The Birthday Lunch (16 page)

“I know, but I doubt my aunt saw anything. She was inside her car parked on the opposite side of the street facing the bridge and by the time the truck reached the crosswalk, it was behind her, between her and Mom. She couldn’t have seen the accident.”

“What a mess,” Larry says.

“Well, I can’t undo the mess, but I can advance an accident insurance claim on Dad’s behalf. The problem is that I leave for Vancouver on Tuesday and won’t be here to track the claim and I need someone on the ground to follow it up. I’m not sure Dad is up to following it up. Would you take it on?”

“Sure. It takes months for an accident claim to be processed and the sooner the claim is entered, the sooner the money will come through. Ideally the claim should be made by your father.”

“Yes, but Dad is in no shape to do this right now, which is why I’m acting on his behalf.”

“Accidental death insurance yields a higher recompense than expected death.”

“I know.”

“Were there reliable witnesses?”

Matt tells Larry about Corrie Spears and Stanley Price from Massachusetts and Larry says it is important to get signed and witnessed statements from them. He urges Matt to get a signed and witnessed statement from the truck driver too. “You were there when he came to the house and apologized so it’s probably better if you go after his signature, not me. You do realize that when the accident insurance claim is made and accepted, the truck driver will lose his licence.”

“Well, he should lose his licence.”

“What company does he work for?”

“Spurrell’s.”

“When Spurrell’s pay the accident claim, they’ll fire the driver. It won’t be the first accident claim made against Spurrell’s. The year before last, I filed an accident claim against one of the company’s drivers for speeding after he rammed into Cecil Pearson’s car.”

“What was the outcome?”

“Spurrell’s paid up. See, the company take their chances on these young drivers because they can pay them less.” Larry checks his watch. “Sorry, Matt. I have a client meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“Before I go, there’s another thing you should know. According to Carl Reidle, after my mother was killed, the truck driver was nowhere to be seen.”

“Which means,” Larry says triumphantly, “he is at risk of being accused as a hit-and-run driver. All the more reason for him to sign the witness statement.” By now Larry is on his
feet. “Before I go home, I’ll ask my secretary to type up the statements, and you can pick them up tomorrow. After you get them signed, give me a call tomorrow and after work I’ll fire up the barbecue in Roachville and we’ll have steaks and beer. In the meantime I’ll track down the coroner’s statement.”

“Be sure to clock your time,” Matt says, “so we can settle up.”

“Forget it,” Larry says. “I owe you one for hustling me out of the Monterey.”

“The Monterey,” Matt says. When he and Larry were roommates in Halifax, Matt was working the bar the night a barefoot Anne Murray was playing guitar. She was singing “You Needed Me” when Larry got himself on stage and tried to sing along. Larry could barely stand, let alone sing along, and Matt hustled him outside before the manager could call the cops. “Just as well you stuck with law,” Matt says. “Even sober you couldn’t carry a tune.”

While Sophie Power’s scalloped potatoes and salmon loaf are heating in the oven, Claudia sets the table around her father and her brother who is telling Hal that he spoke to Joe Northrup about the Impala.

“Joe told me that someone put water in your gas tank.”

“Who would do a fool thing like that?”

“Joe says it was likely young bucks up to no good. Maybe the same bucks who race past the house at night.”

“But I always keep the Impala in the garage. How would they know it was in there?”

“Good point. How would they know? Anyway, Joe drained the gas tank and is letting it dry. It’ll be ready to drive in a couple of days.”

“There’s no hurry,” Hal says. “Between the rental and the Honda, we can manage.”

“Dad, the rental won’t be here much longer. I have a crucial meeting in Vancouver on Wednesday and have to leave here on Monday.”

“Business as usual,” Hal says.

“Sorry, Dad. I’ll come back once the negotiations are finished.”

“Sure you will,” Hal says and looks at his daughter. “What about you, when are you vamoosing?”

“I can stay for the next couple of weeks,” Claudia says. “Getting time off won’t be a problem. I have some vacation time coming up.” Leonard has already made plans for Claudia and himself to spend two weeks in Nuremberg where he intends to examine the Dürer collection, but when he calls tonight, she will tell him that she won’t be going to Nuremberg because she intends to stay with her father.

After supper Matt leaves for the airport to pick up Trish and Claudia asks her father if he wants to watch television while she tidies the bedroom.
The
bedroom, Hal thinks, the bedroom he and Lily shared. “Might as well watch TV,” Hal says and he watches Claudia flick through the channels and stop just as
Dallas
is about to begin. She has never seen the program but she tells Hal that her co-workers in the library never miss it. “I’ll give it a try,” Hal says, and settles himself on the sofa.

Claudia opens the door to her parents’ bedroom. She has two hours to make up the bed and tidy the room before Matt and Trish return from the airport. Last night when she was looking for her uncle’s phone number, she was careful not to look around and marched straight to her father’s dresser. This time, uncertain where to begin, she hovers in the doorway. The bed. She will begin with the bed. Claudia picks up Lily’s nightgown, yanks the sheets free, shakes the pillowcases loose and stuffs the bundle of laundry into the washer at the top of the back stairs. While the cycle runs through, she tidies the bedroom, picking up the empty coffee mug, the face-down book, the crumpled wrapping paper, the birthday card. She looks around for the blue silk outfit but it is nowhere in sight and she knows her mother was wearing it when she died. Claudia will never be able to forget the fact that her mother died wearing her birthday present, a fact that brings a flood of tears. How slippery grief is, how easily you can stumble over something inconsequential and be sucked into the quicksand of sorrow.

Claudia carries the empty coffee mug and the crumpled paper to the kitchen. Back in the bedroom, she picks up Lily’s slippers and adds them to the pile of shoes on the closet floor. Then she turns her attention to the bookcase beside the bed where books are shelved out of order,
The Book of Eve
,
Who Do You Think You Are
? and
Flowers for Hitler
on one side of an early edition of
Middlemarch
and on the other side,
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Happenstance
and Claudia’s high school textbook,
Poems for Study
. Even now Claudia takes the time to place
Middlemarch
in the bookcase on the opposite wall where her grandfather’s antiquarian books are shelved, all the while
scolding herself. What a prig she was to avoid bringing friends home from school because she didn’t want them to see her mother in bed at four o’clock in the afternoon, eating an apple or a banana and reading instead of being in the kitchen baking or ironing. It wasn’t normal, it wasn’t what other mothers did.

A further embarrassment was her mother’s lack of respect for the virginal page, her habit of marking up books. Lily seldom marked up trashy books—they weren’t worth the bother, but any book she admired had notations and underlinings throughout, occasionally in ink, which made the return of her library books awkward. When, as a teenager, Claudia worked at the library desk on Saturdays, she was mortified at the prospect of a reader bringing a defaced book to the desk to complain about her mother’s scribblings. The mortification was misplaced: no one complained on Claudia’s shift and if they had complained, the librarian, Frances Upham, would have brushed off their complaints. Frances enjoyed reading Lily McNab’s notations, unsullied by literary theory and pretension.

Claudia mops and dusts the bedroom before checking on her father.
Dallas
is over but the television is still on and Hal is asleep, his mouth open, his head tipped back. Claudia is reminded of a house she passes during her evening walks, the house with a large picture window, a blue television screen, an elderly woman asleep in a rocking chair.

At Arlene’s urging, Alan Harrington is finally paying Laverne Pritchard a home visit. Alan is Arlene’s second husband. Gordon, her first husband, and Alan had been friends since
boyhood and after Gordon died of cancer three years earlier, it was Alan who consoled his widow. Gordon’s last ministry was on Prince Edward Island and Arlene understands that in small communities like Sussex, parishioners expect home visits. A home visit need not be long, Arlene told Alan, it is your presence and your concern parishioners want.

Parking the Plymouth beside Laverne’s Volkswagen, Alan knocks on her door. No answer. It is not yet eight o’clock but perhaps Laverne has already gone to bed and he decides to knock again, though not loud enough to waken her if she is asleep. Already he is telling himself that if she doesn’t answer, he will slip a note beneath her door. Alan is reaching into a pocket for the notepad when he hears someone moving inside, and presently the door opens and there is Laverne Pritchard looking not at all like the carefully groomed woman who used to attend his church. This woman is wearing a faded dressing gown; her hair is untidy, her face ravaged by grief.

“I am sorry if I woke you, Laverne,” Alan says.

“You didn’t wake me,” she says.

Alan resists the urge to offer a comforting embrace. Instead he says, “I know you and Lily were close.”

“Yes. There were just the two of us and now she is gone.” Again the bleak, grieving face and the impulse to hold her. Alan asks if he might come in.

“Of course,” Laverne says, but does not suggest he sit and so Alan stands inside the open doorway, which casts a green shadow on the opposite wall. Uncertain whether to stay or go, he says, “Do you want to talk about the accident because if you do …”

“I don’t want to talk about the accident.”

“I understand. It must have been a terrible shock.”

Alan waits for Laverne’s answer but none is forthcoming and he asks if he can be of help. Again no answer. Casting around for something to say, Alan nods toward the painting leaning against the wall to the right of the kitchen and asks if that is the painting she was working on when they met at Fox Hill soon after he accepted the ministry of St. Paul’s United Church.

“Yes,” she says but does not explain why it took her so long to finish the painting.

“You’ve done a fine job.” Oil paintings are not Alan’s preference but at least he has found something encouraging to say before he leaves. “If there is anything I can do to help, anything …”

“Thank you, Alan,” Laverne says. Closing the door behind him, she goes back to bed.

As she lies beneath the covers, Laverne thinks about the times when she looked for ways to detain Alan Harrington: wearing her best clothes every Sunday morning; sitting in the middle of the tenth row where Alan could not fail to see her; positioning herself at the end of the line after the service so that she would be the last to shake his hand and there would be more time for conversation. But that was before she saw Alan in the Plymouth with Lily.

A mild Saturday in early September and Laverne was standing at the casement window drinking a cup of tea. The window
was open and she was thinking how pleasant it was to have this corner of the house all to herself, her private view of the cherry tree and the herb garden; how satisfying to have the
dictées
marked, next week’s lessons planned and one of Ivy’s dinners to look forward to that evening. While she was drinking the last of her tea, Laverne saw the familiar Plymouth van turn into the driveway. Setting aside the cup, she hurried to the bathroom to freshen her lipstick and brush her hair. When she returned to the window, she realized she needn’t have hurried because Alan was so engrossed in talking to someone that he hadn’t moved from the van. Laverne strained to see who was sitting in the passenger seat. It was a woman, a dark-haired woman. When the woman turned sideways Laverne realized it was Lily. What was Lily doing inside Alan’s van at three o’clock in the afternoon when she was usually napping or reading upstairs? And what was Alan saying that was so amusing that Lily and he were both laughing? Laverne could not bear watching their merriment and was closing the window when she saw Alan lean sideways and kiss Lily on the cheek. Alan had never once kissed Laverne on the cheek but now he was kissing Lily. How dare he kiss Lily! And why was Lily allowing the kiss? She was a married woman! She was a mother and a grandmother! In a huff of rage, Laverne plunked herself on the chair beneath the portrait of the burgomeister, one hand gripping the other as she resolved what she would and would not do: she would not telephone her sister and she would not watch the nightly television news upstairs; she would not go upstairs at all, not even to use the washer and dryer; instead she would launder
her clothes in the bathroom sink and hang them to dry on the shower rail. Once these resolutions were made, Laverne washed the floors and cleaned the tiny stove and tiny fridge. By the time she was finished, she had decided that as long as Alan Harrington was the minister, she would not attend St. Paul’s United Church.

For six weeks Laverne stuck to her resolutions: she did not telephone Lily or go up the back stairs or darken the door of St. Paul’s United Church. Instead she kept herself busy on the weekends helping Hennie Pronk prepare for a craft exhibit. And she continued giving her Vietnamese student extra lessons in the Phams’ apartment. Xuan’s French was far better than Laverne’s but English remained a struggle for him.

An early skiff of snow had fallen when out of the blue Lily telephoned on a Sunday and invited Laverne upstairs for tea. She had taken a batch of raisin buns from the oven and opened a jar of homemade strawberry jam. “Just the two of us,” Lily said. “Hal is attending an estate auction in Hampton.”