What Is Left the Daughter (4 page)

My aunt poured him a cup of tea. My uncle turned on the radio. As he fiddled with the tuner dial, he said, "No European war news on yet, but let's see what's what anyway, shall we?" As he jumped from station to station, he said, "Lenore, if I catch you using your stenography on our small talk, I'm going to have to ask you to put on a dunce cap and finish your soup in the parlor."

It seemed to me that my uncle was teasing, but Lenore was stung and quickly set her notebook and pencil aside. My uncle finally found a program out of Halifax in which people called in items they wanted to get rid of—from sofas to pigs, firewood to egg beaters, fishing rods to dolls, hay to hay wagons—for an hour it ran the gamut. The program was called
Bargain Basement
and was hosted by a man named Arthur Bunting. "I've always found it dishonest of Arthur Bunting," my uncle said, "to speak of every item, no matter what, with equal excitement. I mean, how can you compare a dog collar to a freestanding generator? On the air he'd peddle lint out of a pocket if someone called in to declare said lint was no longer wanted and would take fifty cents for it."

"Admit it, Donald," my aunt said, "you're still angry at Arthur Bunting, despite the fact it's been two years since he offended you."

My aunt then spoke directly to me, probably because everyone else already knew the story. "Roughly two years ago," she said, "we were listening to
Bargain Basement
when all of a sudden Graham Hejinian—I've sat in the same pew in church with his family, before they moved to Advocate Harbor—Mr. Hejinian called in to say he had one of Donald's toboggans for sale, at a very cheap price. Kristin, the Hejinians' daughter, was already married and living in Kentville. And their son Charles was in the RCN—and the Royal Canadian Navy isn't going to allow a toboggan on a Navy vessel, now, is it? So it made perfect sense that their toboggan was no longer needed. But couldn't Graham have simply stored it in the attic or basement? Let it wait there for a grandchild."

"Seems to me the blame sits with Graham Hejinian," Lenore said, "not Arthur Bunting."

"Well, Donald considers them partners in crime, you see," my aunt said.

My uncle got the tuning just right, static close on either side on the dial. The first caller was a woman who had a love seat on offer. She said it was only a month old. She was asking ten dollars.

My uncle sipped his tea and remarked, "Let's see, today is September 23, so that means it only took since August 23 for love not to work out anymore on that seat, eh? If my calculations are correct."

"People do have sudden debts," my aunt said. She was clearing the dishes, except for teacups. "Perhaps the caller had an unexpected debt."

"I should've jotted down that woman's telephone number," Lenore said, "because I'm interested in that love seat. Even though I live alone."

"What about Denholme Mont?" my aunt said at the sink, rinsing the dishes.

"Postal worker from Truro?" Lenore asked.

"The very same," my aunt said, setting plates on the wooden drying rack.

"What about him?" Lenore said.

"Well, I believe we were talking about love seats and living alone," my aunt said.

"If you must know," Lenore said, "since last April, Denholme Mont and I have lived together, but for only a few hours of a given evening."

"At a
go,
you mean," my uncle said. "But maybe if you had a love seat, he'd begin to stay upward of twenty-four hours. Weekdays and holidays, at least. Him being a postal worker."

"I have no intention of learning how to cook breakfast for two," Lenore said.

"Come on, Lenore," my aunt said. "It's just doubling the amount of eggs, toast and whatnot."

"If only that was all there was to it," Lenore said.

That ended the conversation. My uncle went into the master bedroom and I started back for the shed. But as I put on my shoes, I heard Lenore say, "Ladies, in my notebook, here, I have a conversation. Hundreds of words Denholme Mont and I said to each other. Saturday last."

"Did you take down every word, do you think?" my aunt asked.

"Denholme fell asleep right after," Lenore said. "So I quickly took up my pencil. I think I got most of it."

"Practice makes perfect," Tilda said.

"Would you like to hear it?" Lenore said.

"Not if I'm going to need smelling salts and a fainting couch," my aunt said.

"Probably not, Constance," Lenore said. "Unfortunately."

"Go right ahead, then," my aunt said.

I quietly closed the door behind me.

Truth be told, during lunch that day, it was I who practically needed smelling salts. I'd never thought of myself as particularly romantic, or romantically available, or romantically interesting, though in high school I'd taken girls to dances. Also, some had refused me dances. The previous winter, however, I had what might be called a dedicated romance with Mavis Joubert, a French Canadian, and I stayed miserably dedicated months after she broke it off. During our courtship, Mavis was twenty and waitressed at a fish-and-chips place near the bottom of Duke Street. Her two-room apartment in a house on Gerrish Street spilled over with books. After our breakup she got involved with a professor of art history at Dalhousie, who took her on a tour of museums in Italy, though she returned by herself. Yet once my wounds had mended, I realized I was grateful Mavis and I had had nighttime experiences together, of the sort my mother preferred to call "not casual."

Marlais, it's important for me to tell you why I looked away from Tilda in the kitchen. It's related to memories of a teacher I had in tenth form in Halifax. Her name was Mrs. Francine Woods. The thing is, my grades were only average, but I felt above average at paying attention, especially when it came to history and English literature. For instance, I'd paid very close attention when Mrs. Woods—I'm amazed now to think that she was probably no more than your age, or perhaps a year or two older—spoke passionately and learnedly about the English poet John Keats. She recited his sonnets and read us some of his letters. Keats was her favorite writer of all time, and she said as much, more than once.

Now, you may well ask, how does this pertain to my turning away from Tilda? It pertains because I can definitely say without hesitation that stepping into the kitchen and watching her prepare tea was the moment I fell in love with her. Completely gone, smitten, whatever other words you might find in the dictionary. She was
too much beauty,
and I had to turn away.

You see, at some point during a full week devoted to Keats, Mrs. Woods provided an anecdote. One day John Keats and a friend were walking in the English countryside, which they often did. They trekked up a hill and took in the broad vista below. The sun was behind some clouds and the pale moon could still be seen in the sky. Mist hung low over a pond, swans gliding in and out of view. The big elm trees looked magnificently intelligent (I think "magnificently intelligent" were Mrs. Woods's words, not Keats's). And according to Mrs. Woods, the sight was suddenly too much for John Keats. "Too much beauty—he had to look away," she said. "Class, can you understand this?"

Despite the fact that your father is whatever is the opposite of a poet, there in the kitchen, when I looked at Tilda, when I really took her in, too much beauty is why I looked away. I'm certain you can understand this.

We had a nice birthday party for Tilda that autumn. Her eighteenth birthday, November 4. (My eighteenth was October 11 and passed without me telling anyone.) It was attended by three of her high school friends, Constance, Donald, Cornelia Tell and me. Cornelia provided the cake. There was gramophone and radio music all evening. I had one dance with Tilda and one with my aunt. No one else asked me, and I didn't ask anyone else.

My apprenticeship in sleds and toboggans went methodically. One week my uncle instructed me in how to test the pliability and strength of plywood, how to measure and cut it. The next week I learned to construct a cargo box and fit iron runners. The following week we went step by step in completing a seven-foot-long trapper's sled, including the metal and leather dog harness. The days were given over to the use of steel bridges, brackets, hitch crosspieces, clevis bolts, various types of sandpaper, the application of glues and linseed oil, and so on. I also learned about the clerical aspects of the business, invoices, correspondence, bills to pay.

A month or so after I started in the business, my uncle allowed me to work solo on a three-board toboggan with wrappers and hitch, along with a cargo box and standard handles. It had been ordered by a man living in Heart's Desire, Newfoundland. "I sold him a sled last year," my uncle said. "He's expecting quality work again. My reputation's based on quality work, Wyatt." In order to give my fullest attention to this toboggan—that is, to prevent Uncle Donald from giving me pointers every minute—I decided to work on it after supper and late into the night, and kept it under a tarpaulin outside the shed during the day. Difficult as it may have been for him, my uncle, much to his credit, took the hint. I finished the toboggan in two weeks, and I mean fourteen full days, because I worked on Sundays, too.

At seven
A.M.
the following Monday, I unveiled my toboggan. I stood there while my uncle inspected it top to bottom, testing every joint, running his hands over the wood to detect splinters or rough spots of any sort, tilting it to examine more closely the linseed flush and how evenly the shellac had been applied. "Yesterday," he finally said, "I saw some children sledding in back of the church. Snow's always nicely packed on the slope there. I'll take this toboggan over there right now and try it out, eh? If it can hold me, who's practically a walrus compared to those boys, how bad can the world be? But if it splits and I fly through the air and crack open my skull, Wyatt, you're to look after your aunt Constance, understand?"

"I understand," I said.

"I don't have a last will and testament," he said, "except what I've told my wife in pillow talk, and that's not open to discussion."

I waited a good hour and a half in the shed, mostly smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio kept on a high shelf, and when my uncle returned, he said, "It's fine." We went directly back to work on two sleds ordered by a family from MacLeod Settlement in Nova Scotia. Their letter had mentioned that there were twin girls, age seven, so could Mr. Hillyer please somehow differentiate the sleds in some way that didn't interfere with his design, "to avoid the girls' bickering"? The letter suggested that my uncle paint a board on one sled black or red. After an hour or so of working on these sleds, my uncle slid a log into the woodstove and said, "Wyatt, I've been wanting to ask you something."

"Go right ahead, Uncle Donald."

"At the time you left Halifax, what was the mood in the city? About the war, I mean. Your aunt complains that I'm becoming more and more agitated by the day. Truth is, she only knows the half of just how agitated I am."

I looked at a few of the headlines from the
Halifax Mail
that were tacked on the wall over the workbench:

UNHAPPY CHRISTMAS DAY FOR GERMAN TROOPS

TIDE OF BATTLE TURNS HEAVILY AGAINST HITLER

IN ALL-NIGHT BATTLE,
ALLIED TROOPS FIGHT FOR THEIR LIVES

AXIS U-BOAT "WOLF PACK
"
ATTACK CONVOY; 11 SHIPS LOST

"There's a restaurant, the Green Lantern," I said. "People like to call it the Green Latrine. It's along a block of brothels, and nearby's the Orpheum Theatre. Every night the place is crowded as a pigeon coop. Lots of military. Lots of music and dancing. Anyway, there's this fellow named H. B. Jefferson—have you heard of him?"

"The newspaperman," my uncle said, "who was appointed wartime press censor."

"That's him. That's H. B. Jefferson. His voice is very recognizable. He's always on the radio using that American slogan 'Loose lips sink ships.' Warning there might be German spies listening in all the time, so if you have a husband or wife in the military, you shouldn't repeat anything they've told you, you know, just daily on the street corner."

"Sure, sure," my uncle said.

"Well, one night H. B. Jefferson steps out with his wife, Lennie, to the Green Lantern. People are shouting and laughing and drinking and dancing, the place is jumping. I was there that night with some friends of mine. In fact, we had a table right next to H. B. Jefferson's, and some sailors and their wives or girlfriends had a table on the other side of H. B. Jefferson's. Suddenly a sailor recognizes Jefferson's voice—his radio voice. And this sailor'd had quite a bit to drink, that wasn't hard to tell. And he stands up on his chair and busts a beer bottle on the table and points at H. B. Jefferson and shouts, 'Hey—hey, everyone! That right there's Mr. H. B. Jefferson—right there! Say, Mr. H. B. Jefferson, what do you know that you're not telling all these fine people in this fine establishment?' Then some other sailors got that fellow right out the door."

"What's the point, Wyatt?"

"On the one hand, maybe more than ever, the war's made people let off steam, drinking, dancing. Brothels. Over to Rigolo's Pub. The Green Lantern. The Night Owl. Drink and dance and get crazy every night they possibly can."

"On the other hand?" my uncle said. He had stopped working and was listening closely.

"On the other hand, the whole time people have their stomachs twisted in knots worrying that there's some terrible news they don't yet know about. Like there's a terrible secret about to be told them. And see, at the Green Lantern that night? There was a moment where I really thought some of those sailors were going to drag H. B. Jefferson into an alley and kick him senseless till he told them what he knew and they didn't know yet."

"You couldn't really blame them if they did, eh?" my uncle said.

"No, not really, I guess not," I said. "But H. B. Jefferson's got a tough job, I'd say."

"Certainly he does," my uncle said. "But don't forget, there's human nature. I remember being in an English village during the last war. My buddies and I were beat to hell and hadn't slept in days. We were put up in a farmhouse. The farmer told us that his neighbors had shot a collaborator of some sort. He didn't go into detail. But in a nutshell, he was talking about how suspicion got cranked up so high, his very own neighbors, some he'd known his whole life, were all at wits' end. And I'll never forget what he said. He said, 'My neighbors, they got wind of a saboteur in their midst and started to look at everybody in a different light, for all I know even their cows and sheep.' What I'm saying is, as a wartime censor, H. B. Jefferson's walking a fine line."