18

ON THE FIRST WARM NIGHT in spring—spring? she marvels when it finally comes—Robert arrives with paint. She happens to look down from Harry’s room, and there he is scraping the pickets. Don’t-let-yourself-grow-weary, says its scratchy rhythm rising through the salty air, above the TV. Not till Harry dozes off does she venture out. Robert doesn’t notice her at first, smiling to himself. When he sees her he waves, then asks if he can use the radio. Setting it up on the steps—what a relic, caked with dirt and old batter—he plays it so loud it’s lucky Mrs. Chaddock’s lost her hearing. A choir of tipsy angels and a lippy voice moaning about getting, or not getting, what you want. When she asks him to turn it down, he yells back, “You’re kidding? Don’t you know who that is?”

It seems he’s just gotten started when he quits, leaving the fence half-done. “First thing tomorrow,” he promises. Before she can ask about school—as far as she knows he’s still going—he disappears into the budded twilight, his gangly shape swinging down the street. But he doesn’t turn up next morning, or the next. After a couple of weeks the rain washes flakes of old paint into the gravel, and the fence gets shabbier. At least it’s half-scraped instead of half-peeled, she tells herself, sitting up with Harry watching a replay of last summer’s moon landing. The astronauts bounding over the pocked surface remind her of a Nature of Things close-up of germs exploring a patch of skin.

Later, falling into her narrow bed, the TV’s pale light flaring then fading in the doorway, she feels a tingle through her chest—a sensation that moves from her heart and makes her flush. It’s a crazy feeling that the kingdom of heaven mightn’t be so far off—that is, if people can walk up there on the moon. Downstairs, the fridge just hums along as usual, but oddly the sound ignites a spark of joy, tiny, but more than she’s felt in months.

The next evening, as she’s sorting the pill bottles on Harry’s bureau, something makes her turn down the volume. Shifting, Harry points at the screen. “Bippy,” the word bleeps out of him, like the first time Jewel uttered ma. Wheeling around, she finds Harry eyeing her, a grin lifting the strong side of his mouth. She can’t believe her ears, yet, doubting, stunned, has to fight an urge for precision. “Hippie, dear?” The tingling starts in her chest again, almost painful. “Harry?” “Bee-bee,” it sounds like the second time, the repetition enough to make her drop a vial. Watching her, he opens his mouth and speaks again, more slowly, but clearly. “Swe-eet bip-py.” The look on his face is one she’d almost forgotten. Edging towards him, she feels his hand brush her hip. “Bet your sweet bippy,” she recites, such a foolish phrase, but who cares? Even so, she blushes as Harry beams, reminding her of Jewel—or Robert—tickled to death at spelling his own name.

“Say it once more, for Lucy,” she can’t help murmuring around the thickness in her throat. A doubting Thomasina, she imagines the league ladies snickering.

Harry closes his eyes, swallowing like a little kid dreaming of outer space. “Loocy—henrikpsen.” Henry Gibson, it sounds like he’s saying. Squeezing his wrist, she rummages wildly for his card, pressing a pencil into his hand, her eyes on his. Coaxing. He lets the pencil roll away. His next words, a question, take forever. “Whhhat time, Bippy?”

Her reply—“nine o’clock”—could be from the moon. The smallness of words and what they mean measured against the wonder of speech. Not for another hour, she hears herself say, her hand trembling wiping drool from his chin. Only then does it really hit her, the hugeness of what’s just happened. A giant leap for Harry, barely a blink for mankind. It’s as if she’s caught his disability, struggling for words to match the occasion, kissing his mouth. “Jesus Murphy. Oh my God and all the angels in heaven!”

Jewel and Rebecca arrive bearing a mickey of rum. She lets Harry have a thimbleful, raising her cup of tea in a toast. After one drink Rebecca gets gabby, setting the Don Noble on Harry’s lap and hugging him, as if expecting him to play a jig. “Gosh,” she says, “Elinor oughta be here.” Lucy has to scour her brain for who Rebecca’s talking about. But Rebecca rattles on, oblivious, about getting the skinny on her. “Turns out she’s musical, Miss Van B.” Last time she came, she brought a mouth organ. A harmonica, Lucy winces inwardly; probably Benny’s, used—by many, a multitude of blowers.

“Shhh,” Harry slurs, waving his hand when Laugh-In starts, Henry Gibson’s face blooming in the middle of a daisy. Rebecca keeps yakking, as if they’re hanging on her every word. Prattling on, how Elinor took piano as a kid, how her parents gave her everything, to make up for…“Everything,” she says dramatically, “well, till the crash. Of ’29? When the old man, you know…Couldn’t’ve been easy.”

Harry raises his fist to shut her up—jokingly, Lucy hopes, and raises the volume. Not that Rebecca gets the hint, rambling on about what “the poor thing” went through after the father “hung” himself. “Not that she remembers. What happened before. I guess she looked like a tar baby getting off that train. That’s what they told her, anyways,” Rebecca sticks her chin out, as if they don’t believe her, muttering how “the old man felt so bad seeing all those bloody people” that he grabbed her, then and there at the station, and took the kid home to his wife. Disgusted, Harry thumps the mattress, and Lucy quits trying to make sense of what she’s on about. But there’s a reason Robert calls his mom a motor mouth. “The mother, well,” she sighs, saying how the woman was quite the queen bee always having tea parties, and didn’t want another kid, since she already had a son. “Not an acorn off the old tree,” Rebecca gossips, as if they should give a hoot, “not like his father.” Finally Harry draws a finger across his throat, making a noise like it’s being slit. “Dear,” Lucy nudges her, “it’s one of his few pleasures, this show.”

But Rebecca won’t be silenced, saying how the girl must’ve been some spoilt. “Nice clothes, music lessons, the whole shebang,” she says in a clipped voice. Yap yap yap, Lucy imagines Harry cutting in, if he could, like a goddamn French poodle! “Not that that’s a bad thing,” Rebecca blathers. “’Magine, that poor little kid on that train with all those people, some with their eyes half out. Cripes…” Mercifully a toothpaste ad finally steals her attention, the jingle bouncing off the walls.

Tapping his glass against Harry’s empty thimble, Jewel smirks, offering his dad another shot. Measuring out a spoonful of rum, he grimaces. “So how the hell do you go from that to being a bag lady?” His tone makes Lucy bristle, but just then Lily Tomlin—Ernestine, the telephone operator—fills the screen, licking her lips in her prissy way and dialling. Rebecca could take lessons from her, all the world a party line.

“She’s not a bag lady, hon,” Rebecca jumps in, fending off Harry’s groans, when she calls the woman a “maintainer.” A keeper upper.

“Geezhushchrisht!!” he finally explodes. It’s not like him to be short with her, but it does the trick. Even so, Lucy can’t help thinking, maybe the miracle of speech is a mixed blessing.

With the volume cranked right up, they manage to watch the credits in peace. But when Jewel pours his dad another drink—“Cheers, there, old fella”—it’s as if the walls have eyes, the doctors’.

But she sleeps soundly for the first night, it seems, in nine months: long enough to have a baby. Is it only that long since Harry’s fall? Dreaming, she travels back to when she did have a baby, a real one, her first. Back in their flat in Richmond. In her dreams, Lucy’s body is lighter than ash floating over the quaint linoleum. Light blazes through the windows, fading to forget-me-not blue as she hovers, a hummingbird making breakfast. Poached eggs, tea. Someone knocks, but she can’t touch down to answer it. Too bad, she whispers, pouring milk into Helena’s pink cup. Tough titties. But she has eyes that see through the door: only the landlady coming to collect rent and ask after the baby covered in chicken pox. Shadows spill in, everything charcoal as Helena whimpers, waking from a nap and scratching at welts, a nasty one on her thumb. Her claws dissolving, she tries to wake Harry to get the money, but lacks hands to shake him, and he can’t hear. Being invisible doesn’t mean I’m not here, she tries to chirp, a clutch of feathers. Fluff from a dandelion carried on a breeze with the rust of lilies. Looking down, glimpsing herself, something of herself, black as peat, lying in a box. A bog relic. Black veils riffle as the rest of her hovers, featherless wingless invisible, passing over. Impossible to fly home, never mind Harry’s calling, the baby’s crying. Helena’s wails stir dust into hornets’ nests, trapping Lucy inside them.

So much for sweet dreams. The taste of mud in her mouth, she wakes, shaking. Willing it to stop, she pads as quietly as she can into Harry’s room. The sight of his sleeping face is a reassurance, but cold comfort. When she crawls in next to him he barely stirs, her old side of the bed as chilly as the wrong side of the moon.

A FEW WEEKS LATER, BURIED below the paper’s obituaries there’s something about a pilgrim leaping from his wheelchair after drinking the water at Lourdes. But it’s a piece in the travel section that grabs Lucy’s attention, about a shrine a five-hour drive away, where someone’s reportedly seen the Virgin Mary—like St. Bernadette in the famous French grotto. This woman had been given six weeks, before her cancer disappeared. Complete with a map and a photo of a church surrounded by woods, the article tells how to find it. There’s even a picture of the healing spring, which looks to be a puddle with something bubbling from the bottom.

Is it greedy, she asks herself, wanting more? In spite of everything, Harry’s already been granted a partial gift of the gab. Never mind her impatience and doubts. Seek and ye shall find, she hears, buttering bread, and it’s the fridge, of course, working harder now the warmer weather’s here. Still, she reddens, slathering on tuna, hearing herself say, “What?” Ask and it shall be given, the fridge and the newspaper spread there chime together, as she cuts the sandwich into triangles. Right, and where there’s a will there’s a way, she decides glibly, taking the plate upstairs.

“You need to get out more, Mrs. Caines,” Father Langille says when she finally works up the gumption to go back there. Yes, yes, she agrees, mumbling something about summer being better.

IT’S A CONSPIRACY, LIKE SOMETHING that awful President Nixon might orchestrate: they all want her out of the house. One Saturday Jewel and Rebecca come over, and it’s as if there’s something they’re not telling her. Oh boy, she thinks, it’s got to be Robert; he’s failed, and that’s it with him and school, and next he’ll be taking off without the wherewithal to feed himself.

“Just take your mother for a bloody ice cream!” Rebecca flashes Jewel a look. “Go for a drive.” Harry doesn’t look too happy, but as Rebecca insists, how often do they get out together, mother and son? Okay, Lucy thinks: she and Jewel hardly get a minute alone, and there’s something she needs to broach, away from the chatter. “Keep her on the go,” Rebecca elbows Jewel. They do a lot of this now, talking around and above her the way they do Robert. Eager to stretch her legs and smell the lilacs, she’d rather walk, but Jewel insists on driving.

Parked outside the store, they watch Mr. Jimmy in the window flipping burgers. From the car she can see pickled eggs, too, jars lined up on the counter, specimens floating in brine. It’s supposed to be a leisurely outing, but Jewel leaves the engine running. Asking what flavour she wants, he seems crankier than usual. What makes him that way? He could be an octogenarian inside a fifty-two-and-a-half year old’s body. Changing her mind from vanilla to strawberry, she quips, “My treat, Jooolly,” just being playful, but he refuses her two dollar bill. Maybe it’s not the best time to raise what’s on her mind.

Sun showers the cove as Jewel saunters inside; from the bubble of the car she watches him joking with Mr. Jimmy, who licks his fingers, wrapping the cone in a serviette. She feels a jolt of dismay as Jewel returns, handing in her lonely treat. What’s more, the ice cream is white. Childish to feel disappointed, but not without reason, she thinks. Such a rare jaunt outdoors is a bit like being on the lam, as if any second she’ll be pulled back home. She licks up the drips as neatly as possible, Jewel tapping along to the country-ish bleating on the radio, his foot riding the brake. It’s as though he can’t stand staying put, but can’t think what else to do; he reminds her of Robert that way. Like son like father, she thinks, trying to eat faster, in bites. But the cold makes her teeth throb. Jewel peers anxiously into the rear-view. He smirks, shaking his head. Who comes climbing over the bank but Benny Trott, beating the bushes with an oar?

“Crazy old bugger,” Jewel mutters. Mr. Jimmy, scowling through the glass, spots Benny too. Poor Benny, she can’t help marvelling; a turtle yanked from its shell. Jewel must be thinking the same, snickering as the traveller gets closer. The thought of that nickname makes her smile; mention it to anyone these days and they wouldn’t have a clue who she meant. A space cadet, Robert might call him, or maybe not; Benny’s too old to be connected with rockets. He’s by his lonesome; odd, how she’s come to think of him as half of a pair. Half a deck. Dabbing her mouth, the serviette sticks to it. There’s ice cream on the seat, and Jewel’s so picky about his car. But right now he’s fixed on watching Benny inside, Mr. Jimmy ringing something in. Their mouths opening and closing, Benny gesturing crazily. “Buddy’d talk your ear off,” Jewel mutters. “Must be what happened to her” and she knows he’s talking about Miss Van Buskirk. “Just about done there, Ma?” He’s always in a race, always something on his mind, even when he’s supposed to be relaxing.

It’s now or never, she thinks, beginning, “I’m wondering, dear…”

But he jumps in, on the wrong track. “How Becky’s making out?” That crankiness melting to an edgy cheer. “Just fine, I’ll bet; switching channels, lighting smokes…” If he was in a hurry before, he isn’t now.

She watches Benny inside counting change. “There you go,” Jewel’s voice is heavy with sarcasm, “Old Benny Trott the gold-digger. Missed the boat there. Too bad he didn’t meet Boxy Lady when she was a kid.” Not liking his laugh, she points out that there must be twenty years between Benny and that gal. When she says they ought to be getting back, he looks almost disappointed. Benny’s come outside, rolling a cigarette. Catching Lucy’s eye, he glances away, as sneaky as the muskrats she used to see by the ditch.

“She must be a good listener,” she can’t help herself, meaning Benny’s mate. Jewel gives her a funny look, leaning on the wheel. Misunderstanding, as usual. It’s just that Becky’s willing to pay her, he says. Glory, if she doesn’t raise it now, she never will. So she spits out that she has a favour to ask, never mind that he’ll think it’s foolish.

“How about you and me, dear, taking a trip?”

He looks surprised, even amused. Benny, meanwhile, has crossed the road, and they watch the top of his sunburned head disappear below the bank. Explaining about the article, the church and the spring, and the woman with cancer, she sees the plywood punt put out into the channel, a tiny ark, its oarsman a lonely critter. But Jewel just hoots: “In Cape Breton? What the hell’s up there?” She says it’s not a long drive; a fine one she is, too, judging distances. But Jewel shifts uncomfortably, as if he hasn’t been listening. “It’s Bucky,” he interrupts, saying suddenly that he’s got a good idea of what the little bugger’s been up to.

Baffled, she keeps quiet as he heads back around the cove to what used to be the path near St. Columba’s. A dirt road now, wide enough for a car. Who knows the last time she took it, it’s been so long since she set foot in the Grounds. Mentioning this, she looks away when Jewel groans, “Why would you bother?” Half the woods have been cut down and trash litters the ground. The Big House and the barn are long gone, nothing more than rubble rising from the bushes. But Ida’s shack is still there; someone’s painted it mauve with a rainbow over the window, and wind chimes dangle from the eaves, as though a bunch of crafty little kids have gone nuts with crayons and shells. Where the hens used to peck sits a van with flat tires and queer licence plates, from British Columbia. “Where all the little drips come from,” Jewel snipes, pulling over.

A stink wafts through the window, not wood smoke but more like burning grass, the weedy reek she smelled once coming from Jewel’s basement. Music drifts in too, muffled but whiny as sewing machines with the tension gone, some song about a purple haze. Good Lord. Before she can stop him, Jewel’s out of the car and pounding on the door so hard it shakes. The porch sinks under his weight. He may as well be knocking on the Clampetts’ door for the good it does. Slouching down the steps, he sidles up to a window and peers in, no better than a peeping tom. “Good heavens! What are you doing?” she cranks down her window, hissing, “You’ll be arrested!”

“Damn heeppies,” he yells back, kicking the rotted shingles before climbing back in. His blood pressure, she thinks. Rarely has she seen him this riled up, and for no good reason. “I know he’s in there, the little punk,” he keeps yammering, and something about Robert having dirt for brains. “I’ve seen his friends. I know what they’re up to.”

Without warning, the door opens, the music blasting, and a girl with frizzy red hair holds up her finger in a rude way, while a burly young fellow in a jacket with a homemade peace sign on it swaggers behind her. Then, of all people, Robert staggers out, mouthing something, his eyes Ferris wheels. “Get in the car,” Jewel orders, as if she’s not there. “Get in!”

“You can’t friggin’ make me,” Robert yells with a hate she hasn’t seen before. There’s a sickening thud as he hauls back and kicks something—a tire? Spotting her, he looks away, and as Jewel races the engine, he takes off running towards what’s left of the woods. Cursing, the girl and the fellow with the peace sign go stumbling after him.

“They’re not going to hurt him?!” She can’t contain the tightness inside her, a tightness that slides to her belly. Something from TV leaps to mind, nothing to do with danger, though, or fighting, but a man mooning over himself in a doorknob while the room swayed, some show to scare kids off drugs. She and Harry had found it comical, the man’s nose like a dahlia bulb, especially when they realized it was the guy who’d been married to Cher. Cheer, as Harry pronounced it.

Drugs? Robert? No.

“Let him stew in his own goddamn juice,” Jewel rants, his voice thick with anger, as they head back, and he growls about kids learning their lesson. “They all have to figure things out,” she murmurs lamely, patting his arm before sliding out. “He’s a smart boy, he’ll be all right.” It’s what she keeps telling herself, anyhow; repeat something often enough and sometimes it comes true. But so much for a pleasant outing.

Even from the veranda something seems different: she can almost feel it, an airiness from the house. Upstairs the TV rattles on as always, Rebecca’s laughter drowning out Harry’s. But in the hallway, the walls seem brighter, the smell of Mr. Clean everywhere. The cobweb suspended from the light is gone, so are the dust bunnies from the corners. Good golly Miss Molly, the silly phrase twists through her, and an image of pint-sized Robert mimicking her from behind when she had the spunk to clean despite his shenanigans. In the front room, someone’s wielding a feather duster, poking at the shelf. Miss Van Buskirk, of all people. Miss Mind-Your-Beeswax, Lucy almost blurts. Tucked under her other thick arm is a mop with a pillowcase over it, a rag around her brownish hair to match. It doesn’t quite fit with her swingy black dress, its orange and pink flowers—kind of pretty, though it hasn’t seen soap in a while. Humming to herself, standing on tiptoe, she reaches for Helena’s cup. But before Lucy can say, Leave it, Miss Van Buskirk cradles it in her palm, a look crossing her face. Not as if she’s about to pinch it—Lordie, who would be that low?—but as if admiring something she’s dusted a dozen times before. In some other house, belonging to some other employer or client or whatever she calls people who hire her. Not that Lucy is one of them.

“Who let you in here?” a voice not quite hers cuts the airiness, and she’s aware of Jewel coming in, and silence upstairs, as if somebody’s pulled a plug. The woman looks up, startled, her mouth hardening. Gives a tight little nod. Her hand trembles as she rocks up on her toes to replace the cup, rolling back on worn-down heels. Those shoes, or are they slippers that might’ve been fancy once: velvet with beads? Following Lucy’s stare she looks down, almost shyly. “Benny got me these,” she says, as if anyone should care; as if she and Lucy have just sat down together on a bus, sharing a seat because there’s nowhere else.

“I would appreciate…” Lucy says slowly, her voice ringing in her ears, ashamed of her anger. Being prideful and house-proud are useful, but ways Mama used to say people ought not to be. Watching her. Miss Van Buskirk’s eyes have that in them, pride, and some of what Lucy’s just seen in Robert’s. Those eyes the icy blue of the stone in that ring she once had. “I would appreciate it, please, if you wouldn’t—” Lucy swallows. It’s so petty, so uncharitable of her, but most troubling of all isn’t this stranger’s mucking with her treasures, but being in the house. Interfering—though her own hoity-toity sniff makes her blush. Where’s Jewel when she needs him? To explain, to excuse her? The least he could’ve done was introduce them properly. But he’s halfway up the stairs—on a mission, to get Rebecca in a stew about Robert? Whatever he’s up to, her mind reels, refusing to figure it out. Miss Van Buskirk swats a cobweb from the curtains. There’s more than an afternoon’s work; she says she’ll come back if Lucy wants: “Tell Becky I’ll build it into the price, okay Missus?” Something about that singsong “if you want” reminds Lucy of Harry, of Jewel in a better mood.

“We’ll see,” is all she can manage, as Elinor—“call me Elinor,” the woman insists—gathers up her rags and agents. It’s as if she’s been invaded; worse, having the invader—the thief?—catch her in her underwear, dirty laundry on display. The whole reason she’s resisted getting someone in, never mind Rebecca’s nagging. The last thing she wants, people seeing how she’s managed, or not. If it got back to the league, they’d invade for sure, armed with buckets and Christ-like intentions. The road to hell paved with…

Jamming her feet deeper into those slippers, Miss Van Buskirk reminds Lucy of a bristly animal, in her own little world; letting herself out, she half-whistles, half-hums something not quite under her breath. That tune Lucy’s heard at Jewel’s, the one with slow, plodding piano. Just as it registers, it switches to something sweet and childish, making fun?

WHEN ROBERT FINALLY COMES TO finish scraping, he says he’s been working at the club every possible minute, now that he and Sheryl are “definitely” going out west, as soon as he raises the cash. After that to-do in the Grounds, maybe he’d be better off out there, she thinks. She can hardly grill him about it. At least what she doesn’t know won’t sneak up and throttle her, and after the throttling she’s given Rebecca about bringing Miss Van Buskirk in to clean, all she wants is peace. Though Jewel would say that equals being kaput. The music blaring while Robert works is some outfit called the Grateful Dead. Gratitude can take a lot of forms, she tells herself, calling him in for a Coca-Cola. Watching him guzzle it snags something inside her. He passed school, he’s working, but she blurts out, “What’s your problem?”

His eyes dart, his crooked smile finally settling on her. Nothing she can help him with, he says. Shaking her head, she pulls five dollars from the cupboard, from the little stash, Harry’s freshly cashed pension cheque, and slips it over. A little bonus never hurt anybody, she thinks. She’s upstairs when he leaves, the scraping almost done, the transistor back in its place on the counter. But when she goes to get a plate, the pile of bills looks smaller: half of them are gone.

SHE WANTS TO TELL JEWEL, but can’t. How to admit she’s been betrayed—cheated—by their boy? And there’s her trip to think of, though it’s as if she’s asking to be driven to Vancouver! Vancouver, with its drug dealers and hippies.

“You’re not thinking straight,” Jewel snorts, making excuses, even when she says it’s for his dad, not her. Though maybe it is: since that day the cobwebs came down, she’s begun to wonder. If Harry’s ever going to improve, maybe it will be her doing, if only she has the gumption not to give up. “What does Dad think of this?” Jewel grills her. “Who’ll mind him? Next you’ll be getting his palms read.” Finally he gives in, as long as it’s okay with Rebecca, deciding that Bucky could help: “Let him worry for a change.” She almost says something then, but Harry thumps for her to change the channel. “Womanish bull,” The Edge of Night.

Too bad, in a way, her plans can’t be grander. A tour of Lourdes, a glimpse of St. Bernadette’s corpse, or a visit, at the very least, to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, more remote it seems than ever. She has to pace herself, though, at seventy-three. Opt for the do-able, though wouldn’t it be nice to go for the real McCoy, apple instead of Ritz? Especially these days, when people—some people, crackpots—spy the Virgin Mother and Child on trees and telephone poles and even, she’s read somewhere, on a chicken wing.

“Make sure you come back,” Rebecca jokes, a tad nervously, as if they’ll be circling the globe. Lucy waits till everything’s set before telling Harry. When she shows him the article from the paper, he rolls his eyes and says he won’t be going anywhere except in a box. His look the same as when they lived in the cabin, and she’d go on her missions to the barn, missions of self-saving mercy.

“Like the night life, like to party,” Rebecca pokes him, dumping a suitcase full of containers on the bed, shampoo and pill bottles. “This miracle water, bring me back a case, okay?” Mercy like gratitude, all right, dolled up today in a tight green skirt. Hope in the face of disappointment, that’s what mercy was. Unless Lucy had gone soft in the head and touchy as those gals on the stories.