Wren couldn’t have been more surprised when Lyle Fox pulled up in a convertible coupe in front of the house on Pidgeon Avenue. For their heavily accented dinner beside the Humber River, he’d picked her up in this same car, but now, with its top down, it transformed into a snappy roadster that looked like something from The Great Gatsby.
It was much hotter outside than Wren realized; she’d had the fan blowing upstairs in the flat. She’d worn her peep-toed shoes, so at least her toes wouldn’t swelter. Why hadn’t she chosen her striped rayon dress with the keyhole neckline? It was more slimming than the suit. Less stuffy. Wren turned, once, before stepping into the eye doctor’s car, to see the landlady, Rosa Deluca, peering out her front window.
“I thought we’d take a cruise with the top down,” Lyle said as Wren settled into the passenger seat. “Such a splendid day.”
Wren told him she’d never ridden in a convertible car. Which was true.
“Then you’re in for a treat,” he said.
And it was. It was, in fact, glorious. The only downside being Wren had to remove her straw hat; she worried it would blow away. She felt self-conscious about her grey, thinning hair that blew in wispy strands out behind her. She’d rather hoped to keep her hat on during this outing. But the air, lush with lake smell, felt wonderful and she abandoned herself to the wild convertible ride.
She asked Lyle where they were going.
“It’s a surprise,” he said, gearing down.
She regretted again that she’d overdressed. The doctor’s attire was more attuned to the climate—linen trousers and a light shirt a golfer might sport. She loved the sensation of freedom the convertible brought, and she complimented his car, reiterating that this was her first ride in an automobile with the top down. She didn’t mention the horse-drawn wagons of her rural childhood; that would only accentuate her age.
“I bought this coupe in ’35,” Lyle Fox said. “It’ll have to last me a long time, the way things are going. I don’t drive it much—I walk to my office and home—trying not to waste gas. But today, like our recent dinner, is a special occasion. It feels good to be behind the wheel again, though I’m still rusty.”
“I’m rusty, too, Doctor. Rusty at life.” What a ludicrous thing to say. Wren felt herself blush.
He turned the coupe into the lot of a marina and parked. Wren read, with difficulty without her glasses, the wavering sign: (something) Yacht Club; Open-Air Dancing, Tea Room, Flotilla Amusement Ride (could that be right?).
He cut the engine. “Before we do anything else, put your glasses on, please. I’d like to check them, Miss Maw.”
It amused Wren how he switched back and forth in his mode of addressing her, sometimes more formal, other times less. She took the spectacles from her purse and settled them on her face. She didn’t even want to imagine how abysmal her scraggly, blown hair must look, so didn’t.
He fussed with the temples. Advised her that nose pads would help. “You can put the glasses away now. Keep growing into them gradually. In brief bouts.”
Wren placed them back into her purse. “A useful reminder. I’ve been overdoing it, I think, wearing them too much, too soon. But it’s hard to resist the near miracle they brought me, seeing more clearly—even though I don’t always like or understand what I see.” Having no idea why she tacked on these last few words, she chastised herself again silently.
To his credit, Lyle Fox didn’t draw her out. Instead, he said, “I don’t have any nose pads with me today. I’ll bring them next time.”
“I’ve always liked this tea room,” he said. “It has a fine view of the lake. I haven’t been here since”—a pause, a cringe on his part—“Mildred and I used to enjoy it here.”
Wren sensed his discomfiture over this. She decided the best course was to forge onward. “Should I leave the hat I made for you in the car? Until later?”
Good idea, he told her. It would be quite safe there.
The rustic tea room had an outdoor deck, where they sat, nibbled on scones and sipped tea. The deck overlooked a splendid, panoramic view; and lovely as it was, taking in the lake, Wren couldn’t push a recent tarot card she’d drawn out of her mind. Her troubles had whisked away into the wind during the ride in the convertible, but now her thoughts returned to plague her. The Moon. Instability. Insecurity. Wolf and dog, howling at the scowling nocturnal moon. An ugly crayfish or lobster crawling up from the watery depths. Not a reassuring divination. There on the shore, a new, troubling question struck Wren: Might not Dr. Fox’s professional status be compromised by fraternizing with a patient?
“What’s the matter?” Lyle Fox asked. “You’re all keyed up, more ruffled than a grouse.”
She fibbed. “Oh, nothing. I’m just—you know, giddy—from tooling around in a convertible.”
He stared at her, unconvinced, not hiding it well.
So she came out with it. “Am I still your patient?”
He burst out laughing. “After I affix the pads to your eyeglasses, you can fire me—as your eye doctor. And hire me as—your humble servant, companion. More than I think you know yet, or perhaps still don’t believe. Right now, I’d like you to tell me more about your life.”
So, he’d intuited her need for clarity.
“I brought Mildred’s ghost here today, unwittingly, with my earlier remark,” Lyle said, more seriously. “That gives you permission, Wren, to invite a second ghost to this tea table. One who’s been loved.”
Relief suffused Wren’s bones, and after another scone she told him more about Adam. Having someone listen to her story, her life, someone who cared, felt so freeing, so fine. She relayed that Adam worked as a designer at Grip Ltd., how talented he’d been, though he’d always sluffed that off. She told him the tragic rest of it—which he already knew, but it felt necessary to Wren to bring her time with Adam, in this telling, to completion. Lyle allowed her story to breathe, let it waft, rife with memory, along the willowy shore. Somehow, speaking of Adam instilled a calm in Wren. A sense of peace that made the malevolent Moon card, with its sinister images, recede into the abyss.
After a few laps by a trolling gull nearby, Lyle said, “How hard that must have been. But it was so long ago. Do you mean to tell me that all these years you’ve not”—his tone unsure, cautious—“had any suitors?”
The word suitors brought a small, stuttering laugh from Wren. “I didn’t have the interest, or the time. I was making hats. Raising Gemma.”
He said she’d endured plenty of hardship. And added that she deserved a medal.
Wren swatted away the accolade. “I was just doing what anyone would do, trying to make it through the Depression years and give the child the best I could.” She finished her tea. “It wasn’t all bad. I loved millinery. I found solace in making beautiful things. It brought much pleasure.”
“If not a medal, Miss Maw, then a scone,” Lyle Fox said, passing the tray.
They sat in quiet contentment for a while. Really, few things in life were lovelier than the shores of Lake Ontario in summer. Wren was reluctant to puncture the moment, which felt like a movie, with business. But she did. She reached into her purse and gave Lyle the envelope of money.
“The last instalment, Dr. Fox. Now my spectacles are paid in full.”
He placed the envelope in his trousers’ pocket and smiled at her. Then he paid for their scones and tea, and they sauntered back to his coupe.
As they stood for a moment beside the fine automobile, a butterfly flitted by.
Wren should have revelled in the moment, her debt having been paid, but doubt again crested, like a whitecap on the lake. “Do you think it’s wrong, Dr. Fox, that—let’s be honest—an old woman like me should, especially in a time of great suffering, of war, indulge in a . . . convertible cruise? Quite hedonistic, really. Am I not . . . past all this?”
His gaze was steady, serious. “Past pleasure, you mean? And joy?”
She nodded.
“As in, too old for it?”
Again, Wren nodded.
Lyle studied her in that intense way he had. “You’re not dead, are you?” he asked.
“I think you know the answer, Dr. Fox. For here I stand, animate.”
“Yes. And by the way,” he said, “I’m only five years behind you—in age.”
She supposed he knew her birthdate from his files.
“You’re never too old for joy, Miss Maw. And, as far as I can tell, in the Bank of Pleasure, you’re in a deficit position. Deep in the red, so to speak.”
Wren was relieved to have him confirm that she was not past joy.
She reached into the car and took the hat out of the brown butcher paper she’d wrapped it in. Then, smoothing Lyle’s snowy hair, she placed the homburg on his head. To her it looked dapper, distinguished.
He looked at himself in the side mirror.
“I hope the hat is to your liking,” Wren said.
Lyle turned to her. “Liking? It’s perfect, and soon we must negotiate my payment for it. I’ve paid you for materials, but not labour.”
Before she could demur on this score, he opened the car door for her and she got in.
When Wren returned to the flat, a long-stemmed red rose lay, funnelled in paper, in the foyer. She released the exquisite flower from its paper coil, and a note shook out: For Wren no mistake this time about who sent this and who it’s for—and you shall have one every week henceforth. Lyle F.
She held the fragrant velvet petals against her cheek. How lovely, not being dead.