(1993) The Stone Diaries (22 page)

It was the doctor’s wife, a Mrs. Spears, who urged him to preserve the ring as a keepsake; she also helped him in the removing of it, first rubbing a little lard on his dead wife’s finger, then easing it off. Mrs. Spears’ voice as she performed this act had been most tender. "Keep it, Mr. Goodwill," she said, her face empty of calculation, "so you can give it to your daughter when she grows up."

And this is what he has always intended to do, to present it to his dear child, making a ceremony of it, a moment of illumination in which he would for once join the separate threads of his life and declare the richness of his blessings.

But he feels, recently, that he has lost his way in life. Old age has made him clumsy in both body and spirit, and he is unable finally to bring the scene to actuality or even, of late, to imagine it. What words would he find to invest the moment with significance? And what words would his daughter offer in return? Thank you would not do. Gratitude itself would not do. Speech and gesture would not suffice, not in the thin ether of the world he now inhabits. Far less troubling to bury this treasure beneath a weight of stone—his pyramid, dense, heavy, complex, full of secrets, a sort of machine.

His statement of finality. Either that, or a shrug of surrender.

Mrs. Flett’s Old School Friend

Fraidy Hoyt and Daisy Goodwill Flett went to school together back in Indiana. They sat on the Goodwills’ front porch in Bloomington and shared bags of Jay’s Potato Chips. They went to college together too, and pledged the same sorority, Alpha Zeta, and ever since that time they’ve stayed in touch. That is, they’ve corresponded three or four times a year, and sent each other jokey presents on their birthdays and at Christmas. They haven’t actually seen each other for years, but, finally, in August of 1947, Fraidy got herself on a train and went up to Ottawa for a week’s visit.

While she was there she thought: here is Daisy Goodwill with a distinguished husband and a large well-managed house and three beautiful children. Daisy’s got all that any of us ever wanted.

Whereas I’ve missed out on everything, no husband, no kids, no home really, only a dinky little apartment, not even a garden. Oh, Daisy’s garden! That garden’s something else. She can get up in the morning and spend all day if she likes trimming and weeding and transplanting and bringing beauty into the world. While I’m sitting at work. Tied to a desk and to the clock. Missing out on this business of being a woman. Missing it all.

Or else Fraidy Hoyt thought: oh, poor Daisy. My God, she’s gone fat. And respectable. Although who could be respectable going around in one of those godawful dirndl skirts—should I say something? Drop a little hint? Her cuticles too. I don’t think she’s read a book in ten years. And, Jesus, just look at this guest room.

Hideous pink scallops everywhere. I’m suffocating. Four more days. And this crocheted bedspread, she’s so gee-dee proud of, no one has crocheted bedspreads any more, it’s enough to give you nightmares just touching it. I’d like to unravel the whole damn thing, and I could too, one little pull. These kids are driving me crazy, whining and sneaking around all day, then dressing up like little puppets for the return of the great man at the end of the day.

Putting on a little play every single hypocritical day of their lives.

And: what can I say to her? What’s left to say? I see you’re still breathing, Daisy. I see you’re still dusting that nose of yours with Woodbury Face Powder. I observe your husband is always going off to "meetings" in Toronto or Montreal, and I wonder if you have any notion of what happens to him in those places. I notice you continue to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. Now isn’t that interesting. I believe your life is still going along, it’s still happening to you, isn’t it? Well, well.

Mrs. Flett’s Intimate Relations with her Husband
Deeply, fervently, sincerely desiring to be a good wife and mother, Mrs. Flett reads every issue of Good Housekeeping.

Also McCall’s and The Canadian Home Companion. And every once in a while, between the cosmetic advertisements and the recipe columns, she comes across articles about ways a woman can please her husband in bed. Often, too, there are letters from women who are seeking special advice for particular sexual problems. One of them wrote recently, "My husband always wants to have our cuddly moments on Monday night after his bowling league. Unfortunately I do the wash on Mondays and am too exhausted by evening to be an enthusiastic partner." The advice given was short and to the point: "Wash on Tuesdays." Which made Mrs. Flett smile. She laughed out loud, in fact, and wished her friend Fraidy was here to hear her laugh. Another woman wrote:

"My husband has a very strong physical drive, and expects intimate relations every single night. Is this normal?" Answer: "There is no such thing as normal or abnormal sexual patterns. What goes on in the bedroom of married people is sacred." This advice struck Mrs.

Flett as less than satisfactory; as a matter of fact, she isn’t entirely sure what was meant.

She does believe, though, that "every night" would be a lot to put up with.

Nevertheless she always prepares herself, just in case—her diaphragm in position, though she is repelled by its yellow look of decay and the cold, sick-smelling jelly she smears around its edge.

It’s a bother, and nine times out of ten it isn’t needed, but it seems this is something that has to be put up with. "Try to make your husband believe that you are always ready for his entreaties, even though his actual lovemaking may be sporadic and unpredictable."

Unpredictable, yes, although there are two particular times when Mrs. Flett can be absolutely certain of an episode of ardor: before her husband goes out of town (as a sort of vaccination, she sometimes thinks) and on his return. And tonight, a Wednesday in mid-September, he will be returning on the late train after a few days spent in Winnipeg. The house is orderly, the children asleep, and she herself is bathed, powdered, diaphragmed, and softly nightgowned. "The wearing of pajamas has driven many a man to seek affection elsewhere."

She wonders what his mood will be.

Lately he has been depressed. Not that he’s said anything, but she can feel it. His sixty-fifth birthday is approaching; she knows retirement worries him, the empty width of time ahead and how he will cope with it. Worse than idleness, though, is the sense of being cut off in the world. Lately he has been speaking more frequently of his two brothers in western Canada, and always their names are mentioned with a ping of sorrow. Simon in Edmonton, a drunk, has been out of touch for years, and between Barker and his brother Andrew in Saskatchewan a coolness has fallen. In the old days Andrew wrote frequently, usually, to be sure, asking for hand-outs, but the last two years have brought only an occasional brisk note or a holiday greeting.

Mrs. Flett knows, too, that her husband thinks often about his father in the Orkneys. He wonders if he should write and make inquiries, but the months go by and he puts off writing, almost as though he can’t bear to know what has happened. She, too, thinks often about her father-in-law, Magnus Flett, whom she has never met but who stands in her mind as a tragic figure, abandoned by his wife, dismissed by his three sons, despised, attached to nothing. In a way she loves him more tenderly than she loves her husband, Barker. What exactly had Magnus Flett done to deserve such punishment? The question nudges at her sense of charity, never quite disappearing from view.

Yet now—too late—his son, Barker, pines for reunion.

Recently, another of Barker Flett’s family ties has been rekindled, the most important of life’s ties—that which exists between son and mother. These last few days Barker has been in Winnipeg not for his usual round of agricultural meetings, but to attend the dedication ceremonies of the Clarentine Flett Horticultural Conservatory, a great glass-domed structure set in the middle of Assiniboine Park. The benefactor is one Valdi Goodmansen, the well-known millionaire meatpacker and financier. (Clarentine Flett, who was Barker Flett’s mother, had been run down and killed by a speeding bicycle back in the year 1916, and the rider of the bicycle was Valdi Goodmansen himself, then a lad of seventeen.)

"The terrible guilt I felt at that time has never lifted," Mr. Goodmansen told Mr. Flett over dinner at the Manitoba Club.

"One moment of carelessness, and a human life was erased. If only I had dismounted while turning the corner. Or if I had been traveling at a more reasonable speed. The image will be with me all my life, tied to me in my dreams and in my waking hours, your mother’s poor helpless body thrown against the foundations of the Royal Bank Building, her head striking the edge of the corner stone. If only that stone had been rounded, but, alas, it was sharp as a knife. My life has been altered as a result. I’ve prayed to my Lord, I’ve tried in my way to serve others, and I’ve thought long and hard about a suitable monument." (Here he pulled out a handkerchief that was truly snowy, and blew into its starched folds a loud, prideful honk.) "Always, always I came back to the fact that your mother had loved flowers. You might say that she was responsible for bringing flowers to our great city, for making us aware of the blessings of natural beauty in an inhospitable climate. Of course I can never make full amends, but I do hope this little ceremony will give testimony to my terrible and continuing remorse in the matter of your mother’s demise. I am only sorry that your wife, I believe her name is Daisy, could not be with us today. Of course, I fully understand how difficult it is for her to leave a family of young children to travel across the continent, and I understand, too, yes I do, how emotional an experience this would be for her. We are bound forever to those who care for us in our early years. Their loss cannot be compensated. Our ties to them are unbreakable."

But Mrs. Flett in Ottawa, lying in her bed and awaiting her husband’s return, is thinking not so much of Clarentine Flett, her dear adopted Aunt Clarentine, as of her own mother who died minutes after her birth. How slender and insubstantial that connection now seems, how almost arbitrary, for what does Mrs. Flett possess of her mother beyond a blurred wedding photograph and a small foreign coin, too worn to decipher, which according to her father had been placed on her own forehead at birth—by whom she cannot imagine, nor for what purpose. She has never experienced that everyday taken-for-granted pleasure of touching something her mother had touched. There is no diary, no wedding veil, no beautiful hand-stitched christening gown, no little keepsake of any kind. Once, years ago, her father had mentioned a wedding ring that would one day be hers, but he has not spoken of it since.

Perhaps he has given it to his wife, Maria. Or perhaps it has merely slipped his mind. Tonight, lying under a light blanket and awaiting the return of her husband, a man named Barker Flett, she feels the loss of that ring, the loss, in fact, of any connection in the world.

Her own children are forgotten for the moment, her elderly father is forgotten, even his name reduced to a blur of syllables. She is shivering all over as if struck by a sudden infection.

She’s had these gusts of grief before. The illness she suffers is orphanhood—she recognizes it in the same way you recognize a migraine coming on: here it comes again—and again—and here she lies, stranded, genderless, ageless, alone.

Tears have crept into her eyes and she dabs at them with the blanket binding. The darkness of the room presses close.

These are frightening times for Mrs. Flett, when she feels herself anointed by loneliness, the full weight of it. Wonderingly, she thinks back to the moment when as a young woman she stood gazing at Niagara Falls; her sleeve had brushed the coat sleeve of a man, a stranger standing next to her; he said something that made her laugh, but what? What?

Her loss of memory brings a new wave of panic.

And yet, within her anxiety, secured there like a gemstone, she carries the cool and curious power of occasionally being able to see the world vividly. Clarity bursts upon her, a spray of little stars. She understands this, and thinks of it as one of the tricks of consciousness; there is something almost luxurious about it. The narrative maze opens and permits her to pass through. She may be crowded out of her own life—she knows this for a fact and has always known it—but she possesses, as a compensatory gift, the startling ability to draft alternate versions. She feels, for instance, the force of her children’s unruly secrecies, of her father’s clumsy bargains with the world around him, of the mingled contempt and envy of Fraidy Hoyt (who has not yet written so much as a simple bread-and-butter note following her summer visit). Tonight Mrs. Flett is even touched by a filament of sensation linking her to her dead mother, Mercy Stone Goodwill; this moment to be sure is brief and lightly drawn, no more than an impression of breath or gesture or tint of light which has no assigned place in memory, and which, curiously, suddenly, reverses itself to reveal a flash of distortion—the notion that Mrs. Flett has given birth to her mother, and not the other way around.

And as for Mrs. Flett’s husband—well, what of her husband?

Her husband will be home in an hour or so, having in his usual way taken a taxi from the train station. He will remove his trousers in the dark bedroom, hanging them neatly over the back of the chair.

These trousers carry an odor of sanctity, as well as a pattern of symmetrical whisker-like creases across the front. Then his tie, next his shirt and underwear. Then, unaware of her tears wetting the blanket binding and the depth of her loneliness this September night, he will lie down on top of her, being careful not to put too much weight on her frame ("A gentleman always supports himself on his elbows"). His eyes will be shut, and his warm penis will be produced and directed inside her, and then there will be a few minutes of rhythmic rocking.

On and on it will go while Mrs. Flett tries, as through a helix of mixed print and distraction, to remember exactly what was advised in the latest issue of McCall’s, something about a wife’s responsibility for demonstrating a rise in ardor; that was it—ardor and surrender expressed simultaneously through a single subtle gesturing of the body; but how was that possible?