Chapter Two

2

Anglican Cowgirls

KATYA

Katya offered a pear to a delivery boy who was propping his shorts on a ten-speed and spooning up yoghurt from a plastic tub. He asked if the pear was organically grown. She said it was recycled. He said that was real, dropped it into a saddle bag, remembered to say thanks and jumped his bike back into traffic. A leather-faced man came dodging down the street cackling in the faces of passers-by. Katya gave a quick polish on her sweater sleeve and clapped a pear into his flapping hand without pausing in her step and ignored the articulate spew of abuse, between bites, that followed her down the block. At the corner she arranged four pears on a bench set in the shade of a dying maple. An old Pomeranian half naked with mange muzzled another, small and bruised, then jigged and yapped with such a malicious show of gums, that Katya dropped the soft fruit with a satisfying splat on the dog’s threadbare skull and crossed into the next block.

The woman wasn’t in her chair. Katya stopped on the flagged path and buttoned her sweater. The park gate was set back from the street, the path from the sidewalk bordered the yard of a low grey brick cottage and at the back of the lawn, beneath an arbour of trelliswork without a vine, an old fashioned, round-backed wooden garden chair, its white paint worn and blistered with bird droppings, sat empty. Katya shivered.

That first spring, when the lilac leaves had given her hope, Katya had walked Saami in his harness up this path toward the gate and then, suddenly not sure that the inviting stretch of green was a park, that it was indeed public and not someone’s private yard, she had stalled and reeled the baby to her knee. Beyond the iron palings a set of swings, a concrete drinking fountain… Surely… But what if… Saami fell to his knees to pull the grass edging the path and turning to him Katya had seen the woman bundled in the chair and she had gone hot with the fear of having blundered, forgot her words of English. But the woman’s eyes had been closed, the face tilted to the sun, she couldn’t have seen the embarrassment, the horrible wet confusion. Then the head had moved in one slow nod of affirmation and Katya had breathed again. Of course it was a public park, the concrete fountain was ugly.

In other years Katya had found more convenient entrances to the park; she had moved house, had gone back home, had returned, had had no Saami to push on the swings and the wooden seats had been replaced with rubber, but the fountain had remained a damp grey lump and whenever Katya passed that way the woman had been, sun providing, always in her chair, sometimes her eyes had been open.

Sun’s out, I wonder where she is? Katya shivered again, and not letting herself think of geese and graves, yanked a plastic bag from her sweater pocket. Park! She snorted with disgust, rotated the bulk of pears, string bag and herself between the anti-vehicle stanchion and a gate post and set off across the grass toward a lone crabapple tree.

Park! Flat as a cookie sheet, trees trimmed beyond reach, no shrubbery to poke at, to crawl under, to hide in. So no squirrels, no bums, no berries, no birds but the odd bitchy gull when the lake’s rough. No Indians. Don’t be so crabby, pick up the apples. She stooped and gathered, though she didn’t need more, had already done up three batches of mild rose-coloured jelly, but there they were, and they’d only rot. If the lawns weren’t cut you’d never find them in the long grass. Maybe, but having nowhere to hide isn’t a virtue. Neither’s having nothing. She filled the bag. What am I going to do with them? No good for benches, nobody eats them. She must be out in her chair by now, maybe she’d use them, could do something with her time better than sit. Doesn’t bother with the yard, one old peony and daisies gone wild. Doesn’t mean she mightn’t like to put up a few jars. Crabapples she can pickle, might just suit her.

Walking back across the park Katya’s gaze fixed on the row of children’s swings and as she strolled she swung her bags to a rhythm of humming deep in her chest – Baa, baa, old sheep, have you any wool? well, no sir, but yes sir, my three bags are full. One for the master, one for the old dame, and one for the little boy who lives…

Her son, Saami, (she had trimmed the vowels down to Sam the summer she learned English, but they grew back) occupied an ancient fish shed on the edge of a deep narrow lake, the far end of which poked under a barbed wire border into Russian woods. Solitary, gloomy, and glittering with a fine dust of old fish scales, he laboriously crafted deep-keeled rowboats from strips of cedar and indulged himself in drunken metaphysical searches for God which always ended with a birch whip in the sauna and long stretches of sobriety and rice. On her last visit, Katya had told him that she thought he was mistaking his flashing fish scales for enlightenment. He was her son, but she didn’t like him.

She came to a stop, resting her bags on a bench a few yards from the swings. She flexed the stiffness from her fingers and squeezed the muscles of her arms.

Arne had died beside a logging truck. At the time Katya had thought it silly that it wasn’t lumber that killed him, for the huge trunks had bounced in a cascade from the truck bed and rolled harmlessly down a slope. Arne had been standing on the high side of the slope, figuring a rough estimate of the prime heartwood, and it was a cracked, broken, sling-shot iron link of the chain which entered between his eyes.

Katya’s eyes travelled up and down the chains of the swings, looking for trouble. With a piping squeal, a child dressed in tiny jeans and a hooded sweatshirt came charging from the gateway at a waddling run and fell to his knees in the sand.

Sam had been three years old when Katya was left with insurance money and a rubbery dislocated feeling. Long tear-spotted letters and noisy transatlantic calls urged her and the baby home. An uncle arrived to count the money, pack her up and sell the house. Not knowing why, Katya resisted. She had made no friends, she was frightened and lonely, but she had planted her trees. There might be another way. She advertised the house for rent, took particular care to dress in a commanding twin-set and low heels, sent the uncle for walks with Sam, and interviewed prospects in impeccable English over cups of tea. She had been determined to impress whomever rented her house with her immutable conditions; no changes, no pruning, no handymen, no gardeners. She wondered why it was so important. The uncle said she was hysterical, perhaps a little crazy. She didn’t care, if that was what it took. She had realized she was coming back.

Startled by his fall, hands bruised on the packed sand, the child snuffled and started a long, wailing baby scream. A youngish woman, lumpy in quilted cotton and tortoiseshell barrettes, her face waxen with fear, anger and Nivea cream, galloped through the gateway, her shoulder purse thumping on a padded hip. To rescue her colt, thought Katya, an image she must remember to tell Bena.

It had been Bena who had rented the house on the third day of interviews. She had stood in the doorway looking right through Katya’s matronly disguise at a Larsen print of a child’s room framed on the hall wall. You are a European lady, like me, henh? You are going home, but you will not like it, I think. It will be changed and you will come back. I will keep your house for you and I will not change it. Katya had surrendered the teapot and led Bena to the kitchen for coffee.

“There! See? I told you not to run! It’s what you deserve, so shut up!” The young woman’s eyes landing on Katya went hot with embarrassment, dropped to the bulging plastic bags and flared with disgust. “Get out of there!” And the screaming child was yanked to his feet. Not so young, Katya thought as she looked down and rummaged in her bags, they seem to wait too long in this neighbourhood, for the right husband, or the right house, no patience left for diapers. “No! He doesn’t like pears!” The child whimpered as his mother swatted at his reaching hand. She twitched back to guard her purse and glared at Katya.

“Any child can use a pear. What are you afraid of? My bags? That I want something? You haven’t anything I want, except maybe the child. And I’m not that crazy. You’re afraid because you don’t know me and you don’t know where the pear came from.” Katya swung her bags down from the bench, “I don’t want you to know me. And the pear was offered to the child.” She walked to the gate and left the park.

The woman still wasn’t in her yard. Katya stopped on the path, her bags dangling. Alone beneath the empty arbour, the garden chair looked uncertain; it was its own heavy old woman caught absent-minded in a soiled nightgown, forgetful of just why it was out here in the first place. Katya stared at the windows of the house. Was her offering too late? Oh, for God’s sake, you worry death like a bone! She’s old. You don’t even know the woman! Well, maybe it’s something else, a phone call, a slow kettle, a button off a housedress more than likely. She’s always out on a sunny day. So, maybe she’s out in Florida! Timbuktu, for all you know. For all it’s any business of yours. You’re turning into the worst kind of nosy parker, no wonder people glare at you and grab the children. She might have had a fall, an attack. Maybe I should knock at the door. And maybe she’ll call the police.

Katya crossed the lawn and sat the plastic bag of crabapples in the chair. She nipped a few deadheads from the overgrown peony bush and waited for a curtain to move. She thought the chair looked smug, as though it held a bustle of groceries in its lap. She moved the bag, leaning it against the right leg. She walked out to the street, dropped the dead flowers into the gutter and looked back at the chair. It looked better, just resting, with a bag at its feet. She turned away.

MAUDE

Maude held still behind the kitchen curtains so long she felt faint and a ring of coloured geometry began worming at the edge of her vision. Dizzy, two cups of Ovaltine uneasily awash, she gripped the window frame and watched the bag lady ebb in a circle of light from the side yard. You forgot to breathe, y’old snoop! Snoop? Well, it’s my yard! Indignation and deep breaths brought her back to ground, lights and stomach subsided.

Who is she, anyway? Dumping her junk in my chair, picking at my flowers. What’s she up to? I’ve seen her, she’s by with her bags often enough. Where could she live around here? They don’t let rooms in the neighbourhood that I know of, too proud, even when they’re up to their blue perms in taxes. And they say her kind doesn’t want a roof anyway, wouldn’t thank you for it. Maybe she lives down the ravine. But she looks clean. What’s in that bag?

Maude parted the curtains and screwed up the bridge of her nose for a closer look. The plastic grocery bag leaned lumpily against the leg of the lawn chair. She considered terrorism, it was popular, and though she knew better, the plastic of the bag was implicated by association with a fuzzy idea of explosives. But no, the woman, even if she clearly was a foreigner – the sweater and the thick shoes gave that away – was too old for that sort of thing. Which also made abandoned babies unlikely. Anyway, this’s Toronto, for heaven’s sake, not Beirut, not even a drug-crazed bomber could mistake a brick cottage for an airplane. You wouldn’t think.

Drugs! Maude felt a flutter and made herself concentrate on a few breaths. Maybe that’s it, though, drugs! It’s a what d’you call it… A stake out! No, that’s the other way ’round, fool. A… drop! That’s it. Any minute now somebody else comes along in a grubby trenchcoat… no, a big Cadillac with black windows, with a fat cigar clenched in hairy knuckles and a huge egg of a diamond – bad taste, not right for a man really – and thick blue suits with bulges in the armpits – that must be a problem, you’d think, what with gun oil and leather polish and enough Brut or whatever to cover it all up, it must get awfully high, I suppose that’s why they like to own dry-cleaning places and laundries, not just for the money. …Or they might be Black, as Lizzie calls them, and have those stringy camel-crap hairdos, or motorcycle drivers from Quebec, maybe, and they grab a shopping bag full of cocaine and heroin and what-have-you right out of my chair and take it down to Chinatown, or Harbourfront, they like boats, and jump on it, or something, and before you know it the boy next door is collecting television sets instead of bubblegum cards.

Maude sucked her dentures in disgust. Get a hold of yourself, you old fool, it can’t be dope in Davisville, the houses are detached, besides that woman’s not dark enough to be Italian and the men do it anyway, women are too busy making tomato sauce commercials. She reflected a sour face in the window pane. You’re going to end up with your ass in a sling one of these days, if you go on like you do. You don’t know a joke when you hear one. It’s not me I’m worried about hearing it, you’d better watch your tongue, they’re making laws about some of the things you think. Oh, for Christ’s sake! Sometimes you’re as stupid as Lizzie. Go out and look in the damned bag. Maybe it’s kittens.

ELIZABETH

Snatching her coat from a hanger, Elizabeth Preston was angry enough to slam the closet door, but she had discovered when she and George had moved into the Moore Park house after the death of his mother that the thick oak doors swung on their hinges with such ponderous certainty, such a weight of invested dignity, that the wildest temper could accomplish no more than a self-assured thunk. The wardrobe drawer from which she chose a pair of brown kid gloves was as discreet, sliding home on waxed runners. Her heels could make no noise on the thick carpet of the upstairs hall and for the sake of release she made an unnecessary stop in the bathroom at the top of the back stairs to check her hair and slam down the lid of the toilet seat. She felt calm enough then to descend to the kitchen and speak to Mrs Quaid, “It’s such a bore being an impor… well, having an important position, really, a responsible position…” She hesitated in her stride across the kitchen and glanced at her housekeeper. “It’s important to be responsible, isn’t it, Mrs Quaid? You being Scottish, you know what I mean, you being such good managers.”

Mrs Quaid nodded her lean grey head over the row of salt cellars and the tin of polish ranged before her on the big work table. In fact, she was Polish and had married a liberating quarter-master’s clerk, but Elizabeth having been presented with a dry little body, a wrinkled pucker of a mouth and a name, had assumed during the interview that she was getting a Presbyterian gentle-woman down on her luck, cheap, and Mrs Quaid had seen no reason in ten years to correct the mistake. She seldom needed to speak, affirmation being the expected response to most of what Elizabeth had to say, and she had learned from her husband to say ‘ach aye’ for formal occasions.

“I mean it’s so aggravating to have important things to do in the community, necessary things, and then have an irresponsible agoraphobe for a sister. Because that’s what she is, you know, no sense denying it! George says she’s just a private person. Private my eye, she’s crazy! And I’m beginning to think it’s worse than that, some of the things she’s said to me lately. I think…” Elizabeth lowered her head with her voice, “It’s Alzheimer’s.” She noticed that Mrs Quaid hadn’t nodded. “You don’t know, you haven’t seen her.” To which the housekeeper could agree, although she thought the sister probably preferred privacy to Mrs Preston’s telephone calls. Mrs Quaid heard only one end of the conversations and that was more than enough.

“I wasted half the morning trying to call her about tonight, and no answer!” Elizabeth hovered by the telephone on the kitchen counter tugging a glove onto one hand and examining a silver wire basket for missed tarnish. “I’ve a million things to do and George won’t let me have the driver even though this whole reception business is for his benefit, the bank’s anyway, says it’s a waste of the man’s time and the bank’s money, if you can believe that! What else are they for, I’d like to know? Just because he likes to walk! I’ll never find a place to park. Men!” She lifted the receiver, punched buttons with a gloved finger, tapped a brown, ostrich-covered toe on the linoleum, “She’ll make me late for… Maude? I’ve been half the day calling you. I’ll be late for my hair. Why weren’t you answering? I have to find shoes yet, thought I had them, but they’re a bit… you know… afternoonish. Why didn’t you answer? I’ve a committee at four and I’ll probably have to…”

“G’day, Lizzie. Fine, thank you. And yourself?”

“Fine, thank you. Busy of course, but why haven’t you…”

“I won’t keep you then. My tea kettle’s wearing a scarf and there’s a dope ring operating out of the side yard, but everything’s fine here. You get your curlers out and go find some nice bedroom slippers. Bye.” And the connection was broken.

Elizabeth stared in disbelief at the dead receiver in her hand, a flood of panic weakened her knees and she clutched at the counter, sending the wire basket skittering across the formica. “She’s gone!” Mrs Quaid rose in alarm from her chair. “Right around the bend.” Mrs Quaid subsided with a nod, thinking there was room for another opinion. “I’ll have to call… No!” Elizabeth gasped at the memory of the ambulance sent chasing to Maude’s door and noticed that she was soaking wet under her clothes. “God, I can’t go anywhere like this! I’ll have to change. Damn her!” Her jaw tightened, her knees locked and she punched out the phone numbers with a knuckle, “She can’t do this to me!”

“Hello, Lizzie. D’you call the ambulance yet?”

“Damn you, Maude!” Elizabeth felt a rush of hot tears. “Why do you have to do this to me? Frighten me half to death. You like to hurt me, don’t you? You’re a sadist, Maude, you’re cruel and mean acting crazy like that. Why don’t you grow up!”

“Don’t you forget who powdered your pink bottom, Little Beth!” Maude was nervous. Pretending to the drug drama in her yard helped beat the boredom, but she had found the kettle dressed in a scarf in her refrigerator. Despite that, she was less afraid of the tricks her mind might play than of its retreat altogether, exhausted and paranoid, defeated by Elizabeth’s relentlessly pursed lips. It was a risk, but… “Does it never occur to you that you make me crazy? Nag and whine, do this, do that, you’d be nice if you’d do this, you’d be happier if you’d do that! You talk to me like a halfwit!” Maude sucked a breath that trembled in her throat, “If you can think of anything to say that I want to hear, Lizzie, say it. Otherwise, get off my phone.”

There was a moment of silence while Elizabeth considered her angle of attack, surrender being unthinkable with Maude talking such nonsense. She needed help whether she knew it or not. “They say they’re the last to know.” Elizabeth mouthed in a whisper to the housekeeper. And her voice was soft with concern when she spoke into the phone. “I’m worried about you, Maude dear. I was just saying to Mrs Quaid that I think you may be having just a little trouble remembering some of…”

“Are you deaf? For Christ’s sake, Liz…” Chuckling with frustration, Maude sank onto the chair beside her telephone table. “Forget it. Don’t think. What do you want?”

Elizabeth gripped the insides of her cheeks with her teeth, shifted her position and drew a long breath through her nose, “We shall expect to see you at eight, then.”

Sensing a trap, Maude’s shoulders tightened against the back of the chair, “What? Where?”

“You see?” Elizabeth snorted out the long breath and with eyebrows raised threw a knowing look at Mrs Quaid who caught it without lifting her head. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? I told you ages ago about the reception. Didn’t you pencil it down? It’s not as if your calendar’s swamped with engagements. Funny you shouldn’t remember something I’ve told you.”

Maude fought a scream by crushing her eyelids. “What reception are you talking about, Elizabeth?”

“The reception at the bank, Maude. The rather grand little gala I’ve arranged to celebrate the new interior, Maude. You can’t have forgotten the bank’s having a re-do, can you, Maude? You know, that place where George keeps your money, dear. Actually, it’s gorgeous!” Elizabeth suspended hostilities out of enthusiasm. “It’s the main foyer really that’s the centrepiece of it all, three stories now, all glass and creamy grey marble, very elegant, all the counter things, the wickets or whatever you call them, all that sort of thing’s been put behind an enormous wall, so it doesn’t look commercial at all, you see. It’s stunning, you’ll love it.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes, you will when you see it, believe me. Very handsome. Almost Greek, Maude!”

“No.”

“Well, maybe not Greek, not that black olives and goatmeat sort, anyway, grander, you know, classical, very cool and simple. Except for a sort of balcony thing that’s… Well, never mind, it’s post-modern apparently and I’ve solved that problem. That’s why you have to come, Maude! The Board asked me to chair a search committee – I can’t believe you’ve forgotten this – I was asked to find something good in the way of art, something to display the finer aesthetic, you know, to show that the bank’s not just cash and carry. It gives people something to look at, lets them feel more at home, of course, they won’t have anything as good at home, but then they aren’t banks, and wouldn’t you know I’d find a really brilliant painting – I just do have more feeling for this sort of thing – an absolutely guaranteed work of art that’s the perfect touch, the colours and everything, I just can’t tell you, Maude! So, you see the reception’s as much for me, for the art, as it is for George, for the bank!”

“No.”

“Oh, it is, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to deal with, the organization, those hospitality people are hopeless without someone who knows how these things are done. Thank god for young Martin, at least he’s handling the painter woman for me, I wouldn’t know what to do with that sort. I don’t imagine you’d know him, Martin Knight, his mother was at Havergal, Madge Stevens she was. Lovely boy, so helpful, Madge was always a bit flighty though she has the best taste, but he seems very sensible. Anyway, he’s an agent more or less in a nice way, not pushy the way some of them are, always talking money and investment potential, as if art isn’t above all that, and he found a woman who’s not that well known so she’s not asking the earth, thank god, though it still seems a bit steep considering Martin says she’s not forty and we don’t have her at the Gallery, but Madge had a look apparently and it’s a big picture, so it’ll help that wall, insure the integrity of the surface, Martin says, a coup, a very definite statement. So, you can’t say no, Maude, you have to come. Your navy silk’ll do, I suppose. You still have it? And shoes?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s happened to that pair of court shoes that you… Oh, never mind, you need something with a newer heel anyway. I’m taking back this pair that aren’t quite right this afternoon. I don’t know who makes up these sizes, somebody with bound feet, I wouldn’t be surprised, not that these aren’t Italian, but you know they just don’t put in the leather the way they used to. So, why don’t I pick you up at…”

“No.”

“You be ready and I’ll…”

“I’ve got shoes. I’m not going…”

“Well, why did you say that you didn’t? Honestly, Maudie! I imagine they need a good cleaning, though. You do that. I have to run now, but I’ll call later. You can look nice if you try, dear. Ciao for now.”

“Bugger off, Lizzie.” But it was a half-hearted stab into a dead receiver. Maude sprawled on the narrow chair, rolling her head side to side on the high hard back; she would have been in tears if she hadn’t been laughing.
Elizabeth stood for a moment smoothing her gloved knuckles, picked up the silver wine basket from the counter and pointing to a black smudge inside the pedestal base, replaced it on the cloth before Mrs Quaid, “It’s for her own good.” The housekeeper felt compelled to nod.

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