Nights Below Station Street (20 page)

Thelma looked around at the apartment, at the stains on the wall, at the motor in the corner, at the radios on the floor, and the televisions with their insides taken out, and sighed. She wore a pearl necklace and tiny pearl earrings. She always wore red lipstick, which made her mouth look older than it might have otherwise. Then Ivan went about the apartment trying to find her a clean cup to make her a cup of tea. She was willing to have the tea, until she saw what he was going to make it in – that is, he was boiling the water in an old pot that had, when she came in, been sitting on the stereo with some beans in it.

“I don’t think I’ll have tea,” she said. And with that, she smiled, and continued to wait for her son.

But at this point, Ivan, not really knowing he would scare the woman, started to bang and kick things about. Cupboard doors opened and slammed, a box of crackers went flying across the room.

“I don’t know where in fuck he keeps his tea – that boy’s fuckin crazy, if you ask me.” Sipping on his beer, he passed Thelma and went out onto the landing and shouted: “Hey, Belinda! You got a tea bag? I got a woman down here wants a drink a some tea! Hey, you up there!” And then he mumbled: “Put up with that fat sonofabitch from Bellefond for too long as it is. …” Then he came back in, and smiled suddenly, when he realized Thelma was watching him.

“I know where to get some tea – I’ll go over to Sobey’s –”

“Don’t worry about it, really,” Thelma said.

“You’ll get your tea, I promise. If that no good son of yours was half a man he’d have some tea.…” Then he smiled angelically, and went clomping down the stairs.

She sat patiently, in the depressing apartment, waiting for her son.

“I got ya tea – I got ya tea,” he said, five minutes later, coming back into the apartment. “Just don’t let on where-bouts.
We’ll just have a little secret about where this tea comes from – or else we’ll both be in a big jackpot.”

“Oh – I see,” Thelma said, smiling bravely. But just then Ralphie walked into the apartment, and she gave him a hard cold stare, as if she had figured everything out, and he had been caught red-handed at something.

“Get out there and make your mother some tea,” Ivan said suddenly, as if he and Thelma had decided together the one thing Ralphie needed was discipline. And he walked about the apartment in his old sweat-stained
T
-shirt, angry with Ralphie as well.

Early in the new year Joe had a job to do. He had to go out to Vye’s and take apart the furnace pipe and put on a new one. He had promised to do this and had never gotten about to do it, and Vye had asked Rita if he had forgotten. Rita came home and asked him if he had forgotten. She looked at him as he stood with his back to her.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m going over tonight.”

In fact, he was going over that night. The worst of it was that he had no faith in himself concerning this. If he did not do the job he would be looked upon as ridiculous. If he looked ridiculous perhaps Rita would think it was because he had quit drinking and had gone strange. If he did not do it he would feel less than himself, and yet, once he had done it, he felt something would happen that could make him regret it.

Joe hated these thoughts, and came to the conclusion that no matter if he had felt injured over something, that didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered at the moment was that he had told them he would go and fix the furnace.

He took Milly with him and got to the house about eight-thirty. What happened was totally different than Joe had
expected. Part of the reason was the fact that the house, off on a side street, did not look inside the way Joe pictured it would. Besides this, it had the faded walls and small knick-knacks and calendars that Joe had always associated with his youth. Vye met him at the door and welcomed him as if he’d long wanted him to come to the house and was just waiting for an opportunity like this. He also followed him downstairs and stood behind him as he worked, talking kindly, with deep empathy.

“Well – why haven’t you been to the curling club again?” Vye asked. And his voice sounded genuinely sorry for something.

Joe, at that moment, was standing on an old block of wood and trying to loosen the pipe, and could not answer. Then he said, “I was pretty busy.”

“Oh – busy – you and Rita have to get out more.”

Joe worked very quickly, and with the dexterity of a man who is ingenious at what he does and needs little to work with. If something went wrong, Joe would usually find a way to fix it, and never be stumped when most others were.

Milly was sitting on the oil barrel holding his emergency light up to the pipe. Whenever Vye spoke, she would look at him out the corner of her eye, and then shift her eyes back to Joe’s hands, which were labouring to get the pipe in place. Then she would look back at Vye again, then she looked at Joe’s right hand. His thumb had been sewn back on because it had been cut off on a saw.

Vye asked Milly if she would like anything to drink.

“Pepsi,” Milly said, without taking her eyes off Joe’s hands.

“Don’t be rude,” Joe said.

“Please,” Milly said.

When Vye left, Milly whispered: “He’s wearing his slippers in the basement.”

“That’s up to him,” Joe said.

“Rita told us never to do it,” Milly sniffed self-righteously.

Milly was waiting for Joe to tell Vye about the deer he had shot while she was in the basket on his back. But Joe didn’t. She found it strange that he didn’t. She continued to hold the light and looked at his hands, and then at his feet, which were up on their toes on a block of wood, his bootlaces untied.

When Vye came downstairs with her Pepsi, Milly moved the light and shone it at his slippers, and then quickly up at his funny face, and then back on his slippers again.

“Put the light back up here,” Joe said, gruffly, and back the light went as quickly as possible on his hands.

“Thank you, Milly,” Joe said.

When Joe had finished, Milly jumped off the oil barrel and ran to the stairs before either of them, and disappeared up them. Then she ran back down and grabbed her father by the arm, while Vye was talking to him about the furnace. She kept yanking at him to go, and Joe kept telling her to be quiet because Vye was talking. Vye looked down at her and smiled again with kindness, and every time Joe went to pat her on the head she would step just out of reach.

“Let’s go, ’kay?” Milly said. “Let’s go, ’kay?”

When she finally got them to the kitchen, Milly was still wrestling with her father, standing back on her heels and pulling on his arms.

Joe then kept trying to ward off Vye who was writing him a cheque. This to him was the main point, the one which he was readying himself for. Vye tried to stuff the cheque into Joe’s pocket as if Joe were a child. He did not want to take money, and Vye was just as convinced that he should take it – in fact, that he must take it.

But Joe would not take it They stood looking at each
other for a moment; Joe leaning against the counter with a stooped expression. “No no – I don’t want cher money,” he said.

“But I have to pay you,” Vye said.

While they were speaking, Milly, tired of yanking on her father, began to walk about, as if she had now forgotten about home completely. After a moment they heard a loud sneeze and she came back with her face covered in powder, holding a compact in her hand. “Look at Mom’s compact,” she said.

“No, no – that’s not yer mother’s,” Vye said.

He looked at Joe, and Joe looked quickly away, which made Vye put his hand up and cough, “No, no,” he said, “that’s not Rita’s.”

“I know it ain’t,” Joe said softly. “That’s an end to it,” he said, and then cleared his throat, while Milly looked up at them both with powder on her face, busily scratching her bum.

Then Vye smiled and looked sorrowfully about. All Joe could think of was the compact and the notion that everything had to be refuted. What was worse than the compact being there, was that who it belonged to had to be clarified.

In fact, when Joe left the house and carried Milly down the steps, he was certain it wasn’t Rita’s. But when he got to his lane and turned down it, he was certain that it was.

Shortly after this, Rita fell with a load of wash and hit her eye on the corner of the washing machine. She did not want to show Joe the eye because she was worried he would take her to the hospital and people might think he had beaten her.

She packed a face-cloth with ice and went to sit on the edge of the couch. A woman, when she is worried, will either sit on the edge of a couch with her feet together and her hand on her chin, or lean back against one arm with her feet tucked up under her. A man, when he is worried, will generally move something, tap or pace, or suddenly come to a halt in the centre of the room, as if someone has just thrown water on him.

The next day when parents brought their children, they saw the eye, bloodshot and bruised. Rita was going about as always, laughing and talking, a cigarette going in the ashtray. Adele was sitting at the table eating her breakfast, looking suspiciously at everyone, sneering at the kids, and telling them to line up and not all rush towards the toy-box at the same time. Adele this morning wore her hair in two Indian braids, her little face whiter than a ghost, and her nose looking sharper. She made no comment on Rita’s condition. Milly, who was running about trying to get dressed and looking for things she was holding on to, and for things she was already wearing, kept yelling: “Take a look at Rita’s shiner!”

A rumour started that Joe had caught Rita at the club with Vye, and slapped Rita in the face, and would no longer allow her to curl.

It was January and Vera had trouble feeling good Her throat was sore and she had a cold. Some mornings she did not even feel like dressing but she got up in the cold room, in the dark, and, standing naked, turned on the small light over her head. The weather was bad and they were cut off from everything. When they looked one way they could see the bay, covered in ice. When she went up to town, with its cenotaph and store windows, she only got more depressed.

They met some Acadian friends and went with them to their winter carnival further down the coast. Vera had dressed up to be suddenly Acadian, wearing an Acadian pin, and traditional Acadian dress. More than ever at this time, she disowned her own culture and wanted to belong with the Acadians who she felt were victims like herself. However, the night of the winter carnival, she and Nevin found themselves alone and ignored. People seemed to want to prove how uninhibited their culture was. And when people tell you that they are not restrained or inhibited, and have authenticity, they are also suggesting that you are restrained and inhibited and lack that which is authentic.

Vera felt sad that night because she had read all of Maillet, and listened to Edith Butler, and Nevin had joined in the causes of French equality and simply assumed he knew all about the issues. With her little pin that supported French culture, the sleigh ride they took, and all of the songs, she simply assumed she too would belong.

As for Nevin, as long as he was with Vera, he felt he was speaking out with the right people against the right things, for the right reasons at the right time.