River of the Brokenhearted (10 page)

FIVE

“No.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I cannot tell you. It’s just no. You know it has to be no. For Janie’s sake.”

“But it’s for my father and mother,” she said, “so they will have something too. Why should everything go to others and they have nothing? That’s all Joey is asking.”

“I cannot tell you why, but I cannot go to work for Joey Elias. You are my fiancée. Rebecca is like my sister, and I got her a job—Janie treats her well. But if I did this and Janie suffered, I could never forgive myself.”

“But that’s nonsense! Nothing is going to happen. You can work for Elias—it’s just on a loan, and after that, well, you will be mine and I will be yours. If you do this one thing, I will be yours.”

“Is that what it all relies upon, Putsy?”

It was not, until he said it. They were silent. Time ticked by. What had happened in the intervening day was the prevalence everywhere of the rumour that Elias loved her again, and Putsy, no matter how she denied it, was frantic to please him. Rebecca had come to her and said, “He loves you again, so don’t miss this chance. You are
so
lucky!”

So one more time true love was in the air, a true love that depended on connivance and treachery.

The conversation with Walter had been going on for two hours and it was Christmas Eve. They knew time was short. Midnight mass would start soon, and as Catholics of their time—which was a time of solidarity in a way of life, and a custom—they both wanted to go. Putsy was dressed in a dark blue coat with a fur collar. It was her Christmas present from Walter (she did not know yet about the diamond ring—he was far from rich, he had saved for a year), yet her very beauty in wearing this beautiful coat seemed to signal her independence from him. Or so other men had recognized.

“We better go along to mass,” he said.

“It’s just not fair—I—”

“Putsy.” He smiled. “I can’t—I can’t walk out on Janie.”

“You can’t do anything, can you. There is nothing you can do, is there. You can’t skate, you lumber about, you can’t even walk right, so how can you walk out on Janie?” She gave a crude laugh.

He flinched. Then he shrugged. “You’re right there.” He laughed. “I am discombobulated when I walk.”

“Don’t try it on with fuggin’ big words to impress me.”

“Then please, milady, don’t curse to impress me.”

“We live in a place with no room, no furniture to speak of—it’s terrible and everything—”

She said this looking away from him and he caught how beautiful she was—and how she did not love him. And as always he thought, like most men of modest attractiveness, “If I do this one thing, then she will love me.”

“I told you I’d get you a new place at the beginning of the year—and I promise. Janie has contracted for other houses, small places on Weldon street. She could let you have one—or”—he took a breath—“you and me could live here. I have enough room in this apartment to last me forever.”

“Yer just stupid if you think that’s what I want. I want you to help my father. What’s wrong with Joey Elias?” She stamped her foot, hard against the floor, so he took notice of her, with a changed expression on his face.

“I never said there was anything wrong with him. You did, Putsy.”

“I never did, you did!” she screeched. She sounded like Putsy the little girl and her beauty became something vulgar, and savage.

“I will help your father,” he said. “I will take him on as my apprentice. I’ve already spoken to Janie, telling her I need someone. Well, it’ll be your dad.”

This was a catch she hadn’t expected, and she had to think quickly. Seeing this told him everything. It caught her like Hamlet’s play, and he saw it. Everything became clear to him when she said, “For how much?”

“I don’t know.”

“How much, Walter?”

“I don’t know. Twenty a week—”

“Ha! Elias is giving him forty,” she said, though she knew it was thirty.

“Well, he better go with Elias, but I can’t train him if he does.” Then he whispered, “You must know why Elias is doing this—you must. He will do anything to destroy this business. To destroy us—”

“That’s an awful thing to say about Mr. Elias,” Putsy said. “You are a traitor is all what I know about it—to destroy us—you seem to be the one destroying us. You’re the traitor!”

A traitor! He stared at her, and she looked back at him, her lips trembling like her mother’s had that long-ago day. Then she walked out, and he couldn’t find her in the crowd on the street. He went back to get his canes and made his way to church. The wind was blowing, and it was warm, with wet snow falling. At church he could not see her, and the very solemnity of the mass was lost on him. He looked at the stations of the cross and remembered the flickering candles and shadows of his youth—a youth of torment and bullying at the hands of others, of priests and goody two-shoes and choirboys. And why did he still go to church after they had dishonoured themselves like this? Because they weren’t his faith. If they were, he would be nothing, and have nothing.

After mass he found himself outside, holding the rail. He inched along the steep stairs carefully, while boys and girls walked around him. Because his feet were such an impediment he had rings on four of his fingers, to make his hands more attractive.

“Putsy!” he called. “Putsy!”

People began to look at him. He hated being made a spectacle—he had never called out to anyone in years. He put on his floppy, peaked tam-o’-shanter and started for home. At the end of the walkway he was accidentally jostled onto a slick of ice the kids had used to slide on, and he fell—but was caught under the arms by two men.

“Merry Christmas, Walter,” they said, slapping him on the back.

As he started down the street, the same horse and sleigh they had seen before went around him. He could smell rum, and perfume, and see a hand waving at him. He tried to keep up, thinking he heard Putsy. He started to run, and fell. This time he lay by himself in the snow, listening to the trees grate above him.

“Walter P. McLeary, late of the orphanage, crippled idiot,” he thought. “Crippled idiot—crippled idiot! Thinking a woman would ever love you!”

He struggled to his feet, realizing his mouth was bloody as he lit his cigar.

He could not find her. The diamond he had bought for her was still in its box, under the tree in his room. He sat up all night waiting to hear her key in the door. Then, at midmorning, long after the bells for morning mass, just as he drifted off to sleep, Janie and her boy came in with their gift.

She saw the state he was in. It wasn’t hard for Janie to decide that Walter could not be loved and should not take it seriously. She had tried to talk him out of any romance. It was for his own good—her own good as well. (Though she did not admit this.)

Yet for someone else to decide on the futility of his love did nothing to convince him to abandon it. In fact, he was more convinced of her love now then before. Putsy had probably tried to signal him, and had gotten mixed up, he told Janie. She was probably looking for him, as he was for her; perhaps she had wandered the whole night. Who knows why she didn’t come back to the theatre. Maybe she had fallen—or falling ice from a roof had hit her and she was in a side alley somewhere. He had to find her before she died or was hospitalized with pneumonia. He knew she was fragile—no one more than he knew this.

He fumbled with his tie and rumpled-up shirt.

“She’ll probably phone,” Miles said. He looked quickly at his mother and then at Walter, nodding to both. He did not know that saying this deflated Walter’s hope. Yes, she could have phoned, but she hadn’t.

Walter looked at his phone and then glanced away as if scalded by it.

“That’s probably it,” Janie said. “She’ll phone when she gets a chance. Maybe you should have Christmas Day with me,” Janie said. “It’s just me and my children—Rebecca is gone as soon as we get home. The tree is up, the turkey just cooked. Miles needs a man in the house at Christmas—”

He knew secretly that this was a concession that pretended to ignore his physical limitation.

“I can’t—I have to find Putsy,” he said.

“Why don’t you come with me?”

“I have to find Putsy—she’s probably back home.”

Miles looked at him, and Walter caught a sign of the boy’s worry, and Miles, catching this, smiled again in order to be polite.

“If you won’t come, I’ll find the first derelict on the street to take home and feed, because as you know in the Bible—”

“I know quite well—the wealthy man invited his friends, who did not come, so he told his servant to find the poor and the crippled to share his meal. Well, this cripple is going to find Putsy before she dies in a ditch someplace.”

“But where will I find a derelict at this time of day?” Janie said.

“You could try our old neighbourhood,” he said. “There were many there when we were young.”

SIX

It was now snowing gently all over town, and across the river the trees were blotted out, and down on the embankment huddled into the cliffs a few solemn fires were lighted, and up near the track, near Dobblestein’s old mill, a few indigents stood close to a fire barrel. And then beyond this the little houses of Beaverbrook Settlement and Bellefond, nestled away amid the frozen trees, were silent, with a wisp of smoke trailing off their tin chimneys, their basins sitting out of doors, and here and there a French pudding cooling on the steps.

They left the “hall”—Janie always called the theatre the “hall”—and went in different directions.

She drove the streets in her new car, shifting gears with a clatter, as Miles sat beside her in his white shirt and vest. He wore a long London Fog coat over him. He was tall for his age, and thin, with very white skin (so much so a doctor believed he was suffering from hemophilia, like the son of the Russian tsar). His great attribute was kindness, his failing trait a kind of sad and acute gullibility and weak posture, so he walked bent over and often stared at the ground as if he was searching for a key.

Miles scanned the ridges and the small alleyways for a derelict. His mother would not be satisfied now until she brought someone home and then relayed the message to her father later. Miles’s pensive face was racked with constant worry, and he sat close to the car door, in respect of his mother’s accurate slaps.

He knew his mother was brave, and not to be trifled with. But she was alone. Her father, his grandfather, old Jimmy McLeary, would not come to the house. Once or twice in the last few years she had had to call a doctor down to his house. Again this afternoon she stopped at the little brick house and went inside.

“Would you like to come for a meal, Father,” she asked, “to celebrate Christmas with my son and me?”

“Will there be a drink for me there?”

“No, there will not be.”

“Then I have no intention to,” he said.

“But there will be turkey and your grandchildren—”

“Turkey and my grandchildren—well, it’s enticing but I cannot go. I am in no mood to either speak to a turkey or eat my grandchildren. I don’t like Georgina’s name—you should change it to Mary Beth.”

“She is named after her father.”

“Well, I still can’t come.”

“And why not?”

“The grubby fairies have stolen my suit.”

“The suit I bought you—I saw in Larson’s pawnshop,” she said. “And I bought it again and have it for you now—and I will leave it here.” She instructed Miles to go to the car and bring it inside.

“Yes, well, the fairies must have taken it to Larson’s,” he answered. “The bullies are sitting over there right now if you can see them—they all have a chip on their wings, if you ask me.”

“I will leave your suit here, and if you wish to come, you can, at any time. You know that, Father.”

“Then why did you kick me out of the house?”

“You were cursing and hitting me—and I didn’t want to lose my patience and hit you back.”

“I would never injure anyone.”

“Not intentionally, no. Please come.”

“I cannot do so and remain a man.”

“A drunk loses that distinction almost immediately and with everyone knowing except the drunkard himself.”

“You have sided with the Drukens against me—I think it was back sometime on the morning of October seventeenth, 1911.”

“You know that is a lie, told by Joey Elias to make you hate me. I have never sided with the Drukens against you, and I forgive the fact that you have sided with Joey Elias against me.”

Frowning and feeble, he looked away from her and cursed.

Now Walter and Putsy could not come. And Rebecca was told to go at noon. It was Christmas day.

“Do you think people are against me?” she asked her son.

“Not all,” he answered, smiling, “I don’t think all—I mean, I was counting them up and I am sure it is not all.”

“Yes, all—all—do you understand, Miles? All!”

“All—why, Mother, I don’t think all—”

Here she gave him a slap.

“Even who we pick up today?” he said, rubbing his cheek. She stopped the car and grabbed his lapel. “Even who we pick up today
—Yes.”

He said nothing. Christmas had not been special for him. But he loved his little sister, Georgina. He had Rebecca take him to a store to buy a present for his granddad. Rebecca, angered by his money, told him she had nothing in her youth and could understand why he was bullied—for playing the big shot.

Now he asked his mother to go back and try her father one more time. To his surprise she took up this challenge. But the old house was empty.

“He is away,” she said. “I’m sorry for that. We will have to find someone else.”

Miles at this point in his life was eager to learn but had no one to teach him. He had not played baseball or hockey, or gone camping. Once he bought himself a hockey stick and took shots. Another time he bought a Swiss Army knife for the time when he and his mom would go camping.

He even suspected this neglect was not deliberate on his mother’s part—but so many she had met had stung her, and to the end of her days she found it hard to trust them. So she tried to keep Miles for herself. She wanted him to dance on the stage, told him she would give him piano lessons any day now. But he waited and they did not come. She was afraid to give him piano lessons and lose him, like his father had been lost in England and gone to Canada. What if Miles learned piano and left Canada and went to England? The drawing room, where his father’s piano sat, was in the closed-off part of the house, locked solid.

They were driving up a hill, on their way home to eat Christmas dinner in silence, without her father. It had turned unusually foggy, and the air seemed filled with icy pellets of rain. Suddenly in front of them a man ran out—others chasing him—and fell in front of the car. The men chasing him were some of the same that Janie had seen on the bridge. She threw on the brake and stepped out, pulling the tire iron from behind her seat.

“Ya’ll not come at me as long as I face ya, ya bastards,” she swore.

My grandmother looked at the men, and they turned on her. But they could not get at Roy Dingle, for that’s what the man’s name was. He was a carpenter of sorts and a handyman as well. Janie stepped over him, swinging the iron at the men. Leon Winch advanced, and then stopped.

“Leave him to us, Janie, or ya’ll be sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry every time I lay sight on you,” she snapped, “to think that a man like my husband died and a man like you lives.”

He laughed at this, but he was not happy. He roared that Dingle was hiding under her skirt.

“I suppose he is,” she said. “All men do, sooner or later.”

She backed them off and sheltered Dingle until they left. And they left because it was beginning to draw a crowd.

Janie McLeary got back in her car and started to drive away.

“You have to help him,” Miles said, staring at the crumpled-up form of Dingle. Dingle in the snow.

“Whatsoever for?” She said. She put on the emergency brake and held him by the collar, almost spitting this remark: “You don’t know him, do you. He is a Dingle—he was on the bridge—he was looking for his fifteen dollars just like the rest—and those chasing him today—the same kind of creatures. If I do any more to protect Dingle they will come back at us—you and I in some way. I’ll tell you, boy—you do not know the history. I cannot have any of them in my house—it is a rule. Many Christmases we had nothing because of them. I cannot break that rule and not have disaster rule. If Dingle comes into my house tonight something bad will happen to me. It’s bad enough to have a Druken as a maid; it’s worse to have this man as a guest. You don’t understand!”

“But he’s hurt—he’s hurt—so you have to break your rule. Besides, he’ll be our guest,” my father said, beaming.

Janie twice started to go, and twice my father pleaded.

“If I do, we will regret it all,” she said under her breath. “Elias, who Dingle runs errands for, will seek revenge.”

“We have to. How do you want Georgina to think of this Christmas?” he said. “Or be told of what we did if Mr. Dingle dies? If we went away and he died?”

And so she relented. My father would never forget the black back door of her Ford open and the wet shaking man being put inside. He helped his mother put little Roy Dingle into the back seat.

When Dingle came to, he reached over and grabbed Miles by the shoulder.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I am Miles,” my father said.

“Ah—the Englishman’s boy,” Dingle said, with a glance at Janie King. “You are not a popular little boy. I don’t think you are just hated, Miles—no, you are intentionally hated!”

Miles did not know what that meant. He stared at his mom, and then stared out the window of the Ford.

They got Roy Dingle to the house and put him in a spare bedroom. Janie brought in a towel and a basin, and helped him wash.

“I’m Janie McLeary,” she said. “If you want to have supper with us, there’s a pair of pants and a shirt in the closet. Come down in an hour if you are strong enough.”

“Christmas supper with a McLeary—in one of the biggest houses in town. Times have changed,” he said respectfully.

“Things don’t change that much,” she answered. “My father still owns nothing at all.”

Rebecca, eager to leave, was now caught up with Dingle. Janie asked if she could stay an extra hour or two.

“Yes, ma’am, of course,” Rebecca said. She went back downstairs to set the table, making sure Georgina was changed into her Christmas dress, but all the while seethed at her bad luck. Her one great desire this Christmas was to sneak away and be with Joey Elias. She was supposed to be gone, and light was now fading over the snow.