The Second Son (21 page)

She smiled at his attempt at humour. “You know how people are, dear. If it’s big in the city they’ve got to have it down in the country.”

“I know, I know. Only when are they going to understand that these big companies don’t give a damn about Alexandria. They’re just here to suck all the money out of it they can.”

“It’s kind of hard to argue with savings of five or ten dollars on your grocery bill.”

“Sure, and what do they think will happen when all the small stores have been forced out? The prices will go back up. And there will be half a dozen less store owners, and a dozen less decent-paying jobs in town. And instead of their salaries feeding into the town’s economy, the profit will go to Toronto, or Montreal, to line the pockets of people who are already millionaires. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Look at the farmers and their cheese factories. People just don’t get it.”

I’m sure I was looking at Andrew by that time, rolling my eyes at all this boring talk. I wince with guilt when I think of my childish impatience with my father’s talk of big business and millionaires, and what little understanding I really had of the crisis he was facing. Andrew was more likely to sympathize, and my mother, of course, in her way.

“Oh, c’mon, Ed. Surely there’s a way out of this?” She had the tea ready now and brought it to the table. She took her place beside him and poured him a cup.

He just stared at it, shaking his head, muttering to himself, “Why can’t people see what’s happening to them? Why can’t they see it?” Finally he looked up at my mother and raised his voice, “It’s the same damn thing, Lorna, what happened to the farmers. The big milk company moved into town and started paying ten, twenty percent higher for milk than the local cheese factories — they just couldn’t compete. Pretty soon they were boarded up. All over Glengarry. Why do you think so many cheese factories burned down the last couple of years? They’re burning them for the insurance. Everybody knows that.”

“Drink your tea, dear,” she coaxed, as she looked over to see how much attention we were paying to these dark tales. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You don’t know that for sure.”

“Don’t kid yourself. That’s the way the world works. Just wait till all those cheese factories are gone. Mark my words, the farmers are in for some hard times. You’ll see, the price for milk will drop like a stone. More profits for the big shots, while everyone else works for starvation wages. Just like that goddamn Garfield Weston and his bread monopoly. You can’t buy a loaf of bread or a pound of baked goods in eastern Canada that he doesn’t get a cut on. Did you know that? He’s got a hand in all of it, right from the flour mill to the bakery to the packaging. And the distribution.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad, dear. Don’t we have our own bakery, right here in town?”

“Small potatoes, Lorna. The big markets, he’s got them all sewn up, getting richer by the day. There oughta be a law, you know. A man shouldn’t be allowed to pile up more than a million dollars. What the hell can he do with any more than that? Couldn’t spend it if he tried.”

I’d heard that speech before. It meant he was winding down to his last desperate arguments, unable to find a logical way out of his dilemma. And it always got worse. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he groaned. “Why do I keep trying to make an honest dollar? I should do like the Jews, jack up my insurance and burn the place down. At least then I’ll have the money to try something else.”

“Now, Ed, you know I don’t like that kind of talk.” She reached over and put a hand in his. “Especially in front of the children. Besides, Solly Feinberg is one of your best friends. I don’t know how you can talk like that.”

“Yeah, sure, Solly’s a great guy. But I know about Jews, Lorna. I worked for them in Montreal. Sure, some of them can be all right, but when it comes to business they’re ruthless. If they can make money by burning it down, they will, no holds barred. I admire them, actually, they’re so tough. That’s what I should do, burn it down.”

“Please. You know you couldn’t do that.”

“Are you so sure? Maybe Solly can help me find someone to do it. Safer that way.”

“Quit talking like that.” My mom was on the verge of tears. I looked at her slim little hand buried in my father’s big mitt and began to resent him for upsetting her with his unhappy talk.

Maybe he picked up my thoughts because he reached over and gently took her other hand in his and said, “All right, quit worrying about it. I’ll figure some way out of it. Some legal way. Don’t worry. Things will pick up. They have to.”

I guess she decided to believe him, because she smiled then and withdrew her hand to pour him some more tea.

I wanted to believe him, too. My life was improving that winter and I was hoping for better times. I was in my second year of peewee hockey and had finally found something I was better at than Andrew. When our last year’s goalie didn’t come back, the coach asked me if I wanted to try out for the position. I did and was glad of it. I had the reflexes and the nerve it took to play goalie, and was having a pretty good year. I even got my picture in the
Glengarry News
the week after Christmas, when I got my second shutout.

I was feeling pretty good about myself, figuring everybody was finally going to realize I was just as good as Andrew, if not better at some things. I mean, he really never went in much for team sports. Like I said, he had that excuse about his leg. And there was that famous temper of his. Used to claim he was afraid he’d hurt somebody, if he ever lost control. Me, I always figured he just wanted to avoid any situation where somebody might be pushing him around — I knew for sure he wasn’t one to fight back. The first fight I ever had proved that.

I was five and he was six. Some big kids over on the sliding hill were trying to take his sled away and he just stood there like a statue. It was me who stepped in front of him and took a swing at the bully who was grabbing his sled. “Leave my brother alone,” I yelled, and was surprised when the kid backed down. The same thing happened during that big snowball fight I was talking about. Andrew was pinned down in one corner of the schoolyard, and a bunch of kids were kicking him and shoving snow down his back. It was me who broke it up and chased them off.

I never mentioned any of that to my mother, not anymore. I was tired of her lectures about mature boys not getting into fights. She always said she hated fighting because she had spent too many years breaking up the fights between her brothers on the farm. So I knew better than to expect her praise for being a better fighter than Andrew. That’s why I had hopes of getting some recognition for my exploits in hockey. I mean, I actually got my picture in the paper.

And when I got a puck in the face in February and had my two front teeth broken, I figured at least I’d get some sympathy. She was upset all right, only I didn’t get much sympathy. Mainly she just wanted me to stop playing goalie. There must be safer positions on the team, she insisted. Luckily my dad backed me up. At least he was impressed by my success. He even came to a couple of games in the finals, and was my guest at the end-of-season bean supper, where he saw me win the trophy for best goaltender.

My triumphal march was brought up short on Elm Street. I arrived home with my dad, my shiny big trophy under my arm, in anxious expectation of my mother’s praise for at last excelling in something. She was washing the dishes when we came in.

“Well, Lorna,” my father announced, “it seems we got us a prize-winning goalie in the family.” She smiled and said, “That’s wonderful, dear.” Then she was quiet for a moment as she looked toward the back room where Andrew was watching television. “It’s such a shame,” she finally said, “that Andrew wasn’t able to play. He was always so talented.”

What was she thinking? I don’t know. I gave up trying to figure her out years ago. She sure stunned me into silence that night, with her one-track mind about Andrew. I think my father said something after that, trying to draw the discussion back to my success. I don’t really remember. The blow of those words froze my attention on what I perceived as the deep injustice that was my lot in the Landry family. I guess if the road you travel is constantly marked by such signs, that’s what you begin to expect at every turn. Probably you stop seeing anything but that one message — you come second. I know what happened a few weeks later hit me the same way. This time it was my father who would let me down.

I was in the dentist’s chair, old Doc Shepherd’s. It was a morning appointment — I was smart enough to insist on that. Everyone in town knew about Doc Shepherd’s drinking, which was why you never took an appointment after lunch, not if you could help it. The Doc drank his lunch at the Alexandria Hotel, across the street from his office, and was not to be trusted in the afternoon. One time when I was younger I thought he was going to jab one of those horse needles right through the top of my head.

So I was nervous that day I went to see him about my broken teeth, starting with the journey up that long dark stairway to his office. My mother said something had to be done about the big gap in my front teeth. They weren’t aching yet, but they hurt in the cold air, or when I tried to eat ice cream. “What have we got here, son?” the doctor almost yelled at me. He always talked loud, probably because he was going deaf. “What did you do to yourself?”

“Took a puck in the mouth playing goal,” I proclaimed, hoping I sounded just like Turk Broda.

“That wasn’t too smart, was it?” The doctor didn’t sound like a hockey fan to me.

“It was an accident, sir.”

“Sure it was,” he muttered, “standing in front of flying pucks.” He straightened up from examining me and stretched. “Well, you’ve done a job on them. I’ll have to talk to your father. Is he at the store this morning?”

“I guess so, sir.” I was beginning to wonder if I might need some big operation. “Maybe you should call my mother.”

“No, your father will be paying the bill. He’ll want to know.” He turned and went into his outer office, leaving me to watch the traffic down on Main Street, already worrying about the painful procedures I might be facing. I could hear him on the phone to my father, bellowing like he had to be heard over on the other side of the street. “About your lad’s teeth, Ed. You’ve got a couple of options.” I could only hear one side of the conversation but it was obvious enough from the answers what my father’s questions were. “Yes, that’s right,” the Doc said after a moment, “I can smooth the sharp edges and build them up, somewhat, with an amalgam — a filling. They’ll be a little sensitive to heat and cold, but not too much.”

There was another pause. Then, “Well, yes, there’ll still be quite a gap there. How old is he? Well, it shouldn’t be a big problem, then.” There was another pause. “That’s right, the other option is to grind them right down to posts and cap them. What? Oh, well, quite a bit really. Thirty dollars, let’s say, versus two hundred or so. Depends on what the lab in Cornwall charges me for the caps.”

I knew right away what the question was. And what the answer would be. I had heard too many complaints lately about business losses. In a way I was relieved when he came back and said, “Your father wants them filled.” The thought of Doc Shepherd coming at me with some kind of grinder scared the hell out of me.

I left his office that day thinking myself lucky. It wasn’t till someone called me “snaggletooth,” a week or so later, that I started wondering if I’d gotten a raw deal. What really wore on me, when I started thinking about it, was how little my mother had to say about it when I came home that night. I don’t even know if she ever talked to my father about it, if they really agonized over spending the money, or not. Of one thing I was certain — Prince Andrew would never have been left to walk around with missing teeth.

As the months went by, I started looking in the mirror more than I should have. Sometimes I would fill the gap with chewing gum, to see how I would look with all my teeth. After seeing my hockey team’s picture with me and that jagged smile, I decided everybody must be thinking how funny I looked. The more self-conscious I became, the more I tried to avoid an all-out smile. It’s not easy to smile and keep your upper lip covering your teeth at the same time, so maybe I stopped smiling altogether. That might be why some people said I had gotten more withdrawn or something, about the time of the fire. Of course, there was a lot more to that fire than a couple of broken teeth.

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPIER
, that spring of ’57. Andrew was scheduled to graduate into high school and I could look forward to a whole year without Sister Anthony making comparisons to my big brother in the third row over. At the very least she wouldn’t be sending him home with notes for my mother, notes she didn’t trust me to deliver. That was how my mother came to buy those ugly class pictures of me with the broken teeth. It was Andrew, always Andrew. Not only did I have to put up with him coming first again, I had to watch him up in front of the whole congregation getting that big prize for being the best religion student in the diocese.

That had to be the first time in years my father went to Sunday mass. To be honest, I kind of liked the idea of his staying away from church. It gave me the excuse I needed to skip Benediction. I did take note, though, when Father McDonnell started that campaign about “the family that prays together stays together.” Maybe I suspected my father’s refusal to attend church was one of the reasons we were having such bad luck. Who knows, if he had been a regular churchgoer, the Landrys might still be one big happy family, with Andrew running the grocery store, and me and Gail living . . . well, probably that’s pushing it.

That morning in church there was one thing I did know for sure. There was no chance my father would be there next June, having his picture taken with me. Getting the highest mark in Glengarry on a catechism test was not something I ever aspired to. Andrew, he loved it, up there at the altar with that big smile frozen on his face, looking like he belonged. He even got a trophy, not as nice as my hockey trophy — mine had a goalie on it and his just had some kid with a prayer book — but pretty big just the same. They had the three of them up there, taking pictures for the
Glengarry News
, with that trophy coming up to his knees.