The Antigonish Review 29

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

The Honolulu Sun

Years ago we used to drive down the Don Valley Parkway, past the old brick factories on our way to the old Toronto Zoo, at Riverdale. We'd pass great mounds of leaves gathered by the Parks Department, to moulder and turn into fertilizer - anyone who wanted to, could go and get some to fertilize their gardens. We had no gardens then. Once, we saw two hippos at the zoo, a young one and an older one, and watched them cavort in a shallow pool of water. They snorted water joyfully from their great snouts, diving and surfacing. It was fascinating. I read once somewhere that the hippopotamus has an unique method by which it claims territorial imperative. Waving its silly little switch of a tail at the end of its locomotive-heavy body like a fan, it defecates. The fanning action of the tail spreads a uniform spray of excrement everywhere. Where the ordure falls, that is its territory.

All of which isn't terribly relevant, but interesting. We mark our territories differently. The ponds we inhabit bear no resemblance to the hippos' and we think we differentiate our territories elegantly, but in actual fact, we throw dirt around just as extravagantly, only we think we don't.

And oh yes, I remember now - about the Riverdale Zoo - when Ben and I were a lot younger, oh, maybe about twenty some-odd years ago, when I was working and he was out of a job, he'd call for me at lunch time. Sometimes we'd eat our bagged lunches across the street in the little park at Avenue Road and St.Clair near where I worked, sitting near the statue of ageless Peter Pan. And sometimes we'd drive hurriedly down through the Rosedale Ravine, under all those bridges. It was a wonderfully private place, no other cars at all. We'd pass the Toronto Crematorium. We'd hurry to get there before the factories blew the twelve-noon whistle, and if we were on time, we'd get there on the second level, or was it the third? to stand before the wolves', the coyotes' and the foxes' cages in time to watch them lift their heads as though on cue and all howl and yodel with the factory whistles. Now the zoo's moved, what do they howl at, I wonder?

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In a supermarket last week I shoved my buggy up to the check-out counter, trying to decide whether my purchases could legitimately go through the express check-out. Ahead of me was a young woman with a maybe month-old baby in her buggy, surrounded by food. A five-year-old, obviously her older child, was sneaking his fingers into boxes of chocolates at the end-of-aisle counter. He had a plastic gun in one hand and while munching chocolates, banged the gun down on the display, smashing the chocolate boxes. I can't remember ever letting my children behave like that. Then I saw the boy slip behind his mother's buggy while she was busy putting her groceries onto the counter, and quickly look around him. The little brat stood on his toes and reached over to pinch the peacefully sleeping baby. Hard, on the nose. Of course the baby screeched and its tiny nostrils looked painfully red.

Never one to mind my own business, I said to the startled mother "It's your other child, the little boy. He deliberately hurt the baby. I saw him." She glared at me as though she saw the indelible mark of a child molester engraved on my forehead.

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Watching i musici play a piece for solo violin and bass continuo by Viotti, I was struck by their intensity; as though only they alone in the universe existed. As though, aside from their abstracted vision of sublimely soaring music of the spheres, nothing else is real. The sensitivity of the violinist manifested itself plainly in the exquisite pain on his mobile face. His face seemed that of an angelic mafioso. The earnest little bassist climbed all over his bass - a symbol if I ever saw one. Decadence is everywhere.

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I've got to stop collecting recipes from newspapers and magazines. Every time I see an interesting recipe, I tear it out and stick it behind the cheese board, meaning to type it out on a card after I try it. Kind of amass an interesting collection. Well, I've got a mass of newspaper bits-and-pieces now and I've still not typed any of them up. I guess I should toss them out, but I wanted them for something to do, kind of stretch out the time. There's so much of it.

Yesterday I tried one of the cakes. It was called a Daffodil cake and I thought it sounded intriguing. It failed, and I looked at the dismal mess, trying to decide whether to scrape the rubber uck out of the pans onto a plate and pour chocolate sauce over it, to serve as a 'special dessert' or just throw everything in the garbage, when Teddy came in from school and gave me his generous sympathy.

"Too bad, Mom. Don't feel bad."
"I don't, just inept."
"Aw, you're not. You're pretty good. Anyway, everyone has failures", he tells me and I long to tell him it's not the little failures that bother me but the big, big ones that band-aids won't cure.

"Tell you what", he says, his face brightening, "It's like this Mom, like when I get a rubber airplane kit and work like mad to get it done and then it won't fly. I know the fault isn't with me, 'cause my workmanship is painstaking, so it must be the faulty aerodynamics of the kit, Mom", he beams. "Buy cake mixes."

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When I was a little kid I always suffered from constipation. I used to get really desperate. I'd complain to my mother. She was indifferent. When I got older, I learned about nutrition and bulk and I guess, in retrospect, that I hadn't a proper diet as a kid. Now I know I'm a better mother than my own mother was and I know what constitutes a healthful diet and my kids don't suffer from constipation or anything else. I have no more problems - that way. Sometimes just a kind of mental diarrhoea, but that's all right.

I know my mother suffers from chronic constipation now. She's always complaining, always letting wind, always going for long walks, drinking hot water.

God, she used to drive us crazy, me and Ben. Our families disliked each other and we weren't supposed to meet. Well, we used to sneak out and meet at Christie Pits Park. I was supposed to be taking care of my youngest brother, Sammy.

Now Sammy's a cheerful twenty-six year-old bachelor. Last time he visited, he told us about his latest trip up to Tuktoyaktuk. He's an environmentalist, goes up there for Indian and Northern Affairs to check pollution, the effects of a possible oil spill on the flora and fauna.

"Me and two other guys, we were sleeping in this tent. We were bushed. All of a sudden I woke in a panic - someone was screaming. I saw one of the guys banging a long-handled frypan against the side of the tent, shouting. He's nuts, stir-crazy. We'll have to tie him up and wait for the helicopter to pick us all up, I thought. I started to move slow and easy toward him, kicking the cot of the other guy to wake him up. He slept like the dead and I was hoping that he wasn't yet - like the nut hadn't got to him yet or anything, when the screecher turned to me, his eyeballs rolling and yelled Bear! Polar Bear!

"I ducked my head around the corner of the opening and saw a mean looking bastard standing a few feet away, like it couldn't make up its mind to leave the tent area where Omar the Tentmaker was yelling like crazy, or assault the canvas and get all our edible goodies and us too. I started to yell and bang things around, and so did the third guy. We were all groggy and scared stiff. We must've been yelling and hitting each other with anything we could get our hands on long after the bear ambled off. Next time we'll take a rifle. We had to leave it behind that time, because the helicopter was loaded so heavily with all our equipment..."

He would've made a lousy meal anyway - all bone and gut. Ben always looks a little dazed and wistful when Sammy tells his tall tales. Like he's missing some great life's adventure.

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One day, an early spring afternoon, I answered the doorbell and was mildly surprised to see May Ennis standing there. She looked like spring herself, cool and promising. For some reason, I didn't want to ask her in - I don't know why I felt that way. I kept her standing in the doorway and asked yes? It was crazy, but I had a sudden premonition.

Later, we sat in the living room, me the stiff matron, her the courageous young beauty. Hell, she's not that much younger than me - she has a child by a previous marriage and I'm not bad looking myself.

"I love him", she said.
"Very nice. I love him too. I'm married to him. I've borne his children. What's more, my dear, he loves me."

A barely perceptible frown creased her smooth exterior. "But you don't understand, Mrs. Frier, he doesn't love you! He told me. He said he loves me!"

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I can remember when I was really young, that my mother helped a friend of hers get rid of a tape worm. She described for me in disgusting detail how she pulled in the bathroom and the tapeworm kept coming and coming. I vomited and never again asked her where she had been when I came home from school and no one was at home.

Much later I learned that anyone who tastes the raw fish she's grinding for seasoning when making gefulte fish, is a likely candidate for worms. My mother regularly tasted the raw fish she was grinding. She never got tape worm.

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That bloody little dog from across the road - Myra's pet, keeps coming over to do its job on our lawn. Once, Ben said he was going to collect the feces and put them in a paper bag. "Then I'll put them on the Adlers' verandah and set the bag on fire."
"What then, Dad?, Teddy asked, mouth agape.
"Then, of course, I'll ring the bell and leave." We all waited, blank-faced.
"Stupid! Old Adler'll stomp on the burning mass to put out the fire, won't he?"

Well, he never did, and that dog keeps coming around. The Adlers aren't bad, just kind of vacuous. Years ago, when we first moved here, we found out that they had a kind of cozy thing going with the Bensons.

The first neighbourhood party we went to was at the Adlers'. A swimming party. this must have been around two a.m. by then. There were around eight couples from the neighbourhood. Maybe ten. Lou Adler was kind of happy and he pulled Marg Benson's bikini top off and then Myra's (so she wouldn't feel neglected, I guess). Myra laughed, but Marg ran home next door, crying. She has tiny breasts and I imagine she was mortified. The party went on and Marg came back dressed to kill in a long white georgette dress.

That night, they switched and neighbourhood gossip has it they've been doing it regularly ever since.

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"Look honey, how can you even think I don't love you? Of course I do! You and the kids. What would my life be, without you?"

"Then how could you? How could you do that to us ... to me? How humiliating! This little tramp comes to my door, invades my privacy and tells me to get ready to give my husband up!"

"Look honey, it's all a big mistake. She's been working too hard lately. It's gone to her head. I gave her a little gift, kind of a gesture of appreciation for all her hard work ... and then her kid's been sick lately and causing her all kinds of worry. You've got to pity her, all alone."

"Are you kidding? What's to pity? I don't mind if she's looking for security, but not mine!"

"What're you talking! Don't think things like that, you scare me. Look, if it makes you feel any better, I'll speak to her. I'm going to tell her to behave herself. If worse comes to worse, I'll fire her."

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When my mother comes over for a visit, she sniffs around everything. Anytime I get something new, she pounces on it. How much did it cost? Where'd you get it? What for?

I bought a pair of late Nineteenth-Century terra cotta Blackamoor busts and marble plinths for the archway between the living room and the dining room and she sniffs 'Schvartzes!'. I tell her the Blackamoors were highly respected princes during the Italian Renaissance. She sniffs disdainfully.

"Where's Ben?" she asks. "'Ent he coming home for dinner? He's working late, lately?" She pries incessantly, infuriatingly.

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Ruthie thinks I'm crazy. I should have kept my mouth shut. Now everyone'll know. She says no. She says I can trust her. She doesn't want her mother to know. It would break the old lady's heart, she says.

"He's too damn good-looking for his own good", she says. "Where does he sleep?" I'm startled.

"Where? In his bed. Where should he sleep?" She's aghast.

"Rhoda, you're crazy! You let him sleep with you? From her to you? How could you!"

"Ruthie, I love him!"

"You stupid fool. He's a naughty kid - you catch him with his grubby little paws in the cookie jar and you give him candy? Make him pay!"

"He's going through a phase. What good would it do if I threw him out - I'd just be throwing him at her." She looks at me suspiciously.

"You don't ... you wouldn't let him ..." She's disgusted with me. I don't care.

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Kathy knows something is wrong. I'm broody and pensive all the time. She's very sensitive. Even when she was a toddler she used to say intuitive things, as though she had a psychological line running from my head to hers in place of the umbilical cord. Strange, she's a mystery to me. I can't begin to imagine what goes on in her head, but she always seems to know about me.

I thought that teen-age girls, when they realize their father's sexual interest is wandering, viewed their mothers with contempt.

Last night, when she was at the piano playing a lovely little piece, Hayden, Ben crept up on her as he often likes to do and planted a big kiss on the nape of her neck. She turned and angrily brushed it away, called him a creep. I was embarrassed for him. I've told her nothing's wrong, that she should stop picking on Ben. I don't want to turn our children against their father. Ben would never forgive me.

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When I was watering my house plants I noticed those squiggly little things on top of the soil again. I guess I've been keeping the soil too moist. They're the larvae of flies, I think. Sickening things. I consider whether I should try a folk remedy; pour a thin layer of boiling water over to cook them dead, or use the spray can of insecticide I bought and suffer pangs of conscience.

There, that's something. If we all contracted skin cancer from the radiation of the sun because we've destroyed the ozone layer, we'd be so busy moaning about our disease, we'd forget our pursuits. Monogamy by default.

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A while ago, for my thirty-sixth birthday, Kathy built me a birdhouse in Industrial Arts. Sparrows inhabited it as soon as we put it up, and started their families. We'd find the occasional featherless blue corpse under the Maple. One year we counted five separate broods, all from the same pair of adults. The following autumn a miserably behaved black squirrel bit away at the opening until it'd been stretched large enough to admit it entry. The birdhouse was only made of thin plywood. The squirrel was one of our regulars. We had about four who came around for handouts all summer. All that winter we'd see the black tail switching around outside the opening in the blowing snow. Occasionally, the squirrel would come down for peanuts. If we weren't quick to put them out, he'd climb the screening on the storm door and make a racket. When spring came, the squirrel abandoned the house and made a regular squirrel nest of leaves and twigs over in the park.

A new sparrow family came along. We were always hoping for a more exotic kind of bird, but we had to be content with sparrows, they were the only kind who nested in our backyard. Then the starlings came along and bothered the sparrows. I understand they lay their eggs with the sparrow eggs and the baby starling bird-curmudgeons, when they hatch, do in the sparrow-innocents. Well, we didn't want that happening, so Teddy and Kathy, him holding the ladder and her hammering on a new front, put up a smaller hole.

But it was too small and the sparrows couldn't get in and soon we noticed a regular ingress and egress of bumble bees which didn't really bother us all that much.

One of the last things Ben did before he left for Honolulu was to take down the birdhouse with the intention of fixing up the front for a new crop of birds,next season. But when he looked inside, he found it full of all kinds of larvae, different sizes, colours and shapes. The house, he said, was beyond redemption. Like some futures.

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"You've got to understand, Rhoda. It's true I still love you. But, God help me, I love her too. She's so helpless! She needs me!"

"God won't help you. You can't love us both. You love me and you letch after her and she's helpless like an aroused bull. She's hoodwinked you; she wants the security you give us, that's what she wants."

"You're wrong, dear. She would never do anything to harm you or our family. We're both helpless in the face of our love for each other. It's pure."

"Pure! You mean Platonic? Honest? No sweating between sheets? Just holding hands and looking into each other's limpid pools? And we've been doing all those gross things in bed all these wasted years!"

"Don't be bitter ... it's not like you. It's not like you to be so coarse. Please, please try to understand, Rhoda. You don't know what it's like to be a man and never to have any kinds of experiences. What did I know? I was just a kid and there you were, before I had a chance to live, to know anyone else. I want to know what I've missed! I want to live a little too!"

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Tartini, that dazzling violinist, that brilliant composer, was also not satisfied with his life, with his prolific, admired output. Nothing would do but for him to make a bargain with the devil. His soul for a scintillating work of art par excellence, a tour de force of heavenly - pardon me - devilish melody - and so was born "The Devil's Trill".

What have I got to bargain with? Would I wish a tape worm on her? A dybbuk. A dybbuk should inhabit the temple of her defilement.

My uxorious husband. I want him back!

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I was crabby at the supermarket yesterday. Told two different people, almost snarled at them, to put their cigarettes out until they got out of the store. I don't want my meat and vegetables ashed upon; my air polluted with their second-hand carcinogens.

I meant to get some wheat-germ and looking close at some torn packages on the shelf, saw unmistakably, rodent droppings. I marched right up to the manager and demanded the place be cleaned up. He ignored me. I was stunned. He said he was busy.

Funny. I tried pointing the mess out - and it was a mess; on the lower shelves of the loose-packed cereals there were even small dried pools of urine among the feces - to other shoppers and no one was interested.

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A week ago, I wandered into Robert Dirstein Interiors for a look around. I hadn't really meant to. I hadn't planned on buying anything. I just thought that looking at beautiful things would cheer me up.

I liked a 17th-Century Flemish landscape, unsigned, a la Breughel the younger. But I liked even more a French commode in the style of Louis XV. Serpentine-fronted with exquisite floral marquetry, brass-mounted legs and escutcheons with a pie-crust bracchiated brown marble top. I was almost certain I had seen a similar one at the Royal Ontario Museum, once. It was expensive for a mid-Victorian reproduction of an earlier era, but I figured I could afford it. It was meant to grace my living room, lighten my heart.

The piece was delivered today. Two men clomped their heavy shoes through the living room and set it down beside the blue velvet loveseat. After some deliberation, I topped it with an earlier acquisition from the shop: a French baroque rococo clock with a cunning suspension, ornamented by a bronze shepherd boy fluting to his bell-wether.

It hasn't cheered me up, it hasn't lightened my mood at all. I feel forlorn, strangely removed from pride of acquisition. It doesn't mean anything now.

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"How long is he going to be away?" Ruthie wants to know.

"Who knows?" I shrug. "He's there, finding himself. When he discovers exactly what it is he's looking for he'll come back. There's no hurry, Morley is looking after the business."

"You seem unconcerned. Not at all what I'd thought you'd be like. Don't you care?"

She wants to see me bleeding. My nerves are shot, my stomach churns, my head aches, and I can't sleep.

"Of course, I care. Would you like to see me wear sackcloth and ashes?"

"Rhoda, take my advice. An ultimatum. Give him an ultimatum. You're entirely too calm. When he comes back, scream and rage. Tell him it's either the tramp or you and the children. He adores the kids - it'll be battle over. And don't sleep with him until you're sure!"

"He'll make his own decision, unassisted by any histrionics on my part. I want him back because he wants to come, not because I've issued an ultimatum."

"Listen to me, Rhoda. Don't be so proud. You think he's a man? All men are babies; they need to be told what to do. Show me the man who's a true adult and I'll show you a man with more than his share of female hormones. Men are just grown-up kids. As long as you don't get upset by his fooling around he'll take it for assent. You're just fooling yourself!"

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I find myself wondering how his ice-maiden shapes up in that hemisphere of Gauguinesque beauties. I wonder what she's done with her daughter. If we were truly civilized I could have offered to look after the girl. The height of sophistication. My head is splitting.

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Teddy's read his way through Ryder Haggard. Nordhoff and Hall, and now he's working on Joseph Conrad. Doing his adventuring vicariously. Like me. I wonder if he'll mature earlier than his father.

Kathy is reading, of all things, Machiavelli's 'The Prince'. What's she plotting, I wonder. What a crafty adversary she'll be in some future life.

Speaking of precocious children; although I don't mean to imply that I feel my children qualify for the genius category. I've read about Leonardo da Vinci, apprenticed as a child to a guild of artisans and already turning his brain and cunning hand to works of art. Then there was Beethoven, a reluctant marvel whose father insisted that genius come to fruition. And clever Mozart who at three and a half followed his sister to the Clavichord; a virtuoso before he was five, a composer of sparkling music toasted by cultured Europe, and just incidentally delightedly exploited by his loving father.

Will Teddy read Darwin next and relish his voyage of discovery to the Galapagos? Will Teddy be influenced by him as Darwin as a child had been by von Humboldt, and will Teddy go on to discover new frontiers? For example, that mankind doesn't reallye xist? That we are demented figures of our own tortured imaginations?

Will Kathy go on in the shadow of tyrranical Indira Gandhi, tempered by the clever political finesse of Golda Meier to become Supreme Ruler of this Earth, to complete a manifest destiny of a people that doesn't exist? Angels of Destiny!

I am a babbling idiot. All that Honolulu sun and play has gone to my febrile brain. I can actually feel my brain bubbling and fermenting in the heat of the Pacific. There'll soon be nothing left of me but a mechanical shell, a dutiful automaton.

Ben, come back!

c. 1977 Rita Rosenfeld
published in The Antigonish Review, Number 29, Spring 1977