Tell (15 page)

A brittle, metallic sun shone through the afternoon cold. She could hear skaters before she could see them, the voices of adults and children laughing and calling to one another while their blades criss-crossed the ice. The echoed depth of the bay declared its presence beneath the frozen surface. She crossed the street to be closer to Tress and Kenan’s house, and looked toward shore. The sight of the rink and the skaters gliding around the oval tugged at her, made her want to join in. Music started up near the skaters’ shack while she stood there
—The Skaters’ Waltz
—and she stopped to listen. The music calmed. She felt lighter, as if she were out there gliding around. She decided that she would go out on the bay this very week. All she had to do was pull her skates out of the closet and check the blades to see if they needed sharpening. Maybe she’d skate with Tress on a day when neither of them was working. Or with Zel.
The length of the skating season was unpredictable because it was dependent on weather, so most people in town took advantage of the ice while it was in good condition. Even the older residents came out to the rink. One of the frequent visitors to the library, Mrs. Woodley, was on the ice every year in a kind of improvised wheelchair. She wasn’t strong enough to skate anymore, but she was sure to be seen, her grandson steering her chair from behind, the two of them having a grand time. Mrs. Woodley’s chair had narrow metal blades that glided over the surface like sled runners. The boy took wide-legged strokes as he pushed the chair over the ice. Like a grand duchess, his grandmother wrapped herself against the cold, her eyes and a bit of nose showing. A multi-coloured scarf was always twisted around her head and face, and knotted at the side so that the ends drooped like petals over one shoulder. Maggie hoped Mrs. Woodley would be out again this winter in her specially designed chair.

Maybe, Maggie thought, maybe I’ll ask Am to skate with me some evening after supper. But after refusing to listen to him today, she didn’t know how she would ask. There were tensions between them that she couldn’t explain. If she did ask him to skate with her, he might say no. She didn’t want him to refuse her. She didn’t want to be refused.

She walked to the edge of town and passed the falling-down barn on Zel’s property. A new wooden sign had been hung outside the door of the house:
JACKSON ROOMING HOUSE, APPLY WITHIN.

Zel was ready to take in more boarders. She had cleared and prepared the last of the available rooms. Her house had two sets
of stairs. The stairs off the kitchen were located behind the pantry and led up to the private area of the house, which included Zel’s personal quarters. Her roomers used the stairs that were closer to the front door, though the front door was rarely used. Zel had told Maggie that she’d be advertising after the new year, for either a couple or two single persons.

There was no light in the kitchen when Maggie approached the house. Despite the dimness inside, she rapped at the door. She rapped again and let herself in. She took off her coat and hat and turned on the kitchen light. The stove was lit; she’d seen chimney smoke as she walked up the road. Zel was burning coal now, as was most of the town. Maggie warmed her hands over the stove and took her music through to the dining room. Where the piano had stood only a week before, a small table was now pushed against the wall. How had the piano been moved? That would have been a heavy job. And where had it moved to?

She was about to put on her coat to return home in disappointment, but she remembered that she had also seen smoke coming from the chimney of the small building next to the house. Zel must be out there. Maggie gathered up the pages again and ran, coatless, from house to workroom. She gave a quick tap at the door and pushed her way inside. Luc was sitting at the table, reading. He was alone and startled to see her. Zel’s piano stood against the wall on the left. The room was warm, warmer than Zel’s kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” said Maggie. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here. I was looking for Zel.”

Her glance took in the changes as she spoke. A thin wooden
partition, newly raised at the end of the room but not quite reaching the ceiling, concealed a bed and dresser. Partly concealed—there was no door between the main room and this new small bedroom. A makeshift curtain had been pulled back and was tied with cord at one side of the improvised doorway. Maggie recognized the fabric: part of Zel’s supply, which they’d recently inspected while choosing what to use for their carnival costumes.

Embarrassed at being in the man’s private rooms, Maggie turned, almost tripping on an outer ledge, and went back outside and into Zel’s house.

But Luc followed.

“Wait.” He was calling out behind her. “You had no way of knowing. I’ve been here only two days. Zel permitted me to move in earlier than planned. The place …” He caught up, hurrying, and gestured in the direction of the workroom. “The place is so much better than what I had in town. Here, I have privacy. I can play the piano as much as I wish and only the trees and barnboards can hear. Zel was kind enough to allow me to move in now instead of waiting until spring.”

The two of them looked at his hands, which were held out as if hovering over an unseen keyboard.

“I must go,” said Maggie.

“Why must you? Stay, Magreet. Zel will be back shortly. The teacher, too, will be back. Why does everyone call her ‘the teacher’ instead of her name? Well, that’s what I call her now, too. You could make a pot of tea. You know where Zel keeps her things? Perhaps when she comes back, you can practise. That is why you came, yes? To use the piano?”

He pointed toward the pages Maggie had dropped onto the kitchen table, as if this gesture would stop his own questions.

Maggie considered. Zel would not be upset. She would return to her house and find the two of them at her kitchen table, and she would join in as if this were an everyday occurrence.

“All right,” said Maggie. “All right.” She sank to a chair and added, “Lukas.”

“Luc.”

“Luc, then.” But his name came out differently when her voice spoke it into the air.

“Something like that.”

He sat across from her and rested his arms on the table. Maggie knew she was holding her breath. They both rose at the same time: Luc to check that the kettle was full, Maggie to bring cups to the table.

As predicted, Zel was not surprised to see the two of them together. She strode through the door and pulled off her coat just as Maggie was about to pour tea.

“Aha! I saw the light in my kitchen and had a feeling it was you, Maggie. I knew the teacher was in town because she was in the drugstore not fifteen minutes ago. Sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t give any notice,” said Maggie. “If I’d known that the piano had been moved out, I wouldn’t have presumed …”

“The move happened without much of a plan,” said Zel. “Lukas and I worked out the arrangements and one of the men from town arrived to deliver coal, so we enlisted him to help
while an extra pair of hands and a strong back were available. Actually, he did more pushing and pulling than lifting. Lukas fashioned a trolley on wheels to move the thing out. I did the guiding. The path is short, thank heavens.”

“We should have left the piano in the dining room.” Luc was apologetic. “Magreet came here to practise.”

“And so she shall,” said Zel. “Let’s have the tea you’ve made and then the three of us will go out to the workroom.”

Maggie poured another cup, and watched as bubbles formed on the surface. Zel scooped them up with a spoon while Luc looked on, amused.

“Bubbles mean money,” said Zel. “Income. More boarders after Christmas. Now, Maggie, how shall we proceed? I can play accompaniment and Lukas can help with problems. What do you want to work on?”

“Everything,” said Maggie. “But it’s the Elgar I’m worried about. I’m late coming in at entrances. I’m worried about not making it through the phrases.”

“Leave that behind,” said Luc. “All of it. You worry about the wrong things. Use your body to express each phrase. Continue your thought all the way to the last word. That’s where I would like you to start. Also, you must change moods in the second half of the concert—from Gilbert and Sullivan, yes, to Elgar—but I will be playing Liszt between the two. For you, a metamorphosis from sun and moon to …” He was not reaching her and he could see that.

“Let’s go to the workroom and begin,” he said. “Already, you have honoured the music with the beauty of your voice, Magreet. You will accomplish much more than that, too.”

Maggie did not, could not, tell him or Zel that the words were dragging her down. That when she sang “Peace, Gentle Peace,” she was capable of becoming one with the text, yes, but she was also becoming part of “the bruised and broken earth” the text described.

S
ATURDAY MORNING
, K
ENAN WOKE WITH
T
RESS
curled against him. He pulled her closer, moved his hand up under her gown and along her thighs. She adjusted to his good side and turned toward him. He did not know how long she’d been awake. With not a word between them, they made love. The room was dim, shadowed; fingers of light reached in around the curtains. Tress was intense and silent. Before he drifted off to sleep again, Kenan considered how the unspoken words between them were accumulating, and how each of them was aware of this.

When he woke for the second time, it was because Tress was sliding over to the edge of the bed. Instinctively, he moved to the warm spot she left behind, but already it had begun to cool. He reached for her as she slipped into her robe.

“No interference,” she said. “I’m hungry and I’m going downstairs to make breakfast—as long as you promise to take your turn tomorrow.”

“I do,” he said. “I promise.” Lately, he had begun to share in meal preparation. More cooking than he’d ever done at Uncle Oak’s, though his uncle had ensured that he could put a meal together. Kenan was comfortable in the kitchen and he cooked supper once in a while when Tress was working late. With one hand, he could negotiate the stove, the icebox, the utensils, the frying pan, the wiping up. Even peeling potatoes could be done if he sat down, kept the potato steady by using his dead hand as a weight against it.

He could hear Tress in the kitchen below, filling the kettle, putting dishes on the table. She had no shifts at the hotel for the next three days and had declared that she planned to relax, visit friends, catch up on Christmas baking, skate—if weather allowed. There had been two or three stormy days the past week, but when the rink was clear again, she had gone out skating with Kay. When she returned from the rink, her face was glowing, her body brimming with a vitality he hadn’t seen in her for months. His fault, he told himself. His fault she wasn’t like that all the time. But he knew she didn’t blame him; Tress wasn’t one to lay blame. Nor did she push him to talk about going out on his own skates. This was no secret, since it was obvious that he’d worn them.

Now he lay in bed, tracking her steps as she moved about below. Weeks had passed since he’d listened to her stories. She had become more and more silent. She was going out frequently with friends.

The frying pan connected with the stovetop. He heard the sizzle of grease. She would be cooking eggs, two for him and one for herself. He wondered if she ever gave any thought to the fact
that he had not been permitted to eat eggs when he was a child. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Once a year, Easter morning, an egg had been put before him at breakfast. The rest of the year, he craved what he couldn’t have. He watched other children open their lunch buckets at school and lift out hard-boiled eggs, or eggs sliced between slabs of bread. A couple of times he traded a sandwich with classmates, or cheese and honey, all for a bite of egg, just to get the taste. He used to wonder how he could ever imagine the taste when he was allowed only one egg a year. Now he could eat as many as he wanted and he still couldn’t describe the taste. An egg tasted like an egg.

His uncle Oak had raised hens for a decade and a half in a tiny area that was mostly a scrubby patch west of their house on Mill Street. There had been hens in the coop for as many years as Kenan could remember. His uncle wore his overalls while tending, feeding, cleaning. Every year in April, May, June, the good laying months, the eggs were put by for storage. One of Kenan’s after-school jobs was to immerse the eggs in crocks filled with water glass, a syrupy, jelly-like substance he didn’t like to put his hands near. He was taught to pack the eggs carefully, small ends pointed down so the yolks wouldn’t settle. It was also his job to check the crocks and add cooled boiled water so the eggs would stay immersed.

Uncle Oak’s eggs tasted fresh, even in the middle of winter when egg prices were at their peak. Or so it was said by his loyal customers. How would Kenan have known the taste of a fresh egg from a stale one? No egg had ever been put before him at mealtime. Every egg was a source of income. Uncle Oak relied on the egg money to support the two of them, along with what
he earned from the welding shop. What Kenan did know for certain was that in wintertime, his uncle’s storage eggs satisfied the demands of their end of town.

And so it evolved that the day for his once-a-year egg during childhood was Easter Sunday. On that morning, two eggs appeared on the kitchen table in a white oval dish that had a thin gold line around its edge. Kenan had easily imagined that a storybook king was about to arrive, or a prince. The two eggs out of sight under the gold-edged lid were hot and promising in their shells. One for Kenan, one for Uncle Oak. Kenan did not know where the special dish had come from. It was stowed on a shelf in the cupboard. Perhaps it had once belonged to Uncle Oak’s parents. Apart from Easter morning, the fancy dish with the gold-rimmed lid stayed in the cupboard. It was probably there still.

Why had he been allowed an egg only at Easter when there was an abundance under their noses?

Every year at Easter, when his uncle carried the dish to the table, he said the same thing to Kenan: “This will keep your gizzards functioning.” And he smiled to himself as if it was a great joke.

His uncle Oak was a tea drinker. He drank tea in the morning and tea after supper at night. The teapot was his luxury and it matched the dish that held the eggs, a thin gold line rimming the lid. When his uncle was done drinking his tea, he stood on the stoop at the back door of the house and threw the remnants, including the tea leaves, off to the side and onto a flat patch of dirt. Not only were the dregs of tea thrown there, but dishwater, too, was pitched to the side after the dishes were done
at the end of the day. In winter, when the earth was frozen, the dishwater and tea collected on the surface of that patch of yard, and froze. The icy patch, no more than ten feet across, was the first small rink upon which Kenan had tried out his skates. If a clump of tea leaves became trapped in the ice, he tripped. He fell more than a few times, but that little frozen patch provided him with his first experience on skates. Long before he went out to the rink on the bay.

This year, Uncle Oak would be joining him and Tress for Christmas dinner. Kenan knew that Tress’s parents would like to have them all over to the hotel dining room for dinner, but he wasn’t planning to be company for anyone. Not now, not yet.

His own memories of Christmas were of Uncle Oak ensuring that they always had a modest celebration. Every year, Kenan had found a quarter wrapped in a handkerchief under the tree. That, and an orange in his stocking. A wonderful, sweet-tasting, full-of-juice orange that he took his time about eating. Some of his friends from school received an apple Christmas Day, instead of an orange. A Snow apple, or maybe a Spy. But Kenan felt himself lucky to be given an orange. When he was overseas, oranges appeared a few times but had to be divided and shared by three men. A third of an orange was an enormous treat and never failed to bring back memories of Christmas Day.

On Christmas afternoon every year, while Uncle Oak was cooking a small goose for the two of them, Kenan stopped by the house next to the hotel to visit with Tress and Grania and their two brothers, and to see their Christmas gifts. There, Tress’s mother gave him special candies. Agnes knew that satins with pale stripes were his favourites. He’d have been happy to
have one every day of the year. But satins were sold in the stores for one month only, and that was December. Every Christmas afternoon, Agnes gave him his own small bag—a drawstring bag she made—filled to the top. By exercising willpower, he could make his sticky candies last into the new year.

Agnes also made a special orange pudding for her children on Christmas afternoons, and she included Kenan in that treat as well. The pudding was a sweet custard containing pieces of cut-up orange. Kenan looked forward to the dessert as much as he looked forward to the satin candies.

His uncle went to the bother of putting up a Christmas tree. A small tree in one corner of the dining room. He kept a supply of hickory nuts by the kitchen stove all winter so that he and Kenan could crack them open with the iron poker. One year, his uncle carved a tiny basket from a walnut shell and hung it on the tree. Kenan lifted it off the branch and marvelled at its delicate handle. He was given a jackknife that year, and Uncle Oak taught him how to whittle. After that, Kenan made his own carvings to hang on the tree.

In 1913, Uncle Oak gave up the hens and the egg business. By then, he had more than enough welding to do and there was no shortage of repair work. People were making equipment last instead of buying new. That was the same year he acquired his pup, the bulldog that sprawled in the back doorway, especially if there was a spot of sun to lie in. Oak named the dog Jowls, and Jowls had to be stepped over or pushed out of the way whenever Kenan or his uncle wanted to enter the house.

In that same year, Kenan turned nineteen. He finished school and began to train as a teller at the bank on Main Street.
He and Tress married when he was twenty, and Dermot and Agnes became his in-laws. It was no surprise to anyone when he and Tress announced that they would marry.

Jowls was a year-old pup when Kenan left for the war. When he returned, Jowls was reported to be at his post, though Kenan had been inside no one’s house but his own, and in the tower above Maggie and Am’s apartment, since coming back. During Uncle Oak’s most recent visit, at the end of November, Jowls had been at his heels. The dog hadn’t forgotten Kenan, but after the initial excitement of seeing him, he slumped in the doorway of Tress and Kenan’s kitchen, transferring his habits from Oak’s house to theirs during that short and somewhat less awkward visit. The dog’s presence must have helped, because Oak spoke more freely that day and even described a moving picture he’d seen at Naylor’s. An exciting picture about the Martin and Osa Johnson expedition to the South Sea Islands. He couldn’t stop talking about the threat of cannibals. It was clear that he’d never given cannibals a thought until he was presented with evidence of them at the pictures.

K
ENAN KNEW HE SHOULD GET OUT OF BED
. H
E COULD
smell sausages frying. There was bread left over from yesterday’s baking. Tress would have heated that in the warming oven. He thought of bread and golden syrup, a ration that had been a popular treat at the Front. Every man he knew there had a craving for something sweet.

He decided to go downstairs before Tress called up to him.

But he didn’t move. The memories of the yearly egg, the
dish with the gold-rimmed lid, the satin candies, the orange pudding were as vivid as if he had stepped away from them the day before. What he couldn’t reconcile was that those parts of his life were disjointed; they didn’t fit together inside the person he was now. He also knew there were memories he didn’t have. Missing memories. He had never asked about his background, his parents. He had been adopted and brought up by Uncle Oak. Why hadn’t he pushed for an explanation? Why hadn’t neighbours, teachers, friends, anyone, spoken about his real parents? Why didn’t Tress’s family ever say anything? Most of all, why had he not thought it strange that everyone had remained silent?

Because Uncle Oak had set the tone while Kenan was growing up, that was why. The tone meant: life is treacherous, no questions asked. And someone—perhaps Oak, perhaps not—had sent out a great hush, a devouring, silencing hush, a wave that had rolled over anyone who might have knowledge of Kenan’s birth.

There had to be a simple explanation. Kenan was an orphan and had always been an orphan. Uncle Oak had no doubt adopted him from the orphanage in Belleville when he was a baby, and Kenan couldn’t imagine an orphanage giving up its secrets. The life he’d had growing up in his uncle’s house was the only one he knew, and he had memories of no other. But what did that explain—knowing you were an orphan? Nothing satisfactory that he could think of. His family attic was empty of skeletons.

Someone might have knowledge of his mother and father. Now, this minute, he craved the tiniest detail, a rattle of bones
from the past. What had his mother looked like? His father? Whom did he resemble? Where was the rest of the family—relatives of either parent? Why he wanted to know details now, when he was twenty-five, he couldn’t explain. Nor was he certain whom to ask.

Why hadn’t anyone come forward? Probably because there was no one. Perhaps he’d sailed from Britain with the Home Children. But whatever his story amounted to, it had also belonged to others. He hadn’t arrived in the world by appearing on a log in the middle of a swamp. If he knew where to look, perhaps he would find a person who could tell him. He could, he supposed, ask his uncle point-blank. He made up his mind to do just that if Oak stopped in to visit during the week.

Some people spoke freely and some did not. Some told and others withheld. Kenan’s memory shifted suddenly, and he recalled that while he’d been convalescing in hospital in England, the soldier in the bed next to him couldn’t stop spilling out everything he knew. Why should he think of him now? At the time, the nursing sisters had repeatedly asked the man to be silent, but he waited until they were busy and then started up again in a low monotone, as if his voice were controlled by a mechanical speaker. The man was small, short; he’d been nicknamed Peewee by his mates, he said, the day he joined up. Most men in the hospital with blighties wanted to stay in bed and do nothing but sleep, but not Peewee. He wanted to talk.

“I inherited from my mother,” Peewee said to Kenan—he was lying on his back and turned his head toward Kenan’s bed so as to aim his conversation directly—”I inherited the tendency to believe that I could smother at the slightest of causes. My
mother disliked closed doors, drawn curtains, rooms deprived of fresh air.”

What is he going on about? Kenan thought, not wanting to listen, not wanting to hear about smothering at the slightest of causes. But Peewee would not be stopped, and he knew very well that Kenan was not capable of interrupting. Not then.