Nights Below Station Street (24 page)

That is how the doctor spoke to Clare all that winter. He told her she was thinking like a tourist. This is because she was becoming interested in crafts – and of all things the doctor hated, crafts were foremost. And again he would not say why he disliked them.

Since Clare never knew how to answer these outbursts, she kept silent. Sometimes the doctor would come home from the hospital and sit in the hallway upstairs rocking and smoking his pipe. Clare would hear that he had shouted at Doctor Savard or had insulted someone.

The doctor knew exactly what made him disagree with Savard at certain times. And it had nothing to do with the French and English question. However, it was simply assumed by everyone that it was the French and English question – that he was a bigot.

The doctor found himself at an age when he shouldn’t have to explain anything of how he thought or felt, of explaining nothing on principle. Much like Joe when it came to reconciling himself with his past.

One day Vera went out by herself to cut more wood. She took the chainsaw and walked up the road, and into the back lot of Allain Garret’s. The day was mild and the snow was deep, and it filled her rubber boots. The snow was blue under the trees, and hard there also. The sun was warm, the sky pulpy, which always gave Vera a strange feeling, as if the woods would come over her.

The smell of sawdust and oil that caked the top of the saw filled her with that sort of dread of all the mind-numbing, aching work that lay in front of her. She had her hair piled up under her old hat, that came to the top of her dark eyes. In this way she worked for two hours straight. And as she worked, anyone could see that in her thin, tall body lay a great strength and domineering will.

Hearing the saw old Allain came down to speak with her. He rolled one cigarette and then another, sitting on a maple tree fall, as at home here, with his shirt open, and a toque on his head, as at any time in his life. His pockets were filled with bread and he would lift them up and moosebirds would land on his head. He’d smile, without any teeth, then he would flip the bread up and the birds would scatter here and there.

Old Allain told Vera how he had gotten in trouble with a truckload of pigs. He had been taking them down river for a friend. The pigs were squashed into the back of the truck and the door was loose, and every time he went around a corner, a pig or two would fall out The police eventually stopped him and laid a charge, and he was taken to court. The police claimed that too many of them were squashed together. But Allain had not put the pigs in the truck – the man who owned them had. The expert witness for the defence, a friend of Allain’s, said that he saw nothing wrong with the way the pigs were handled whatsoever. That was until he got on the stand.

“Would you load pigs like that?” he was asked.

Allain’s friend looked at the picture that the police had taken, looked at the people in the courtroom, looked over at Allain, and shook his head as if suddenly frightened.

“No,” he said. “I’d never put a pig into a scrape like that.”

Allain’s lawyer tried to get him to change his mind, and tried also to make him say what he had in private. But the man, now confused and somewhat ashamed, mumbled that he’d never seen so many pigs “in such a state.”

The judge, feeling that this was an excellent opportunity to show where he stood on the subject of cruelty to animals, which was popular, gave a lecture to the defence lawyer – and to the court at large – and complimented Allain’s friend, who still looked frightened.

Allain’s friend, after he had betrayed Allain about these pigs, looked as if he was angry with Allain and had been for a long time and could not now forgive him. Allain was fined five hundred dollars. Allain did not know what to do. Every year he got two thousand chicks from the fellow, but now he didn’t know whether to or not. He thought his friend must be angry with him, though he didn’t understand why. They were both seventy years old, and what in god’s name were they doing going to court.

Vera listened to this story and said nothing. She was sitting on the saw, with her legs spread and her boots far apart. She peeled herself an orange as she listened, becoming more and more engrossed, not so much in what old Allain was saying, as by the hair in his ears, the gentle smell of woodchips and wine. She thought of his son at home who dressed in a blue suit jacket and sat in the porch.

More than anything, Vera wanted to become like this old man. She was, above all, a shy person, and would not sit on
a saw and spread her legs out into the snow like she did, peeling an orange and nodding her head, with anyone she did not trust. There was a loud crash in the bay. There was the smell of smoke lingering in the bare trees, with the bud tips wet and lonely.

Allain smiled. “You work as good as your uncle, Dr. Hennessey,” he said shyly. “I love that – like Rita Walsh – strong as a ox.” And then he gently patted her head with his thick dark hand.

She got flustered and then smiled, like a child who has just been complimented.

Vye went to see his Belinda because he had things to settle. He went because he wanted to prove to Belinda how concerned he was about their past – and how everything was forgiven and that he still cared for her. Once, when she was pregnant, he had promised her he would marry her – but this promise had not been kept. In her apartment at the back of the house there were Advent candles from Rita because Belinda had wanted to celebrate last Christmas exactly as her friend had. When anyone came to the door Belinda would listen to them. In this way, she had collected dozens of pamphlets, from the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, that she displayed proudly on her coffee table.

Belinda had forgiven Vye long ago – because she was frightened that it was her fault, and she wanted him to like her. She was frightened of displeasing Vye and Vye recognized this.

When Vye walked in Belinda was sitting in the chair watching her soap opera. She stood and grabbed Maggie, who wore a
T
-shirt and strawberry-coloured pants. Maggie looked at him and smiled, and Belinda, carrying her against her right hip, went immediately to pour him tea
which was one thing she had always done for him. Whenever he came home from work she would have the pot of tea on the stove. She limped across the room in her furry slippers, with a bandage on her left heel, and sat down again.

The difference could be seen immediately in how he dressed compared to how they dressed. Maggie, who was almost three, was certainly dressed as well as possible – but there was always something faded in her clothes, along with the chain about her neck, and the small stud earrings Belinda had put in. It had nothing, of course, to do with faded clothes – it was the whole aspect. Belinda had on clothes which made her look even heavier than she was – a maternity top, and baggy pants, and a black belt.

Though she had once been very pretty, Vye was upset with her looks now, and it made him angry. He did not want to belittle her – but he always ended up doing it.

The child made him angry too. Every time he saw the child he would remember it kicking its legs in the crib, like some type of messenger.

When he spoke to her, Belinda now looked at him in a stern way as if she had practised this look for a long time to be ready for him. But as soon as she looked at him, she held Maggie closer, and her lips began to tremble, not for any other reason but that she thought he might ridicule her. Then, with the child on her knees, she scratched her right hip, and looked around the apartment as if she was surprised at the cracked plaster and the pipe that stuck up through the middle of it.

Vye talked to her while looking out at the neon sign. The snow was dirty and brown. He looked down at it and yawned. The street was empty, the neon sign was warm and cast its red light on a patch of slick snow by the door. He told Belinda he was getting married, that, in fact, he himself
was as surprised as she was. “Imagine,” he said suddenly. She smiled kindly, and then blushed. Since she was always worried that he would laugh at her and say
things
about her child – she could never bring herself to imagine
what
things – she was only happy that he didn’t, and in fact she realized that in his way he was trying to treat her with kindness by telling her this.

The wedding was going to take place at the United Church. Myhrra had suddenly become United because of the anguish over her talks with Father Garret. She wanted nothing more to do with him or his church, and, besides, Vye was United.

All of a sudden, Vye tried to be Byron’s father. This happened almost overnight. Vye now acted as if he knew all about Byron – knew why he did what he did, and why he sauced his mother. Knew that he, Vye, had to be accepted, so he tried to reason with him and played road hockey in his suit pants. All of this took place as if they were following a prescribed ritual, not being sure where they had learned it. Byron wanted nothing to do with this and acted suspicious every time Vye was around.

Vye was going to be his father. Sometimes Vye would take Byron’s part over Myhrra’s and Myhrra would say “Oh – you two!” And Byron would look at them both as if questioning their reasoning, and trying to figure something out.

Vye and Myhrra’s former life became a pale vestige. Now their whole new life used new words, went to new places, drank new concoctions. They gave up curling and took up racketball; met each other at five instead of seven at night – and
yet everything was familiar. For instance, Vye realized that he should love her, but he wasn’t sure if he did. And Myhrra wanted to be elated, wanted to feel that everything was new and exciting – but in her heart she did not feel this.

With Byron in the back seat, they travelled about from one new mall to the other. Byron, seeming to study them, would flick his hand in the air now and then against the winter light when Myhrra said anything that disturbed him, and now and then he’d suddenly look startled, as if he was seeing Myhrra in a new way.

Byron did not have many friends and was sometimes chased home from school. Some of the kids would ambush him by the convent and he would begin his trek, turning to run across the hospital parking lot, making it down across the big houses, rushing in the twilight across the highway to Turcotte’s, climbing the fence, and making his way knee-deep in snow across the back field to Joe Walsh’s. There Rita would come out of the door and fend off the neighbourhood. As soon as he saw Rita, Byron – having good dexterity when he needed it – would boot someone who had unwittingly turned away, and then he would rush into Rita’s house, with his ski mask pulled down over his face and only his eyes and mouth visible.

“Water,” he would say.

And with his scarf covered in snow knobs, and his eyes returning again to a sort of sly dismissive nature, he would move to a corner and sit there, drinking his second glass of water, his lips visible, something like an exhausted trout in a clear pool.

But whenever he had a project going the kids would watch him and be conciliatory. Byron would take fifteen mice in cages down to Zellers to sell them – and the trailer and the world he lived in, which was so different from their
world at that moment, would overwhelm them and down they would go with him, watch as he walked right into the back of the building, saying: “Mice,” and watch as Gerard took the cages into the stock room and paid him.