The Monkey Puzzle Tree (22 page)

Their social life was equally minimal. Danielle, still teaching at Sir Charles Roberts, but now married and living in nearby Lindenlea, came over occasionally for morning coffee, but
Gillian’s attempt at a dinner party for her and Pierre had been a failure.

Never one for small-talk, Russ had been polite but ill-at-ease, and conversation had been stilted over the shrimp cocktail, game-hens, and blueberry cheesecake Gillian had prepared in anticipation of a lively evening. While she served after-dinner coffee and liqueurs, Russ excused himself to check data, returning just as Pierre, who loved a joke, reached the punch line. Gillian saw Pierre’s mouth snap shut and his vivid, mobile face freeze as Russ re-entered the room, and understood immediately that there would be no more such dinner parties. It was not just because Russ knew few French-Canadians; he was awkward and unresponsive with everyone he met. Socializing was not his sort of thing, he said. No more than it had been Doug’s, she thought.

Work could have made her life less empty, but when, years before, she had suggested she could return to teaching once Bryn was at school full-time, Russ had dismissed the idea, arguing that unforeseen domestic concerns might interfere with his work. In any case, there was no need for it. He had looked complacently around at their well-appointed home. He could provide for all their wants.

Gillian had not argued. Perhaps Bryn needed her to be home, and she should be supportive of Russ, who was working harder than ever. She should appreciate what she had and not rock the boat.

The sound of the vacuum intensified and then stopped as Mrs. Knight arrived at the top of the stairs. There was another driven one, thought Gillian, wondering what motivated her cleaning woman to work with such fervour; a question which reminded her of a strange little discrepancy regarding Mrs. Knight. Her friend, or friendly acquaintance, Bernice, with whom she shared Mrs. Knight’s services, and who lived in a shabby-genteel house in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill, all hardwood floors, varnished panelling, and stained glass, had reported to her that Mrs. Knight had said her greatest pleasure lay in “helping to restore a beautiful old home to its former graciousness.” Mrs. Knight had told Gillian, on the other hand, that she preferred houses like hers, where everything was fresh and new and came clean quickly. “Not like those big old houses where, however hard you work, it always looks shabby.”

Turning her eyes from her reflected presence in the kitchen’s shining surfaces, Gillian prepared lunch. She heard Mrs. Knight bump the Hoover down the stairs, and saw her pause at the bottom beside the maidenhair fern, whisk a rag out of her apron pocket, and rub something, a finger-print maybe, off the oval hall mirror.

Knowing that Mrs. Knight would refuse anything more substantial, she laid out plates of lettuce and tomato and slices of the best, whole-grain bread, lightly buttered.

“I’ll just have a little bit of lettuce, and a bit of bread and butter, and a nice cup of tea, if you have one,” Mrs. Knight would say with a bright smile. “I’ll have plenty to eat tonight when the family comes to supper.”

Mrs. Knight was rightly proud of her family. Shirley, the eldest, was married to Nicholas, a very successful businessman, who had just bought a new Buick apparently, in which Mrs. Knight would be taken for a drive that evening. It seemed they had a lovely home on elegant Clemow Avenue, where they entertained important people like the mayor. Their six-year-old twins, Kimberly and Kendra, as bright as they were beautiful, were to start at a private girls’ school, in the fall.

Doreen, her younger daughter, was articled with a highly respected law firm. She had been engaged to a brilliant young orthopedic surgeon, but had recently broken it off; Mrs. Knight was afraid that Doreen liked living at home too much for her own good.

The youngest, Norman, his mother’s pride and joy, was doing his Master’s degree in political science at Carleton University. According to Mrs. Knight, in looks and personality he took after his father, Victor, a gentle giant of a man with hair so blond it was almost white, and piercing blue eyes.

Victor had died, it seemed, when Shirley was ten and Norman barely two, and Mrs. Knight had raised the children single-handedly since then, struggling to keep to the ideals and hopes her husband had for them. Gillian and Bernice thought she was wonderful: a shining example of what was possible.

“You must be exhausted in this heat.” Gillian pulled out a vinyl-topped stool for Mrs. Knight. “But we’ll all be much more comfortable soon because my husband’s buying us an air conditioner.” This was not strictly true, but it felt good to say it. “Look, why don’t you go home after lunch? With full pay, of course. It’s much too hot for such heavy work, and you’ve already done much more than I expected.”

“Oh, no, I’m not a bit tired. After all, I’m only fifty-five. I never run out of energy.” Mrs. Knight looked mistily at the rounded, sky-blue refrigerator. “My husband used to call me ‘the human dynamo’. He used to say it wore him out just looking at me dusting.” She studied the hot-pink polish on her short, broken fingernails. “I told you he died of leukemia, didn’t I?”

“No … No, I thought it was polio for some reason. You said he died when the children were very young. That must have been terribly hard for you.”

Mrs. Knight stirred her tea thoughtfully. Gillian noticed, for the first time, brown blotches on the back of her hand, and heard a little clatter as she replaced the spoon. Her amber curls had lost their bounce, there was a film of sweat on her brow, and while her cheeks and lips were their usual geranium pink, her blue eyes had a confused look that Gillian had not seen before, the shadows under them too deep for makeup to hide.

“No, it was leukemia. It was my father that died of polio.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have got mixed up.” Gillian poured Mrs. Knight another cup of tea.

The meal over, she collected the dishes. “I’ll see to these. And please let me drive you home today for once. It’s far too hot for you to have to stand at the bus stop.”

“No. I like the bus, and I may want to drop in on a friend, but thanks just the same, Mrs. Armstrong. Now I’ll be off upstairs to tackle that grouting. I’ll have it spotless in no time.”

“Please don’t, Mrs. Knight. Not in this heat. Leave it until next week.”

“Not to worry. I’d like to get it done.”

Two days later, Gillian
was
cutting roses in the garden in her coolest sundress while waiting for Bryn to get home from school. She felt sweat break out between her shoulder blades as she walked over the yellowed lawn. Thunder rumbled con-
tinuously in the heavy air like distant bombing, while rain always seemed to be about to fall, but never did, and the poppies and peonies drooped and faded despite daily watering. She moved listlessly along the bed of roses, looking for the least wilted. As she leaned over to clip a sheltered crimson bloom, she heard the phone ring.

“I’m sorry, Gillian, but I’ve got some awful news.” Bernice’s usually crisp voice sounded fuzzy and hesitant. “It’s Mrs. Knight. She’s dead, Gillian! She dropped dead here, cleaning windows.”

“Good God, Bernice! Cleaning windows?
In this heat?”

“I know! I told her not to. Honestly, I did, Gillian; but she said she felt fine, and she wanted to do them because it’s better when the sun isn’t on them.” Bernice took a shuddering breath. “You get a better shine she said.”

Gillian sat down by the phone. “When did this happen?”

“About an hour ago. The ambulance has just gone.”

“Oh, her poor family! And poor you! You must be feeling terrible.” Gillian listened as Bernice unburdened herself tearfully at length. “We should send flowers,” she said finally to Bernice. “And go to the funeral, of course.” After Bernice rang off, Gillian shakily jammed the roses into a jug, crimson petals falling onto their own reflections in the gleaming, black and white tiled floor.

Visitation time at the small downtown funeral parlour coincided with both rush hour and the long-awaited downpour. Gillian was grateful that Russ, possibly feeling he should be sorry about Mrs. Knight, had uncharacteristically volunteered to be home when Bryn got back from school, and to stay until she returned. An accident on Bank Street necessitated a detour, and by the time she had found a parking place and hurried over swirling gutters and down streaming streets to the small funeral parlour, she was late for meeting Bernice. As she entered the dim front hall, breathless and flustered, a short, stout, middle-aged man stepped out from a doorway.

“You gotta be Mrs. Armstrong.” He shook her hand. “I’m Norm Knight. Thanks for coming to pay your respects to my mother.” He smoothed his thin, greying hair and tucked in his nylon shirt over a substantial belly.

This is Norman
? Trying to hide her confusion, Gillian said, “I’m so sorry about your mother. She was a wonderful woman. I admired her so much.”

“Yeah, that’s what that other lady said. Would you like to see the remains?” He led her into a small, shadowy, visitation room where a dozen or so people, not including Bernice, turned sharply to stare at her.

The star of the occasion, clad in a silky white dress, lay in an open casket floating in a pool of illumination on a dais at the other end of the room. Accompanied by Norman, Gillian approached the casket to survey what seemed to be an artist’s version of Mrs. Knight; the brassy curls subdued to auburn waves and the cheeks and faintly smiling lips beneath the patrician nose, tinted a pale, refined rose.

She peered at the name and dates on the placard in front of the coffin:

Victoria Elaine Knight 1905–1970.

She had talked to Mrs. Knight every week for years, and had thought she knew her, but had not even known her Christian name, or her true age.

Norman leaned forward. “She has a lovely face, eh?” He touched his mother’s hand tenderly.

Dizzy from hurrying and from the heat, Gillian nodded and lowered her gaze to the oppressively sweet-smelling bouquet of lilies below the casket, and to the few, wilting wreaths. Sensing someone watching her, she looked up to see a dark-haired little woman in a beige crimplene suit standing nearby, next to a gaunt man in black pants and a white shirt, whom Gillian recognized as a waiter from La Roma. Behind them skulked a spotty teenaged boy in worn jeans. The woman stepped forward. Ice-blue eyes that, but for the expression, could have been Mrs. Knight’s, bored into Gillian’s with such hatred that she stepped quickly back, at which the woman turned and walked away, followed by the other two.

“That’s my young sister, Doreen,” Norman was back at her side, “and her husband and son. They’re in a real state. Know what I mean? That’s my father, Vince, over there.” He pointed to a swarthy little old man pouring himself a bumper glass of sherry from one of two bottles on a small table.

“Your father?”

“Yes. What’s the matter? That other lady was the same. Looked real funny.”

“I … I expect she was overcome, like me. We were both very fond of your mother.”

“Yes, poor ladies.” Norman was obviously trying to be fair. “My mother was ever so sorry for both of you.” He left her side to guide his father away from the drinks table.

She was sorry for us?
Gillian looked at the occupant of the casket, and then around the room, which seemed to have become peopled by trolls. There were those eyes again; this time on a stout, ginger-haired woman who glared across the casket at Gillian before contorting her face to mouth a single word:

“Murderer!

“Excuse me? What did you say?”

The woman rounded the casket at a trot to stand, breathing heavily, in front of Gillian. “I’m Shirley Knight,” she said in a hoarse voice. “And I gotta tell ya, lady, my mom killed herself looking after you and your sort.” She jabbed Gillian in the shoulder with a thick forefinger. “She’d drag herself home, half-dead from cleaning up after them parties you was always throwing in that friggin’ mansion of yours. And you,” another jab, “Madam,” jab, “never lifted a finger, did you? Never gave her a break, not even in this friggin’ heat-wave. Never gave her a decent lunch, just that friggin’ brown bread she hated, and a bit of lettuce. Never even offered to give her a drive home in that fancy new Buick you got. Not once!”

Gillian’s knees shook as she backed away. “Did … did she say that?”

The woman narrowed her small, fierce eyes and rocked back on her white lace-ups. “Oh, she always had excuses for you. She was a saint! But I knew my mother. I knew you people was goin’ to be the death of her.” Her voice rose. “Usin’ my poor, sick mother, a sixty-five-year-old woman, like a slave! Who the hell d’ you think you are?” She thrust her jaw forward, her face inches from Gillian’s. “You
killed
my mother!”

“Okay, Shirl. That’s enough.” Norman’s voice came through the mist that filled Gillian’s sight, and she felt the edge of a chair being pushed against the back of her buckling knees.

“You mustn’t mind Shirley,” Norman was saying as Gillian sat up after the room came back into focus. “She’s real upset, being the youngest and all. We all are. You gotta understand.”

Gillian sat for a while, trying to recover her composure while at the same time struggling to make sense of Mrs. Knight’s upside-down, back-to-front, inside-out world in which the only recognizable element was Norman’s decency. She rose from the chair, clinging to its back.

“Thank you, Norman.” She looked into his dark eyes. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused your family any distress by coming here today.” Deciding that the actual ceremony was a conclusion best foregone, she made her way shakily down the room through a gamut of outraged glares. Leaning against the door frame, she looked back at Mrs. Knight’s family, and over and beyond them to Mrs. Knight herself, serene in her shining little craft, floating above the swirl of muddy waters below.

Driving home, she brooded on the dénouement to the story of Victoria Elaine Knight, heroic widowed mother of brilliantly successful offspring, saintly victim of slave-drivers. What must her life have been to drive her to weave that gleaming web from the meagre rags of truth? Why, moreover, had she herself not picked up on the improbabilities and contradictions in Mrs. Knight’s narratives that seemed so obvious now? Clearly she had chosen to just enjoy the story rather than bother
to read between the lines.