After the swarming Sunday evening traffic on the highway the city seemed deserted. Scarcely a soul was to be seen in Kendal Park as D.J. McConnell drew his luxurious new car quietly to the curb under the chestnut trees.
Edna always asked him to stop there, in the crescent opposite her boarding house, so that she would not be seen arriving “in state,” as one of the roomers had remarked a few months back.
“Your obedient servant, Mrs. Colby,” said D.J. with heavy playfulness, seeking her hand and fondling it.
A loud whack on the roof of the car startled them.
“What? Kids throwing stones?” D.J. demanded, glaring around with his stern Sunday School Superintendent’s manner.
“It’s the chestnuts,” laughed Edna. “They make quite a racket outside my window at night.”
She pointed at the prickly green burrs strewn all over the grass under the trees. It was the time of year she loved best. The maples on the other side of the little block-long park had turned to a deep russet colour. In the flower beds tall red blossoms, whose name she could never remember, stood up like banners, with little purple foliage plants in curlycued borders around them.
The day in the country had been wonderful. They had been out to see Mr. Kimber’s chrysanthemums. He was the president of their firm and it was an event for Edna to go out there with D.J. He had wanted to stay all evening, but she wanted to be home in time for Mr. Kolessa’s party.
If the girls at the office knew she had come home to her boarding house crowd instead of staying out there with wealthy people like the Kimbers and their friends, they would have thought her crazy. But she never told the girls anything. In the office they called her “the clam.”
She had told D.J. almost nothing about herself. He knew she had been a widow for some time, but no one knew how long. She never told anyone. At the office she never mentioned her birthdays; but that afternoon, on the way to the lake, she had let it out that tomorrow was her birthday. It had slipped out because she wanted D.J. to see how important it was for her to get back early.
“Mr. Kolessa’s birthday is today,” she had said, “and it’s his party until midnight. Then it’s my party from midnight on.”
He had pounced on it at once, and all the way home he had been pressing her to have dinner with him tomorrow night at Gleneagle Inn, promising her a birthday present she could wear for the rest of her life.
She knew what it would be. He had proposed to her three different times at the Gleneagle, sitting on the rocks in the dusk with the dark water flowing past. She knew by his tone that if she went out there tomorrow he would expect her to accept his ring.
Some of the girls, perhaps, would think she ought to feel flattered that D.J. McConnell should want her. He was manager of one of the largest of Kimber’s magazines, whereas she was a fashion artist on one of the smaller women’s publications. He knew nothing about her work. His office was two floors up from the art department, and if it had not been for a pouring rainstorm one night at quitting time he might have passed her for years without speaking. On the elevators he nodded only to a few old-timers. Everyone thought he was pretty pompous. He had a large important-looking head and large eyes that were always too wide open. She had wondered whether it was thyroid trouble, or perhaps his heart. He was well over fifty. Toward the end of the summer he told her that his doctor had advised him to give up golf. Perhaps some of his gloominess was due to worrying about his health.
“Sit here a minute,” said D.J., leaning toward her.
“No, I must go! I must go! They’ll be waiting for me,” she said, astonished at the panic she felt suddenly throbbing through her.
“You’ll be up to all hours, drinking, I suppose,” said D.J., severely.
“Once a year, on my birthday, I have a glass of sherry with Mr. Kolessa.”
“Well, Edna,” said D.J., his wide-open eyes fastening on her solemnly, “this will be your last birthday as a single woman.”
“Tomorrow I shall be forty.” She brought it out challengingly, and watched his surprise.
Scarcely anyone ever guessed her age. There was no sign of grey in her blonde short-cropped hair. Such large blue eyes in so small and pointed a face gave her an elf-like air. There was an unworldliness and a deceptive meekness in her manner. She was, in fact, a small-town woman who had never warmed to the ways of the city. Except among a few intimates at the boarding house she seemed elusive and reserved.
“Forty!” D.J. repeated, with a note of grave finality in his voice.
“It’s an awful birthday to reach,” she said. “But don’t build too much on it—tomorrow night. I like my freedom too much. I may disappoint you again.”
She opened the door quickly and jumped out. Bending to wave to him, with an unpromising smile, she called out: “Goodbye, David Jonathan.”
Her teasing use of his two Christian names brought a vexed frown to his face.
While the glistening car swung around the crescent, she allowed her mind to imagine for a moment the luxury she would live in if she married him. He was eager to get away from the huge house where he had lived with his mother and sister since boyhood. To be ordered about and fussed over at his age had grown unbearable.
Once he had taken her through a half-finished house of the type he wanted to build for himself and her. Then he had shown her a wooded lot he intended to buy, overlooking a beautiful ravine at the north end of the city. Only the other day he had pointed out to her the little English car he intended to buy for her own use.
“It’s sheer bribery,” she thought.
For a moment more she stood still, making a wry face, as though she had taken a bite of a bitter apple, saying to herself, first under her breath, and then out loud, listening to its sound: “Mrs. D.J. McConnell! Mrs. D.J. McConnell!”
Then she turned and faced the little park and the place she called home.
Two men were leaving as she reached the steps. George Copp, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, came out on the verandah to see them off. One of the men, red-faced and paunchy, shook his head gravely. “This will be his last, George,” he said.
“Never see another,” said the taller of the two, who was staggering a little.
“Nonsense!” George burst out, boisterously. “He’ll be going strong when the three of us are under the sod.”
Catching sight of Edna he moved aside from the doorway to let her pass.
The odour of beer and whisky completely obliterated the stale smell of cooking and furniture polish which usually met her in the hall. Unused to liquor all her life, the fumes in the air were almost stifling as she squeezed her way between knots of people toward the fireplace. They were mostly students or teachers at the Academy of Music, and many of them shook her hand or nodded as she passed.
At last she reached a little space that was being kept clear around Mr. Kolessa, who sat, as she expected, in the big blue chair with his feet up on a hassock. One frail hand, lifted to catch the warmth of the fire, glowed with uncanny transparency.
Bending quickly, she kissed him on the cheek, her lips barely touching the cold dry skin. “Many happy returns, Mr. Kolessa,” she murmured, her breast suddenly heaving with unexpected breathlessness.
“Not many, Edna. Not many, my dear,” wheezed the old man, patting the upholstered arm of the big chair for her to sit beside him. “Eighty eight. Eighty eight today. Ten years more. That’s the best I can look for.”
He had come to America with a famous Ukrainian choir, and stayed, as singer and teacher, and later as music critic, all these years. Only the slightest accent remained in his voice, but there was an unmistakable foreign graciousness in his manner and gestures, and his high rounded head, now bare of any vestige of hair, was distinctly European. Edna had never seen him look paler. The yellow skin, stretched tautly over the prominent bones of his nose and cheeks, had often made her think of parchment, and now she thought of an old manuscript. The book of his life could be read, she thought, in the wrinkles which seared his face from chin to brow. How little room there was left for time to inscribe any more lines between the crisscross furrows!
Looking around at her friends and thinking of how they were all ageing, she choked back the nostalgic remembrance of herself, at sixteen, entering Mr. Kolessa’s studio for the first time.
“Alas that youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close,” she breathed to herself, almost in tears at the thought of the little Rubaiyat bound in heliotrope suede that a boy named Ronnie had given her. She had forgotten his last name. It was so long ago.
Penny, the maid, stood in front of her with a plate of hot little sausages.
As she took one, Mr. Kolessa’s voice sounded behind her. “Give Mrs. Colby a glass of sherry, Penelope,” he called out. “You don’t want this beer they’re drinking, do you, Edna?”
“A glass of sherry,” she said, nodding. “Just to drink your health.”
Edna fingered the stem of the glass awkwardly when Penny handed it to her.
“Hold it just a minute,” said George Copp, lifting his own glass, and stepping up on the long stool in front of the fire.
Every year he did the same thing. First he called for attention and waited with a patient smile and a few tipsy winks while everybody turned to face him. Then in his resonant baritone voice which quickly silenced the mutterers in corners, he launched into his annual speech, referring at first with deliberate vagueness to a man they all honoured, a man of amazing musical knowledge and aptitude, a man whose zeal for the finest music had never slackened, a man whose counsel and advice and fatherly eagerness for everyone’s welfare, a man who—could he say it?—yes, he would say it—a man who had drawn from all of them through the years the deepest affection—he might as well out with it —
But by this time tears stood in his eyes, and with a gulp he swung around and lifted his glass. In a snuffling voice that was meant to be loud and firm, but could scarcely be heard, he burst out: “We love you, Daddy Kolessa!”
Then, while those near him clapped George on the back and shoulders, there was a chorus of hushing. The old man was trying to get up. On either side somebody was lifting under his arms. He flung back his head, as though tossing a mane of hair from his brow. For a moment his mouth opened, but only a hoarse cry of mingled pride and grief came from his crumpling lips. Then he sank down in the chair, dabbed at his wet cheeks, and began nodding and smiling with the pleased air of a child who has said his piece.
“Where’s my drink, George?” he fussed, blinking tears from his eyes.
“Here it is.”
They clinked glasses and drank, and then the old man asked: “Where’s Virginia?”
“Here I am,” said a round-shouldered woman, her eyes shaded by a freakish feathered hat, who had been standing near.
“Do you feel like playing, Virginia?”
“What would you like me to play?”
“On my birthday, always the same—Liebestraum,” said Mr. Kolessa, his voice quite firm. Now he was the music master again. “Everybody very quiet,” he said, watching Virginia settle herself at the piano. He lifted his long frail fingers to his temples and closed his eyes.
“All right, Virginia. Dream of love.”
Sitting on the long stool with her back to the fire, Edna clasped her hands in her lap, and when the piece was finished she returned from dreams of her first music lessons and joined in the applause.
Mr. Kolessa sat hushed until his silence spread through the room. Many who were near watched his closed eyes, a few wondering anxiously if they would ever open again. But with a great sigh he stretched out one hand behind him like a blind man, groping for Virginia. She came close and without opening his eyes he took her two hands and pressed them for a moment to his lips. It was not the stooped grey woman beside him who stood in his thoughts, but little Virginia, the tiny child who called him Daddy from the first because she had never known a father.
In the hall and in the corners of the room the chattering started again, and now it was Edna’s turn. George had found the music of their duet, and stepping unsteadily, he escorted her and Virginia to the piano. Virginia sat down and turned up the corners of the pages while George pulled at the ends of his bow-tie and Edna cupped her hands, one in the other, holding them out from herself in a gesture of offering, the way singers do. She had sung in a country church choir as a girl, and after years of lessons with Daddy Kolessa she had become soprano soloist in a downtown church in a poor part of the city.
Virginia looked up for a signal. George looked at Edna. Edna inclined her head. George Copp’s nod to Virginia was almost a bow.
It was an old-fashioned duet in canon, the two voices following one another as in a “round” song. They sang it every year at Mr. Kolessa’s parties.
“Go pretty rose, go to my fair, go tell her all I fain would dare.”
George was hoarse and Edna was nervous, fearing he would get confused when their leads were reversed, but they began prompting each other with little smiling nods and at the close George made a sort of race of it, so that the listeners burst into laughter and applause when the two singers finished together, bowing their congratulations to each other like old-fashioned performers in vaudeville.
There were no cries for an encore. It was getting late. People were leaving. There was much handshaking and saying of goodbyes. Somewhere at the back of the house a few students were harmonizing songs such as “Down by the old mill stream.”
“Where’s Louis? He hasn’t played tonight,” Mr. Kolessa called out.
Someone went out to the kitchen to find the young violinist who lived in the house, but he could not be persuaded to play. He simply shrugged and jerked his head in the direction of the raucous singers who were repeating “Moonlight and Roses” for the third time.
“Ask the boys to come in and hear Louis,” said Mr. Kolessa.
“No, no,” said Louis. “They’re having a good time.”
Dropping on the floor and hunching up his knees, he joined the little group left around the fire, where a remark about violinists launched Mr. Kolessa into a succession of anecdotes about Kubelik and Ysaye. His memory was phenomenal, and the others sat with leaning heads anxious not to miss a word. They were so engrossed that no one noticed the clock in the hall chiming midnight, but before the last stroke sounded George Copp and the boys from the kitchen came lurching into the parlour. George went over and lifted Edna from the low stool. When she stood up, smiling shyly, he threw up his hand and the six or seven voices broke into “Happy Birthday to You.”
They were in a mood to repeat it, but Mr. Kolessa hushed them with a raised finger, and lifted his glass: “To you, Edna,” he said with quiet tenderness.
Among the few that were left she heard “Edna, Edna, Edna,” murmured around the room. She blushed a little, and being unfamiliar with toasts, she held up her half-emptied sherry glass and drank with them all.
Reaching her room at last, Edna switched on the rose-shaded light over her pillow and sank down on the bed, exhausted and troubled, although her face felt flushed by the mouthful or two of wine.
Now that the party was over she could not escape thinking of what she should say to D.J. tomorrow. No, today! This is my birthday, she reminded herself.
Too many things were circling like chattering birds in her mind. She had enjoyed the party, but toward the end old Mr. Kolessa had been quite pathetic, and George Copp so noisy that quiet conversation was impossible. It disturbed her that they all drank so much, and she almost shuddered to think of what D.J. would have thought of her friends if he had come in about midnight.
The best part of the evening had been when a few of them sat around Mr. Kolessa, listening to his talk of the violinists who were famous when he was young. Recalling the rapt earnest expression on the faces of the musicians who remained, and how she had experienced a kinship with them and a sense of homage and reverence for masters of the past, a sharp feeling shot through her, like a barrier suddenly raising itself between her and all thought of D.J.
If she married D.J. it would mean that she would scarcely ever see Mr. Kolessa and the others again. Unless she came secretly. But she could see that it would be impossible to keep secrets from D.J. He was possessive, jealous and suspicious already, and after marriage—
“I can’t marry him,” she burst out, almost aloud, jumping up from the bed and starting to undress. She attacked her clothes with a sort of fury, as though violent action would somehow give force and finality to the decision she had reached. Besides, to disrobe in her room as usual made her feel that she was still herself, and would remain herself. She could dismiss the anxiety which had sometimes disturbed her when she had thought ahead to undressing before D.J.
Her face felt hot and she peered into the mirror to see if her cheeks were flushed. With a start of astonishment she found she was naked. Usually she brought her nightgown from the closet and flung it on the bed before she undressed, ready to slip on. But tonight her thoughts were in a turmoil.
For a moment she stared at herself, not dreamily as she sometimes did, but with an intense conscious curiosity, trying to estimate what her body would look like to somebody else. Forty! But she was slender, her breasts were firm, and her skin was still white.
She looked at herself steadily, thinking: “This is my body. This is my privacy. I won’t surrender it.”
She turned to the closet door, but with a sudden shiver she stood still. She was afraid to open it. It was nonsense, but she felt that if she opened it D.J.’s wide round eyes would be there, staring at her. It was absurd, but it made her think that if she married D.J. there would be this to bear—this staring!
With her husband there had been no staring. She was so shy that on the first night, and for many nights, she had turned out the light and they undressed in the dark. They had been young then, whereas D.J. was old, and she thought of things she had heard about elderly men marrying young wives. Not that she was young, but perhaps he would feel bound to prove his virility, and she began wondering fearfully—he was often short of breath— thinking of what would happen if he had a heart attack. What would she ever do? Would there be anyone to call? What could she do for him alone if he fell down groaning?
She was shivering so much that she flung open the closet door and snatched her nightgown from the hook, shutting the door again without looking. Covering herself quickly, she slid into bed and turned out the light.
Tomorrow she must tell him. Today!
She tried to think of her birthday, but all that came into her mind was a panicky repetition: “I cannot! I won’t!”
The chestnuts falling on the roof of Cooper’s garage kept her awake a long time, but now she was happier, because she felt that nothing could make her weaken.
All day long Edna’s heart had been thumping. Every now and then she drew in a deep breath and crushed her hands together. They were cold. Sometimes she felt a little faint. These queer sensations drove everything from her head. All her thoughts were buried deep under a vague feeling of impotence which she had experienced in dreams just before waking.
“If I am like this, what must D.J. be feeling?” she wondered.
Somewhere in her mind throbbed the urgent need to decide. It was useless to remind herself that last night she had come to a firm resolve. Her intention was no longer clear. Her numbed will seemed powerless to choose.
If she had run across D.J. that day in the corridors or on the elevators, the sight of his too-wide-open eyes might have restored her confidence in what she was determined to say to him. But she rarely saw him in the building, and today she had scarcely moved from her drawing board.
In the afternoon she went down to the cafeteria for her relief with Janet Hobbs, hoping that coffee and a little talk would disperse the stupor that had been hanging over her since morning. But Janet was obviously puzzled by her mood, and after a few searching questions which Edna evaded, her friend lapsed into a shrugged-up silence.
They took the elevator, standing close together without a word. As they stepped off, the noise of a screaming siren came from the open window at the end of the hall.
“Fire reels?” said Edna.
“More like an ambulance,” guessed Janet.
Eyeing each other nervously, they ran the few steps to the window. An ambulance swung around the corner on screeching tires and jolted to a stop outside the main entrance. Two uniformed men leapt out and ran back to open the doors, but the doorman called out to them as he hobbled down the steps, pointing to the side of the building.
“They’ll have to take it up in the freight elevator,” said Janet, as the men got back into their seats.
“An accident, d’you suppose?” Edna said.
Together they hurried to the door of the art department and almost ran along the passage that led to the big studio. The door was open and most of the artists were leaning out of the high casement windows. Red-headed Stella had jumped up on one of the men’s backs, and he was jiggling her up and down.
“Who’s hurt?” said Janet, crossing the floor with three of her masculine strides.
“They’re taking McConnell to the hospital,” said someone.
“What happened?” asked Janet, looking over her shoulder quickly at Edna.
“Heart attack,” said the new French boy.
Edna could gasp out only two words: “Is he—?”
“Collapsed beside his desk,” said Paul.
Edna sank down on a chair and nearly slipped off onto the floor. Janet and Paul jumped to help her, but she waved them off as though she needed air. Gripping the seat of the chair with both hands, she shook her head several times and then her chin sank forward until it touched the amethyst brooch she wore at the opening of her blouse. D.J. had given it to her at Christmas. As soon as her chin touched the cold stone she began to shiver.
“Get her a glass of water, Paul,” said Janet.
“I’ll be all right,” muttered Edna, brushing tears from her cheeks.
Two or three of the artists had turned from the window and were staring at Edna curiously. Janet strode toward them and said in a lowered voice: “See if Tommy has a bottle in his desk.”
The youngest of the apprentices scurried out after the French boy.
“You’d be better off lying down,” Janet said, her flat voice sounding surprisingly soft. “Kate Lawson is out of town this week. You could stretch out on her chesterfield.”
“What goes?” cried out one of the boys to the old janitor who passed the open door slowly, with a plodding step, shaking his head.
“They’ve taken him to St. Mike’s.”
Tommy appeared with a half-filled bottle of rye. Paul came behind him with a glass of water from the cooler.
“Give her a good shot,” said Janet.
“No, no,” murmured Edna, piteously. “Never drink.”
“Fix you up,” said Tommy, unscrewing the cap of the bottle.
“Never drink,” repeated Edna, trying to rise.
“Give her the water, Paul,” said Janet.
Grasping the glass tremblingly in both hands, Edna sipped several times, then held the glass out blindly, her eyes closed to squeeze back her tears. Somebody took the glass from her and she felt arms around her shoulders, lifting her up.
“Come on in to Kate’s room,” Janet was saying.
She allowed herself to be led.
“Shut the door, Jane,” she said, when she found herself on Mrs. Lawson’s couch. Without opening her eyes, she said to Janet, whose strong step came close on the carpet beside her: “Did they give me whisky?”
“You wouldn’t take it.”
Edna opened her eyes, and a single tear rolled out of sight across her temple into her hair.
Janet had a cigarette in her mouth and her silver lighter lifted to it.
“You don’t mind if I smoke?” Janet said.
“No, no, no,” murmured Edna.
The lighter clicked and Janet inhaled deeply. “Do you feel better?” she said, the smoke issuing from her mouth in jerks with each syllable.
“Yes, I do.”
Janet moved over to sit on the edge of the chesterfield beside Edna’s feet.
“Were you going to marry him?” she asked quietly.
Edna shook her head.
“I thought you were.”
“He told me you were.”
“He—he told you?” faltered Edna.
“When?”
“Last week. I was out with him, and he said he guessed it would be the last time. He said you didn’t quite know it yet, but he felt sure you’d marry him.”
“I didn’t know you went out with him, Jane.”
Staring at Kate Lawson’s framed diploma on the wall, Janet shrugged her shoulders. “You’re such a clam,” she said, screwing up her eyes as though studying the small print.
It was true, Edna thought. She never talked to the girls about her affairs or encouraged them to talk about theirs. It hadn’t occurred to her all day to mention to anyone that this was her birthday.
She dragged herself upward on the slippery leather chesterfield and propped herself on her elbows.
Staring at Janet’s masculine face with the fringe of black hairs like a man’s sideburns growing down beside her ears, she leaned forward and whispered: “Did D.J. ever ask you to marry him, Jane?”
“Oh, yes.”
The two words sliding out at her in so casual a tone gave Edna a queer little shock.
“He tried several of the girls. Didn’t you know?” asked Janet, incredulously.
“Tried?” Edna groped in a puzzled whisper.
“Oh, he wasn’t a wolf,” Janet answered promptly. “He never made passes at any of the girls. So they say. He was just crazy to get married. Surely to God you know why, Edna.”
“Why?”
“Did he never tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That his mother and sister were driving him nuts. He had to get away from them. Do you mean to say he never—?”
“He told me he was sick to death of a fourteen-room house. He wanted to build a house of his own, with a terraced garden. There was going to be a pool—not a swimming pool—just a small round one with a fountain in the middle. One night he showed me the lot.”
“I guess we’ve all seen the lot,” said Janet. “On the Parkdale ravine.”
Edna clasped her hands behind her head and looked at the ceiling. Her shivering had ceased. The tremours had gone from her heart. “I guess I must have been the last one he ‘tried,’” she thought to herself, with a hurt feeling of repugnance.
“He had an attack a few months ago, you know,” said Jane.
“He didn’t tell me.”
“He wouldn’t. It was Kate who told me.”
Janet crushed her cigarette out in Mrs. Lawson’s spotless ashtray. “Let’s go out and get high,” she said. “You’ll take a drink tonight, surely.”
“I never drink, Janet. I have one glass of sherry once a year on my birthday.
“You can get drunk on sherry,” said Janet.
“I had my glass this morning, just after midnight.”
“Is this your birthday?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the limit,” said Janet, getting up and brushing down her hips. People were scurrying by outside the closed door. It was quitting time.
“Let’s go out to a bar,” Janet said. “You can sit and sip coke if you want to.”
“I don’t feel like it. I guess I’ll go home.”
But seeing her reddened eyes in the washroom mirror she hated to face people in a crowded bus. When she reached the street the low sun was flashing on westbound windshields as the stampede of evening traffic swept past. Turning her back on the blinding sunset and the noise of the intersection, she started homeward through a shabby district of short shady streets. Dirty children were playing in the gutters. But she neither saw nor heard. Her senses waned until all she could feel was a strange eager expectation of freedom stirring in her. She expected very little. Only to go her way alone, to become again the quiet isolated person she had been before she had met D.J.
“At my age some women would feel lonely,” she thought.
Tears welled into her eyes, but they seemed to be tears of relief, of happiness, as her heart swelled, welcoming back the one deep silent person who never disturbed her—herself!
She had dreaded her fortieth birthday, feeling that fear of the future might drive her into a marriage she knew would be stifling. But now, even if D.J. should live, she would see no more of him.
It was a struggle to thrust him out of her mind, to forget that tonight he would have proposed to her for the fourth time. Perhaps she should have gone with Janet to celebrate her birthday. A glass of sherry with Janet! It might have loosened the tight reins she held on her heart.
Her steps were unsteady as she stared ahead unseeingly, trying to banish D.J. and the luxury he would have lavished on her—trying not to think forward—
At last her thoughts veered to childhood memories of happy country faces, birthday cakes, candles, kisses!
“Alas, that youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close,” echoed in her mind.
She should have gone with Janet. Where could she go? What did she want? It was only a little gnawing want. A yearning for the treats of bygone birthdays.
At the corner she saw a sign over a storefront. Dreamily she went in and sat down at a table in a cubby-hole. It was an Italian place. A radio was going. A plump dark waitress came out from behind the counter.
“What’ll you have?” she said.
“Give me a chocolate soda,” said Edna.
She caught the girl bending to stare at her downturned face, and it was only then that she knew she had been crying all along the street.