PUBLIC PLACES : Part Two

"Look, Stupid ... have at Geneva, but lay off Sybil!"

"Geneva's a dog!"

"She'd let you do anything."

"Big deal, I've had her."

"You know Sybil's not like that."

"They all are, just some of them need encouragement."

"I'll be held equally responsible, anything happens. Remember what Dad said."

Finally, a promise. Not that he believed Hans, but he'd tried. "Christ! alright, alright, what the hell's the difference? She's nothing special."

Both girls lived in the main house. Geneva slept downstairs in a room off the parlour, with her mother. Mrs. Paull did the housekeeping for the Hulleys, cooked for them. Mrs. Hulley wasn't exactly sick but she never seemed well either, wandering around the big old farmhouse, a housedress-sloppy wraith.

Sybil played the flute and sometimes Curtis would see her practising outside, sun glancing off the silver rod as her fingers plied the keys. She practised between the boundary of the apple orchard and a grazing field where her father kept the steers. Curtis watched from the second story of the barn as she arranged herself on the grass, played scales, the sound floating thinly on the breeze. The sound there, yet not there. He strained to hear the eerily wispy strands and it seemed she might be teasing him.

Something about the reedy sound of the flute attracted the animals. Invariably, a group would sway ponderously through the field beyond to form a half-circle on their side of the fence, stupid heads lowered, twitching ears and tails against the everpresent flies.

In his dreams Curtis became a steer, was transformed to a bull, the appendage hanging hot, heavy with lust; he rammed the fence and ravaged Sybil. Clearly, he could see her face drenched with tears as she eluded him running, screaming and finally evaporating. He awoke mumbling, sweating, disgusted.

Mr. Hulley used the fixed-house method for his cattle in the winter, didn't bother to clean the barn throughout the cold months, so when spring came the building was a stinking morass. Curtis and Hans had the job of forking the offal-splattered hay onto a flat-bed wagon. Later it would be used to fertilize the fields, the sumptuous stench breaking down into the dirt, encouraging another cycle of growth.

There was a scoop running on a pulley, to pick up the stuff as they shovelled it into the centre lane of the barn. They came out splattered, clothes reeking, Curtis certain his pores were permanently clogged with offal. He'd never be able to wash clean.

When they trudged up to the bathhouse, if Geneva saw them she'd laugh. Once, Hans ran after her, grimy with ordure. She squealed like a panicked pig as he gained, finally threw her to the ground, covered her with his filthy clothing. Mrs. Paull flew out of the house, large and angry, shouted at Hans, told him he'd eat in the bunkhouse.

That night Curtis dreamed of tumbling Sybil on the manure-wagon. Wasn't she humbled? Lost her cool. Brought down to his level. Dainty Sybil who wouldn't soil her hands. Didn't she change? Pleaded with him to love her, didn't she? But nothing; the dream was inconclusive. He woke, couldn't recall what had happened. Stupid, really, to think of her like that. She was pure, virginal. Innocent and above or rather beyond, his puerile fantasy. Different, she was. Right, Curtis?

"What do you suppose's wrong with Mrs. Hulley?"

"Don't know, don't care. We're here for a summer job Hans, not to get involved with those people."

"Yeah, yeah. But aren't you curious?"

"No."

"Jeez, I bet you believe that shit Dad tells us about hard work and being in the country is character-forming, eh?"

"That's got nothing to do with it. I don't like them, can't be bothered. Now shut up and let me read."

Should have been asleep long ago. Had to get up early enough. Put in two hours before they even got breakfast. Shut bloody well up, Hans.

"Nothing wrong with wondering. I think she must have T.B. or something, the way she's always going around hacking. A rack of bones."

"Fine. Now we've diagnosed her, go to sleep."

"Hell, why should I? You're reading."

"I'm trying to read!"

"Hey, you really get off on that stuff, huh? Dad'd kill you if he ever saw you reading stuff like that. S'what he calls smut, isn't it?"

"Shut up!"

"Like I was saying, there's nothing to her, right? Right. Well, look at Mrs. Paull. A big woman like that. Jeez, let me tell you what I think...."

"Christ! I don't want to know!"

"...what I think, fact what I know is the old man's banging off Mrs. Paull. Now what do you think of that?"

"Shut up."

***************************************************************

It was a huge old barn, with a stone foundation. Boards so wide the size of the trees they were torn from must have been staggering. The boards had contracted slightly in some places so slender wires of light shone through into the barn during the day. Grain was stored in great bins upstairs. Field mice scuttled around in the bins. Rats too. Once, Hans pitchforked a huge black rat and they marvelled at the size of the noxious thing, joked about the Black Death. It had squealed ear-piercingly until Hans bashed it to jelly on one of the pine supports.

No real reason to be there in the loft that time of evening. Looking for privacy, that's all. Intended to light one of the kerosene lamps, do some reading, unmolested. Mr. Hulley would kill him if he found out. Always telling them about how easy it was to catch fire in the barn. But he'd be careful.

He was careful, quiet and stealthy, groping up the ladder. Careful not to arouse any of the brooding hens over on the other side. They'd cackle in their mindlessly panicked way and Mr. Hulley would hear the racket, might think a fox got in. He was quiet, all right. So quiet he could hear the rodents rustling in the grain.

But that was straw rasping around, not grain. And it was the husky voice of Mrs. Paull he heard not the scratching of a rat. Warm, not harsh the way it always was, the voice. Giggling, gurgling. What was she doing?

Hell of a thing if he got caught. No, they were the ones, not him. Making so much noise he wouldn't be heard if he fell down the ladder. Mr. Hulley's voice, asking nicely, not like it sounded when he ordered them around, but wheedling with her, guffawing when she giggled.

What's the hurry, Curtis? Stick around, maybe you'll learn something. think about it, what it might be like, hmmm? No use. He swelled all right, but the thought of himself thrashing about over the woman's huge flaccid body revolted him.

************************************************************

Town was nothing special, just a break from the farm. A hardware store, feed-and-grain store, lumberyard, fabric shop, supermarket. Two churches on dusty streets; the same edifices that steeple every small Ontario town, beside them the manses. One greasy-spoon, one poolroom.

In the fall, when the binder-twine festival called for celebration the town came alive, everyone happy, bashed. Banners strung across Main Street marking whatever anniversary was hallmarked; baking, sewing contests, plowing matches. Ordinarily though, dull, depressing. Streets running off the main thoroughfare where people lived, never coming out of their houses. Like Mrs. Hulley, wandering dully behind curtained windows. Sometimes a pot of bright red geraniums hanging on a wooden porch added a forlorn touch of cheerfulness.

Younger kids hung around the entrance of the pool hall, waiting to grow up. Older ones with surly mouths, challenging them; anything to relieve the boredom, the stiflingly cloistered, ingrown atmosphere.

At the community park Curtis left Hans and Geneva sitting under a willow dipping slender branches into the stream that bisected the town. Same stream that meandered through the farm, broadened out, ran off for miles, a ribbon of brightness.

"Aw, stay with us", Geneva pouted, asked as he walked away "what's the matter with him, anyway?"

"Jeez, he's queer, didn't you know?"

What's the matter, Curtis? Why so hot, so mad, so dissatisfied? Hey, what's the matter, Curtis?

Up the long heat-filled road, stones turning under sneakers, hardly any traffic, stepping on beetles, hearing them crunch. No good in anything, no satisfaction anywhere. What the hell is the matter? What's the matter with me, anyway?

A large arched gateway, wood, a sign: "Gracey Parklands". Nice cedar hedge, nice aroma; cedar. Rotten mosquitoes. Count them; killer.

All right, give it a try. See what lies beyond. Private property - so what, let them throw him out. Up the gravel road, into a park-like setting, the stream running through here too, sentried by willows hunched over the water, their leaves tumbling green, hiding the stream. But you could hear it.

Nicely tended grass, not the usual rank scrub. The road winding up the hill, and what's over the hill? Steps here fall soft, soft on the grass, in a hollow here, Curtis; nice. Wind picking up, tossing voices over there, over the hill. Like a dream, huh?

Have a look at the stream, wind through the trees, and there's a waterfall. Small, but a waterfall anyway, the water cascading in a silver flume. So that's why the water sounds so loud.

Sybil? Sitting there? No, not her. This girl has dark hair. Unreal, everything. Imagining things? Hey, is that someone sitting there, or nothing at all, through the curtain of leaves? Step on twigs, make some sound, so you won't surprise her, whoever she is.

Surprised anyway.

"It's all right." But she stands up, looking at him with the undecided, startled eyes of a doe.

She might feel threatened, he standing so much taller. Better to sit down, turn face to the water, hug knees as she had.

"What is this place?"

"Gracey Parklands."

"I read the sign. What's it mean?"

"It's a girls' summer camp. There aren't any boys here."

"I was just walking by. I'm working on a farm for the summer, not far from here. It's nice here."

"Yes."

"So that's all the noise I hear over there, then, campers."

"Yes. They've having games competitions."

"Not you?"

"No. I don't like to do those things. Besides, no one likes me. I'd rather be by myself."

If you want to look, then turn slowly. Hair pulled back in braids so tight her skin has a taut look, that's why her eyes look so big. Smile, Curtis, she'll smile back. See?

"I like to be alone too. Usually."

See? Nothing to it. She's reassured. Your intentions are merely friendly. Oh, cunning Curtis, and now you have a meek and mild companion, a little girl, oh what say, about thirteen? Those lumps are fairly undeveloped, she's tall and skinny, the shorts and tee shirt don't do much for her, but nice looking. And sitting right close beside you too, isn't that companionable? Voices over the hill thinner now, straining thinly through the leaves.

What's that? A rabbit? A hare. Nice, isn't it, just sitting here in quiet communion with nature and a nice girl for company. Oh, study the landscape Curtis, weigh the sounds, the smells, the textures and colouration of the arras. A remarkable composition, wouldn't you say?

"What's why I sit here. I see things when I'm still. Rabbits come out all the time. Groundhogs too. They browse, don't seem to mind if I'm sitting here as long as I'm still."

"Why doesn't anyone like you?"

"Why? Because I read too much and don't want to be with anyone. They said I can't get any books out of the camp library for the rest of the week. They said I have to get along with everyone."

"Oh. Who said?"

"The counselors. They're all right, but they say I've got to learn to socialize. I don't want to."

"I don't blame you. But what are you doing here at a camp, then?"

"My mother said it would be a good experience. That's what she always says when she thinks I should do something I don't want to do. She's just glad to be rid of me. I bug her. She doesn't much like me around."

"Maybe it only seems that way."

"Nope. I know how she feels about me. I like it here all right. But I don't like sleeping in a dormitory and I don't like eating in a long hall at a big table and I don't like not being alone when I want to, and not being able to read whenever I want to."

"Neither would I."

"My name is Alix. I hate my mother."

"Hmmm."

"Anyway, you better go now. No boys are supposed to be here."

Oh, not so quick, not just yet. Permit your eye to rove over the landscape Curtis, appreciate it. What a magnificent and solitary landscape. Impale the memory of it on your inner lens, paint it on the canvas of memory.

If he moved, quickly... No one would hear, the spot so secluded.

God, what was he, anyway? What was the matter with him! Was he sick? Or was there something like this in everyone?

"You going?"

"Soon."

"You better. If they find you here...."

They? Camp authorities. Counselors. Someone in charge. But there was no one near. The sounds from over the hill gone, nothing now but the sound of the water, some bird calls; the silence of trees thick in a conspiracy to shield him, them, from watchful eyes.

Bet she doesn't trust you, eh Curtis? Probably watching sideways out of the corner of her eyes while she's picking at the grass, there. Seems nervous, don't you think?

"Yeah, I'm going. Time for me to get back, I guess." Ask, why not ask, what can you lose, Curtis?

"Alix ... would you be interested ... if I came back next week. Would you be here?"

"Why? Why should I? And you're not supposed...."

"No one would know. I'll bring some books." Curtis, you're lonely, right? The other thing, that's what they call a momentary aberration. See? No more swelling, no ache, nothing. This skinny little kid couldn't turn anyone on.

"You don't look like someone who - like my mother's always saying, would molest me."

"Molest you?" Throat dry, feel strangled, swallow...come on!

"What do you ... forget it, what I said, about next week. It's not such a good idea, after all."

Laughing? At him?

"Molest! Like that? Stupid word! She can't even say rape or anything like that, my mother. Too crude. She thinks maybe the word would strain my imagination. Shows how stupid she is, telling me to look out for myself, not talk to anyone I don't know, not hang around parks, go out after dark, because none of those things helped and it was her own brother who looked after me. Good old Uncle Barnie. He was supposed to look after me. Well, he did that all right."

God! Her own uncle.... "That's sick! Didn't you tell anything? Your mother....?"

"My mother? Tell her anything? She'd say I made it all up. Punish me. Anyway, what's the difference, I'm telling you so you know I'm not as innocent as you may think. I can look after myself."

"Oh."

"What kind of books?"

"What...?"

"The books. You said you'd bring some books. What kind?"

******************************************************************

A bird rose in panic through the air bruised with the agony of her silent suffering. Her mouth huge, but no eruption of sound, nothing came out. Could she have screamed and I didn't hear it? No, no scream. Fast Curtis, you're damn fast.

Better leave now, Curtis. Boys aren't supposed to be here.

 

 

PRIVATE SPACES : Part One

Their family tree was a long and personally distinguished one, meticulously searched by a firm specializing in this certain type of conceit. The money, Mother said, when Father complained of the fee, had been well worth it. "You'd never have known would you, that your great grandfather three times removed was a brilliant mathematician. Would you?" When he ignored her, still grunting as he made out the cheque, she prodded "would you?" and he turned his pallid face to hers, his complexion that same nebulous hue as of a mutant that Van der Eyck had made famous, with those same limpid blue and chilling eyes that warned her she had pushed too far; time to back off.

He would, she knew, pay for her occasional whims, but he expected her to know the limitations their relationship imposed on her. There was a restrained violence in his sinewy form, a threat of punitive treatment that would be meted out to the unruly - a character trait that equally repelled and excited her. His cold dismissal evoked in her a vague fear and a spark of something else - once it had been erotic, her immediate response, and now it was something else, she could not define and did not care to dwell upon. Her spirit had become almost as bruised as her generous and still-tempting flesh which she more frequently now begrudged him in his insatiable demands.

Just to look at him, the stern droop of his mouth, the high jutting bones resting under spare cheeks, the direct gaze, one could see the clergyman piously resting in those hollow bones. It was a diversified background, their duality, a genetic gift to their two boys to make the most of their latent talents, if they only listened to her.

Nothing new had been discovered. The old church records had simply, under the skillful prodding of the professionals she had hired, turned up certainties and verifiable dates where before everything had been handed down word-of-mouth, a family tradition of chance recollection enhanced by a soupcon of fanciful embellishment. The real difference now was that the boys had some concrete proof; the heralded, engraved and trusted certification of all she had claimed which they had shrugged off, uncaring.

There was a tradition of fine art too, on Mr. DeVreis's side; one of his forbears had been famed for his paintings of the Zyder Zee, an accomplishment and history that left him unimpressed; rather, it was the distinguished clergymen and academics that bolstered his secret pride, spread balm on the annoying canker that invariably flared whenever extravagant sums of money were demanded of him. The number of those engaged in simple market gardening on the distaff side on the other hand, confirmed his secret distaste of his wife's deplorable lack in certain values, constraints, even elegance, not to mention native intelligence. It was the peasant in her. She'd chattered on initially about 'genetic vigour', a term she had picked up God knew where - until he told her to shut up. Her formerly admired colouring which he had in their romantic years compared to some exotic fruit now served to remind him of her common roots.

Ironic then, that Mr. DeVreis had always insisted the boys realize early the benefits of hard work and that his wife yearned for 'her boys' to cultivate a fine aesthetic taste, eventually make something of themselves as creative artists.

A balance had been struck and every summer for the past three years the boys had been shipped off to work on a nearby farm while their parents fled the discomfort of summers' dog days, to visit relatives in the Netherlands. And every winter during the school year the boys were given private instruction in art appreciation.

The farm work was gruelling, boring, and neither boy's ideal of summer occupation. As for the art lessons, Hans was not particularly taken with them, but he eventually discovered in himself a flair for depiction of the human form.

Hans laughed derisively at Curtis's bucolic landscapes, the scenes their instructor praised so lavishly, that their mother viewed with such rapture. Curtis himself imagined that his art was reminiscent of van Ruysdael, though his sense of self-preservation was acute enough never to be so reckless as to give voice to those fond self-referrals. Older than Hans, he was the leader, he was the cautious one, the one on whom parental displeasure fell most often, as he was expected to 'guide' his brother into all the right channels; of behaviour regarding filial respect and social niceties, and finally, academic excellence.

An uneasy truce had been effected between the siblings; Curtis sounding the requisite warnings knowing Hans would happily go about doing whatever came naturally to his carefree spirit, and Hans becoming considerate enough as he matured -- and just incidentally overtook his brother in a sudden spurt of growth to finally stand a head taller and much broader -- to behave a little more circumspectly; that is, he became foxily covert so his misadventures would not reach their parents' condemning eyes, their father's punishing edicts.

Which brings us again to Hans's drawings. For he conceived a compelling fascination with the female form, a not-altogether unnatural attraction for a boy of fourteen, when the sensuous and hitherto largely unknown contours of a woman's body took on all the mystery of most secretive, forbidden, alluring fevers. Hans became inspired thinking of the hidden valleys, moist and warmly inviting, the thrusting, teasing, maddening mounds of quivering flesh. He went through a period of wild obsession, pouring his artistic inspiration onto paper - not any paper, but an artist's vellum as fluid and soft to the touch as the sinuous undulations they yielded under his devoted hand. Nudes, endless depictions of nude women were given birth through the feverish manipulations of his accurate hand, fuelled by his baffling dissatisfaction of society's denials.

"Good", Curtis admitted grudgingly. "But if Father ever gets a hold..."

"He won't", Hans responded confidently, not even certain that he cared. "He never snoops around".

"If he does", Curtis insisted, "I'll get slammed, you know that. Hide the damn things; better yet why keep producing them? Isn't one enough? Or even half a dozen? Why the hell do you keep drawing them?"

"What's the matter with you? Don't tell me they don't do anything for you, old boy."

"Can it Analpore, don't bother trying to get a rise out of me. It isn't worth it. And for Chrissake, put the damn things out of sight, will you? You're getting careless, left one out last week. I got in here a few minutes before Mother did, on her cleaning rounds."

"What? It's damn good art! Better than your pissy landscapes. You ever try to do the human form? I'm good, damn good Curt, admit it!"

"Yeah."

So was it capricious chance or deliberate provocation that their mother did come across a few drawings tossed carelessly on Hans's desk. An insufferable challenge to her stubbornly-held belief in the purity of thought and deed of some teen-age boys; her own. She recoiled as though struck, as though one of her boys had seen her undressing, had thoughtfully assessed her gradually crepeing skin, her sagging mounds. She removed them wordlessly, saying nothing to their father, fearing the art lessons would be discontinued. And she dreamed, oh how she dreamed of one day being the proud mother of famous artists.

Hans became aware, mourned the loss of his precious nudes. He found them destroyed, their luscious mystique profaned. He pieced them tenderly together, the shredded paper with its loving and now discontinued lines matting the bottom of his wastebasket in hurt reproach. He continued his replications of Lilith, Undine, the universal siren; cleverly cached them beneath schoolwork, wool sweaters, in his desk and bureau drawers; behind the accumulation of books and childhood paraphernalia he'd outgrown still on his bookshelves. He hadn't though, quite considered his mother's steely determination and she ferreted out the proscribed and to him, living presences.

Curtis turned an implacable face toward Hans's bitter loss. In this instance at least, he wasn't held responsible for his brother's lapse from respectability. His art, after all, was safe, predictable, admired and admirable. He set a sterling example. He had nothing to do with Hans's perversions.

A silent war had been declared, was waged just as stealthily with no quarter given and none expected, as Hans finally realized he was playing a game with someone whose dedication was fully as rich as his own. She destroyed them, his priceless, peerless companions of the flesh. He felt outraged that his privacy was being invaded.

"Don't draw them any more", Curtis advised; removed, without empathy, artist to artist.

"Right! Draw trees and rivers, like you. There's nothing the matter with me, Curtis, I'm normal, what the hell's the matter with you? How can you keep doing those damn landscapes, they don't mean anything. You're less a person than a puppet!"

"Arsewipe!", Curtis hissed back. "Just because I keep my thoughts to myself doesn't mean I don't have any. I compromise between what I want and what they expect of me. No hassles for me, see? You like the frustration ... have it, keep making those drawings. One of these days she'll get tired of playing your game and go to Father..."

But she did not. Their game became a neurotic compulsion of mutual need; their annoyance with each one produced and discovered blossomed from anger to bleed into an impotent hatred as one tried to outdo the other in cunning; he through hapless avoidance and she by sheer perseverance. Curtis remained aloof, on the safe side, a disaffected onlooker, painting his circumspect landscapes, removing himself from the conflict, perceiving Hans's frustration and their mother's stolid determination as an exercise in mindless futility.

Just shortly before they left -- the boys for their summer on the farm -- and their parents for their European jaunt, she came across a maliciously humorous drawing of a couple having intercourse. The paper had been neatly divided into four rectangles, the activity sectioned into innovative and seemingly improbable positions. How, Curtis wondered when Hans displayed it before him, could he have envisioned such lasciviousness? The limbs twisted so convincingly in their agony or lust, the buttocks jutted so generously, the mouths devoured so hungrily that he knew, just as he knew his mother would know if she saw it, that Hans drew on more than imagination now. He had assuredly gained experience. Curtis looked at his brother with a new and grudging respect, took pains not to alert Hans to his knowledge, felt mortified that his groin was hot, tumescent.

"Good, eh?"

"You're crazy, you're just crazy-dumb. Why'd you do something like this?"

"Good, isn't it?"

"I've never seen anything like it."

"Like it?"

"I don't know. But I do know who won't. You'd better not keep this one. Doesn't matter where you hide it, she'll sniff it out."

"Bitch!"

"Hey, Hans!"

"Okay, what do you think she is, eh?"

"Never mind. Never mind, just remember she's our mother, okay?"

"You may be older than me Curt, but you're a little fart, aren't you? Scared of your own shadow."

"No, you are, not me. I'm smart, that's all. Self-preserving. I don't go looking for trouble. You want it, you've got it. At least this can't be pinned on me. So go ahead, bring things to a head. Hell, why bother hiding it? She's going to find it anyway, so just leave it out. You must be absolutely crazy. Yeah, you're right out of your head!"

When next Mrs. DeVreis entered the boys' room, inured by now to feelings of residual guilt that she was making too much of an ultimately harmless albeit disturbing preoccupation, that she was driving her boys from her; their hostility had become almost palpable, though she felt Curtis was being unfair since she had said nothing to either of them. She hadn't expected to discover a drawing right out in plain view. Before she even approached the bed where it lay in wait for her, she suspected something new. It lay there, a mailed gauntlet, waiting to strike her helpless psyche with the threat of its mocking obscenity. He'll tire of it, she promised herself, approaching the bed. Probably has already; this is a note, nothing more, he's never left one of those out in plain view before.

And when, finally, she stood glowering above it, the drawing seemed to leap at her. The vulgarity, the squatting ugliness of the depiction, the profaning of an act of love. Love? an inner voice sneered at her. Love, what love? is it love when he insists, when he thrusts at you unwilling and unready, your dying body? Is it love that impales you time and again, pounding you closer to your grave? These fleeting thoughts were just that; anarchic and consigned to the waste heap of her helpless resentment.

This time, she felt, the game would have to stop. She would face her son. Rescue him from the filth he wallowed in, bring him back to sanity and decency. Facing him, the offending drawing trembling visibly in her hand, the soft vellum edges seemed sharp with venom, biting her melting flesh as though diseased.

"Hans - what filth!"

"It's not", Hans replied calmly, eyeing his mother with unconcealed distaste; her mauve-wool enveloped bulk, dark blond hair straying from its accustomed hug around her broad face. He stood his ground, himself tall and solid, broad and muscular, youth's face beginning to fade behind the man's positively flaring nostrils, lips curled in a male's rejection of female hysteria. "It's human nature after all, isn't it?", he probed cleverly, like a surgeon deftly inserting a knife to remove an unwanted growth. Oh, innocence!

"Not this - this filth!", she shuddered. Feeling herself grow faint, the paper fluttered from her nerveless hand, came to rest at her feet. Her eyes were drawn to it again, that couple writhing in Godless lust; an abomination. God give her the strength to see this through. Her own child, her son doing this to her. What had she ever done to deserve this?

"It's just a couple, coupling", he said lightly, deliberately contrasting his calm reaction in response. So that hers would assume proportions of madness. Oh, clever boy! "Nothing", he said offhandedly, "to get so mad about".

"You're mocking me!", she wailed, desperately.

"No, why would I?" he denied reasonably.

"You're making love appear obscene, and that's unforgivable", she finally said, equilibrium, dignity regained. "And for that, my son, you've lost my respect."

Later, Hans told Curtis he'd never known his mother to respect him. And it was sex, S E X, he'd been depicting, not love. And if she thought lovemaking was so great how come he heard scurries in the night and urgent whispers of "leave me alone!".

And he didn't so much mind that he'd lost her respect, he said, but it rankled that he had to forego two straight weeks of dessert, after a harder penalty of no dinner the first two days, as penance for her sanctimonious rejection of him. Not that she was a great cook anyway, but because he was a growing lad, he said, and he had a sweet tooth, and to deny him the simple pleasure relishing food was punishment unsuitable to his age; it was demeaning discipline and stupidly vengeful.

He stoked up at the school cafeteria but resented the desperate stealth, the melting away of his allowance, the gnawing dissatisfaction of an evening's bleak anticipation. His stomach rebelled at the heavy burden imposed on it during the day and it groaned its depletion in the evenings. His metabolism refused to adjust to this unfair new distribution of fuel and he was miserable with discomfort.

"I can't sleep on an empty stomach", he told her after two days.

"Too bad", she responded with obvious satisfaction. Having sacrificed his oral needs and pleasures to his sexually-obsessed determination, denied him one sensuous pleasure after the other, she scented vindication.

"What's the use if I can't tell someone?" Hans snapped.

"Look, keep it to yourself. I just don't want to hear about it", Curtis objected. Useless, though. Hans described with minute relish his surreptitious rummaging about in their father's night-table paraphernalia; the locating of the condoms, the careful pinpricks and conscientious replacing of every last object in the position in which they were discovered.

And they waited.

When their mother's bluffly red-brick colour took on a pasty cast, when she complained of nausea, they locked eyes, one with mild trepidation, the other amusedly triumphant, to the thickening of her form. But they were precipitate; they were destined to be disappointed, as the doctor diagnosed it as nothing but an iron-deficient condition that medication would alleviate. The sterile psyche was lodged in an inert casing whose ovum passed listlessly on a red tide, never to be fecundated by their father's impotently seeking fishlets.

And not long after the sex-cartoon episode, Father discovered Curtis pleasurably passing the time in mild flirtation and badminton across the back fence with a neighbouring girl. Painfully shy, jealous of his brother's assured manner and good looks, hating the spare meanness of his own physique and lean face so closely resembling his father's, Curtis had been overjoyed at this minor success, this casually bantering exchange and sport-fun with the girl.

Although nothing was said later directly about the lapse -- the lazing about in the sun -- a series of odd 'little jobs', as Father called them, such as scraping recalcitrant paint off outside window-frames and painting them in that same gangrenous green; cleaning out the impolite accumulation cluttering the cellar; and patching the hugely growing gaps in the cement of the garage floor - arduously mixing new cement and trowelling it on, were assigned to Curtis.

Much after, tired and foul-tempered, longing now for the few days to pass when they would be at the farm where the work load was no more palatable, but the pretense of a happily engaged familial environment could be dispensed with, Curtis ruminated on the therapeutic value of revenge. Hans had done it, got away with it, why not him?

Rising out of bed two nights running, ducking threatening sounds in the night-settling house, he made his dark way to the bathroom, groping along the walls to pluck his father's dentures out of the glass tumbler they gleamed within, and pissed on them, holding them carefully over the toilet bowl. Serves him right, he told himself; angry for succumbing to the juvenile trick; for leaving them in the bathroom where we all have to look at the damn things. He'd always hated seeing them there, sneering, as if there was to be no privacy in the loo either. The teeth appeared distorted, hugely grinning in the water-filled glass, contortions they never assumed when Father wore them.

Revolting things, they seemed to wink conspiratorially at Curtis, as though he and they shared a private little joke.

 

Casualty

 

She looked around expectantly, coming down the stairs. That's what he'd said wasn't it, that someone was there, should he ask her in? You're always so curious about what these itinerants are hawking, here's your chance. But the foyer was empty. She walked to the front door, saw a slight figure standing to one side in the gloom, opened the glass door and there stood a shivering girl of no more, she guessed, than seventeen. Tatty jeans, not even a sweater worn against the night chill.

"I'm sorry" she said, "I thought my husband asked you in."

"It's all right, he did tell me to come in, I thought I'd better wait out here."

"Well, come on in then and you can show me what you've got." And what exactly did she expect to see? There was very little room left on the walls to hang anything. Their taste ran to old prints and oils. Highly unlikely they'd consider a contemporary piece of art ... why was she bothering? Vaguely uncomfortable with herself.

In the living room the girl looked cautiously about, as though appraising the interior, deciding for herself that what she had would strike a discordant note. Sat tentatively on the edge of the sofa, placed the portfolio she'd held under her arm beside her.

"I see you've got lots of pictures already; a dull observation.

"I've got a thing about paintings. I really love them ... old landscapes."

"I don't know if you'd like any of mine, they're not like those at all", leaning earnestly toward her.

"Now you see why my husband told you we wouldn't be interested." He hadn't, he said, been able to turn her away. She insisted, said she wanted to see the lady of the house. So I thought, why not? he'd said, watching her rinse her hair, then wrap her head with a towel before going back to the garage.

The girl slowly unwound the string holding her case closed. Absorbed, her long hair swept filaments of burnished brown across her lean face. She withdrew a few small oil paintings on canvas, a few watercolours, an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. Carefully she lifted them by the edges, silently exhibiting them for Marcy who punctuated the offerings with wan little acknowledgements. Evident to both the display was unimpressive. Finally, lifting the last one, the girl carefully shuffled the pile together and placed them back into the folder.

"I guess you don't really like them", tonelessly, readying herself to leave.

"To be honest I wouldn't want to own any of them, but that doesn't mean they don't have artistic value - it's just my taste." She glanced around at her room, visualizing the incongruity of that schlock hanging over her commodes, her armoires. "Are any of them your own work?"

"No-no, like, I don't paint. some of my friends do, but we get this stuff from a group of artists. Art students, I think. We go out like this sometimes to make some bread."

"Well", Marcy searched for some way to extricate herself. "Can I offer you anything, something to drink?"

"Oh, no ... that's okay, I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble."

"It's no trouble."

"Well, a glass of milk? If you don't mind, please."

She asked if the girl had eaten dinner. They hadn't had time to get anything before leaving. "Shit, that's not true, we didn't have any food, how 'bout that, nothing to eat, stupid, eh?"

Marcy winced. "You don't live at home?"

"With my parents? No. I've got my own pad. I mean, I crash with friends."

"Don't you miss your parents? What about school? What do you do with yourself?" The girl sat there, without weight, lacking energy to move, not minding the questions, willing enough to respond, content to be sitting there.

"Yeah, I miss my mom sometimes, not my dad. You don't know what it was like. Nothing but hassles. And I couldn't care less about school."

"That's too bad. It must be tough, you're so young. I couldn't imagine any of my kids living away from home. I'd be terrified for them."

"Yeah, well. Maybe you treat your kids different. I had to do everything my old man said. He never listened to me. He never liked my friends. Used to slap me around. I could tell you things... One day I just took off. Only thing", voice strained, Marcy leaned toward her: "I hated to leave my little sister. Now I'm gone things are rough for her. I'll help her leave when she gets a little older."

Silence enveloped them; not uncomfortable, but quiet, slightly brooding. "Do you work?" Unable to still her curiosity. "I mean aside from this?"

"No. I don't want to work straight. I mean like, I wouldn't want to work nine-to-five, be someone's Joeboy. this way I can do what I feel like, whenever I want to. Wish I could collect unemployment insurance. Or Welfare. They ask too many questions. I'm under-age, they'd get the Children's Aid after me, or something."

"Sounds really great", mentally comparing her own children's sheltered lives, shivering. But they were so much younger. And what, she asked herself, what could I do about it if they ever conceived a hostility toward us as this girl has done her parents?

"Oh yeah, it's not so bad, just sounds crappy. Sometimes we run out of food is all, then we go out and make some bread. The guy I live with - it's not like you think; there's three of us, me'n another girl and this guy. Well, this guy works sometimes pretty steady. Oh, he works mostly, just happened this time we ran out."

"Are you really happier living with your friends?" Why she was pursuing this, questioning her, what compelled her to?

"Sure, sure I am. No one breathing down my neck all the time. I feel a little bad for my mom maybe, but I wouldn't go back, not for anything. Look, I gotta go. I'm taking up your time, you want to curl your hair before it dries."

"No, I don't." A few moments earlier she'd wanted the girl to leave, now for some reason she couldn't fathom she felt she had to make some kind of intimate contact, persuade her ... of what...? "I mean it's naturally curly. I try to uncurl it, not the other way around". She laughed nervously, wondering what was wrong with her.

"Hey, you're lucky. Wish I had curly hair", flicking hers off her back, arm crooked, falling back to her side as her hair cascaded back around her shoulders.

"It's in style to have long straight hair", babbling inanely, knowing how she sounded to herself, wondering how she appeared to this lost child. "Just like you've got ... why would you want it to be different", as though admiringly, as though her intent was to prop up the girl's self-esteem.

"Oh, I don't know; it would be nice for a change, you know."

"Isn't that strange, people with straight hair want it curly, people with curly hair would rather have straight. There's just no pleasing anyone". Lame, flushing, an old chestnut repeated, embarrassing her with its vacuity.

Still the girl made no move to go. Exhausted looking, lavender shadows deepening the craters of her green-flecked eyes; a spectral impression. How could a teen-age girl look so, what was the right word - burnt-out? Languidly turning her head, the girl looked about the room. "This is a nice room, feels comfortable. I like it", she said dreamily.

"Thank you", responded the perfect hostess. "My husband collects the pine furniture, I'm the one likes the paintings", as though she hadn't already made that abundantly clear, as though it would have any meaning to the girl. "Some of them", she expounded, "are Flemish and Scottish. The paintings, I mean. That one over there, a fragment of a larger Spanish painting. They don't really cost much more than contemporary art. Good art, I mean", she said artlessly. "You have to look around, get to know some dealers. It's more expensive to buy things in the city, so we go to small dealers in towns on the periphery of Toronto. It's really lots of fun, looking around, collecting. But we didn't get this stuff overnight. We've been married for ten years."

"Yeah? You sure don't look it. Ten years! How can you stand it?"

"It's been beautiful!" Defensive, taken aback. "It sounds banal, but it's true!"

"There was nothing happy about my parents. They're always screaming, mad, blaming one another, nasty, miserable. And us, always picking on us, easy targets. And I don't know anyone who's married and likes it. All you hear is about people fighting, hating each other. Love is a load of crap, a bad trip."

"It isn't! You've had bad experiences. Almost everyone has, one time or another. I know what you mean, it was like that when I was a kid too, my parents didn't get along either. I couldn't wait to leave the house."

"Then how'd it come out different for you?"

"I don't honestly know, it just did."

"I wouldn't like it", the girl said with finality.

"Just because of your family?"

"Not just. You gotta do everything the guy wants. Whatever he says, that's it."

"Not if you have a relationship based on mutual respect", trying to impress the girl with her own triumph; imbue her with hope, but reality for her, was hopeless, futile ... glad, so glad you didn't have those experiences, aren't you, Marcy? "Anyway, I thought things were supposed to be different for your generation."

"Yeah, well, maybe. If you don't mind, could I have more milk?"

"What kind of food do you eat...at your pad?" Watching her gulp the milk.

"Mostly health food, when we've got the bread. Sometimes we get fruit and vegetables behind chain stores, like when they throw stuff out."

"Ugh, sounds pretty crummy to me. But then I'm not used to that kind of spontaneous lifestyle. I guess it'd be all right if it's really what you want."

"It's not bad. I'm trying to move out anyway, get my own place. Like I mean, I like them but ... I mean, what do you do when this guy wants to ball and you don't feel like it? He's nice and all that but he doesn't really turn me on."

"You mean he forces himself on you?"

"It's not that bad", soothingly, the girl feeling badly for the sensibilities of the adult, the mother of children, the married woman. Trying to spare her feelings, her sheltered idea of protecting the young. "He's a good guy, he doesn't force me. He's really my friend's boyfriend, but sometimes he feels like fooling around and if I say no, he kinda kids and says I'm frigid or hung-up or something like that."

"What kind of hassle-free living is that? You've gone from one rotten environment to another. What've you gained? Call that freedom?" A bad dream Marcy, good thing it's someone else's dream.

"Well look, it's not that bad. It just sounds bad to you. It gets me down sometimes, sure, but it's okay."

"Any way you cut it", shrilly now, can't you discipline yourself a little better than that? "you're being forced to do something you don't want to. He's manipulating you. That's independence?"

"Yeah, yeah, you're right. Well, like I said, I'll be moving out soon." Guess it kind of bothers you to hear me talk - about things?"

"Of course not. Liar, liar. I'm asking, aren't I? People should talk to each other." Hypocrite. "I'm glad you feel enough at ease to talk like this." Are you now, Marcy? "Are you sure you wouldn't rather go back to your mother?"

"I might, but never with my father there. Like I said, it was a real bad scene."

"Look, I'm really sorry about the paintings. There's just no way I would have any of them. They're not my kind of expression." Marcy, the art critic, Marcy the elitist, Marcy the privileged middle-class wife and mother of such well-adjusted children...

"Oh, that's okay, don't feel bad. I don't expect you to like them." Looking away from one another. Aware that they are strangers, despite a momentary intimacy. Marcy wanting somehow to make a difference, to make it up somehow to this child that life had abandoned. Hapless, Marcy, nothing you can do for her, she'll find her own way.

"Guess I better go. My friend would be mad if he knew I was sitting here. I'm supposed to be out flogging this stuff. He'll be going down the street soon. I'm supposed to meet them at the corner."

"I feel bad about this, I wish I could do something for you, give you something. Would you accept some food?"

"Yeah, sure, why not? Oh hell, look you don't have to feel bad. Never mind about the food."

"No", she insisted. "I want to give you something. I want to. We've always got plenty of canned food around."

The girl following her docilely into the kitchen. Gleaming tortoise-shell counters, pale green appliances, banks of cupboard space; a housewife's delight. Marcy pulled out two large paper bags, stuffing one into the other, bent and opened cupboard doors where she began inspecting labels, placing tins in the bag. Arose, lifted the bag for weight. "It's heavy. Will you be able to carry it?"

"Sure I will. When I get to the corner my friend will help me. That's really nice of you."

"That's all right. It's to make me feel better, really. I wish I could do something for you. Look, why don't you re-think this, get in touch with your mother? I'm sure she loves you."

"It's okay. Maybe I will. Don't let it bother you."

Shoving the portfolio helpfully under the girl's elbow. "Sure all that isn't too heavy?"

"No, no, it's fine. Christ! Gotta go! I'll get shit if everyone's waiting for me. Look, thanks. Thanks a lot. It's been nice, really."

For a moment she stood watching until the darkness swallowed the slight figure, swaying to one side, balancing the weight of the bag of groceries. Then she was aware of the sound of voices raised in nighttime games, from the back of the house. Excited voices, children playing, happy in their childhood. Thought of the heaviness of the girl's voice, childhood muffled in a resented past, living in a soiled world she hoped never to know more about.

Finally, the screen door clattered to a close and she shut the house door behind her. She walked through the house to the back door. To call her children in for their bed-time ritual.

 

 

Wild Red Strawberries

 

Quiet, not to make any sound. Daddy loves his little Marty, but not on week-end mornings. Not when Daddy's stumbled into bed in the misty-dark hours before dawn. It's all right, it's all right for him to wake me up with all his fumbling and his stupid whistling. That's different all right when he wakes me and I can't get back to sleep.

But her sleep, when her Daddy's out at night is fitful and worried anyway, and a delicious calm steals over her when she knows Daddy's back, even if she can't sleep any more. Mom's gone, probably for good this time, but she's Daddy's girl and Daddy won't ever leave her.

Pick on her once in a while, why don't you! Leave the Kid alone!

The Kid's asleep too. Nothing, no amount of noise ever awakens him. He rides his trail bike over the same tired old ground near the cabin, bumpety-bump, every day. Smokes one weed after another, eyes blank, trailing his feet in the water over at the dock. the Kid's on probation. Car-theft. Leaving the scene of an accident. "But", the judge had said, "you come from a good family, I can see that. I can see how concerned your parents are". And gave him a suspended judgement. In the care of his concerned parents. Mom was always concerned, true.

You bloody little bastards, get out of my hair! To be fair, she'd screech that at both of them, ever since Marty could remember. But the Kid was Mom's kid. Always, she hinted Marty was probably a changeling. Someone switched babies in the hospital nursery. Jesus, my own kid couldn't be so stupid.

But Marty had Daddy.

On with her cut-offs, her tee shirt dirty from yesterday but she wouldn't go banging drawers in search of another one. Who cared, anyway? Would a clean tee shirt make the morning better? Decided against sneakers, bare feet would do. And slipped carefully out the screened door. Outside, where the freshness of the morning unfurled from its night's sleep and gently enfolded her, caressed her with the damp and loving fingers of pre-dawn.

She stepped lightly on the wet grass, forcing herself not to think of slimy, slithering snails, mashing them underfoot. A mist rose languorously from the lake. In the trees overhead, the rustle of birds. A scuttering in the underbrush off to the left. She stopped, looked that way nervously. Groundhog?

Finally she untied the gun'l rope of the red canoe, the short one. Shoved it gently, dipped her feet into the cold water, slipping on rocks, gained a footing and made into the canoe. The sun soon to rise over the hills. The moon up there, ghostly, halved. Everything belonged to her, the lake, the sky, the cedars fencing the lake, obscuring the depths of the woods beyond. She breathed the fragrance of the trees, her surroundings; attar of life.

These early morning excursions on the lake suffused her with a gratefulness, a will to experience everything that life placed in her solitary path. She loved the wilderness feel of the lake, the woods, when all the surrounding cottages, hidden by old conifers skirting the shoreline of the lake housed fast-asleep people who could never know the wholeness, the completedness of the experiences that were hers alone. Somnambulists all, awake or asleep. Only she felt the earth beating, sighing, was at one with nature.

Her paddle raised slivers of silver from the lake, glimmering in the light of the naked moon. The gentle slap and slush of the water cradling her. The lake her birth-sac and every morning it delivered her newly-born. A dark and sleek shape dove from rocks coasting the shoreline as she spirited the canoe alongside. Muskrat.

A strange, unmistakable silhouette in the water betraying, at this pre-dawn time, no white. The loon, silent and aloof, submerged and she waited, no longer paddling, but dreamily drifting, until it broke the surface of the water. This must be what the primordial earth was like, she convinced herself. A strange grey and silver half-light, a luminescent moon, and vapours rising from the water.

There! That sound? And watched as a long-legged bird strode from a rock to the water, daintily lifting its awkward yet graceful stalks, shifting its long-beaked head forward. The heron half-dove, then raised itself out of the water, resumed its position on the rock, shaking droplets out of its blue-gray wings stretched impossibly wide. Effortlessly, it craned its head forward and rose, its body bulky yet uncumbersome, legs folding underneath, silently floating the ether over Marty, the canoe, the lake and the cedars.

She beached the canoe, slung the rope around an old stump and gingerly hobbled the pebbles of an unfamiliar portion of the shoreline. Ahead, what was it? An old stone foundation. Weeds, brambles overgrowing the stone, the squared timbers, what was left of them. Careful now, where you're walking, Marty. Don't want to step on a rusted nail, hand-forged or not.

Why don't you go on out and drown? Who needs your damn eyes following me around? What do you know about it? You think your mother's a whore and your father's faultless? What the hell do they teach you at that bloody high school anyway? At your age I never condemned my mother, damn you. Damn you! DAMN YOU! GO DROWN!

Sure, this was the place. Wild strawberries grew here, and garlic, and hens 'n chicks, someone's old garden. Once, when she was little, she and Daddy had discovered this place. One carefree and long-gone, hot and misty afternoon. They'd taken the baler from the canoe and lovingly filled it with wild strawberries. Red, luscious and ridiculously runty. The size of blueberries. Your mother'll make jam out of them, Marty. Jam. Wild strawberry jam. She could ignore the horseflies, the deer flies, lighting and biting, even the black flies.

Screw yourself! Think I'm prepared to hover over a hot stove for you two? Want jam, make it yourselves. Bloody well time I said it, I'm through!

What's this? Burnt rocks. Barbecue? Someone had a barbecue here? Lifting feet carefully, regretting the absence of sneakers now. Nothing to see here anyway. Back to the canoe. The lilting, tilting, mesmerizing and faultless water.

And shoving off again, rocking the canoe, settling, paddling.

Something white and lumpy in the water, half submerged.
 

Soon the sun would rise above the hills. Already a promise in the air of a warm, muggy day. Wonder what plans Daddy had in mind for this day. The Kid would want to stay home, stick around the cabin. Ride his trail bike. Over the same tired old trails, worn thin and hardened over like the shell of a turtle, by that bumpety-bumpety, bump. One smoke after another. Blank face. What did he ever think of? Did he ever think?

Time you did, you know, eighteen. At your age... Daddy censuring, recalling his own long-ago eighteen years. No trail bikes, no cigarettes. At least he said there were none.

Paddle shoving against something soft, yielding.

Wild strawberries, red and ripe. When you cook them on the stove they turn to liquid quickly, with the sugar. Bubble and squeak, cook into a gelatinous mush that smells and tastes like heaven.

Floating off one end of the something soft, dark fronds. Like hair. Hair? Red-on-white? Red streaming from the white-on-dark? Luscious red, like wild strawberries.

Could no one, no one at all in that lonely place, that place where everyone slept and no one knew the joy of the wilderness, could NO ONE hear her screams? Scream, Marty, Scream!

Marty? Marty! MARTY, SHUT UP, DAMN YOU! You're making enough noise to wake the dead.

 

 

Nicholas's Cashier At Byward Market

The market wears the faces of the seasons. In the spring vendors set up their stands and sell maple syrup and maple sugar in decorative forms. The syrup is bottled in old wine bottles, gallon containers, small recycled corn syrup containers or anything else that comes to hand. And there's a bustling business done in starter-crops for backyard farmers - novices who want to dabble in dirt. They buy tomato plants, green pepper plants, onions, radishes and leeks. The more careful gardeners, those who have had experience don't buy cucumber plants, knowing how difficult these are to transplant.

In the summer months the street is a frenetic beehive. Vendors again set up stalls, larger stalls than the maple syrup people. These stalls often have a makeshift awning of some kind to keep the vendors and the produce dry through the summer rains. Early crops are sold then, and root crops left over from the previous autumn; until the lettuce and radishes and green onions come in, the offerings are sparse.

In the early autumn, Ottawa-Valley-grown tomatoes, bell peppers, cauliflower, onions, potatoes and corn make their appearance, as do cut flowers and greenhouse plants of every variety. A kaleidoscope of brilliant colour, a cornucopia of earth riches. Which abundance, of course, brings out the crowds and the tourists who come, not to buy, but to gawk and crowd the market streets, enchanted by the quaintness of it all.

Nicholas Schikle always felt annoyed about the crowds of fair-weather shoppers who made his own Saturday excursions to the market more hectic than he would like. Ideally, he wanted to savour everything, every last purchase, and to do that properly, a pleasant exchange between vendor and vendee was essential. Otherwise, he felt cheated. Otherwise he might as well shop at one of those supermarkets where everything was plastic and sterile, everyone anonymous. Where, he asked himself, as he waited for his passage to be eased up the street through the throngs, where were all these people in the miserable weather when the stall- and shop-keepers depended on some business to keep them going...?

He stopped about where he imagined the Biscuiteria would be. Nicholas is short, thin and sandy-haired. It's raining lightly and despite the crush, people are stupidly carrying umbrellas trying to keep dry while presenting a grave danger to passersby. He turns and squints at the blurred blue-and-white sign over the store. He's mildly astigmatic and forgot his glasses. Thrashing his way to the entrance of the store he hesitates, is finally pushed into the open doorway by an impatient shopper, a big woman who wants to get inside. The store is crowded; the fragrance of fresh bread, crusty rolls and delectable strudels rise to his nostrils. The clamour of the street noises almost recedes as he recalls other such stores, smaller, dingier, in his childhood.

Nicholas shifts his canvas shopping bag to free both arms and plucks down from some shelves beside the open door one black rye, one white with caraway. A woman dragging an unwilling child by the hand pushes her way past him, her handbag catching on the strap of his bag, pulling him further into the store. She looks back startled, her eyes flashing, ready to scream 'thief!', as he awkwardly attempts to disentangle himself.

Juggling his parcels, he waits for his turn at the cash register, relieved to see the short blond girl is there today, not the owner, a brusque man who always intimidates him. The memory of an incident that took place several weeks ago still rankles.

The breads are encased in plastic bags open at one end. Some are kept in large cardboard boxes on the floor. Once, Nicholas had chosen a bread and turned it over to discover a beetle crawling around inside the bag. Often enough he had seen people bring their dogs inside the store and the animals would snuffle the bags. Then, several weeks before, Nicholas had picked up a bread at the wrong end and the bread had dropped out of its bag onto the sawdust-covered floor. He'd turned to see whether anyone had noticed, then placed the bag back and selected another. Then he realized that any one of the breads he so carefully chose, pressing their plumb sides for freshness, could have been dropped by another customer, been put back, just as he had done.

"Why don't you tie the ends of the bread bags?" he asked the proprietor.

"That's how we get them from the baker."

"But then - they should tie the bags there!"

"They're still warm when we get them. Would you like your bread mouldy? that's what would happen if the bags were closed before they cooled." The man looked at him morosely and Nicholas imagined how much he was disliked by this man. He turned away with his two breads and flushed when he heard, as he attempted to push his way out of the store, the proprietor speaking to someone: "Pests! You just can't please some people!"

Should he call the Health Department, he wondered. But no, the man might know that it was him ... suspect him anyway, and then where would he get those breads?

Outside, he saw the drizzle had let up. The crowd seemed denser. On the way to his next stop he managed to squeeze next to a stand to buy green onions, a Chinese radish, some endive. "Merci", he said to the woman, counting his change in French. The only French word he knew, as it happened. He would have to do something about that, he told himself again.

Once more pressing through the throng, a burly young man thrust a newspaper before him, asking, "working class paper?" One of them was always there selling that paper. Once, he'd bought one. It read like a communist manifesto; hysterical denunciations of capitalists, the government, the straight press, the bourgeoisie. Interesting, how people could believe that tired dogma.

In another store, he plastic-bagged a chunk of feta cheese, then half-filled another bag with sauerkraut. Similar to, but not quite like the sauerkraut he remembered in Kitchener. He chose the mushrooms he wanted, dropped them into a paper bag - big caps, short stems. He remembered his anger at being told in another store that he couldn't do that, couldn't select his own.

"Which of the apples is better?", he asked the big Hungarian behind the counter, "the yellow or the red?" The man shrugged, lifting ginger eyebrows. "some like blonds, some like redheads. You hef to make up your own mind."

Nicholas always took his purchases to the man's cash register. He disliked going to the man's wife, a sour-faced, impatient woman with hard eyes. This woman had once mortified a customer who had attempted, unobtrusively to be served before his proper turn. "Ged oud!" she'd shrilled. "Oud of this store! We don' serve customers like you." Piercingly, so that all eyes in the store swivelled to scrutinize the poor wretch who'd hurried out without his selections.

He hadn't always shopped at that store. At one time he'd given most of his custom to the corner store. That store was long and wide, arranged so that four cash registers sat at the narrow end of the store next to the doors. There were two women he'd got to know well. One about the age Nicholas's mother would have been now, the other a few years older than Nicholas himself. They looked after him, one like a mother, the other like a ... sister.

"Those oranges are no good. Here, just a minute, I'll get you better ones", the older woman might say and then leave him waiting at the cash register while she quickly picked better ones. And if he splurged in the winter and bought a pint of imported strawberries, he'd always ask her first whether they were fresh. Often as not they weren't, and before she had adopted him he had occasionally taken home a box to find the top layer good and those underneath fuzzy with mould.

The younger woman shared recipes with him, told him how to prepare eggplant, how to grow his own beansprouts. He never bothered though, with the bean sprouts, preferring to buy them already sprouted. He knew she was married, she wore a wedding ring. She always wore several short gold chains around her neck, with religious medals on them. She was slim, with an olive complexion and dark straight hair, cut short.

"Going out tonight?", she'd tease him.

"If you go with me."

"Are you inviting my husband too, and our two children?" she'd ask teasingly, flashing her dark eyes.

The truth was Nicholas seldom went out on dates. He'd always been shy with girls other than his sister, his cousins. And here in Ottawa, his experience with the women who worked in his office had soured his expectations of women even further. A worse bunch of office misfits he'd never imagined. All they ever seemed to do was go on interminable coffee breaks.

They used a pool system there, like most government offices. Once he'd spoken to his Head, said, "Look, give me one of those girls ... I mean why not break up the pool and assign each of us our own helper? It's more practical, surely?" When what he'd really wanted to say was I'd soon get one of them to move when I want something done - what he was thinking was you're such a nice guy you just can't bring yourself to tell them to get off their backsides to get something done for a change. He didn't say any of those things to his Section Head, but they were what he was thinking. Nothing ever came of it, it just wasn't done like that.

Those two women who worked in the corner store were different, they worked hard, had a sense of integrity. And if the olive-skinned one hadn't been married, a mother of children, if she were available, he would have asked her out.

God knew, he was lonely enough. His apartment in Centretown could be called that only by the wildest stretch of a hopeful imagination. A combination kitchen-sitting room and a dingy bedroom, furnished. He had to keep anything edible in the battered refrigerator. Mice; he'd found their droppings around the floor and in cupboards, heard their scuttling at night.

Everything he owned, with the exception of his bicycle, two suits and his books, could fit comfortably in a medium-sized cardboard box. He was still paying back his student loan and sending money home to help Margarethe run the house, look after their father.

Yes, he was lonely. Yes, he would like to have the company of an attractive, intelligent woman. And he did believe there must be some intelligent, nubile women around, somewhere.

He used to fantasize about her, the younger one at the corner store. that he would take her out, they'd laugh together, go for long walks, tell one another all kinds of interesting and ridiculous things. Sometimes his thoughts turned feverish at night, in the dark, in his bed. He imagined her soft body beside his. Her hands, slim and impatient, stroking him. He wanted to think those things, yet he didn't want to. They left him frustrated, inept at dealing with realities.

Once, in the winter, he was at the store, the older woman looking after him and he'd asked about the younger one, where she was.

"Doris?" Oh, she didn't come in today, called in sick. Not her though, she never gets sick. Must be one of the children was." And so he learned her name was Doris, and smiled gratefully at the older grey-haired woman, white uniform folded neatly over her thin chest, bustling his groceries into a bag, telling him to have a good week.

Sometimes he'd deliberately go to the older woman's check-out so he could covertly watch Doris as she busied herself with another customer's order. It seemed to him that she smiled more warmly at him, was more talkative with him than with any of the other customers.

In the winter she always wore a fuzzy yellow sweater over her uniform. The yellow made her hair look darker, like a glistening cap over her neat head. Sometimes the intensity with which he regarded her dizzied him.

He'd told himself his obsession with this unavailable woman was unhealthy, unnatural. You've got to meet some girl in a normal way, he told himself, make some kind of normal contact.

"Where were you last Saturday?" she asked brightly the following week. "I missed you."

"I was away for the weekend", he lied clumsily, feeling a traitor because he'd gone to another market store. How stupid, he told himself, it means nothing to her. But her face - so concerned - smiling so kindly at him; perhaps he did mean something to her?

He worked hard at the laboratory all week and looked forward to his little market forays on Saturday mornings. That brief time in the corner store when he would exchange pleasantries with the two women, fed his imagination with situations revolving around Doris.

He liked his work. It was painstaking and often rewarding, and he was constantly learning. Learning the exciting difference between abstract knowledge and empirical findings. He had plant specimens from out West to keep him busy for at least six months, classifying and coding. He'd soon be going out on a field trip, looked forward to that.

Besides all his reading he was taking a correspondence course in Business Administration. No special reason, just that he wanted to order his life better. Already he found himself able to keep files in better order and he'd made some very keen suggestions to Burt Howard, his chief. Burt seemed interested, but that was typical of Burt - he'd heard nothing since. Typical of a government office, Ted Stevenson told him. Ted had been around for years, knew the ropes. He was also a great spinner of tales. Like who was sleeping with whom at the office, and who was available. As though Nicholas cared. He'd like to though - he'd like to be able to take advantage of some tips he got from Ted, follow up on some of those leads, but he couldn't get Doris out of his head.

At lunch time, walking on the Mall with Ted, he'd nod his head politely at the proper intervals, Ted's voice a buzzing monotone. Everything went right through Nicholas's head. What if, he thought, what if I told Ted I have this crazy feeling for a married woman I don't really know at all; some woman who works as a cashier in a little market store. Why, he'd think I'm crazy!

One Saturday morning Nicholas took his handful of pears, his tangerines, apples, lettuce, carrots and leeks to Doris's check-out. She glanced up absent-mindedly, the smile slow, but soon it spread, lighting her face as she recognized him. From the next counter the other one lifted her head, saw him and flicked her hand in a gay salute. His weekly acknowledgement; he belonged.

"Lovely day Doris, isn't it?" He spoke the ritual banality, waited to hear her soothing voice say anything, anything at all.

"Yes it is, it certainly is, Mr. Schickle. Did you notice the special on nectarines?" And she ran off to bring forward a quart basket to the counter for his inspection.

"I'll take them, they look great ... a special treat. What would I do without you?" He hoped his voice sounded bantering, jocular, light, although he felt quite serious.

"Oh, you!" She laughed. Then her mouth turned down slightly at the corners, her eyes looked conspiratorial. She whispered: "I asked them for a raise."

"You ... I beg your pardon?"

"Them", she repeated emphatically, lifting her chin in the direction of one of the men at the weighing scales. "We both did". And he knew she meant the motherly cashier as well.

"Well, I hope you get your raise. You certainly deserve it!"

"Would you believe it ... eight years she's been working here, six years for me, and we never got a raise! It's crazy - don't you think?"

"I do, absolutely!" Nicholas replied, taken aback. His opinion was being sought. "That's shocking! After all ... the cost of living ..."

"That's what I said", she pounced triumphantly on his words, repeating them. "That's what I told them. Enough is enough! A raise, I said, or I'll go ... and she did too, she told them the same thing."

"Oh well, they'd never let you go, you two" Nicholas said, weakly. "You'd be too hard to replace."

"Hah! You don't know them! I don't think they'll give us more."

She took his five and gave him change, then began to place his food into a large paper bag, shook her head and instead filled a plastic shopping bag and flashed another smile at him.

"Well ... what ... I mean you won't quit? Where'll you get another job?" He felt panicky. Maybe they'd leave, both of them. What'll that do to my Saturday mornings?

During the week his mind was nagged by the thought of Doris, the two women, leaving the corner store. He tried to analyze his behaviour, his concern with those two. It was definitely unhealthy, he told himself firmly. I've got to get a grip on myself, maybe if I talked with someone? And on Thursday, walking again on the Mall with Ted, he was about to break into one of Ted's monologues, tell him, when their attention was arrested by the jangle of a bell and they stopped to watch a procession.

Men's voices lifted in an unnatural falsetto: "Hare Krisha Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare, Rama Hare, Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare". Bizarre, the sight of the men, eight of them, walking a single file, the first one ringing the bell, holding it daintily in his huge hand, ringing in time to the chant. Several others banging tambourines solemnly. A spiritual ritual. All the men wore beneficent expressions, all had shaven heads, a thin braid springing from their bare pates. Long white robes, sandalled feet. They took long strides, but gravely, the procession stately, except for one man who seemed to be doing an irrepressible little dance of sacred joy. Nicholas felt attracted to them, felt an indescribable anguish, felt that they had individually and collectively discovered some great happiness, some peace that was eluding him. He wondered vaguely if everyone felt that way, watching the men, dedicated to that esoteric religion, despite the crude jokes.

Ted's eyes bulged after them, he mouthed "poor slobs!" Then he turned to Nicholas. "See that guy? See the size of that guy? Christ! Wouldn't old Frederick William have loved to nab that one."

"What ... what?"

"King of Prussia ... the father of Freddie the Great. I was never that good in history, but this guy was such an oddball I remembered him. He had this thing about giants ... you know, big guys like that one. Used to have his soldiers raid neighbouring states - go on forays, just like talent scouts and bring back any big guys they could find. He liked to dress them up in uniform. They formed his personal guard and he'd look at all those huge guys, enjoying them. A real wierdo. Did you see the size of that one? It would take a dozen guys to hold him down."

Ted thought they were freaks. How could he possibly tell someone with such a literal mind about his problems?

That Saturday he almost dreaded going to the corner store, but he caught a glimpse of both women at their usual places before he entered and heaved a sigh of relief. He mentally castigated himself for his childish dependence. Almost lightheaded, he chose a red pepper, a large purple eggplant, a Spanish onion. He would ask Doris, he told himself, how to prepare them for a Greek salad. He felt great, a treat was in order ... a bagful of luscious, skin-bursting cherries.

At the check-out, placing his chunk of Mozzarella lovingly on the counter, leaning forward to reach for the rest of his selections, Doris started, noticing him for the first time. the store was packed with shoppers. She leaned forward, solemn-faced.

"This is the last time."

"?"

"We're going." Her voice low, controlled. His reaction was slow, fuddled. He stood speechless, forgetting the rest of his vegetables.

"We're going", she repeated, impatient with his lack of response.

"No raise?"

"No." She laughed, a small bitter bark. "Would you believe?"

"No. No ... I don't believe it."

"You'll come sometimes and see us?"

"See you? Where?"

"There. Across the street. We got other jobs, both of us. At the butcher, across the street."

Nicholas recoiled. A butcher shop?

"I'm ... I don't think so. I'm a vegetarian."

She looked at him curiously. "No meat? You don't eat no meat?" She shrugged. "Anyway, wave. Give us a wave sometimes, when you go by."

"Yes ... I'll wave sometimes ... when I go by."

He dreamed that night of approaching a bier with a rigid, greenish body laid out naked on it. His mother, it was his mother. But as he approached, the face changed and became Doris's. Then as he stood over the body it turned to a red slab of meat with a cleaver thrust in it and he was holding the handle of the cleaver. He awoke in a sweat, hearing himself screaming.

Nicholas missed his usual trip to the market the following Saturday. He stayed off work for a few days. Just a slight fever, a general feeling of malaise. Flu probably, he told Burt Howard, when he called in sick.

The Saturday after, he steeled himself to go in the corner store as though no change had taken place. Well, it wasn't so bad he told himself. It's just a place to shop, after all. And really, it wasn't so dreadful at all. There were two replacement cashiers, one short and plump and one tall, stringy female; girls really. They looked like they should still be in school. Maybe they were temporary help. They looked like most of the cashiers in the supermarkets, efficient and distant. The one Nicholas went to wouldn't even meet his eyes. Her hair needed a wash, hung long and greasy. Nicholas averted his eyes and dug for his money, silently handed her a ten.

He heard the ring of the register, held out his hand for change. Heard her count the money into his waiting hand, then the girl packed his purchases into a paper bag and as she packed Nicholas looked at the money in his hand, checked again the amount rung up on the register. Incredible! She'd given him change for a twenty. His first impulse was to correct her, give it back. After the first twinge, it wasn't too difficult to repress the impulse.

Let them pay, he thought, glancing at one of the men beside the tomatoes, weighing produce for a customer. They discarded quality, let them pay.

He never did bother waving. Nicholas just simply did not cross over to the other side of the street where the butcher shop stood. The women ceased to exist. Doris was a slab of red meat in a nightmare.

 

Her Mother

She stood beside her mother at the kitchen sink, wiping dinner dishes. Short as she was, she still stood taller than her mother. There was no resemblance in their facial features, still less in their bearing. The older woman moving efficiently, humming a monotone irritating to her daughter's ears. The younger woman wiping clumsily, as though unaccustomed to the chore.

Alexis's mind was busy, all kinds of openings tried on her inner ear and each rejected in turn. When she stood for a moment in her mother's way as the older woman reached for a dirty pot on the stove, there was no 'excuse me', just a brusque shove. Not meant to offend, although it did. It was just her mother's way.

"Ma, I'm moving out", she finally uttered. At first there was no indication that her mother had heard. Arms up to the elbows in the right-hand sink, scrubbing pots, then dipping them into the clear rinse water of the left-hand sink, her mother continued to clean up, her manner mechanical and thorough.

"What?" finally came the response. "What?"

I'm twenty one years old Ma, and I need to be independent." The words tumbled out, independent of her carefully rehearsed calm. "I'm moving, to an apartment of my own." Keep your voice firm. One quaver and she'll know you're testing the waters.

"What kind of crazy nonsense? What are you talking?" her mother asked, voice grating on Alexis's sensibilities, strengthening her determination to see it through. She had to anyway, she'd committed herself to half the rent. Ellen was counting on her, and she was damned anyway if she'd spend any more of her life in this house.

She had to face her mother's incredulous annoyance, writ large on her face, as she wiped her arms on the apron, heard the dishwater gurgling into the drain, her mother standing there, one eyebrow raised in her combative manner, ready for an argument, any argument. Her mother loved their constant battles, of that Alexis was certain. Some people needed tension in their lives, it seemed to render a peculiar kind of satisfaction to feel put-upon, martyred. She, on the other hand, was bloody well sick of it.

"I've rented an apartment, me and Ellen, partners, and we're moving into it in two weeks. Ellen has furniture, she's been living in another place, so I won't need anything really, right away." She forced herself to slow down, the words were running away with her, one piling into the other. Her mother's face still evinced no real comprehension. She might have been saying that the chicken hadn't been tender enough. Her mother had that defensive/offensive look on her face.

"Ellen?" Mrs. Margolies repeated. "Who, Ellen?"

"Ellen Schwartz."

"Schwartz? You mean Ellen from down the street? When did you see her? I thought she was in California, no?"

"No, she's been back in Toronto for a few years."

"That's nice, back in Toronto and she didn't even come to visit, I was such a good friend with her mother, and she was like a daughter, a second daughter by us. Nu", she shrugged philosophically, "what can you do? People are like that! You're helping her to move to a new apartment?"

Alexis inhaled, counted to ten, wondered if her mother was being deliberately obtuse to gain time, work out a strategy for an argument, or whether her mind had been busy somewhere else. Patience, there was no way of avoiding a scene, but at least she could clear something up before she plunged in again.

"She hadn't come by because she didn't think she would be welcome. I just happened to run into her on Yonge Street a few months back." Come now, Alexis, a few months back?

"What is this, not welcome? Tillie's daughter not welcome in my home? Where does she get the idea?" Oh where, Ma, where would she get such an idea...

"Mother, you always claim to have such a good memory for details. Well, I can remember eight years ago when you warned me not to have anything more to do with Ellen."

"Oh. that was just ... her father ... "

"Her father was an embezzler, but what did that have to do with Ellen? Did you know Tillie is dead?"

"What? No! Vay!"

"Yes, she committed suicide."

"I'm sorry to hear, why are you telling me like this, like it was my fault?"

"I'm sorry if that's what it sounds like, I don't mean it to. Not entirely your fault, Ma, but you helped. What Ellen told me is that her mother didn't know whom to go to, all her friends deserted her and she was so ashamed she felt they had to get away, but even so she just kept getting more and more depressed. It hasn't been easy for Ellen, she's had to practically raise herself. She lived with a second-cousin in the States for the first few years after her mother died. Her mother's second cousin, an unmarried school teacher."

"Nu, that's life", her mother said, turned and began to walk out of the kitchen.

"Ma!" Alexis called after her. "I'm moving in with Ellen."

"What am I hearing?" her mother said, turning around, moving back with a heavy tread into the kitchen, her face burdened with innocence. "What do you mean, you're moving away from here, from this house, from us, where you've always lived. We haven't done enough to make you happy? What are you talking? What foolishness!"

"I've been thinking about it for a long time, Ma. It wasn't a decision that came easily. I need independence, I want to have my own life, live the way it suits me to." Let her make an effort to understand this time, Alexis thought, begging someone, she hardly knew who.

"Here you're not independent? Don't you always do what you want whether or no Daddy and me thinks you should? When did you ever ask us for yes or no? Here it doesn't suit you?"

"Ma, you don't understand. Please try to. I'm old enough to be on my own. I feel stifled here."

"Stifled? Who's stifling? I'm doing you something? I love you and want the best for you? Daddy and me we always thought about your future and how it should be good for you, not like it was hard for us, and haven't we always helped you? This is thanks, this moving out? This is how you say to your parents, after all those years of giving and taking, us giving all the time and you taking like it belongs to you, and now when we can begin to do a little taking, you take away?"

"Ma, it's not like that at all. I'm grateful, you know I am. It's not as though I'm going somewhere far away or anything, the apartment's only a fifteen-minute drive from here. Look at it this way: if I were getting married, would it be any different?"

"Difference, sure it's different! If you got married - from my mouth to His ears - it would be a nochas! This is a running away, a saying we haven't done good by you, that you can't live here with us, we're not good enough or something!"

Her mother's voice gradually rose, her eyes began brimming. One hand leaning on the counter, she stood there looking frail and pathetic. Impossible to believe that this little woman had a vicious temper that cowed her husband, son and daughter. To a stranger's eyes she would appear as wronged as she felt herself to be.

All the uproar brought Alexis's father into the kitchen with his "what's wrong? What's wrong here?" Typical. He'd rather not be involved in any disagreement between mother and daughter. It was enough for him to have to contend with those between himself and his wife, but somehow he always came around at the tail end, asked what's wrong, looked accusingly at Alexis, and patted his wife on the shoulder. When his wife screamed at him, however, he was always silent, hunched over into himself, trying to decrease his bulk as though that would grant him protection from her unappeasable ire.

It never failed, his silence, his mute inability to counteract his wife's accusations, to drive her to renewed frenzies of impassioned denunciations. She invariably worked herself into a steam of uncontrolled emotion, garbled words of baseless accusations, went about grumbling for an hour later, finally forgetting everything until the next storm broke. Any matter, however seemingly insignificant could induce another storm without warning, even the most innocuous remark, and for that reason, Mr. Margolies habitually kept his own counsel.

"Moishe", his wife wailed at him, for once an ally. "She's going to leave us. Would you believe?"

*****************************************************************

In the week that followed there was no ploy that her mother left untried. Playing on her sympathies, her guilt. First the accusations, then a day of baleful silence, broken only by her mother's heart-rending sighs. Finally, another confrontation. "What do you want from my life?"

"From your life nothing, Ma. I want to be responsible for my own life, make my own decisions."

"Again decisions! Don't I always ask you, don't I, if it's okay by you when I want you should do something? You're driving me to an early grave with this, you're pulling pieces from mine heart, you're killing me!"

"Oh Ma, it's not so simple. I just want to be responsible for myself, have some freedom!"

"Responsible? Don't I always say you're responsible, you do something wrong?"

"Like all the time", Alexis muttered.

"What, WHAT?" her mother strained to hear. "Speak up, don't mumble." And then a sly grin slid over her mother's face. "It's the boys, eh? You don't like I should inspect them all the time, they come, no?"

Alexis flushed. "That's not the only kind of freedom I'm talking about, Ma."

A huge shrug. "No, no, what can I do with you. I gave up mine life you should have everything. But everything yet isn't enough."

"I'm grateful, Ma! I know everything you've done, but it's time I lived my own life, and you live yours."

******************************************************************

Another week of tears, and this time her mother warned her that Alexis's children would be as mean and cruel to her as she was to her mother. Wait, she warned, it would come, that time when although she nurtured her children with love and gave them every opportunity to be special, they would one day turn on her, and break her heart, as she was doing to her mother.

"Mean and cruel? Oh Ma, I'm sorry if I'm causing you pain. But everyone, all the girls are leaving home. I'm a hold-over from another era, it's downright anachronistic!"

"Is that dirty talk?" her mother asked. Alexis laughed through her exasperation.

"You're laughing at me?" her mother huffed. "I'm trying to be reasonable, you're laughing at me? AZOI TEET MEN A MUMMA?"

Alexis couldn't restrain herself. She flung her arms about her mother, hugged and kissed her, couldn't recall the last time she had.

"Go away", her mother sniffed, pushing her off, trying to appear hurt, but so obviously pleased by the little demonstration of filial emotion. "Okay, all right, let it be like you want, you'll go. But promise me, Alex, supper every Friday night."

"Of course" her daughter exulted. "Every Friday night, Ma, I wouldn't miss it for anything!"

"Wednesday too, maybe?" her mother ventured.

"Ma, we'll see. first let me adjust. Let yourself become accustomed to it..."

"Oy", her mother fretted, "What'll I tell everyone, mine tochter is living by herself, who knows where, who with..."

"Ellen, remember, Ellen!" Alexis prodded. Then, despite her better judgement Alexis said it: "Ma, don't worry. If I've been able to keep my head intact for all these years living with you, I'll survive anything."

"Dopishe kind", her mother smiled through tears. "Why do you think I brought you up like I did?"