Bitter Sweet (12 page)
The concrete steps of the Fish Creek General Store were as pitted as ever, leading up to doors set in an inverted bay.
Inside, the floors squeaked, the lighting was less than adequate, and the smell was rich with memory: years of fruit that had grown too old to sell, and home-cured sausage and the sweeping compound Albert Olson still used when he swept the floors at night.
At
in the afternoon the place was crowded. She passed the busy counter up front, waving to Albert’s wife, Mae, who called a surprised hello, and worked her way to the rear where a knot of customers surrounded the shoulder-high meat and delicatessen counter. Behind it, her father, dressed in a long white bibbed apron, was busy charming the customers as he ran the meat slicer.
‘Fresh?’ he was saying, above the whine of the machine.
‘Why, I went out and killed the cow myself at
this morning.’ He reached down and switched off the motor, swinging into the next motion without a wasted movement. ‘That’s one with French mustard and Swiss. One pumpernickel with mustard and American.’ He sliced a French roll, slapped down two slices of pumpernickel, slathered them with butter and mustard, clapped on two stacks of corned beef, rolled open the glass door of the display case, peeled off two slices of cheese, plopped the ingredients into stacks and snapped the finished sandwiches into plastic containers. The entire process had taken him less than thirty seconds.
‘Anything else?’ He stood with the butts of his hands braced on the shoulder-high counter. ‘Potato salad’s the best you’ll find anywhere on the shores of
Lake Michigan
.
My grandma grew the potatoes herself.’ He winked at the couple who were waiting for their sandwiches.
They laughed and said, ‘No, that’ll be all.’
‘Pay up front. Next?’
Roy
bellowed.
A sixtyish man in Bermuda shorts and a terrycloth beach jacket ordered two pastrami sandwich.
Watching her father make them, Maggie was amazed anew at his business persona, so different from the one he displayed around home. He was amusing and startlingly efficient. People loved him on sight. He could make them laugh and come back for more.
She stood back, remaining inconspicuous, watching him work the crowd like a barker in a sideshow, scarcely appearing to glance at them as he rushed from spot to spot.
She listened to the sound of the butcher paper tearing, of his hands slapping down beef roasts, of the heavy rolling doors on the meat case- the same one that had been there since she was a child. There was a wait- in summer there always was - but he kept tempers off edge with his efficiency and showmanship.
When she had watched for several minutes, she stepped up to the counter while his back was turned.
I’ll have a nickel from your pocket to buy a Dixie Cup,’ she said quietly.
He glanced over his shoulder and his face went blank with surprise.
‘Maggie?’ He swung around, wiping his hands on his white apron. ‘Maggie-honey, am I seeing things?’
She laughed, happy she’d come. ‘Nope, I’m really here.’
If the meat case had been any lower he might have vaulted over it. Instead he came around the end where he scooped her up in a jarring hug.
‘Well, Maggie, this is a surprise.’
‘To me, too.’
He held her away by both shoulders. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Brookie talked me into coming.’
‘Does your mother know yet?’
‘No, I came straight to the store.’
‘Well, I’ll be.’ He laughed jubilantly, hugging her again, then remembered his customers. With an arm around her shoulders, he turned to them. ‘For those of you who think I’m just a dirty old man, this is my daughter, Maggie, from
Seattle
. Just gave me the surprise of my life.’ Releasing her, he said, ‘Are you going up to the house now?’
‘I guess so.’
He checked his watch. ‘Well, I’ve got another forty-five minutes here yet. I’ll be home at six. How long are you staying?’
‘Five days.’
‘That’s all?’
I’m afraid so. I have to go back Sunday.’
‘Well, dye’s better than nothing. Now go on so I can take care of this crowd.’ He headed back towards his duties, calling after Maggie, ‘Tell your mother to call if she needs anything extra for supper.’
As Maggie started her car and headed home, her enthusiasm waned. She drove slowly, wondering as she often did whether it was her tendency to expect too much of her mother that always made homecoming a disappointment. Pulling up before the house where she’d grown up, Maggie leaned over and peered at it a moment before leaving the car. Completely unchanged. Prairie-styled, two-storeyed, with a low-pitched hipped roof and widely overhanging eaves, it would have been perfectly square were it not for the front porch with its massive native limestone supports. Sturdy and solid, with bridal wreath bushes on either side of the stone steps and matched elms in the side yards, the house looked as if it would be standing a hundred years from now.
Maggie turned off the engine and sat awhile: for as long as she could remember her mother had rushed to the front window at the sound of any action on the street. Vera would stand back from the curtains and watch neighbours unload their passengers or purchases and at supper would give a blow-by-blow, laced with aspersions. ‘Elsie must have been to
Or, ‘Toby Miller brought that
Anderson
girl home in the middle of the afternoon when I know perfectly well his mother was working. Only sixteen years old and in the house all alone for a good hour and a half-Judy Miller would have a fit if she knew!’
Maggie closed the car door with little more than a click and walked up the front sidewalk almost reluctantly. On the parapets at the foot of the steps a pair of stone urns had the same pink geraniums and vinca vines as always. The wooden porch floor gleamed with its annual coat of grey paint. The welcome mat looked as if no shoe had ever scraped over it. The aluminium screen door had the same ‘P’ on its grille.
She opened it quietly and stood in the front hall, listening.
At the far end of the house a radio played softly and the kitchen water r an. The living room was quiet, tasteful, spotless. It had never been allowed to be otherwise, for Vera let it be known that shoes were to be left at the door, feet kept off the coffee table, and no smoking was allowed anywhere near her draperies, The fireplace had the same stack of birch logs it had had for thirty years because Vera never allowed them to be burned: fires made ashes and ashes were dirty. The andirons and fan-shaped firescreen had never been tarnished by smoke nor had the cinnamon-red bricks been discoloured by heat. The mahogany mantel and woodwork gleamed, and through a square archway the cherry dining-room table held the same lace runner and the same silver bowl as always- one of Vera and Roy’s wedding gifts.
Maggie found the changelessness simultaneously comforting and stifling.
Down the strips of varnished floor beside the hall runner, reflected light gleamed from the kitchen at the rear, and to the left the mahogany stairway climbed the wall and took a right turn at the landing with a high window. A thousand times Maggie had come running down only to hear her mother’s voice ordering from down, ‘Margaret! Walk down those stairs!’ Maggie was standing looking up at the landing window when Vera entered the opposite end of the hall, came up short, gasped and screamed.
‘Mother, it’s me, Maggie.’
‘Oh my word, girl, you scared the daylights out of me!’
She had fallen back against the wall with a hand on her heart.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.’
‘Well, what in the world are you doing here anyway?’
‘I just came. Just...’ Maggie spread her hands and shrugged. ‘... jumped on a plane and came.’
“Well, my word, you could let a person know. What in the world have you done to your hair?’
“I tried something new.’ Maggie reached up, unconsciously trying to flatten the moussed strands that only yesterday had made her feel jaunty.
Vera looked away from the hair and took to fanning her face with a hand. ‘Gracious, my heart is still in my throat.
Why, a person my age could have a stroke from a shock like that- standing there in front of the screen door where a person can’t even see your face. All I could see was that hair sticking up. Why, for all I know you could have been a burglar looking for something to grab and run with. These days, from the things you read in the papers you never know anymore, and this town is full of strangers. A person should almost keep their doors locked.’
Maggie moved towards Vera. ‘Don’t I get a hug?’
‘Why, of course.’
Vera was much like her house: stout and stocky, meticulously neat and unmodish. She’d worn the same hairstyle since 1965 - a backcombed French roll with two neat crescent curls up above the corners of her forehead. The hairdo got lacquered in once a week at Bea’s Beauty Nook by Bea herself, who had as little imagination as her customers. Vera wore a homogenized outfit of polyester aqua-blue double-knit slacks, a white blouse and white nurse’s shoes with thick crepe soles, rimless glasses with a silver slash across the top, and an apron.
As Maggie moved towards her she gave more of a hug than she received.
‘My hands are wet,’ Vera explained. ‘I was pealing potatoes.’
As the hug ended, Maggie experienced the vague disappointment she always felt when she reached for any affection from her mother. With her father she’d have sauntered towards the kitchen arm in arm. With her mother she walked apart.
‘Mmm... it smells good in here.’ She would try very hard.
‘I’m making pork chops in cream of mushroom soup. Goodness, I hope I have enough for supper, I just wish you had called, Margaret.’
‘Daddy said for you to call and he’d bring home anything you need.’
‘Oh? You’ve seen him already?’ There it was - the subtle jealous undertone Maggie always sensed at the mention of
Roy
.
‘Just for a minute. I stopped at the store.’
‘Well, it’s too late to put your pork chops in with the others. They’ll never get done. I guess I’ll just have to fry them for you.’ Vera headed directly for the kitchen phone.
‘No, Mom, don’t bother. I can run up and get a sandwich.’
‘A sandwich, why don’t be silly!’
Maggie rarely ate pork anymore and would have preferred a turkey sandwich but Vera was dutifully dialling the phone before Maggie could state a preference. While she spoke she used her apron to polish the top of the spotless telephone. ‘Hello, Mac? This is Vera. Will you tell
Roy
to bring two pork chops home?’ Next she polished the adjacent countertop. ‘No, two will be fine, and tell him to get here at six or everything else will be all dried up like it was last night. Thanks, Mac.’ She hung up and turned towards the sink, rushing on without a pause. ‘I swear you wouldn’t know that father of yours owns a watch. He’s supposed to get off at six on the dot, but he doesn’t give a rip if he walks in here half an hour late or not. I said to him the other day, I said, “
Roy
, if those customers at the store are more important than coming home to supper on time, maybe you should just move in down there.” Do you know what he did?’ Vera’s wattle shook as she picked up a peeler and began slashing at a potato. “He went out to the garage without so much as a word! Sometimes you wouldn’t even think I lived here, for all he talks to me. He’s out in the garage all the dine. Now he even took a TV out there to watch his baseball games while he potters.’
Maybe he’d watch it in the house, Mother, if you’d let him set his popcorn bowl where he wants to, or put his feet up on your precious coffee table.
Returning to her mother’s realm, Maggie wondered how her father had tolerated living with her for forty-odd years.
Maggie herself had been in the house only five minutes and already her nerves felt frayed.
‘Well, you didn’t come home to hear about that,’ Vera said in a tone that warned Maggie would hear plenty more in the next four days. Vera finished her peeling and put the pan of potatoes on the stove. ‘You must have some suitcases in the car. Why don’t you bring them in and put them upstairs while I set the table?’
How badly Maggie wanted to say, ‘I’m staying out at Brookie’s,” but Vera’s dominance could not be shrugged off. Even at age forty, Maggie hadn’t the courage to cross her.
Upstairs, she forgot and set her suitcase on the bed. A moment later she plucked it off and set it on the floor, glancing cautiously towards the door, then smoothing the spread, relieved to see she hadn’t left a mark on it.
The room looked the same. When Vera bought furniture, she bought it to last. Maggie’s maple bed and dresser sat in the same spots as always. The subtle blue-flowered wallpaper through which Maggie had never been allowed to put thumbtacks would serve for years yet. Her desk was back in place; during the years when Katy had been a baby Vera had installed a crib in the spot for their convenience.