River of the Brokenhearted (8 page)

THREE

Walter wondered what they had they said about him to cause that other laugh. Of course one could not be sure. But still, wasn’t he used to it? Of course. And wasn’t that part of the subtext—that is, his willingness to be made sport of? Walter was undeniably used to it, and would not even have flinched—if not for her.

Because he was used to something else; the subtext of a woman’s pity. And for the first time he saw it in Putsy’s gaze, and the undertone was fear and dislike of what her friends saw in him. Not fear of his affliction, but fear of the grief it would cause later in life. It was what Rebecca always saw when she looked at him—or looked through him, with a smile. But he had not seen it as yet in Putsy—not until this moment; when the realization that she would be left alone with him, as the revellers went on, became evident.

Though he pretended not to notice, or, if seeing that she noticed his gaze and then recognized that he knew what for a brief moment she let escape, he pretended not to care, and in pretending not to care he let out a laugh and shook his great head. Both of them saw Rebecca for a second. There was something strange about her, Walter felt. He did not know why, but she made him uneasy. Perhaps because she saw through his weakness.

He was left with Putsy, Putsy with him, and they moved into the dark together. He shook his head all the way down the street to the theatre, but he did not tease her, as he often did, nor did he ask her about her skating—she was deplorable, he knew, but this could not be said with humour or equanimity by a man with a bad leg.

He climbed the dark stairs to the projection booth and sat down to rest his right foot, the heel of which never touched the ground, the toes of which were as hard as cast iron. Then, after lighting his cigar, he checked the frames, spooled the reel, and waited for Janie’s call up that it was time. The theatre was warm and cozy, and now seated 150 patrons, and on most nights it was full. Especially tonight with the movie
Frankenstein
.

“It will be time to start soon,” he said. “Putsy, you may as well go home and see your mom.”

“No, I will stay with you,” she answered. “I want to.” She sat down and stubbornly tried to make herself comfortable.

“Your mother wants you home,” Walter said, “and I’ll catch it if you don’t.”

Putsy, sitting on a stool at the back of the booth, nodded and, getting up, kissed him on the forehead. “Never mind,” she said.

“Never mind what?” he asked with a blank stare.

“Never mind them!” she said, squeezing his hand, and she took her leave.

He flipped the projection lever and stared through the ghostly, vapid light at the great dark castle on the screen.

Then he sat down as the picture ran and read a mystery novel. “The woman was a floozy,” he read. He put the book aside and thought. Yes, he convinced himself, she would get over this infatuation with whomever it was that she gave the backward glance to. Perhaps some young boy she was skating with. Besides, it was selfish to demand her complete attention. He could not ask what others asked for and feel deserving. Still, he was responsible for her now and acted circumspectly because of this. Though he was afraid to ask her what she thought of him! He could only imagine.

Some nights in the snow when they went out together it seemed as if she was travelling beside a gnome, a sin of which she was not conscious, having caused some grave sorrow in her life. For born witless in the world, skill demanded of us all that we managed as best we could against those who would be willing to destroy who we were. And the snow said this, and the ice and the hail, and he heard it every time he blanched at a young girl’s horror as she met him on a dark corner. This was all intended to destroy something of his spirit—the great scope of his honour, the great pity of his heart, the great rendering of service to those of less fortune. Therefore over time subterfuge against others was demanded from him as well. How then could we not go into sin?

And wasn’t he demanding too much from her? That is too much loyalty? This is what his part was—and he knew it. Still, he did not demand what others did—the attention span others demanded. And he believed it was a noble course he was offering, that is, marriage. Although even here, or I might say especially here, he understood what her limited options were in order to say yes to him. He put the book aside again. Ah yes, the pain and futility of her existence had caused her to grasp his hand. And her little sister whom she wished to take care of and keep safe from the clutches of Joey Elias. Rebecca! That is who she would die for, and so she was with him, Walter P., as a kind of death.

He hated in himself the vanity that had enabled him to cross that threshold and ask for her hand in marriage. He knew that her acceptance had extended fundamentally from her family’s misfortune with their accommodations. A misfortune caused by Joey Elias, whom they had fallen from favour with. It was Joey who raised the rent on their small, rundown yellow house on Pond Street the very month after Dobblestein’s mill, where Phil had worked for years, went bankrupt—and then, finding them no longer worth the trouble, threw them out.

So what had happened to Putsy except bad luck? When Elias took over their house on that fateful day he had thrown the teapot full of tea that they in worry and fear had made for him out the door behind them and kicked the door closed.

“I’ll have to fumigate this place!” he had roared.

Elias was in a state where rage was enlivened with the possibility that people would stare at him, that they would think, “Ah, he’s finally had enough. He’s a great man but even a great man can have enough.” And so he did what he did, picked upon one of the most miserable and servile families in town, and was rewarded just as he thought he would be. And something else was well known. Putsy as well as other young women had been his “girls.” They would fight and call each other names because of him, and men he knew would listen to this, amused, and roar and laugh at their antics. Elias was old enough to be their father, though few told him that. Putsy was nineteen. She had been his girl whenever he wanted, and her only stipulation was that he not touch her sister.

On the day he threw them out, Putsy was at home.

“Oh, is there anyone going to help us?” said tall and thin as a rail Mrs. Druken, while Phil sat in a pile, oblivious to those around him, not only drunk but catatonic in his state of helplessness—as strong men of certain worth become as soon as that worth is challenged. Men who laugh at weakness all their lives, when suddenly pulled out of their environment, see weakness triumph over themselves.

And Putsy, with raven black hair and small, thin lips, kept trying to pick up their things. “Is there one man here, one man in all the crowd who will help?”

But the men at that moment were powerless—and Elias’s men, like Leon Winch, believed they had won a moral victory. They cawed like crows over a piece of coloured string.

“Yeah, Philip, yer finally gettin’ yers now,” Leon said, taking a sniff and a spit. He stared around him, and seeing Putsy come at him he held her back as she spat and cursed.

“Yer not to go in there now—it’s no longer yer place, you understand?” Winch said.

Rebecca Druken—wild red hair and green eyes—stood far down the street, her eyes fixed on Mr. Elias, at first perplexed and then amazed at what was transpiring. She herself did not enter the fray.

There was none to help, it seemed, in the whole world.

Yet who came along at that moment, from being at Easter duties, but the gnome, Walter P. McLeary of the orphanage off Pond Street, projectionist extraordinaire, a grand master of the defensive garble, a well-read provincial, with exquisite hands and a fertile mind. A cripple to boot.

Poor Putsy chasing her bland and not so clean corset that the wind had wired skyward. And now he had come to be her saviour. This was a defining moment in the destiny of our family—not only with Mr. Walter’s arrival but in everything that had happened up until this point.

Added to the mix was his very strange soliloquy to God at Easter service, when hearing of the murder of five children in Strathadam by a deranged, out-of-work father, Walter had said, “Is there anyone going to be sent to help?”

And the answer came as clear as a tinkling bell. “Why, Walter P. McLeary of the orphanage off Pond Street, late of the beating nuns and hoodwinked by friends, I have sent you, sir—can’t you see it?—I have sent you—you are called upon—and many are called and few are chosen.”

He walked downtown muttering at the futility of belief, and ran into the melee at the bottom of the hill, and Putsy calling out for help.

And he (at first reluctantly) came to Putsy’s aid. Mrs. Druken, she of the hard gaze who had teased him more in a day than most in a week, once calling him a weakling and a cripple, watched him begin to pick up their belongings, shouldering them and saying, “Come with me.”

And she looked at him, her lips trembling not because of his help but because she had been reduced to help from him. Her family had always been at a strange war with the McLearys and had sided with Elias because he was strong. Now they were reduced to accepting help from Walter P. How could this be when they had long been in Joey Elias’s good graces, when she had taken his part in any dispute with the McLearys, now be reduced to having a McLeary tell her, “Come with me”? Noticing also how strong he was, she trembled to think of all the times she had called him weak.

“Why in Christ’s holy name should I follow you?” Patricia Druken said, blessing herself twice in rapid succession.

But young Putsy nodded and, clutching her loose garments, spoke: “Don’t mind, Momma,” she said. “If you can just put us somewhere tonight, I’ll make sure we pay you.”

“But why should we go with you?” Mrs. Druken said again.

“Because you asked for a man, and I am the one,” he said, as heartily as he could say it.

Mrs. Druken gave a slight start, and then a feeble laugh, and off they followed him, old Phil Druken teetering on his legs, and Putsy holding a box in her outstretched hands, her face dirty and pouty, while young Rebecca followed at a safe distance, uncertain of her place.

“I will never speak to Joey Elias again,” Putsy said. “It is not me who is insulted but my family now!” She took the Bible, there at that moment in the cold spring air and swore enmity against Elias, and spat.

After much searching and much inconvenience to himself, Walter found them a place on Tar Street, a smallish shed more than a house, yet warm and cozy enough, and he paid for it out of his own pocket. Putsy told him all about how Joey Elias had used her, seduced her, then beat her up.

“There is a better way to live,” Walter said simply.

It was after this that Putsy became friendly toward him. She often went down to the theatre to wait for him, and they would go for a walk or sit out on a summer night. Rebecca often came along to watch the movies too, and they teased her about how susceptible she was to being the mimic.

So Walter as a mature man, spoke to Putsy about getting them a better situation. He took both Rebecca and Putsy to Miss Fish, the lawyer, to see if they would have some case against Elias, for his bad behaviour. But those most in need of the law so often have no case. He did, though, help procure Rebecca a job, taking care of Miles and Georgina King. Rebecca went gratefully enough, and he was happy. The idea that the Druken and McLeary clans were once at odds made her appointment more endearing to both families. And Putsy was profoundly grateful to him.

But was it subterfuge on his part—was he only doing it for the comfort of the young woman’s companionship?

Well, no, because he had never known that the young woman would offer her companionship, or any part of herself for that matter. He had always thought Putsy was Joey Elias’s girl, but she told him with her kisses that this was not so, and he believed her. She hated Joey Elias now—she hated Elias more than anyone. And since she was worried about Rebecca following her bad behaviour, she must change.

“But?” he said, “There is a but, of course.”

“No, there will never be a but.” She smiled and took his arm in hers as they walked.

But was that why she loved him? Was she willing to do this—to sacrifice for her family by marrying a cripple?

“I never think of it.” She smiled again.

Then she was far more noble than he was, he thought.

Yet at the best of times he still hoped, and it was hope that now guided him. He had bought her new shoes just the other week, and new skates too. She could not pass a pair of shoes without wanting them. She had the mark of poverty, for wasn’t it his experience that there were many things coveted by the poor—and one was shoes?

No. She loved him now, she told him. She loved Walter P. McLeary.

But now was the word—for NOW is what informed him, saying: “Before—when you asked a girl to dance, or visited her there was always that which prevented her—but ‘That’ doesn’t inform Putsy—Putsy Druken is different—can’t you tell by her kisses?” Ah yes, her kisses inform me, thought Walter McLeary. Her kisses were passionate, he thought.

“Can’t you tell by my kisses?” she’d said one night.

Yes, she loved him.

Still, except for the kisses he had bought at the Sunny Corner Fair, he had nothing to compare her kisses to.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer day?” he said aloud now, and got up to make sure the reel changeover was still five minutes away. Then he sat down and fell into deep and pleasant thought. He thought of Christmas, how they would go to midnight mass, have punch later at the house, how her father and he would play checkers—he loved checkers and so did Phil. They would put the turkey on, perhaps wave the Irish flag, go carolling—and he would give her a diamond ring. Not even Janie knew about this.

Janie did not know something else. He had given Putsy a key to come and go from the theatre as she pleased, to save him from walking up and down the stairs to open the door for her. Because—well, it all came back to his paining foot and the unfamiliarity of love.

“You must never lose this,” he had said, holding the key up to Putsy.