Chapter Six

6

Anglican Cowgirls

MAUDE & KATYA

Crabapples! What the hell am I supposed to do with crabapples? Tie your belly in knots, useless things.

Maude wished she had the stomach for Elizabeth’s party. I’d be better off a cow, a stomach for dinner, one for drinks, one for storage and one for the godawful boredom of a group of us getting together. Best I can do is eat, drink and ruminate. No stomach for the crap.

She had snatched into her old cardigan, buttoning to the top, knotted the red scarf at her throat with a curtsy to the tea kettle, and marched out the kitchen door to the yard, to her chair.

Her foot poked at the plastic bag sprawled by the chair leg and a stray whip of wind snapped up past her knees. Damn! She pinned the skirt of her dress between her knees. Crabapples. What a bore. She looked overhead at the white arbour. Her own idea, hope really, that the abandoned plastic bag was a drug stash, drop, whatever, had been much more fun… hard men in narrow suits, boats without running lights off the coast of… France? Florida? Wherever.

Maude lowered herself into the garden chair, fists in sweater pockets, and sipped at the cold air, shuddering until the sun’s heat picked out the line of her hair. She did wish she had the kind of energy that would take her to Elizabeth’s reception, her little culture do. How hard can it be to look up at a picture, have a few drinks, maybe chat up old George? It’s just not something I can manage alone anymore. She rubbed her nose tingling with cold. Set to kiss a fool, I could almost miss Harry. Harry’d shake hands with a corpse.

Harry had talked accounts with widows at wakes and Maude had finally abandoned him in Deep River when home had become a bathroom between clubs, and when he had tried to relieve her of the distillery stock he had married her for in the first place. If the silly bugger were alive tonight, he’d be front and centre in a fresh haircut and shoeshine, smearing Lizzie’s makeup and glad-handing corporate suits at George’s elbow.

Give over, Maudlin, it doesn’t do to bad-mouth the passed-over. And that he was. Oh, bad! She winced, for Harry had been backed over by a drunken Lion escaping a Jamboree. You should be spanked! Go in and get yourself a book, raise the tone around here. Maude took her hands from her pockets to push out of the chair, and there was that woman again on the edge of the yard.

The black rubber boots with the brick red soles might have been more obvious, if it weren’t for the dress pattern, bold enough to hold down a sofa. The woman dangled a string bag from one hand and her shoulders were wrapped in what might well be a car rug worked with a pattern of magenta… Maude squinted… Horses? Horns. Deer? Bringing Maude to a conclusion, “You aren’t Italian.”

“No. Finnish.”

“Finish what?” Maude’s fingers tightened on the chair arms.

Seeing the fingers curl on the white wood, Katya thought for a moment that she had stepped into a snake-pit, but running the words again in her head, she heard the problem and smiled, “Finnish. From Finland. I left a long time ago, but,” she looked down at the length of her dress, “I like the cloth. It takes a lot of colour against all that snow.”

Maude grunted, “Foreign used to mean the Irish linen room at Eaton’s.” She relaxed back into her chair and recognized the figures woven into the heavy shawl, “Reindeer. Pushing the season a bit, aren’t you?” She glanced at the shiny black and red rubber, “I thought Finns wore felt boots. You going dancing?”

Katya’s smile stayed fixed to her lips as she studied the woman’s eyes. The years of passing by, the quick glimpses, had revealed nothing but that she was alone. The eyes held. Not crazy, but possibly nasty. “The boots are for revenge. I have a friend, a woman who makes remarks about my clothes,” Katya paused and ran her eye over the woman’s cardigan, found a moth-hole and met her gaze, “she wants me to look respectable – Wear a nice skirt! You should have maybe a jacket to match – like the preacher’s wife. I’m fed up with her. She thinks she’s a princess, or something.”

“She Finnish?”

“Hungarian.”

“They’re all princesses.” Maude broke into a grin, nothing wrong with this woman, “The Russians took it all, of course.”

“Oh, huge estates, herds of horses!” Katya swept her arm with the imagined weight of Bena’s bangles.

“Makes you wonder how the peasant got in all that hay by himself.”

Katya laughed, “The Imperial Hungarian Gypsy is in for a surprise.” She stomped the heels of her boots, “These are Canadian content. I’m meeting her at the Art Gallery. With any luck she’ll abandon me and I can go look at the Pissarros.”

Maude approved. She imagined herself wearing rubber boots into the foyer of the Imperial Trust, clomping up to Elizabeth with a string bag in one hand, cocktail in the other, watching her sister’s nose dislocate with horror. She offered her hand, “I’m Maude Matthew.”

“Katya Saarila.” The grip was firm and held through the length of a smile.

“I’ve seen you a lot, you and your bags.”

“Yes.” Katya felt herself blush and pointed to the spilling crabapples, “Those are from the park. They’re good, not many bruises and no worms. The jelly’s nice, but some people don’t have the patience. I’ll take them back, if you don’t want them.”

“What made you think I’d want them?”

“I… Well, I’m not sure… I’ve seen you out. Sitting. That’s… And I thought…” Katya pulled at her shawl and felt foolish, she couldn’t very well tell this Maude Matthew that she’d feared the worst, that the bag of apples had been an offering, “I thought… Well, I don’t know. I gathered them. And… and I had some pears. There’s a house three blocks up and over where they don’t care, the pears’d rot on the ground. There’re more yet, a few days, they’ll be down. I filled a bag and then Bena… She’s the one, the princess… she found me and we had coffee in a restaurant. That Swiss place next to the Royal Bank. I don’t like the place, but it’s hard to say no to Bena. She made a traffic jam for an excuse, but she doesn’t listen very well. And I went to the park for the apples and there was one of those mothers,” Katya wagged her head back toward the street, “With a baby, her boy, and she was rude because I had all my bags…” Katya stopped and made herself look at Maude Matthew, “And you weren’t in your chair, and I thought something must be wrong, but I didn’t want to… you know… So I left the bag… I thought it…” She trailed off in embarrassment, “I’ll take them back.”

Maude was uncomfortable. She was well accustomed to Elizabeth’s solicitous nagging, but this was a basic stranger who, oddly enough, seemed to have noticed her. “What did you think was wrong?”

“Ohh!” Katya could feel the temperature rise in her rubber boots, “I don’t know. Maybe a button had come loose, on your dress, and you had to sew it. Or the telephone, I thought of that, someone called. Or your kettle might be slow… or… I thought you’d be here!”

At mention of the kettle, Maude skipped a breath in panic. Finding the kettle full of milk and wearing her scarf in the refrigerator had given her pause, no matter if she could laugh it off to Elizabeth. She gave Katya a dry look, “Or dead from a slip in the bath, eh, or down the cellar steps, or the working half of me stiff with a stroke. Or… You’re warm with the kettle. Would you like a cup of coffee, by the way? Or tea? I could make us a cup.”

“Well…” Katya looked at her wristwatch, “I gave myself time to walk. I’m to meet Bena at four… I suppose… I’d like it very much, yes.”

“Which?”

“Coffee, please.”

“You’re going to see the Blakes?”

“Yes. Someone, her latest man, gave Bena tickets. He’s too important to go. She says. I’d guess he’s afraid to be seen with her. It’s hard not to be seen when you’re with Bena. I’m not that fussy about Blake, but I like to look at pictures and she wasn’t going to let me say no. She doesn’t know Blake from Bauhaus, but it’s an excuse to dress up. Her friend’s generous with the tickets and smart enough to stay home.”

“Me too.” Maude heaved herself from the chair and indicated the back door with a wave of the hand, “Let’s go in.” And led the way.

Katya looked at the empty counters, the bare table, the clean white shallow sink, and looked back at the woman lifting a kettle from the stove. She should weigh eighty-two pounds, wear a dry hanky tucked in her sleeve and glare at my fingernails; instead she’s round, damp and giving me coffee. These people aren’t what they used to be.

“My sister’s been bothering me to go,” Maude was rinsing and filling the kettle from the tap and turning, waved Katya to a chair at the table, “but I said no. Blake! The man masturbated paint.” She paused to see if this woman minded, saw watchful eyes, a curving lip held firm, a pair of red rubber soles tipped comfortably on their heels between table legs, and set the kettle on the stove. “She’s on a committee. My sister is. Every committee. My sister the Chair. A cultural butterfly. Moth! She chews at my clothes like your friend. Considers herself responsible for all and every drip of paint on the walls of the a.g.o. and anywhere else she can flog her ego and her husband’s job. No children. Me either, we’re the dried up udders of an old herd, but I just chew quietly, Lizzie has to give birth. Blake’s her latest calf.”

Maude set the mugs on the table, “It’ll be a minute. D’you have children?” and returning, took a can of coffee and a filter from a cupboard shelf.

“A son!” Katya’s voice was happy with relief, she’d feared instant coffee, “A boy. A man, now, of course.”

Maude heard the enthusiasm and hesitated with the filter cone, oh dear, here we go, me and my mouth. “Wonderful to you, is he?” She tried to sound bland and heard only sarcasm. “D’you like muffins?”

“Yes, but don’t go to any bother.” Katya took a deep breath and spoke without quite knowing why, “He’s something of a twit, really. I’m afraid I don’t like him.”

Something in the voice, pain perhaps, prevented Maude from turning to the table. “Store-bought, but let me check and see what they’re wearing,” she opened a drawer and peered into a bag, “Just raisins. Things happen,” she glanced at the rubber boots, “I do things… sometimes I say things… I get a little absent. Harmless. Unless somebody else is paying attention.”

“He lives in Finland. He builds beautiful boats. Fishing boats, just like they’ve always been built, but he struggles with God. It’s tiresome. God doesn’t fight. He is my son and I honour that, but I don’t want him near me.”

“I have a sister.” Maude swung gently from the sink, “Relations deserve points for perseverance. It encourages them. I try not to judge mutts when I can help it. You’re brave to see the choice and forgiven in the choosing. And then you live with it. Have a muffin.” Maude flipped the bag of muffins onto the table and opened the fridge for butter. “D’you take milk?”

“No. I…”

“Good. I’m out.”

KATHERINE & BEA
& TILLIE & DAVID

Beatrice picked up the cheque. There wasn’t a real objection from the others. Tillie murmured and subsided in ritual protest, she never carried money anyway. Katherine’s hand went to her bag, but she remembered too well that lunch had been her mother’s idea and restrained herself. Bea asked David what the tip should be and he insisted on paying that, at least, which she had known he would. She counted out the dollars with enough concentration to raise Katherine’s blood pressure.

Busy with the end-of-lunch clean up, the hostess missed most of the conversation, but none of the meaning, as Bea groped under her chair for her purse, as David glanced at the bill and laid money on the tray, as Katherine snatched at it and vigorously shook her head, claiming he was too generous considering that she had had to yell and wave for service and that the ashtray hadn’t been emptied nearly often enough. David offered to let her take care of the tip, but she said no, no, go ahead, spoil the help, it wouldn’t matter to her, she never came here anyway. That much the hostess heard, straightening knives at the next table. She fingered a pin fastened to her green lapel. She despised the smiling mouth and Have A Nice Day, but it came with the polyester and the turkey. She would have kept her distance, but that cheap, noisy, overdressed… hooker! She remembered the soft molar with the temporary filling and made her jaw relax…

She thanked Beatrice, hoping that everything had proven satisfactory; for Tillie she made the little bow she had been taught to make to her own grandmother. David was so… inviting, and the laughter in his eyes so tickled her – she touched the filling with her tongue – that the hated smiling pin came into her hand and she reached out at Katherine, “I think perhaps that you have lost this?”

MAUDE & KATYA

“That’ll be my sister, her nails must be dry,” Maude finished refilling Katya’s coffee cup, set the pot back on the burner and went to the ringing telephone.

“Liz, dear, hello. Can’t talk now, dear, I’ve company. Your hair looks nice. Bye…”

“Because it always looks nice. No, no one you know. No. No. None of your business, dear.”

“No, don’t bother then, either. No, I’m just not up to going tonight. Fine. Of course I’m taking them, every pill in the house and washing them down with gin! Oh, for pete’s sake, it’s a joke, Elizabeth. I’m just not up to your kind of party magic, my cheeks are past it, smiling like a butcher at a cattle show. Grim fun, I’m too old, dear.”

“Don’t bother to call again ’cause I won’t change my mind. I can barely find it. I have to go now, my company. So you have a nice time and tell George to have one for me. Goodb…”

“No, I haven’t heard he’s ‘over-indulging.’ George’s an under-indulger by birth, Elizabeth, you’re his only extravagance, dear. And worth every penny of it, too.”

“No! Recently? How often? That doesn’t sound like drink to me. I’d be grateful, if I were you. Make the best of it, dear, pretend you like it, think of the nice things in Holt’s lingerie department. Bye!” Maude placed the receiver firmly in the cradle and returned to her company.

KATHERINE & BEA
& TILLIE & DAVID

“Well, I don’t think she was just being nice, Mother dear, I think she was being a miserable bitch!” Katherine punched her way out the restaurant door to the street. “Do I look like I’d be caught dead wearing one of those tacky pins?”

“Maybe in silver, with…”

Katherine furiously snatched back the elbow David had used to steer her out of range of the hostess and drove it into his shoulder. “Don’t you start! Don’t think I didn’t see you flexing your denims. She couldn’t keep her eyes to herself. Care for a little dark meat, David?”

“Katherine!” Bea’s voice was sharp with anger, and Katherine, her face shocked with itself and beginning to crumple, drew away hurriedly to a shop window. Her eyes were swimming with tears and she had to shut them cautiously, or lose her contact lenses.

“Sometimes that girl…” Beatrice shook her head at the shame.

“Oh, there’s no harm in her, Bea, she’s wound up for this business tonight, and rope’s a worry, you know, she thinks of those things. And then there’s… David, you go bring her along now.”

David touched an elbow gently, “Come on, Kate, take it easy.”

She carefully opened her eyes, he hadn’t called her that in a coon’s… oohh! a donkey’s age (never sure whether that’s a raccoon or a … you know). There was always love in his voice when he called her Kate. Maybe he was changing his… The shop window was full of wrapping papers, ribbons, bows, seasonal gold, rust, pumpkin, and at the centre lay boxes of cards, charming children in international yellow, pink and brown. Katherine whimpered, covered her eyes with a hand, leaned into David, took a deep breath and apologized.

MAUDE & KATYA

Maude flopped into a kitchen chair across the table from Katya, “The woman isn’t happy unless someone else has a problem, it gives her something to fix, ‘Bessie make better,’ trouble is she means better than you, not better for you. Now she’s on about George falling into whiskey pails and coming up dirty-minded. Silly woman thinks her husband’s a ledger with hair, drink’s not his problem, women are. Not that Lizzie knows, mind you, George’s a gentleman, but he likes a good pair of…” Maude petered out and her eye slid over the edge of the table to the tip of a rubber boot, “He has strange tastes. I’ve seen one or two of them. I guess I’m less of a lady, he doesn’t hide things from me. Must be a new one, Lizzie says George isn’t listening to her, which, odd as it may sound, is odd, George loves listening to her, he thinks she’s a riot. She goes on so much about everything that she manages to cover anything you can think of at least once, George does as he pleases and she thinks it was her idea. Mind you, she thinks he’s drinking. And he’s been frisky, so he must really be drinking. Dear Lizzie, she thinks they have to be drunk.” Maude sighed, “They always seem to be.” Then she smiled and nodded her head, “You’d like George, he’s an honest man. In fact…” Chair legs shuddered on linoleum as Maude snapped up and planted her elbows on the table to frame her face before Katya, “…in fact, you and your friend… Bena? Yes, you really must take the opportunity to… uh, to grace this reception of my sister’s, to meet George and… yes…”

Katya stared at the woman and heard her giggle. Katya felt her mouth twitch and heard herself say, “I wouldn’t have anything to wear.” She watched Maude’s eyes slide over the edge of the table again, and waggled her fingers, “No gloves.”

Maude’s chin rested on her knuckles in a beam of pleasure, she chuckled, “I mean, if your Bena likes to dress up… Well! This’s the big time, to the nines. In a manner of speaking. Believe me, a little goes a long way with this crowd, a decent length of Liberty and it’s finders keepers. But really, you wouldn’t even need to change… ‘just down from Caledon, sheep you know, hallo George…’ that sort of thing. Introduce yourselves to him, tell him I invited you. He’d love it, he really would. There’s a streak in George.”

She’s mad, Katya thought, silly mad from being alone, the way Bena’s mad from too much company. Searching for the livid colours of dangerous blood pressure, Katya saw wrinkled egg-shell skin loose on heavy bones and brown eyes sparking black behind bifocals. There didn’t appear to be any heart disturbance beyond a flush of pleasure, but then, at her age…

“It’s just not possible for me, d’you see,” Maude’s hand hovered protectively over her breast and Katya nodded smugly. “I panic in crowds.” Katya looked understanding. “So I tend to drink.” Now Katya felt warm. “And then I’m apt to say things I shouldn’t.” Katya held herself very still.

Maude shrugged and sighed, “It’s a social curse. Ask my sister. Two little ponies and I’m on my high horse, ‘To hell with the wind chill factor, let’s talk about life!’ My husband hated me for it. Harry, he liked to go and he couldn’t take me anywhere, I was no good for little-womanhood. A doctor in his foursome decided I was a dipso-maniac, didn’t know when to stop, so that made Harry feel better about his clubs. I think he let the boys confuse dipso with nympho and ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ I had to be kept under lock and key for his private pleasure. My god, what an asshole he was!

“Mind you, I think that golfer was right, I get a dreadful thirst in a crowded room, I suppose it’s the heat, and I never seem to find the door. Until somebody shows me. But that’s not something to worry about, nobody invites me except Lizzie and I just say no.” A thought surprised her, “Wait! Now why didn’t I… There ought to be some sort of invitation to this bank business.” She pushed from the table and stood, “There must be a ticket, something to control the rabble. Liz didn’t mention that when she called, but then she knows what I do with it, doesn’t she?” Maude strode across the kitchen to the swing door. “I’ll bet I’ve had one come. God knows I’m on all the rest of her lists when it comes to building wings and starving artists and whatnot. I’ll bet…” she jerked a jammed drawer from the telephone table until it gave grudgingly on a crush of grey envelopes. “I don’t bother opening bank mail, I never spend all I’ve got and George sends a young lad around when something needs signing; he clears this lot out every spring. There ought to be…” she brushed through the top layers, separating two or three windowless envelopes from the mass, dropped two which were obviously fat with brochures, frowned at the others, “It wouldn’t be paper, would it, Lizzie?” She felt with her fingers and prized a stiff crumpled envelope from under the lip of the tabletop. Ripping the flap with her nail, she pulled out a thick fold of vellum and turning waved it in triumph at Katya.

“Ta da! Your ticket to the circus, Madam. Come see the clowns and social lions, the fortune tellers, the canapé swallowers. Step up, step up and spin the wheel! Oh, Lord…” Maude screwed up her face in mock despair, “Poor old Harry died under the wheels of fortune. The one thing that got his pressure up was running a Crown and Anchor game; every Jamboree and Monte Carlo night he could find. Harry wouldn’t bet on water being wet, but he loved to stroke the wheel and slap the winners.” She noticed Katya’s puzzled eyes, “He slipped on some ice and went under the wheels of the equipment truck after a New Year’s do at the Odd Fellows Hall. I thought it was kind of fitting, you know, but I kept a straight face for the funeral.” She mistook a flash of pain in Katya’s eyes, “You think that’s cruel.” With a heave of breath, Maude returned to the table and sat, leaned back in her chair and stared down at the folded invitation in her hands.

“There was a day… oh, a year or so after we moved to Deep River, I was reading a book, just sitting reading… nothing important, I don’t even remember. But I noticed how unhappy I was, unhappy and old. Old!” Maude snorted, “Then, I was old.” She slapped the invitation onto the table. “I married Harry because he asked me and he asked me because he knew my bank balance. That’s how it happened, it was really that dumb. And there I was with a book in my lap like any other day wondering if I was going to feel unhappy for the rest of my life. I heard myself and I guess that’s when I started listening. I knew how to pack, so I did, moved here and bought this house where I wouldn’t have to know anybody. Well… Lizzie and George, but somebody has to have the extra key, don’t they? I’ve been sad once in a while, kind of wet and down-in-the-mouth, but that’s just hot milk and old movies.

“So then, when George came around to tell me Harry was gone, all I could imagine was the red and white and blue spin of his Crown and Anchor game, and it struck me maybe that had been his way – Harry’d never gotten overseas, hernias kept him down at the Armouries counting mess kits and cap badges – we still had the Union Jack then, and maybe the spin of the red, white and blue had been his way of waving the flag all those years.” Maude screwed her lips into a moue and raised her brows over her glasses for a look at Katya, “Well, it was a nice thought and that’s what counts.”

Katya’s breath burst with a giggle that sounded like sobbing before it caught in her throat and choked into coughing and cold tears. Covering her mouth with one hand, she squeezed her wind back into rhythm until she could take a two-fisted sip of black coffee, wipe her wet temples with the palms of her hands and apologize with a duck of her head.

“You wonder,” she paused to clear her throat, “You wonder why you think the things you do. My Arne, he was a lumberman all his life, his world was woods and trees, and when he died I thought, “How petty!” God has all the symbols, all the signs, the portents, the clichés, they’re all His and He couldn’t spare a single decent tree, not even one cheap spruce, to fall on my Arne’s head. Oh no, He killed him with a scrap of broken chain, a bit of rusty iron, cheap, no grace.” Deflated, embarrassed and angry together, Katya tried for sarcasm, “But then, He is supposed to work in mysterious ways.”

Maude relaxed, smiled and her voice was dry, “Oh, it’s a mystery, all right. People keep dying for no apparent reason, an Agatha Christie world without end. Everybody since Adam’s a suspect, but Poirot’s drunk on the elderberry wine and Miss Marple accuses the servants of everything, so the fire in the drawingroom never gets lit and the answer never gets given. It’s hell, is what it is, mindless, meaningless melodrama with a stick shoved through to hold it over the coals.” She had a thought, “Your husband… a chain… He wasn’t…” she didn’t know quite how to say it, “…he wasn’t… with chains, I mean, he…”

“Oh! No, no, no, an accident, a logging chain broke and a link caught him right between the eyes. Well, there you are, eh, it was a logging chain and Arne bought and sold trees and it happened right about the time people started getting worried about them, started to hug them, you know, so of course there’s all that kind of symbolism to it, if you like. But still, d’you see what I mean? Arne was a good man, he didn’t deserve that.”

It occurred to Maude that this woman didn’t get along with a son who made wooden boats and argued with God. Maybe this sort of thing was normal with Finns? Lutheran, aren’t they? Sense, not incense. Function before form. Finland’s a cold place, perhaps they’d rather God be practical and get on with delivering the loaves and fishes. Not that this country’s any warmer, she admitted, but we pretend the snow will go away at some point, and we’ve always had the French, and mostly a virgin Queen of sorts – Victoria, MacKenzie King, Elizabeth the Two – so we’re more or less used to rick-rack on the Bishop’s sleeve and God’s not really expected to shovel snow. “Does God ski in Finland?”

Katya stared at Maude in a lengthening silence, smelling an old ripeness of fish and hearing Saami’s patronizing claims for the tools he held Christ-like in his hands and she felt again her anger as she slammed his fish-house door. And she blushed again with the frustration of a too-late answer to his righteous self-indulgence when high over the north Atlantic a magazine display of Black and Decker had caused her to think her son would look a perfect ass if God were into power tools. “Cross-country on barrel staves.” She said it with a snort and drained her mug. “I must go now,” she began to rise, “Or I’ll be late meeting Bena.” She stood, collected her string bag, “I’d like…” she tidied her shawl, “I would like to come visit you again if you…”

“Oh, yes! Do. Come back and tell me what you think of the Blakes. And bring your friend. I’ll have milk, in case she takes milk. And here, you must,” Maude grabbed the card of stiff vellum from the table and shoved it into Katya’s hand, “You must take this and show it to her, to Bena, and maybe she would like to go. You should go. To the party. And you must come back, please do, you’ve given me…” she paused and a shy smile crept into her lips.

“You don’t want the crabapples. That’s all right, I’ll take them with me.” Katya slipped the invitation into a pocket of her dress.

Maude held the door and followed Katya into the side yard. “I’m not ungrateful, really, but I just don’t do much of that kind of thing any more. Never did, really. And since Harry… Well, I don’t get up to much at all.”

“Never mind, I know what to do with them.” Katya stooped to wrestle the plastic bag into her string bag, “When I come again I’ll bring jelly.” She straightened and extended her hand, “Thank you, Maude Matthew. I’m glad I stopped.”

“Thank you, Katya…?”

“Saarila.”

“Yes. I’ll tell you next time about the kettle, how close you were with that thought. And I do hope you change your mind and take your friend tonight. Introduce her to George, just ask. You can’t miss Elizabeth, she’ll be over-dressed and in the middle.” Maude pressed a hand in both of hers, “Thank you.”

BEA & TILLIE

“Could you not get closer, woman?” Tillie had demanded, when they had first arrived for lunch, “There are parking meters right out front of the restaurant, if memory serves.”

“Well, but if they’re full,” Bea had swung the wheel two handed and bowled the old Ford over the sidewalk, “then we’d have to go ’round the block again and I’m not sure but it’s a one-way street the wrong way coming back and look at all the room here, I won’t have to parallel park, it’s not easy you know, with this old thing, and they’d not tow from here, surely. Not Anglicans, d’you think?” Beatrice had never trusted the city and wasn’t prepared to find her car towed, stolen, crushed, or occupied by a bum with a bottle, which was why she parked it three long blocks from the restaurant at the back end of a church lot.

Tillie had stretched her legs in the autumn sun while Bea fussed around making sure that all the windows were up, all the doors locked. The old car was past practicality, it rattled, roared in high gear and drank oil, but Bea was attached to it, forgave it, felt safe in it. The two-tone white and navy paint had always been something warm, nice, she wasn’t sure what, but a safe feeling all the same and one that she was careful not to examine too closely in case it might be a vainly remembered pair of saddle-shoes. Vain, because she had had good legs and saddle-shoes could have proved it. Vain, because she’d already been a mother, an abandoned wife, and an object of pity when saddle-shoes were in fashion. Twice in her lifetime she had been tempted, had ventured into anonymous department stores with a view to pricing a pair, but what if she died and someone found them hidden in the back of her closet and…

KATHERINE & BEA
& TILLIE & DAVID

But the car was safe behind the church and Bea still showed a good pair of legs as she hoisted herself behind the wheel. She rolled down her window and Katherine, having kissed her grandmother’s ear, walked around the car with her head down, to be forgiven.

“I’m sorry, Mother.” She raised her eyes and smiled, “I’m really glad you’re coming tonight.”

Bea puckered, “Well, I don’t know about that for sure, we’ll see. But you just calm down, young lady, behave yourself and everything’ll be all right. There’s no need…”

“Drive, she said,” Tillie slapped a puff of dust from the seat between them and winked at David leaning in her window.

“For crying out loud, Mother, will you put your seatbelt on! I’ve said before I’m not driving around with you set to go through the windsh…” She remembered the crash of pans in the restaurant kitchen, the vision of her mother sailing through a shower of glass, the belly-flip of release, “Oh, dear.” She handed the lap belt buckle to Tillie to snap in place and disguised a surreptitious tug with a pat.

“See you about seven.” Katherine crossed the fingers of her right hand and waved them high over the windshield, “Bye, Gran, see you later!”

“You wear something gorgeous, Tillie, and I’ll do the cocktails.” David patted the roof and stepped back with a wave. Concentrating on ignition and clutching and tugging at gears, Bea missed her mother’s return signal of circled thumb and forefinger.
Engine gunning, the old car rolled cautiously out of the church driveway and with a grumble of power lurched into the flashing traffic. Katherine winced at the angry noise of braking and honking, but she watched until the car was over the rise and out of sight, hardly aware of the vague prayer at the back of her mind. It was the same half-articulated wish she made on the first star of an evening, on the snap of a wishbone, or when travelling, at sight of a pasturing white horse she would lick two fingers, slap her wrist and stomp the opposite foot, and thereby assure a safe journey, a welcome return, good health, long life, happiness, general prosperity and the occasional box of chocolates for everybody. It was, truly, a charm for herself; a dodging of the evil eye, black cats, drunk drivers, but she had learned to couch it in a larger concern for all mankind, to remember the hungry heathen, having been taught that the Deity frowned on greedy girls who asked only for Barbara-Ann Scott dolls and clear complexions. She’d have been embarrassed to think of it as a prayer.

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