Homesick (6 page)

“I expect he’s upstairs napping,” he said, peering into the curtained living room. “He doesn’t seem to get much sleep nights lately.” Vera did not respond to this remark. She did not respond because she had not heard it. Mr. Stutz, realizing his information had gone unabsorbed, turned back into the kitchen and left her staring into the dim room, standing with her pelvis tilted forward so that the cardboard box she held was supported on the points of her hip bones. For two days this box had never been out of her sight. Over the objections of the bus driver she had insisted it ride in an overhead rack where she could keep an eye on it and be sure it wasn’t lost. In it were birth certificates, a cancelled insurance policy, old bank passbooks, her Army discharge papers, two hundred dollars’ worth of Canada Savings Bonds, and six school exercise-books in which her husband had kept a diary. These were, as she had said to the driver, important documents that had to be watched.

Now, however, the documents were unwatched and forgotten, jostled out of her mind by two murky brown reproductions of nineteenth-century book illustrations across the way, on the wall. They struck her a disturbing blow. Vera knew with absolute certainty that they were hung in exactly the same positions as that day seventeen years ago when she turned her back on them and left her father’s house. Today she faced them again. The long-horned, shaggy-coated Highland cattle still drank deeply from a burn, misty mountains rising behind them in a romantic backdrop. An expressive-eyed, cupid-lipped, cloudy-haired Lorna Doone still simpered. Everything was so familiar, it was as if the intervening years had suddenly been dismissed. This dismissal made Vera feel
cheated and angry. She had not lived through so much hardship to find herself back where she had begun, back in 1942, furious with her father. He had always claimed to hate those pictures which her mother had admired for “being tastefully understated.” He had described them as dark and gloomy. So why hadn’t he taken them down, changed them? Changed
something
in all these years?

Vera set down the cardboard box and stepped into the living room. The old fake candelabra with its flame-shaped electrical bulbs still dangled from the ceiling. The sofa with the carved cat’s paw feet still stood where she had left it, although now it was spread with a blanket to hide worn upholstery. Even her mother’s Singer sewing machine was where it always had been, in the bay window for the user to get the benefit of sunlight. Except now the sewing machine was folded down into its cabinet and a litter of torn envelopes and bills on the cabinet top suggested her father was using it as a desk. Nothing new in the entire room, aside from a television in the corner. She was back in the past. All of it more or less the same, except maybe for the smell. That was different. A bachelor smell of sour potatoes, dirty socks, stale cigarette smoke. A heavy, brooding stuffiness that made Vera think of windows painted shut, impossible to pry open.

Vera sensed someone had entered the room. She turned around to see Mr. Stutz standing a few feet off, hands clasped over his belly, looking as if he were hers to command. Once again, as she had when he met them at the bus stop, Vera found herself speculating which was Mr. Stutz’s famous glass eye, the one which Earl had written her about so often during the war. The left, she decided. Despite the gloom of drawn drapes, Vera believed she had detected an unnatural glint of light in it.

“It smells in here,” she said abruptly. “What kind of cleaning lady has he got himself?”

“Not a very good one,” replied Stutz, a slow smile breaking on his face. “I guess I’m what you’d call his cleaning lady.”

“You?”

“Well, not regular,” he explained. “Just when things get a bit out of hand. The old fellow doesn’t mind cooking for himself but he’s not much of a one for the cleaning up. When it gets bad I’ll wash the dishes, maybe run the vacuum back and forth, do his laundry. Thing is, these old people got a tendency to be awfully untidy.”

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” said Vera firmly. “You ought to have told him to clean up his own mess or else hire somebody to do it for him.”

“He’s had some of those,” said Stutz, “but they always got into trouble with him for moving things. The old gentleman is particular on that point. He likes things to stay where he left them. I generally just clean around his stuff. He prefers that.”

“Whatever his nibs prefers. I see that hasn’t changed either. He still expects things to be organized to suit him and only him.”

“There’s some old dogs I wouldn’t go trying to learn new tricks,” said Stutz. Vera wasn’t sure how to take this. As warning, advice, or reproof.

“I’m not a dog trainer, Mr. Stutz. Never had any desire to be.”

“I just came to ask if you wanted him called,” said Stutz evenly.

“I suppose he ought to know we’re here.”

The two of them returned to the kitchen, Mr. Stutz brushing past Daniel who leaned against the kitchen sink, turning the hot water faucet on and off, alerting the adults he was bored. “That’s not doing the washer any good,” Stutz said to him as he pulled open the door to a narrow staircase. He poked his head up it and shouted, “Hey, Alec! Your company’s here! Get up!” When he got no immediate answer he pounded on the wall of the stairway with his fist, making it boom hollowly. “Hey, Alec! Get up!”

“What?” The voice was muffled, distant.

“Get up,” repeated Mr. Stutz. “Your company’s come.”

They heard coughing, a shoe dropped on the floor. Several minutes passed and then the stairs began to creak as Alec Monkman started his heavy-footed descent. Listening to his slow, deliberate progress Vera found her heart beating quickly. Her mother had
described her father in his youth as a wonderful dancer, amazingly agile and light on his feet for such a large man. “It was like dancing with a big cat,” was how she had put it to her daughter. Coming down the stairs he did not sound like a big cat.

And then he was there, poised in the doorway. It had been six years since he had sent her his last photograph. He looked different. For one thing, he had new teeth. Teeth too large, too white, too regular and even. They seemed to prevent his lips from closing. They shone almost as much as the glass in his spectacles. Another thing. He had taken to carrying his head thrust well forward, as if he were straining to see through, to penetrate, a thick fog. It was impossible for Vera to tell whether he had gone grey or bald because of the straw fedora he wore. She judged the hat too small. Like Oliver Hardy’s, it made him appear fatter, grosser than he really was. It was downright unflattering.

Monkman lingered in the doorway several moments more, teeth gleaming as he studied his visitors. Then, abruptly, he took the final step down into the kitchen. “So, Vera,” he said in a loud, harsh voice, “you made it safe and sound.”

“That’s me, safe and sound.”

He shuffled nearer, still peering, neck craned. “It’s good to have you home, daughter,” he said at last, reaching out and awkwardly patting her shoulder.

Handles me like a horse in a stall with a bad reputation for kicking, she thought. Nevertheless, she realized her own hand had gone out to rest gently on his forearm. She quickly withdrew it. “How’ve you been keeping, Dad?”

“As good as can be expected for a man who leads a clean life and pays his taxes. I have sore joints on bad days.” He held up a hand and stiffly flexed his fingers. “But a man my age – that’s got to be expected.” He paused. “Yourself?”

“Can’t complain.”

“I was thinking, standing in the door,” said Monkman, “how you’ve come to resemble your mother. It brought me up short
there. I believed I’d come face to face with a ghost. I don’t recall your resembling your mother when you were a girl.”

“When I was a girl I had red hair. That might have had something to do with it.”

Monkman laughed. “It’s been a long time. I’d almost forgotten. Red hair that came out of a bottle.”

“Yes. Out of a bottle. You hated it.”

Her father gave her a measuring look. “I might have. My memory’s not what it once was.”

“Mine is. You did,” said Vera.

The old man shifted ground. “Is this the boy then?” he asked in a hearty voice, turning to Daniel.

“Yes.” Vera nudged Daniel forward. “Daniel, say hello to your Grandfather Monkman.”

“Hello.”

“Now how do we go about this?” said Monkman. “I don’t know how I introduce myself to a grandson I meet for the first time when he’s practically grown. Do I shake hands, or what?” He threw his daughter a sly glance. “I think maybe that would be best, don’t you, son?” he suggested, extending swollen fingers. The boy gingerly grasped them and Monkman pumped his arm once, twice. “So what do you go by?” he asked. “Daniel, Danny, or Dan?”

“It’s Daniel,” intervened Vera.

“Pleased to meet you,” said the boy.

“Who does he look like?” Monkman said aloud, apparently to himself. “I’m looking at him and thinking someone but I can’t put a name to him.”

“Daniel looks like his father,” said Vera firmly.

“Can’t be him I’m thinking of. I never met his father.” Monkman smiled at the boy. “I wasn’t invited to the wedding,” he explained. His next question was directed to Vera. “Would I have liked his father?”

“It’s hard to say. But I don’t think he was your type.”

“And what’s my type, daughter?”

“You’re your type.”

The old man adopted a confidential tone, drew closer to his grandson. “Your mother likes to let on I’m hard to get along with. But nothing’s further from the truth. Stutz here has been working for me for fifteen years and he’s never heard a harsh word from me. Have you, Stutz?”

“No, never just one,” returned Stutz on cue.

The two men laughed at an old joke, well-rehearsed.

Pleased with himself, Monkman fussed with his hands, scratching the back of one, then the other. “What do you say we have a drink to celebrate your homecoming, Vera? There’s a bottle of Crown Royal under the sink, seal’s never been broke. I’ve been saving it for an occasion and I guess this is one. Stutz won’t join us – religious principles – but it wouldn’t hurt you, Vera, to have one. It’d help you relax after your long trip. And the boy could join us. Very weak, mind you, plenty of water in his, just a drop of whisky. All for the sake of the ceremony. It couldn’t hurt.”

“Don’t let us stop you,” said Vera. “But Daniel and I won’t be having a drink.”

“Oh, Jesus, no, I suppose not,” said Monkman, winking conspiratorially at Daniel. “To hell with that then. But later can I feed the boy? I thought the four of us could take supper in the hotel. I told Rita to put roast pork and apple sauce on the special tonight. That’s Rita Benger, the cook. You’d remember her. She’s Charlie Benger’s sister that went to school with you. Charlie Benger with the limp?”

“Can we discuss supper in a bit?” said Vera. “I’d like to know what arrangements have been made for Daniel and me tonight.”

“Arrangements?”

“Yes, arrangements. Like where we’re to stay. Also, I’d like to know where and when I start work.”

“Why, you’ll stay here,” responded Monkman with determination.

“Until we find a place to rent.”

“This is Connaught, daughter. There are no places to rent. I’ve got the two bedrooms upstairs that I thought the boy and I could have. That’d leave you the one down here. More privacy for you that way.”

“I didn’t count on this,” said Vera, drawing together her lips. “I’ll see for myself if there aren’t places to rent.”

“Suit yourself. But looking won’t change anything. There are no places for rent. Unless you’re interested in a fire-trap suite over the poolroom.”

“All right then,” she said grimly, “there are no places to rent. What about work?”

“We’ll settle that in due course. Catch your breath.”

“What the hell do I live on while I’m catching it?” demanded Vera, suddenly exasperated. “All the money I have in the world is two hundred dollars in Canada Savings Bonds in that box,” she said, pointing. “I can’t afford to be a lady of leisure.”

“Christ, Vera, relax. The trouble with you is everything gets blown way out of proportion. Always did. You and the boy are home now. You’re taken care of. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I didn’t come home to be taken care of. I’m not a child. I came to work. You promised me a job.”

“If I promised you a job, you’ve got a job. I’m your father. What do you expect me to do? Cheat you? Put your mind at rest. You’ve got a job for chrissakes.”

“What kind of job?” Her voice was flat, controlled.

“An easy job. You said you wanted to be able to spend more time with the boy so I got you one. We’ll talk about it tomorrow when you’re not so tired and irritable from your trip.”

“I want to talk about it now. What kind of job?”

Monkman hesitated. “Housekeeper,” he finally admitted, reluctantly.

Vera’s face flushed. “Housekeeper to who?”

Monkman appealed to Mr. Stutz. “Is she serious? ‘Housekeeper
to who?’ she says.” He swung back on Vera. “Christ, for who do you think? For me. And for him,” he added, nodding to Daniel. “For once you can be a full-time mother. You can look after your boy.”

“And you.”

“That’s such a hardship? You wash his shirt, throw mine in the machine, too. You boil him a potato, boil me one, too. Where’s the strain in that?”

“That’s not where I expect the strain to come in.”

“So where does the strain come in?”

“I’m a grown woman. I’m thirty-six years old and I want to have my own money. I mean to have a salary, not a housekeeping allowance. I don’t intend to snitch nickels and dimes from household expenses so I can buy myself a new bra when I need one. I want a wage. I’m not sixteen years old like before.”

The word bra caused Mr. Stutz to cast his eyes down to the toes of his boots.

“I was a poor man in those days,” her father announced.

“I get a wage or I’m dust. I’ll cash one of my bonds and climb back on that bus tomorrow and head right back where I came from.”

“Look at her, Stutz!” cried Monkman. “Look at her! There’s fire for you! Exactly like she was when she was seven, skipping rope with the other little girls. Going over that rope with her jaw set solid as iron and her pigtails cracking up and down like buggy whips. Little Miss Determination. When I saw that, I said to myself, Lord help and protect the man who gets her.”