The Fiddlehead, Fall 1979

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

I'd Have Kicked Her Out

I've known Willie for most of my life. When we were kids, he used to spend more time at my house than at his own. My mother didn't really mind, but held her breath whenever he was over. She collected all kinds of bric-a-brac and always expected him to break something, although he never did. She was genuinely fond of him but we all knew that if ever anything was to go wrong, it did when he was around. He attracted trouble the way a magnet does iron filings. Not anything particularly serious, just awkward mishaps. And nothing ever seemed to go right for him. My mother used to say Willie was born with two left feet - attached backwards; that if trouble, like a meteorite, landed somewhere by chance, inexplicably Willie would be there to bear the brunt of its weighty misfortune.

I always felt protective towards him, as you would for a younger brother. I think my mother deliberately used Willie as an example to demonstrate to me all the do's and dont's, while at the same time engendering in me a protective kind of pity toward those less fortunate; making me feel, you see, responsible in part, for his welfare. She'll never know how burdened I've been by that; probably she felt, piously, that she was 'doing her duty;', preparing me for the sensitive role of 'my brother's keeper'.

I'm the only one now who still calls him Willie, now that his mother, and mine, are dead. Even Maureen, his wife, called him Bill. She once said to me, "Willie's a great clown's name", inferring of course, that he was just that. But he isn't; only one of life's unfortunate stumblers.

Not that long ago, Maureen told me, with that whining inflection in her voice that always grated on me, that he had been slapping her around. How it affected their two little girls, I hate to think. She wanted me to talk to Willie, to tell him it's not civilized behaviour. But I felt, why should I? After all, she had driven him to it. He never used to be that way, would never even play hard contact sports, couldn't stand the thought of guys slamming each other into the boards playing hockey.

He liked mechanical things at high school, used to fool around with cars. There was even a small aeroplane in the auto mechanics class he took, where they would take the engine apart, put it back together, kick it around. Though they were never quite certain it would work. He thought he'd like to be a racing car driver, something like that. He sets type now on this city's biggest paper's opposition. We all suffer disappointments we learn to transcend.

Like me, a good sprinter with aspirations to develop my ability, maybe be a long distance runner, compete in international meets. I'm a postie now.

Part of gaining maturity is learning to adjust to reality, but Willie's head still inhabits some other world that disappointed him; that was his first big souring.

I said we were close, and we were. He couldn't understand, didn't seem to want to for a long time, why we couldn't spend as much time together as we had as kids, once I met Susan and wanted to spend all the time I could with her. He was that possessive. When Susan and I got married he used to hang around the place, get on her nerves. He wasn't one of her favourite people, even then. And by the time we were expecting our first child Willie married Maureen who just happens to be a distant cousin of Susan's. Very distant, she reminds me.

At first we spent a lot of time together, the four of us. Even went on a summer vacation together the first year they were married. By then Susan didn't mind him quite so much since he spent more of his time shuffling his feet after Maureen and made fewer demands on me.

That summer we rented a cottage in New Hampshire, a large one. We hiked the White Mountain range, went to visit all the local tourist traps, had an altogether good time.

Then near the end of the second week Susan found Maureen and me together, in one of the bedrooms. Susan had been out picking berries with Willie, but decided to head back. Later, she told me she had felt uneasy, didn't then know why, a premonition perhaps. But there she discovered us in what might charitably be called a compromising situation.

It wasn't exactly my fault. In that I didn't initiate contact. Not that the thought hadn't crossed my mind. Maureen likes to flaunt her ripeness. She's the provocative type. Slutty, Susan says. But there's a great divide between the thought and the act.

I had been nursing a hangover from the night before, lying in bed quite innocently when Maureen came in wearing a halter and shorts and before I could say much of anything, off they came and she stood there, whispering candid encouragement. I'm only human after all. My response was pure reaction. Anyway, that part is old history.

We never did tell Willie. All the screeching and hair-pulling was over before he got back, and although the remaining few days were very cool, he mentioned it seemed as though the girls had seen enough of each other to do them a while. For obvious reasons neither Maureen nor I wanted him to know what had happened and Susan was just there, part of the conspiracy. Silly bugger, not to guess; Susan wasn't talking to any of us, even him, and he couldn't figure it out. God, I was miserable!

He thought that Susan was just being 'reserved' when she refused to see them again after our return home. Likeable as he is, the truth is he is not very perceptive. Because Susan's side of the family had a well-earned reputation for snobbery, and Maureen never let him forget it, it seemed a reasonable explanation to him. He never, after the first few refusals by Susan to get together again, questioned her motives too closely. I think he felt embarrassed for me, that I was married to someone like that. I hoped the situation would never arise that I might have to enlighten him - as much because I regretted my part in the affair, as my hunch that Maureen's overtures to me were no isolated lapse.


More recent history is that I dropped by one day last year and found him in his living room in Centretown, head in his hands, crying. He's the emotional type but I had never seen him quite so shattered before.

"She's gone", he said, sitting there with a woeful expression, red hair standing in spikes, socked feet digging miserably into the shag rug. Although their place was always a slovenly mess Maureen expected everyone to take their shoes off before coming into her house.

"Who's gone?" I asked, knowing who, but stalling for time, wanting to respond in a believable way. So much for friendship and spontanaeity.

"I got home early today" his voice quavered thickly through his hands. "We've gone on strike and I don't know when we'll go back. We think the press is going to lock us out." Dully, dutifully, telling me the story of woe he was preparing to break to her on his arrival home - to an empty house.

"I got home early today" his voice repeated and his tone turned peevish, he raised his hurt eyes "and she's nowhere! So I go looking around, calling for her. There's nothing cooking on the stove, the kids aren't home from school - and she's NOWHERE!"

"Well, what do you mean she's gone?" I said. "She's probably slipped out to visit with one of the neighbours. You know how women are." Hell, I wasn't trying to give him false hope. I really thought she had left, but there was always the possibility.... Because, if you think of it, nothing so good as her leaving him could possibly happen to the poor slob.

He glared at me. "What do you take me for, Steve?" For a moment I was taken aback, thought perhaps he knew more than I had given him credit for, was myself prepared to plead innocence; of knowledge of her behaviour more than anything else; after all, it was mostly guesswork on my part augmented by family gossip which I take to be a vicious instrument of women having too much leisure time on their hands. "I looked", he stressed. "I said I looked around, didn't I? I looked around and half her clothes are gone! The fur coat she just wheedled out of me - gone!" He looked down at the rug, drew his arm across his face, his sleeve absorbing the moisture around his eyes. "No note, nothing! She's just gone and I don't know why. JESUS!" he suddenly erupted "why'd she take off?"

I sat there across from him, wondering myself why. She seemed to have it made here. But I was glad, and hoped she hadn't taken the children with her. He would be better off, as I said, without her. Maybe he'd straighten himself out, pay off some of his debts, stop drinking as much, without her goading him, teasing, threatening him. I know she did all that not only because I had witnessed it but also because he kept asking me if Susan did things like that too. She wouldn't, she just isn't the type, but I recall telling him once women were like that, always trying a man's patience.

I wondered myself, sometimes, why I couldn't be honest with him, tell him what I really thought of her. The thought of her telling him what had happened between us those years back, even embellishing it for effect; she was vindictive enough to do it; held me back. So much for trust and friendship, all those nice virtues that my mother tried to inculcate in me that make a relationship. It sometimes seemed to me that his life was an ongoing drama; he headed toward some unhappy end and I a fascinated yet disaffected spectator. The guiltier I felt toward him the more drawn I was to his side. She mixed feelings I had about Willie I couldn't easily explain to Susan. She calls my attachment to 'that ass' unnatural, 'idiotic'. Well.

A knock, a timid knock at the front door and he looked up, startled, a flush spreading across his face. "Maybe ..." he said, started to get up, then sat back hard and stared at the rug again, a disgusted look on his face. I answered and there was a thin old lady standing there, her mouth a slit of acerbity, long skinny fingers holding an envelope; her manner one of a messenger bearing important news.

In ancient civilizations they used to kill messengers bearing ill tidings. I only flirted with the idea of asking her to remove herself. "I'm here to see Mr. MacLean", she said sourly and I knew she would never allow me to deliver the message to him; she wanted the honour.

I know her type. The kind that always peered through windows hidden by lace curtains, who scuttled crabwise to the door whenever they heard me leave the mail on my rounds. They'd open the door quickly, so no one could look inside, clutch their mail and slam the door. Their lives were private but everyone else's was an open book for them to peruse.

I stepped aside and she came in, walked down the hall to the living room, stopped in the doorway. There she addressed Willie. "I've a letter for you" she said, holding it out, forcing him to rise and take it from her, a puzzled expression on his face. He stood there, holding the envelope, turning it over. He observed both sides were blank and looked at her questioningly.

"From your wife" she snapped. "Gone off to Montreal. With HIM, over there", and she inclined her head sharply to indicate the other side of the street. "I've got your girls, caught them on the way home from school. Don't worry about them, they're drinking milk, eating cookies. They're used to it" she explained with what sounded like satisfaction. "Used to be locked out of the house, sometimes."

She paused and a sneer smeared her wrinkled face. Malevolent old bitch. "Thought I'd give you a chance to get used to the idea. You're a cuckold, man."

Through it all Willie stood there, mouth agape, making strange sounds as though he was strangling on too many questions. She made an impatient gesture with her hand, indicating that he was to sit down again. Then she stood there, hands on crooked hips, looking down at him.

"Seems you had no idea, is it? The whole street knew what was going on and thought maybe you did too." She talked on, telling him in her dry voice about his wife's affair with a man across the street. How he, the man, was over at all times of the day. A young man of some twenty, and you'd think, she said, that a woman Maureen's age would have more sense, a little more discretion what with two small children. Finally she left, said she would send the girls over after dinner. "Give you a chance to bear up" she said grimly.

He was on strike for a lengthy period of time so he stayed home looking after Nora and Dolly. They thought it was a keen new game, mommy away on a holiday and daddy looking after them, walking them to school every morning and preparing their meals. He did a better job of looking after them than Maureen ever did. Even the house looked better.

Willie lost a little weight, looked a little drawn, but otherwise seemed all right. He began taking up his long-lost interest in flying, taking books out of the library, reading as much as he could about the latest aeronautical advances. A harmless past time, it occupied his spare time, was good for him. Kept him from brooding on his other failures.

He heard nothing from Maureen until she suddenly appeared again five months later. Looking a little the worse for wear. And expecting to be taken back. She knew her man. But not entirely, perhaps, because that's when he began drinking more than just a little, and that's apparently when he also began slapping her around. And I'll never know what she told him when she came back, because I've never been able to bring myself to ask, and he has never volunteered the information.

Susan was scandalized when I told her Maureen was back, that she had resumed her role as housewife, mother. She said if Willie was half a man he would have thrown her out. I said I would take her back any time at all if she decided she needed a vacation.

She gave me a definitely unpleased look. "Ver-ry funny! I shall keep that under advisement", she said scathingly. I knew I had gone too far. I just couldn't resist it. Her genteel family had discussed Willie's misfortune ad infinitum. It had been the main topic of conversation, like some exotic objet d'art somehow finding its way into their otherwise stolid existence - and still they always used the euphemism 'on vacation' to describe Maureen's desertion. After all, she was one of them, albeit somewhat removed. They discussed her with that peculiar kind of emphasis the morally superior employ when comparing and elevating their virtuous lifestyles above the common.

Later, when Greg came home from school he was made official intermediary. Susan saying things like: "Greg dear, ask your father if he would like to come in for dinner" and he looked from her to me as though we were all mad when he saw me come sauntering in with Joanne saying: "Tell your mom, son, I'm here". He was relieved when we both began laughing at the absurdity of it all; reconciled.


Even though, since Maureen's return, Susan penalized me for dropping by Willie's place by withholding sex for a few days after each visit, I began going over a little more often, if only to get him out of the house. With two adolescents of my own and a disapproving wife it was difficult, but I felt I owed it to him.

We would go to a neighbourhood bar and just sit around talking, or not talking, whatever suited his mood. I even thought then about telling him to kick her out because it had seemed to me that once he got over the initial shock of her leaving him last year for that ... well, whatever he was, her paramour, he'd adjusted fairly well, seemed happy enough just himself and the girls. Since she had come back he had become progressively more drawn and seedy looking, morosely introspective. And as I mentioned earlier he had been beating her. I felt a little apprehensive that the situation would eventually worsen, that his violence might erupt into something more serious.


A few weeks ago I drove down Willie's street looking for a parking spot when I noticed Willie on the bottom step of his porch, appearing to be swaying somewhat. Dusk was beginning to settle and I couldn't quite make out his expression but his mouth was a dark shadow, wide open and he was yelling what seemed to be incivilities as I drove by, unable to find a vacancy. I glanced across the street as I passed, toward where his rancour seemed to be directed, and saw a hefty man walking across, yelling back. For the merest split second it occurred to me that this was Maureen's - Christ, what would you call him, her lover? But I'd known, don't remember who told me, that he was living in Montreal. I remember thinking it must be, it must be him. I felt like pushing the gas and driving on, just going on home. Willie hadn't seen me and I didn't want to be involved, felt suddenly sick of the whole sordid affair.

But eventually I found a spot, parked, and then rushed back up the street, my heart thumping. things had happened swiftly; the interval between seeing them at first and my eventual parking seemed a long time of my own personal indecision, but I knew it had only been a matter of minutes.

As I ran up I saw the man whack Willie on the head, back and forth. Willie ineffectually beating the air about the other's head; he easily dodging Willie's drunken efforts. Then the man reached down and pulled Willie's legs out from under him. Even from where I was, pounding the pavement a few hundred yards down the street, the thunk was sickening as Willie fell. I saw the man kick Willie's head. Once, twice, and a final time. My legs felt like lead. It was like one of those recurring nightmares when you're running and just not getting anywhere. I heard myself yelling "hey, HEY!" in the direction of Willie's attacker. He stopped midpoint on the road and began to walk back, said "mind yer bizniz, eh? You want some too?"

I felt my face drain, seeing his heft bulging under a tight sweatshirt, his face impassive, the eyes dead looking. I turned and made for Willie, muttering 'bastard' under my breath.


There was one adjournment of the trial and when it was eventually called months later, the defence attorney explained convincingly that yelling obscenities had been tantamount to inviting the assault, that Willie had indicated by his behaviour that he was willing and prepared to fight. But the Crown Prosecutor demurred just as convincingly, emphasizing how drunk Willie had been, how imhumane it had been to kick Willie when he had been down like that, breaking his nose.

Then the defence went to introduce the ... punk, that's what he was ... the punk's mother, his sister, asking them questions regarding the defendant's character. They testified as to his good character, naturally; completely objective witnesses. The whole family looked like a degenerate lot; revolting slobs. The prosecutor attempted to introduce the history of bad feeling, the reason for it, but the judge ruled that evidence inadmissible, said he was only interested in the immediacy of the event. The prosecutor looked mildly frustrated, but I knew this was just a routine case for him; he hadn't really put that much effort into the prosecution.

The defence attorney had more to gain from the outcome but even he looked bored to hell, couldn't really have believed in his own assertions. Any nit could deduce that Willie had been the victim of a vicious assault.

He tried to discredit me. I had been careful to speak as objectively as possible in describing what I had seen.

Through it all that creep sat there like an eel, ready to strike, muscles taut. Watching him from time to time, I felt a momentary twinge of, I suppose, fear. I felt it was only his surroundings that restrained him, that he'd remember this, all of it, and exact some kind of primitive revenge. I felt personally vulnerable but angry too that that kind of intimidation could exist in the kind of work he inhabited; threatening me, a casual interloper casting a reluctant shadow on his netherworld.

The court perused his record. A long one. More recently he had been in custody in a minimum security institution near here for the last two months, awaiting trial. This then, had been his second hearing of the day. The first, in the morning, I learned, had been on a charge of forgery. His sentence was handed down, the judge sitting impassively, removed from it all, an oracle pronouncing his shadowy future. A year for the forgery. Six months for the assault. The assault to run concurrently with the forgery. Just Willie's cockeyed luck; his beating treated as a minor misdemeanor and the forgery charge seen as a more serious crime against society.


Willie's nose looks fine, now. Maureen is gone. He finally threw her out, just after the trial. He's been doing a lot of talking recently about taking flying lessons. Planning eventually to buy a plane of his own. He's taking it seriously; minor things like the wherewithal don't seem to occur to him. The girls listen to him wide-eyed, think it's glamorous. When they get a little older, he'll look to them just the way he looks to the rest of the world; a stumble-bum.

As long as he doesn't give up his job, that's all. but through all that self-generated enthusiasm, all the delusions, he still retains some sense of responsibility. I suppose he can afford to behave a little erratically now and then, to get him over the hump of adjustment; now that it's permanent. And now I'm tired of thinking about him all the time, told him to count me out of any plans he has, don't want to bother. I'll see him still, from time to time, just to check on things. But the less frequently, the better.


I keep thinking that thug is going to get out eventually. I keep remembering that look on his face. God, there are a myriad of such faces haunting me in my dreams ... nightmares, like a teasing echo ringing hollowly in some secret place in my head.

As I said, Willie is fine now. But things could be going a little better for me. Susan has begun for some reason dredging up the past, angry with me retrospectively again, about that time years ago.

"Creep!" she called me yesterday. "You probably started her career."

It wasn't my fault" I protested. I didn't do anything to encourage her. In fact, if you hadn't burst in I would have kicked her out!"

"Likely!" Her face set in a hard ball of anger.

So help me", I said desperately. "I was just about to throw her out of there, that's what I was doing, honestly!"

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in The Fiddlehead, Number 123