Chapter Ten

10

Anglican

Cowgirls

MAUDE

Maude couldn’t remember the last time she’d baked tea biscuits. For that matter, she couldn’t remember having started the batch of dough which waited squatting on the kitchen table while she rummaged drawers for a rolling-pin. Don’t think about it. Find the rolling-pin first, and then worry about how you got into this.

In a lower cupboard she found a packet of raisins, the box was red, and she remembered hearing that her husband was dead on the highway somewhere north, and remembered burying the rolling-pin under newspapers wet with potato peels in the Saniboy. She worked the raisins into the dough, squashed it flat as best she could with her hands, and cut out biscuits with the lid of the coffee pot. They’ll be hockey pucks for size, but I don’t see that’ll hurt. More likely to be senile, the age of that flour.

She patted remnants of dough into a ring. Since you’re on the subject, got any notion why you’re doing this? I like biscuits. Umhum. And? Well, it has been a long time, okay, but I can still do it, didn’t miss anything out. Sure? Pretty sure. So, why? Oh, God! Maude sighed and stared at the stove, feeling that something was forgotten.

George’d be glad to see me. I wonder if that woman’ll go, that Katya Saarila? She said not, but maybe her friend – she said she’d tell her – maybe she’ll change her mind. I’d like to see her again. It’s been… Maude chewed her lips and nudged the bridge of her glasses, sure she was missing something. A long time since I’ve talked to someone I’ve wanted to. That Katya really was worried about me. You egotistical old thing! I’ll take what I can get, thanks, few enough compliments around here. She’s nobody’s fool, a bit overworked about me in my chair or not, but she’s not just some soppy do-gooder with her nose up the neighbours. I don’t think. She’s got edges on her. Katya. Caught ya. I wonder if she’ll come back? Probably not. Sure was different from having Elizabeth visit. Warmed it right up in here. Warm! She’d known there was something; Maude switched on the oven, thought, hunted out an old tin baking sheet.

Mind you, if she has the gumption to wade through the Blake crowd, maybe she will go tonight. It sounded like her friend’d go anywhere. Wouldn’t George get a kick out of them? I’d love to see Lizzie’s face. I suppose she wouldn’t wear the rubber boots, but… whatsername… Bena? She sounds a treat. A Hungarian princess in full fig might dislocate Mrs Chairperson’s nose for good. I could stand to watch that. Maude slid the sheet of biscuits into the oven, wished them luck and turned up the heat.

I don’t have anything to wear. You never did… I don’t remember the last time I… There’s a lot of that, isn’t there? Maybe it’s time you did something new, sort of fill up the gaps. But I… Who cares? It’s your own sister, after all. Exactly! And George, he’s always glad… Yes, yes, but a party! Big deal, wear a skirt, wear a coat, take a cab. Leave early. If Katya isn’t there, she won’t be back here. What’s to lose? The worst you can do is have drinks on Elizabeth and have George send you home in a car. Maude glared at the clock, marched into the livingroom, and gave herself fifteen minutes of Let’s Make A Deal.

When the commercials thickened, she went back, switched off the oven and took out the biscuits. She had finished off two with butter and jam and was reaching for a third. You won’t get the zipper up. I’m not going. I think you should. I think it’s time you grew up and… Maude side-armed the third biscuit into the face of the refrigerator and realized that she was laughing. It’s a dare!

KATHERINE & DAVID & MARTIN

Katherine hunched on a hassock in the middle of her record albums looking for something, apprehensively sure that she wouldn’t find what she needed. What it was she didn’t know, a certain mood, a comfort. She shuffled stacks. A Billie Holliday cover held Slim Whitman. Exasperation became depression, resignation, predestination, magic – if cowboys it was, then cowboys it would be. She poked Slim with the spindle and the doorbell rang. She adjusted the volume, hummed her way to the door and opened it to Martin, “I remember youooo… you’re the one who made my dreams come trueooo… come in, come in! Oh, flowers. Blue flowers. Paint them yourself?” She accepted a tissue cone of dyed carnations and a bottle of screw-top hock with a sour twist of lips and a batting of lashes.

“Sorrr… eee!” Martin bridled in confusion. “I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of time to run about after hanging your picture, racing home to shower and change in five minutes to rush to your house with a gift in each hand. The flowers are what was left in the cart on the corner and the bottle’s left over from a party; you said fish, it’s white. You want to look at its teeth?” He removed a pair of pale pigskin gloves with the intensity of a stripper and shrugged out of a Burberry without missing a beat, “When and if, my dear, I am able to flog you and yours with any degree of regularity, I will bring you a dozen long-stemmed Signy Eatons and an early Rothschild. You are the artist. Until then there is always Ripple, and petunias in the park.”

Katherine looked at him with what could have been real hatred, tucked the bottle firmly into an armpit and rapped him smartly on the nose with the carnations, “Thank you for the flowers, Martin. They match the atmosphere.” A silent truce got his coat hung in the closet and her appraisal of his suit went unsaid. She figured that a jacket without vents must be hiding something. “That new?”

“Umhum.” Martin dressed according to Gentleman’s Quarterly, which he hid beneath stacks of Vogue and Architectural Digest, pretending that his wardrobe was an act of God. “Nothing special. You like it?”

She hated smugness in other people. “You gaining weight?”

He glared at the bottle of wine under her arm and raised his hand to a glass-holding position, “Do you know, I heard David was seen with…”

She cut him short. “There’s an open red, want some?” She strode to the bar, the blond wooden pulpit, set down the bottle from under her arm and slapped the carnations beside it. She filled two glasses, in no mood to hunt for the one she had been using, and fitted one into his outstretched fingers. “Thank you for taking care of things for me, Martin. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She buzzed his cheek. “Did it hang all right?”

“Of course. It looks like it grew there.”

“Marble mould. Yuk! Boring.” Katherine sipped and brooded over the record piles, looking to replace Slim. She remembered and whirled toward Martin, slopping wine on her wrist. “Hey! Oh, hell! I’ve got a surprise in the workroom. Go look. Give me your hankie.” She grabbed for a bit of silk poking from his breast pocket.

“Like hell!” Martin dodged from her reach, stooped behind the pulpit and came up with a napkin. “Here.”

“Go look.” Katherine mopped and gestured and mopped again. “Go on. I’ve finished it. I think. So black, it gives me goose-bumps. Go look.”

“Where’s David?”

“Just showering. Go! I want to know what…”

“He’s leaving?”

“He packed. Leave it alone, please, Martin. I want to know what you think.”

“Well, I think he’s a first-class ass…”

“No! I want you to look at the painting!” She grabbed his glass from him, refilled it, shoved it back into his hand and steered him by the shoulder, her nails in the seam, through a maze of furniture and plants to her workroom door. “You look. I’ll check on dinner.”

She hurried back across the hall, retrieved Martin’s flowers and wine, slowed to consider another record, but nothing came to mind and she picked up speed again into the kitchen tacked on to the rear of the brick cottage. The back pantry had become a bathroom when plumbing moved indoors and she was halfway there yelling, “David! Martin’s here!” and started, to find him behind her perched on the counter beside the sink, swinging his legs and lighting two cigarettes. He was cross-eyed watching the match find both tips. “Oh, there you are. Martin’s here. Why are you smoking two… What, in hell’s name, is the fish doing on the towel rack?”

Over the sink, by David’s shoulder, a large whitefish occupied a swing-out towel bar and cast a dead eye at Katherine. “We were just going to have a smoke and a chat. Here, Mac, it’s lit.” David fitted a cigarette between pouting lips and gave the fish a comradely pat just back of the dorsal.

“You’re nuts.”

“It’s his last meal, Katherine.”

“Then he’d better have a drink.” She offered her glass to the fish. “Oop, sorry.” She offered the bottle of white wine instead. The bouquet of blue carnations was clenched with the neck in her fist. “And he can have the flowers for his service.”

David raised an eyebrow, “Those are nice. Marty?”

“Who else?”

“The Blue Fairy.”

“Don’t start! I suppose I’d better put them in water.”

“Drown them? Good idea. God, they’re ugly.”

Wistfully, “At least somebody brings me flowers.”

He rolled his eyes, “Here we go.”

“It’s more like ‘here you go’, isn’t it?” She drooped. “And I get left alone with…”

David hopped from the counter and snatched the flowers from her fist, “…with Marty. I’ll deal with these. You won’t be alone for long. Scram. I’ve got a fish to stuff.”

Katherine’s mouth closed and she lingered, her gaze fixing on the square plane of David’s neck between collar and hair as he bent and reached and moved about the kitchen. She almost had forgotten that smooth firm flesh, so brave and bare, never more than half-protected by an upturned collar, a winter scarf. She obviously hadn’t been standing behind him in… God, how long? Seeing it new again and perfect, she whimpered. The tears ran quietly at first, but when David didn’t turn she started to snuffle, and when he began measuring ingredients aloud and walked right around her getting butter and eggs, her cheeks blew out in a long, wet bawl.

David turned from the counter, tossing and catching an egg between hands, and gave her a weary sigh. He shook his head. “There are worse things in the world, Katherine. Maybe it doesn’t seem like it, but there are.”

“Like what?” She pouted it out between sobs.

David was patient, “Like… oh, death, I suppose, for one thing, or rickets. You could have bowed legs, Katherine. Death’s worse than separation. It’s forever. We can meet for lunch any time you like.”

“It’s not the same!” She was rebuffed and sucked her tears back indignantly. “I guess I just feel things more than you do.”

His patience suffered a relapse, “You’re right, it won’t be the same. It’ll be different, and who knows, maybe it’ll be better,” he set the egg down in a bowl behind him, “or maybe it won’t. Depends. It’s not death, Katherine, the fish is dead, and we’re going to eat him. Marty, too.” David swooped his arms in an impresario’s gesture, “And we’ll wash him down with a flood of wine, and we’ll put on the dog for Tillie and Bea, and strike forth on your triumphal march into the moneyed halls of patronage, and tomorrow you’ll wake up with the same urge for coffee and a cigarette as you do every other day of the year.”

“That’s why, isn’t it?”

“Why what?”

“Because I smoke too much. And I have to have coffee before I can talk. That’s why, isn’t it? I look like shit in the morning. I’m not eighteen, my hair…”

“Where’s Marty?”

“In my room. It’s because I don’t…”

“Go play with him. Go on! You’ll make me crazy. You want to eat? Leave me alone, beat it, scram, shoo, I’ve got a job to do on this fish.”

Katherine held him with a long, baleful look, wrinkling her nose in a last hard snuffle, and turned on her heel, “You should have turned the oven on ten minutes ago.”

MARTIN & KATHERINE

Martin nosed around Katherine’s workroom looking for something to like. He riffled a pile of pencil drawings, a run of flowers caught his eye. Her skill was apparent, a pair of tulips, a clump of poppies, a single flag iris were alive on paper. He sank into a deep breath and felt grateful. He took another long look at the black painting, a three by five foot canvas standing on the easel. Little in life had prepared Martin for abstraction, his experience, by preference, had been securely concrete, in style baroque, and the non-representational tended to raise his blood pressure and leave him with a chill. The painting was black. A black picture. Mystification made him resentful. Was she crazy? Was she full of crap? Was he too stupid to understand? Why wouldn’t she paint the flowers instead? The most they ever got to be were thin watercolours tightly framed in fashionably painted bathrooms. But this! He cocked his head side to side, looking with one eye, the other, both. What did he know from Rothko and all those whatstheirnames? He had no choice, he’d have to trust her on it, have to keep an eye out for potential and a step ahead of embarrassment.

Katherine sidled up behind and rested an elbow on his shoulder, “So, what d’you think, Martin?”

“I think he’s a cretin. My cleaning lady said she saw him with…”

“That! Damn you!” She jabbed her arm past his face at the black painting.

Martin turned his head slightly and deliberately studied her hand. Large, thick-veined and surprisingly old, it stabbed a red-nailed finger and trembled with force. He wanted to bite into the fleshy edge of the palm, but knew instinctively that she wouldn’t laugh and might well break his nose. He exercised his jaw three or four times for pride’s sake. “Well, it’s really very… clean, isn’t it? I mean… pure form, I guess, non-symbolic…” Katherine snorted. “…or, well, you know… totally symbolic, eh? uh… black hole, like, and uh, dirt, earth, the earth, maybe. Widows! Portuguese neighbourhoods, yah… not the houses, the women – black dresses, coats, stockings, everything. And punks! Black leather and police boots and kohl, for black eyes… bikers… Chinese hair, uh… Night! Night, for sure. And the ace of spa…” Martin’s mumble died as her hand twitched before his nose, was cocked back by her elbow and dropped to her side.

Katherine blew out a sigh like a bored hound. Why on earth did she bother? She was damned if she’d tell him to look for the colours so painstakingly secretted in the painting – green, her favourite Hooker’s green, a couple of blues, reds, a purple, violet – all in there, carefully built layer atop layer, each hiding and revealing the others, all there, all being black, being paint, being colour. Why did Martin have to have a symbol when there obviously was none? She was an artist, for Christ’s sake, if she’d wanted a symbol, she’d have made one! Sometimes she wondered whether he had any critical sense at all. Then again, did it matter? As long as he liked to deal with the crap, the framing and the galleries and hanging and people… as long as he made her money, did it really matter what he thought about anything? “What did your cleaning lady say?”

“She saw him on the subway with Jeannie Anderson.”

She put her hand to her belly to break the fall of her heart. “Polly’s girl? But she’s…”

“Seventeen and gorgeous. Maybe eighteen.”

“Oh, they were just… ” She bit down hard enough to crack her voice, “…that’s not… it’s just coincidence.”

“Ha! You’re the one who says there’s no such thing as coincidence – it’s all part of the pattern, Martin, it’s all magic, Martin,” he went for control, “They weren’t just! They were…” He was stopped by her humming violence shoving past him to the easel.

“Isn’t this wonderful? I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Martin held his breath, afraid of her, afraid that he had gone too far with the truth, his truth, any truth that contradicted her truth. Like God with His Garden, she might put him out on his ear. He stepped carefully, “It’s different.”

“Umhum.” Her fuse sputtered and went out. “Apparently, things are going to be different around here. Maybe better, maybe not, but the word is that it’s not death, Martin, it’s not death.”

“No, eh?” He made a run for higher ground, “Not rocks either, not like anything I’ve ever seen you paint.”

“I guess not, eh. Where d’you suppose it’s coming from?” She stiffened, “Never mind that. Let’s get another drink,” and aimed for the door.

Martin tried to hold her, “It’s sure not wonderful rocks, not like that outcrop of granite I hauled up the marble cliff today. Now that is your Work of Art!” His pigeon chest puffed with congratulation.

“Yah.” She noticed in a short breath that she had misplaced conviction and made a body search. “That one, the one at the bank, that one’s two hundred and thirty-seven dollars worth of runny plastic gone hard – and who knows how long before it falls off the canvas in chunks, or turns back into ooze. Probably end up running tractors on acrylic paintings someday. The damned thing’s the size of a billboard – Come See the North – true land strong and free – Rock Face National Park – see the North as it looked before Kilroy showed up with spray paint and beer cans.” She was alone with the solemn rock, unmoved, knowing. “In a way, that’s just what it is, a souvenir, a velvet cushion with Niagara Falls on it. First rockcut North, on the right… where I come from. I hope it’s as good as Paul Kane’s Indians.” Humility brought her back to herself. “So, I’m hung. And on approval. On a corner downtown. Looking to get paid.” She blinked and shook her head. “Jesus! I need another drink.”

KATYA & BENA

“It is a miracle, Katya.” Bena painted her nails at Katya’s kitchen table thinking about muscles, particularly the hard muscle on the front of the thigh, the one that stands like a collar bone when a man rests his weight on his knees. “A miracle.” She paused to trace a garnet nail up the purple crocus standing potted in the centre of the table.

“What is?” Katya licked the sauce-spoon, moved a pot from the heat and turned to Bena, “Even you could manage. Don’t get polish on that plant! Cooking’s no miracle. Oh, do you mean the flower? It’s not so hard, you just need to know how long the bulbs…”

“The miracle is that you should speak today to the lady in the chair, this Maude who invites us to the party, and that she should be sister to the one who insults us! Two miracles. And she should be the w… It is three miracles! You see, Katya, how Saint Catherine earns her candles?”

“The only miracle is that you’re invited. Clear up your mess and we’ll eat.”

“Poor Katya,” Bena tidied emery boards and polish into a heap and swept them into an embroidered clutch that puffed pink powder, “you have no faith.”
“Oh, I have faith.” Katya laid plates. “I faithfully believe that this is going to be a disaster. It’ll be a miracle if they let us in, and if they do, it’ll be a bigger miracle if we don’t get put out on our ears.”