spookin’
horses an’ givin’ old Mrs. Farrow a case of the hiccups she claimed
took her ten years to get over.”

The sun was now shining through
the west window over the sink. She felt its warmth around her
ankles. Soon in her garden it would be tempting bulb and tuber.

“
He left it
sittin’ in front of The Queen’s, surrounded by townsfolk, an’
walked by himself across the fields towards our work gang; we were
cuttin’ ragweed or somethin’, between boats, with our shirts
stripped off showin’ our muscles an’ tan to the whole world. He
didn’t know I saw him, but he stood near a little hawthorn,
watchin’ us work an’ horse around as we always did, an’ by that
time I was feelin’ like one of the gang, with all my blisters
toughened up and all the kinks out of my arms an’ legs, an’
real
earned
money in my pocket. He never said a
word, and I never let on I saw him. He just turned an’ walked away.
We heard the poppin’ and jumpin’ of the automobile all the way
across the marsh, and I remember one of the fellas sayin’: ‘Christ,
it’s like ridin’ a Gatling Gun!”

Arthur – bless him for trying –
built that little cupboard beside the sink, she was thinking. He
let Eddie cut out the scrolls and curlicues with his coping saw. He
was so patient, Arthur, with his hands on the piano, with anything
in them. We were always going to fix up the outside, but there was
never enough money and the property was not really ours and beside
the inside was always cozy and full of music, and the nimbleness of
Arthur’s fingers never did transfer from piano hammers to a
carpenter’s, though he could never figure out why, staring up at
her helplessly for absolution.

“
You would
have liked my Aunt Grace, Cora,” Sunny was saying. “I never could
understand how she came to marry such a stuffed shirt as my Uncle
Bramwell. You couldn’t picture two more opposite types. She cared
nothing for money or fancy things: she loved people. Especially
children, an’ she regretted, I know, bein’ able to have but one
child. She almost died havin’ Ruth-Anne, I was told. I’m hopin’
you’ll get a chance to meet Ruth-Anne soon. I’ve been tryin’ to
help her with her pursuit of her family tree. She insists her
mother had relatives livin’ in this county, and is threatenin’ to
come down here an’ prove it to herself. I hope she does. You’ll
like her. She’s got her mother’s spunk.”

Granny smiled as best she
could. She wrote a word on her slate: ‘When?’

“
Two weeks,”
he said, barely above a whisper. “The plaster an’ paint won’t take
long. It’s gonna look real nice, Cora. Just the way you an’ me
sketched it out. We’d like you to move in by the first of May. The
monument man’s comin’ from London about then. We’re plannin’ a
little ceremony for you – I know you don’t approve but it’s really
to make the council feel good about it all, if you wouldn’t mind –
but that won’t be till later because the lawyers are still sortin’
out the legal stuff. But I promise you, you’ll have a
bona fide
deed in your hand by June. You’ll own that piece of
land an’ that cottage outright. Nobody’ll ever be able to take it
away from you. It’s the least we owe you, the least you
deserve.”

She was
listening and not listening. She got up and walked slowly to the
west window. She looked out over her dozing gardens. Sunny Denfield
was at her side. He looked out with her. “I’m sorry,” he said, his
voice breaking. Her hand on his wrist said,
I know
.

A stranger, walking by, might
have caught them in their window – glazed by a westering glow – and
mistaken them for mother and son.

42

1

T
he Grand Trunk Ball
was the social event of the winter season. For twenty years – years
marked by unparalleled human progress (one or two depressions and
the odd insurrection notwithstanding) – the affair had been held in
the largest, most resplendent ballroom of western Ontario, the
G.T.R. Station-Hotel on the docks of Point Edward. Burned to the
ground by revisionist forces of Nature in 1871, it had been
immediately resurrected, more capacious and vainglorious than ever.
The three dozen Venetian chandeliers, reflected like minor galaxies
in the ebony firmament of the walnut floors, were a testament to
the depth and longing of the mercantilist fancy that confected
them. And though the queenly edifice herself was imperceptibly
aging – indeed about to be sacrificed to such commercial
inevitabilities as mergers and corporate restructuring – she had
fitted herself out for this annual ceremonial with no diminution of
splendour and no intimation that the cracks at the edges of her
smile might one day be irremediable. And whether by coincidence or
design, the last evening of 1885 – a year which had seen the young
nation riven by dissent, racial antagonism and rebellion – turned
out to be clear, crisp and star-spangled.