Emancipation Day (22 page)

The summer passed. The bedsit no longer seemed impossibly tiny. Jack’s trombone was behind the sofa bed, the case gathering dust. Their savings account held steady at thirty-four dollars, not enough for two train tickets to anywhere but enough to make them feel they could afford a movie or a dinner out now and then. She began looking at the Sears catalogues: the fall dresses had cinched waists and flared at the hips, she might be able to afford one. The newspapers had ads for wringer washers and cookstoves and she found herself looking around the bedsit, wondering where on earth she would put such things.

One afternoon towards the end of October, as she was reading the
Toronto Star
, her eye caught on a headline: “New Novel Flays Anti-Negro Prejudice.” The book under review was
Kingsblood Royal
, by Sinclair Lewis, a writer she had read and enjoyed. This new one was about a man named Neil Kingsblood, who lived in a small Minnesota city called Grand Republic. Kingsblood started checking into his family history because, according to family legend, he was distantly related to one of the kings of England. “People have been warned before now about examining family trees too closely,” the reviewer wrote, “owing to the number which have miscreants hanging from them. In this case it is not a miscreant that Neil finds, but a Negro.”

She coughed and put her cigarette down in the ashtray. She looked around the apartment, making sure Jack wasn’t there
even though she knew he was at work. When her breathing settled, she got up from the table, found her scissors in her sewing basket, and cut the review out of the paper. Then she set it in the ashtray and burned it, stubbing out the ash with the remains of her cigarette.

Thank God they were out of Windsor.

By the second week of November she began to feel her body changing, though not in ways Jack was likely to notice. She found it more comfortable sleeping on her back; her breasts hurt when she lay on her stomach, or when Jack felt for her in the mornings. She noticed a metallic taste in her mouth when she drank tea. She tried it with less milk, but it was worse. She cut down on smoking; no effect, except that she felt irritable. There was a mild tightening in her lower abdomen, she wouldn’t call it cramps, exactly. She didn’t connect any of these sensations for a week or more, and then one night she sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide in the darkness. She was pregnant.

Her first thought was that she wouldn’t tell Jack until she was sure, until she had seen a doctor. She didn’t know any doctors in Toronto. She didn’t know any doctors anywhere except back home. Should she write to Iris and her mother? No, not yet. She might tell Jeannie. You lucky devil, Jeannie would say. You must be so happy. Was she? She and Jack had been married for two and a half years, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. They hadn’t been trying, but they hadn’t been trying not to, either.
She realized with a tinge of guilt that every time her period had come she’d felt relieved.

She should be overjoyed, so why wasn’t she? Their bedsit was much too small; they’d have to move. That wasn’t so bad; she liked this place but she didn’t love it, as she had loved their tiny apartment in St. John’s. So that wasn’t what was worrying her.

It was Jack. As she’d seen with the barber, it didn’t take much to make his blood boil. He liked his job, he said, but he’d come home complaining about his territory and his customers, the hills and the snow, and he usually fell asleep on the couch after supper before they could even pull out the bed. She would sit up and read while he slept, smoking and drinking cold tea left over from supper. Was this to be their life from now on, both of them filled with secrets they couldn’t share with each other? It wasn’t just her body that was changing: the world was spinning around them, too. New styles. New countries. New gadgets. Televisions, vacuum cleaners, automatic washing machines. Jack kept talking about buying all of them on credit.

“Where would we put them?”

“You don’t think we’re going to live in one room all our lives, do you?”

Well, that was true, not with a baby on the way. She counted on her fingers: they wouldn’t need to move until July or August. But they wouldn’t be able to think of buying a house, not on Jack’s commissions. Veterans Affairs might give them a mortgage, but where would they find the down payment?

“I should make supervisor in another couple of months,”
Jack said one night at dinner, when she’d broached the idea of moving. “All they do is drive around all day making sure joes like me are doing their jobs. Piece of cake. A year or two as a super and I’ll be up for promotion to manager.”

He made a year or two sound like no time at all. She couldn’t think that far ahead. She made a mental list of things she couldn’t think about. The baby after it was born. Jack’s quick temper. The fact that she still hadn’t met his father, or his sister. Jack’s mother wrote from time to time, but they hadn’t been back to Windsor since coming to Toronto, and she could hardly expect Jack’s family to come all this way just for a visit. But then again, why not? If her own family lived only a few hours away, they’d be here every month, and she and Jack would go there at least on holidays. Wat would have put his motor back together and driven to Toronto every Sunday for dinner. Jack’s family never even phoned. Making the list had only made her think about the things that were on it.

“What’s wrong, Viv?” Jack asked that evening after dinner. “You’re very quiet tonight.”

“I’m sorry, darling. I was thinking that we haven’t heard from your family for a while.”

“That’s because they don’t need anything yet. Let’s talk about something else.”

But they didn’t talk about anything else. They went back to not talking at all except about unimportant things. Would they listen to the radio or go out to a movie? Did she think he needed a haircut? How long could she put off telling him she was
expecting? A month? Two months? She would tell him when she’d seen a doctor, when she started showing, when she had a due date. When it was safe.

By Christmas she still hadn’t been to a doctor. She thought about telling Jack as a Christmas present, giving him something a father might need. A box of cigars, maybe: Surprise, darling, we’re going to have a baby! She practised different ways of saying it. “Jack, I’m pregnant.” No, too abrupt. “Jack, darling, we’re in the family way.” “There’s a little bundle of joy in our future.” None of them sounded right. In the end, she gave him a tie clip in the shape of a trombone, and he gave her some perfume in a really nice bottle.

On Christmas Day they brushed the snow off the Hup and drove all the way to Newmarket to see the Sterlings. The Danforth was bright with Christmas lights hanging from the hydro poles and in the shop windows. The snow was so deep that Jack drove behind a streetcar until they reached the edge of the city, the windshield wipers on and the wheels riding on the metal trolley tracks. She was afraid he would not be able to stop if the trolley suddenly stopped, but she knew better than to say anything about his driving.

Frank and Jeannie lived in a new house that Frank had built in the fall, a split-level bungalow with a gently sloping roof and grey brick siding below a bay window that looked out onto a tall blue spruce with Christmas lights strung on it and a wooden
cut-out reindeer grazing in the snow next to the front porch. They had come up in the world, and Vivian was happy for them. She couldn’t help thinking that if Jack had accepted Frank’s offer, they might be living in such a house now, too.

“Looks cheap, doesn’t it?” Jack said as they parked in the drive behind a new truck that had
F. Sterling and Sons, Contractors
painted on the side.

Inside, the house smelled of roasted turkey and floor wax. Frank kissed Vivian’s cheek and Jeannie took their coats. She’d brought a jar of bakeapple jam, one of three that her mother had sent from Ferryland, all of which had survived the journey, and she had spent part of the morning baking oatmeal cookies. Jack handed Frank what was left of a bottle of Canadian Club. Frank took it and poured the drinks and Jeannie put the bakeapple jam and cookies under a tree in a corner of the living room. The tree was almost as tall as the one outside.

They spent a few minutes admiring the house. Jack knocked on one of the walls with his knuckles. “Drywall?”

“Five-eighths-inch,” Frank said. “Nothing but the best.”

“My parents had a house like this in Windsor,” Jack said. “Had a fireplace in every bedroom. They lost it during the Depression.”

“How’s the encyclopedia business?” Frank asked.

“Can’t complain. I’m in line for a manager’s job.”

“That’s great, Jack,” Frank said. “How long have you been there? Two years now?”

“About that. You going to sell this house when you build another one?”

“That’s the idea. Why? You want this one?” Frank laughed.

“Naw,” Jack said, “there’s just the two of us. We’d be lost in a place this big, eh, Viv?”

“Come and help me in the kitchen, Viv,” Jeannie said.

Jeannie’s kitchen was done entirely in white and fire-engine red. White walls, white ceiling, red countertop, white cupboard doors with little red Scottie dogs on them, a new white icebox and a matching stove, and a white sink with two sections, one for washing and the other for rinsing. Even the tea towels were red-and-white striped.

“Are you all right, Viv?” Jeannie asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. Why?”

“You look kind of pale.”

“I do?”

“You’re not …?”

Vivian nodded. Jeannie gave a whoop and Vivian shushed her. “I haven’t told Jack yet!”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ve only missed twice.”

“Oh, Viv, I wondered how long you two were going to take. It’s been over two years.”

“What about you? Are you trying?”

“Yeah, we’re trying all right, but so far nothing doing.”

“Sorry,” Vivian said quietly.

“Yeah, well. Still, it’s fun trying.”

They laughed, but Vivian felt uneasy about having confided in Jeannie before she’d told Jack.

“When are you going to tell him?”

“When I’ve seen a doctor.”

“I’ll give you the name of mine. He’s an old sourpuss, but he’s good. And he’ll be happy to have a patient with ovaries that do what they’re supposed to.”

Vivian put off calling. Having a Toronto doctor would commit her to having the baby in Toronto, and she still had thoughts of going back to Newfoundland, to having her mother and Iris with her. There was plenty of time to make plans. Jack was still talking about starting a band, and on New Year’s Eve he surprised her by taking a job with a small combo that was playing at the Rex Hotel on Queen Street. He spent most of the afternoon polishing his trombone, coating the slide with Pond’s cold cream and humming “Blue Moon” to himself. When he finished, he tested his lip by playing “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.” There were a few sour notes, but he got through it, and she clapped appreciatively from the sofa.

Instead of going to hear him play, however, she spent the night in the bedsit, reading. At midnight she listened to Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians on the radio, and after the countdown she sang “Auld Lang Syne” under her breath, staring out the window at the ravine and fighting back tears. Old acquaintances back home would be doing the rounds of the houses dressed up as jannies, frightening the children and getting a drink of rum. The villagers called her father the Lord
of the Hill because he owned the store, a title both of respect and resentment. During the war, the men from Ferryland who had joined the Newfoundland Regiment had sent their pay packets home to Vivian’s father, rather than to their wives. Her father would put a little money on the families’ accounts, enough to keep the store running, and give the rest to the families. When the men came back they’d been mean about the little he had held back, but why else had they sent him their pay? And how else could he have kept the store going and the village fed? But all was forgotten on New Year’s Eve. There would be laughter and hijinks and rum, and any rifts there had been in the outport would be set aside. Whatever you did on New Year’s Day set the tone for the rest of the year.

Later that night, actually early on January 1, 1948, after Jack had come home and they were lying in bed, she thought: I’ll tell him now. But what if he got angry? She wouldn’t tell him now. Maybe tomorrow.

JACK

O
ne night after supper, Jack told Vivian he was going out to see a band. He whistled “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” as he buttoned his yellow sports jacket and put his trombone tie clip on his blue-and-yellow tie.

He drove down to the Royal York Hotel to hear Moxie Whitney’s band in the Imperial Ballroom. He didn’t pay the cover charge, just stood at the door pretending he was looking for someone. The bandsmen were all wearing tuxedos. They looked like Bay Street bankers, but he knew that up close, their suits would be shiny and smell of sweat and cigarette smoke, and he felt a silent bond with them, the fellowship of spit on brass. They weren’t Guy Lombardo, maybe, but they weren’t bad.
They already had people up and dancing and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. He watched the trombone players when they stood up to take their turn. He could see himself as one of them, maybe not lead trombone, that guy looked as old as Whitney himself, but second or third, maybe alto. He wondered how much Whitney paid them. They were playing “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” one of the songs he’d arranged back when he was planning his own band. He scanned the couples on the dance floor; they probably were bankers, in good tuxedos and ball gowns, and not a coloured face among them. The head waiter was standing behind a little lectern with a light on it, pretending not to notice Jack.

“I guess my party isn’t here yet,” Jack said to him on his way out.

“Perhaps she’s in another part of the hotel, sir,” the waiter said.

Bastard, Jack thought. But he had seen what he’d come to see, and went out through the lobby to where he’d parked the Hup. It had started to snow. Coloured bellhops were loading suitcases into the car behind his, and a coloured redcap was pushing a heavy wagonload of luggage across Front Street from Union Station, having trouble with the trolley tracks.