Emancipation Day (21 page)

“Don’t worry, the books will sell themselves,” the recruiter told him.

“So why do you need us?” he quipped. No one laughed.

The company divided the city into sectors, like on a war map, and he was given a territory in a new subdivision called Scarborough, in the east end north of the Danforth. He was to make his rounds on weekdays, when the husbands weren’t home, because only women bought books. He got a dollar for every book he sold.

Scarborough turned out to be a mecca for returning veterans and their growing broods. A hundred and fifty bungalows, all built from the same plan on twenty-five-foot lots, no basements, no front yards to speak of, all of them looking across four streets surrounding the Pine Hills Cemetery.

He sold one year book the first week, to a woman whose husband was a schoolteacher, and two the second week, which was progress. At that rate, he calculated, by the end of three
months he’d be selling two thousand books a week. When he managed to sell only ten books in his first month, he wasn’t discouraged. The big numbers wouldn’t start kicking in until month three.

When December came and went and he was still lucky if he sold a couple of books a week, he saw another ad in the paper, this time for people to sell Regal Greeting Cards door to door. He thought that having two reasons to let him in would double his chances of making a sale. People
had
to buy Christmas cards, didn’t they? Vivian thought he was jeopardizing his job with Funk & Wagnalls, but how would they find out?

He was now making ten dollars a week, which covered the rent easy, and when he got his band going, he would double that. More important, for him, he was doing it on his own. No help from Vivian’s family, no hindrance from his own. Nobody knew who he was, and nobody cared, which was Jack’s idea of paradise.

He was still selling encyclopedias and cards when their first wedding anniversary came around. He’d wanted to have a quiet evening at home, turn on the radio, pull out the sofa bed, but Vivian had other ideas. Frank and Jeannie were taking them out for dinner. Well, that was okay by him, if it made Vivian happy. They exchanged their presents after breakfast. He gave her a bracelet with a heart engraved around the words
Jack and Vivian
.

“I love it,” she said, slipping it over her wrist.

“It’s not real gold,” he said, “but you can’t tell from a distance.”

She gave him a book about music. As if he didn’t handle enough books already. But he told her he loved it, too, and would read it as soon as he found time. What was it with her and books?

“You’re supposed to get paper on your first anniversary,” Jeannie said when they met them at the restaurant, a small place on Bloor West not far from Euclid. Tablecloths, real flowers, fancy waiters, a five-piece combo playing in a corner.

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Darling, I love the bracelet.” She pulled back the sleeve of her sweater and showed it around the table. Jeannie murmured appreciatively.

Frank ordered a bottle of champagne. Vivian asked him if he could afford it.

“Always buy the best,” said Jeannie. “Of course we can afford it, as long as we don’t plan on eating until July.” They all laughed.

“To long and happy marriages,” Frank said when the champagne came. They clinked their glasses over the table. The champagne tasted like thin beer that had gone skunky, but he didn’t say anything.

Then Jeannie gave Vivian a present, a tube wrapped in silver paper. When Vivian unwrapped it, it was a roll of wallpaper. “Aha!” said Vivian, unrolling it a ways to look at the pattern. “It’s perfect!” But Jack didn’t get it.

“Wallpaper?” he said.

“It’s for your new house,” Jeannie explained.

“What new house?” Jack said.

“Well,” Frank said, “since it looks like you’re staying in Toronto, we figured you’re going to be looking around for a house.”

“Who says we’re staying in Toronto?” Jack turned to Vivian. He hadn’t told her about cashing in the tickets. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “We could live here.” A person could be anyone he wanted to be in Toronto.

“Actually, we’re thinking of moving out,” Jeannie said. “To Barrie or some other place up north.”

“Maybe Barrie,” Frank said. “Or Newmarket. Or Markham. Turn one of those one-horse towns into a big city.” Frank said they had started their own construction company, F. Sterling & Sons. “The sons will come later,” he said, winking at Jeannie. “Strictly new houses. There’s no money in fixing up someone else’s mistakes. You said so yourself, Jack.”

Jack nodded. He’d had enough of that in Windsor.

“So, what do you say, Jack?” Frank asked him.

“What’s that?” Jack said, startled. “Say to what?”

“To coming in with us,” said Jeannie. “We’re a construction company, you’re a plasterer. How about it?”

“I’m not a plasterer anymore,” he said. “But I’ll think about it.”

“It’s a good offer, Jack,” Vivian said.

“I said I’d think it over.”

“Sure, you think about it,” said Frank, leaning back in his chair. “You two lovebirds talk it over. Jeannie and I have made up our minds, though. Newmarket is the future, and we’re going
to be part of it. You could be, too.”

Then the penny dropped. Talk it over with Vivian’s family was what Frank meant. They were the ones with the money. Jack had never taken a cent from them, and he never would. This from Frank was a huge disappointment. The old Frank would have known better. He’d sooner sell books than ask for handouts, thank you very much. He’d sooner starve.

VIVIAN

V
ivian didn’t want Jack to be selling encyclopedias door to door. It was undignified work. Salesmen used to come to the store in Ferryland. They were a dusty, feckless lot, always on the go, on the make, lacking any kind of sincerity or industry, usually with a bottle stuck in their jacket pocket. Her father would look their wares over, order what he thought the village needed, then show the men out and come up to the house for a cup of tea. She didn’t like the thought of Jack being treated like that.

But he seemed happy to do it, so she didn’t say anything. Since coming to Toronto he was relaxed, more his old self, and she didn’t want to do anything to cause him to feel that he wasn’t
a success. He had big plans, he said, he wouldn’t be selling encyclopedias forever. She would keep her worries about Jack to herself, at least for now.

As the days shortened, she established a routine. She’d always thought that doing the same thing over and over would make time pass slowly, but in fact she found that knowing exactly what she had to do each morning freed her mind up for other things, so that each day held new meaning, even new adventures. First, after checking the newspaper to see what was on at the cinemas, she would turn to the grocery-store ads. Since she had only a tiny icebox she had to shop for perishables nearly every day. She didn’t mind, it was fun, in a way, like the math problems she used to do in school. Grapefruit at Power’s were six for twenty-nine cents; at Loblaws the big ones were three for twenty-five and those that were just “a good size” were five for twenty-nine. Where could she get the most grapefruit for fifteen cents? Carrots at both Power’s and Dominion were two bunches for seventeen cents; Dominion had bigger bunches, but at Power’s the rib roast was forty-five cents a pound and at Dominion it was forty-nine. She wrote down everything she had to buy and put the three totals at the bottom of the list. The sums were very close and always too high, but she calculated that if she walked to Power’s, got a blade roast instead of a rib and made do without butter, then went to Dominion for vegetables, she could just about manage. The papers said the government was considering lifting the ban on margarine and she hoped it would do so soon. With margarine a third the cost of butter and sugar
rationing almost over, she might be able to afford to make a cake for Thanksgiving dinner.

She kept up with her reading. There was a public library a few blocks east of Hollywood Crescent that was sort of on her way to the grocer’s. It was small, but had most of the current popular books, and if she asked for a title they didn’t have they would order it from the main branch. Jack grumbled about her books cluttering up the apartment, but she thought they added a certain interest to the place, proof that there was life beyond these four garishly papered walls. They were like letters from faraway places, and Lord knew she didn’t get many of those. Iris was not a letter-writer. Her mother sent her brief notes in her eccentric handwriting and peacock-blue ink: crocuses up, peas picked, storm windows on, Wat gave a talk at the Junior Conservatives’ Fall Convention. Her father wrote occasional long, sad, marginless letters laboriously typed on the office Underwood, probably after his secretary had gone home at the end of the day. She pictured him sitting at her rolltop desk in the little room behind the store, typing with two fingers as the evening light faded, reading everything over half a dozen times. He rarely mentioned himself. He wrote about her mother’s health, the declining size of the catch, birds as they came and went in the harbour, the latest idiocies of Joseph Smallwood’s confederate faction. “They think joining Canada will bring down the price of rum!” A roseate tern was spotted up the coast near Renews and he had considered going to see it, but the weather had turned mauzy and in the end he had stayed
home and worked on his stamp collection. He had given up the idea of moving to St. Lucia. Wat was taking a car engine apart and putting it back together, and meanwhile the oily bits were scattered about the kitchen. Her father bet that Jack would like to help him with it, because being a Windsor man he would know about motors. Her breath caught at that, because it was the first time he had mentioned Jack. She wrote back saying yes, Jack would love to do that, he was so good with cars. She told her father about the Hupmobile, “our adorable old Hup,” and the cute little rumble seat that Wat could ride in when they came to visit.

She saved Canadian stamps to send him. The eight-cent stamp showed a peaceful farm scene that she knew he would like. She told him about the two silken jays and the cardinal she’d seen in the ravine by their house. She wrote about her first ride in a streetcar and the unimaginable variety of goods in the shops along Danforth, as if she could afford them. She was beginning to like Toronto, she wrote. It was odd to think of herself living in a city that her father would find too big, too noisy, too dangerous, but she told him that where they lived was like a village, with the Towne Theatre at one end and Power’s at the other. And it wasn’t noisy at all. At night she could hear the crickets chirruping in the ravine, and the sound of heels on the pavement as far away as Gerrard. Being comfortable in Toronto made her feel older than her parents, and the distance she had felt from them since her marriage increased, despite her attempts to shrink it. She kept her letters gay so as not to cause her parents any anxiety, just as she was doing with her conversations with
Jack. She never mentioned Windsor, not even to say they hadn’t been back. She was beginning to fear the very idea of Windsor; her mind refused to let her thoughts go there, the way fishermen avoided certain corners of the sea without really knowing why.

Jack didn’t like her walking in the ravine by herself, but she went anyway. It was a lovely forested parkland with birds and wildflowers and a meandering stream that was, she had to admit, a bit muddy, but seemed cheerful enough, and there were minnows and, recently, larger fish in it. Atlantic salmon! she wrote. During the hot summer afternoons she would stroll along the paths, and the rustle of leaves and the sound of birds and water trickling over stones reminded her of the woods she had played in as a girl. She told Jack about her walks when he came home, to show him that nothing bad had happened and he was not to worry. North of their house the ravine left Hollywood Crescent and went under some railway tracks, but she hadn’t followed it that far. They should walk it together sometime, she said, pick it up at the tracks and see where it went. He said yes, they might do that someday, but everyone knew the ravines were full of DPs and tramps, people who would knife her for her purse, or even her shoes, or worse.

“I’ve never seen any tramps or DPs,” she said.

“You don’t think they stand out in the open, waiting for you to come up to them and ask to be mugged, do you?”

His arguments were always both ridiculous and irrefutable. She remembered what he’d said about Negroes and knives in Windsor, which also turned out not to be true. She was touched
that he worried about her, but she didn’t want to start thinking like he did.

Sometimes after supper they would walk down to Gerrard, visit the shops and the soda fountains in the drugstores. Jack would buy cigarettes or get a haircut, and she would sit in the barbershop and watch the barber, an elderly man with glasses and a thin moustache who never smiled, never exhibited any emotion whatsoever except a smouldering hatred for cutting hair. Barbers were supposed to talk your ear off, Jack said, but here it was Jack who did all the talking. After he’d been getting his hair cut there for several months, Jack told him that his grandfather had been a barber in Windsor, had owned his own shop in the basement of City Hall before it burned down, and his uncle still had a barbershop in one of the biggest hotels in the city. This was only a slightly different version of the story she had heard before.

“That so?” the barber said.

Then Jack told him that his father, a successful businessman in Windsor, went to a barber every day for his morning shave, every single morning, never shaved himself. What did he think of that? The barber wasn’t impressed. Jack frowned and asked the barber what he would say if he, Jack, came down every day for his morning shave. “That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t open until eleven,” the barber said.

She was amazed to see Jack getting angry about something so petty. She picked up a
Liberty
magazine and looked at the cover. It showed a smiling Navy rating holding an engagement ring and
talking into a pay phone, proposing long-distance to his girl. She felt a catch in her throat, imagining the happy woman at the other end of the line, her mother and sister smiling in the background.