More in Anger (11 page)

Opal took her purse from her bedside table, checked the wad of cash in the bottom of her knitting bag, put on her slip and her navy blue dress with the tiny white polka dots, and even managed her girdle and stockings. No one commented when she walked out the front door, and no one noticed when she got into the cab that was waiting for somebody else. “To the CPR station,” she said with authority, the way Mac would have said it, and in less than an hour she had used her lifetime CPR pass and boarded a train to Calgary. She smiled as the train took her home: everything had lined up. At the Calgary station she caught another cab, and on the way to her apartment Opal asked the driver to stop at a grocery store and go in and buy her two quarts of vanilla ice cream. A week later, the home care nurse found Opal dead, lying on her rose-coloured jacquard chesterfield beneath the front room window and nestled in a pale green satin duvet, a dessert bowl and spoon on the otherwise empty table beside her.

PEARL

 

The biggest pleasure of Pearl Macaulay's life so far had been, without question, leaving home for the first time, setting off on the university train into the great unknown, off to Montreal to study English Literature and Art History, off to the best university in the country, according to her father. Adieu! she had called out the window, and smiled broadly at her parents. The look of astonishment on her mother's face still made her smile. Ha! She had no idea her daughter could look so happy, did she? How little she knew her. And Pearl
was
happy. Every year at this time. Leaving her mother's stupid badgering, her father's sudden explosions of anger, her placid and boring goody two-shoes little sister. Never mind all that. She was setting out on an adventure. She was setting out on her
life
and she was leaving all that had hobbled her behind.

Now, returning, she felt that same delicious sense of release. But it was a much more mature approach now, she was sure, and refined. She looked forward to her studies, to the stacks of new books to read, to seeing the girlfriends she had made, Marion and Esther. She liked belonging to Kappa Alpha Theta with
them, and playing badminton, and attending the elegant parties and dances to which she wore her evening gowns and gloves and her deep red velvet opera cape with the ermine collar and was asked to dance, sometimes by tall fellows with red hair. She smiled. There was nothing she didn't like about life at McGill. Nothing. She wondered if Manny with the red hair would be back. He had hoped to return, he said, but there had been some doubt and they hadn't communicated further. What a waltz they had had. She could still feel his hand on her back.

Pearl took up her book, glanced at her wristwatch and began to read. She was reading a forbidden book, her current favourite: D.H. Lawrence's
Sons and Lovers
. This would be her third time through, and it wasn't on any of her university reading lists. But so what? Live a little, she told herself. What fun was there in doing what you were told all the time?

After reading for an hour, she closed the book, keeping her fingers inside against the words and closing the covers so the book squeezed her fingertips. Her body was awake and aching. No wonder Lawrence had been censored. He was banned from the house by her parents, too. She snickered. This summer, thinking to enlighten them, or at least startle them into an awareness of the real world, she had left the book in the summer house. It was gone when she returned the next day, and she had had to retrieve it from the kindling bin where one of them had tossed it. A smile played on her lips. They had probably used tongs. Ha! What prudes her parents were! She gave a small snort of contempt, and the woman across from her raised her head from her magazine. Pearl met her pale blue eyes, blinked, and turned her head to the window. They were so rigid, her parents,
both of them. And how laughable her mother was, the way she “stuck to her guns” even when doing so flew in the face of logic. She was pathetic, really. And her father—well, she would always adore him, but not his atrocious temper. When he became angry, it was like a huge, sudden thunderclap that made everything around it shake. And cry.

She lay back and closed her eyes. Free! She was free of all that for the next three and a half months.

Aunt Pearly K and Grandpa King were waiting for Pearl at the Winnipeg station—she identified her aunt at once by the wide-striped blouse she was wearing—Aunt Pearly K loved stripes—and she gave them both a smile and a wave out the train window. She would be staying overnight, resuming her trip to Montreal tomorrow. Her aunt and grandfather had come directly from the horse races, they explained as they embraced her, and she could smell the manure and the beer. Good thing Mother isn't here! she thought. Ha! They said they had been concerned about being late and so hadn't stopped at the hardware store to pick up Melville, which wouldn't make him happy and so, said Aunt Pearly K, there would be hell to pay when they got home. “Oh well,” she said with a grin at her niece. In her humble opinion Melville always got what he wanted, so he deserved to learn better.

Pearl enjoyed the time with the Kings. She always did. She always thought of them fondly, even Uncle Melville, who was so strange the way he spoke with a giggle and normally wouldn't look at you but if he did it was with this long, pale, unnerving look as though he were looking at a part of you that you didn't know existed.

She always felt somehow nicer after spending time with them all, though the feeling never lasted. They loved each other, this family, and they loved her, and there was something clean and uncomplicated about their kind of love. What was the matter with her own family? Why did they get her in such knots and make her so unhappy? Why did they make her so mad? Well, she wouldn't have to think about any of that for a while. Thank heavens. And thank heavens for her Winnipeg relatives, who didn't criticize her every minute of the day or jump out of nowhere to attack her. Hallelujah!

The train pulled out of the Winnipeg station and Pearl leaned back. Maybe she wouldn't go home for Christmas. Maybe one of her girlfriends would invite her for the holidays. She could go to Knowlton with Marion. Imagine the looks on her parents' faces when they heard she wasn't coming home. Ha! It would serve them right. Give them pause to reflect on how they treated her. But she'd have to go back eventually. Why was nothing ever perfect? Nothing. There was something wrong with everything. She tilted her seat back as far as it would go and relaxed her body, and thought about Lawrence, and allowed the train to sway her back and forth.

Pearl was taken completely by surprise when Tom Mayfield proposed to her. They hadn't been dating very long, and a wedding engagement was the furthest thing from her mind. She barely knew him, in fact. They'd played badminton a few times. Before that, she had just seen him, along with his younger brother,
William, in the McGill car of the university train as they travelled across the country. She had never spoken to them, though she knew they were from Banff. Their father was a doctor and worked, as her father did, for the CPR. Their aunt attended the same church in Calgary as her parents. That's about all she knew about the Mayfields until October, when Eleanor, Tom's mother, had started pushing Tom towards her. Eleanor Mayfield's little note was Pearl's first experience with her future mother-in-law—such a pretty note, suggesting that she and Tom might play a game of badminton and get to know each other. And they had. Why not? He was not as good a player as she, and she'd let him win so that his fragile male ego wouldn't suffer too much. Ha! And so that he might ask her out again. Which he did. He was very quiet, and shy, and she felt responsible for carrying the conversation and asking him twenty times more questions than he asked her. But he seemed to like her well enough. They played badminton again, and then they settled into a kind of routine, getting together on weekends and occasionally taking in a show. They sat together part of the way on the trip home and back at Christmas. They went to a musical, then a dance. Then another.

In the spring of 1940, Tom's parents had come for a visit—they were en route to England and their ship would sail from Montreal. Pearl hadn't expected to see Tom that weekend, which was just as well; she was sick in bed with a bad cold and could barely think straight. She wasn't in the mood for visiting, let alone romance. When she could think about anything at all, she thought about the badminton tournament she was missing, and the Chaucer exam she was going to fail on Monday if she couldn't study. Her intermittent sleep was filled with Middle
English phrases she couldn't remember and badminton shots she missed.

She roused herself and came down to the common room in her housecoat to meet Tom. She wondered why that darn tic on his face was going so strongly, why his voice was so low and tremulous, why he had so much trouble meeting her eyes with his. Then all was revealed, as he forged ahead with his proposal of marriage. Astounded, she was able to blurt out “Yes,” and to offer some semblance of grace and appreciation in spite of her runny nose and red eyes. At least she had combed her hair. It, anyway, was presentable.

“You'd better not kiss me,” she said. “I don't want to give you this cold.” So they shook hands instead. Both hands.

Jewellery had never been high on Pearl's list of desires, but still, wasn't there supposed to be a ring? Tactfully, she hoped, she asked after an engagement ring's existence or whereabouts.

“There is one, but it isn't here,” said Tom.

“Where is it?”

“Henry Birks.”

“Gee, that's too bad. Well, can you tell me what it's like?”

“I don't know what it's like. I haven't seen it.”

“Oh,” said Pearl.

It turned out that his mother had picked out the ring herself, because, after all, she said, she and his father were paying for it. She had given Tom explicit instructions (they were written down and tucked into his breast pocket) on how the day was to unfold: propose to Pearl after lunch; take Pearl to pick up the ring at Henry Birks'; meet Mother and Dad in their suite at the hotel at four for the presentation of the ring; and then go out
for dinner, the four of them, in the hotel's dining room. Pearl dressed and went along with Tom reluctantly. She did not want to meet his parents when she still felt so ill, and she did not appreciate being railroaded by someone's mother: it made her want to run in the other direction. However, she didn't want to jeopardize the engagement. You had to marry someone, and no one else had shown much interest in dating let alone marrying her. Manny her red-headed dance partner had never returned. And she and Tom liked each other well enough and got along reasonably well, and they
definitely
enjoyed kissing each other. That was, above all, the very best thing about their relationship. The touch of their hot, sweaty bodies after a game. The touch of their hot, wet hands. The hugs of defeat and of victory.

As they followed his mother's instructions to a T, Pearl was getting crankier by the minute. Ha, she thought. Is this how it's going to be? Mama this, Mama that? Today and every day? It seemed so, given the letters Eleanor wrote.

Banff, Alberta

June 28, 1940

Dearest Tom
,

We arrived home yesterday and I'm still weary from our big trip. Daddy looks tired too. I will write further about our time in England, but right now there are more pressing matters.

We certainly enjoyed meeting with you and your Pearl, and having dinner with you after the presentation of the ring. Pearl seems to be a very sweet girl, and Daddy is highly pleased about your engagement too.

Darling, I have had time to think since leaving you, and if you have not already written to Mr. Macaulay formally asking for Pearl's hand, I hope you'll send an air mail off immediately, doing so. You see, Mr. Macaulay is “old country” and he seems to me to be quite a formal person. I think he would expect such a letter. As well, I think it would be nice to write a separate letter to Mrs. Macaulay on the matter. One does not marry the whole family, but there is consideration due those who have spent thousands of dollars and years of care on your girl. Please attend to both these letters at once. Don't procrastinate, dear!

And dear, you must be very definite and very prompt in letting us know the price of the bride's bouquet, and corsages for the bride's mother and for the bridesmaid, if Pearl is having one, so that we can take care of the financial end of things. Is she, dear? Since you may be in the service soon, it seems a shame to buy a new suit, so you might wear a dark suit freshly pressed, if the wedding is in the afternoon, or, better, wear tails for an evening wedding, since you have those already. That would call for white gloves, I suppose. Are you having an attendant, and if so, whom? There would be his gift and the organist's. Get right down to business re details and
do not leave them until the last
. Mr. Macaulay is very businesslike and I feel he may be a little impatient of indefiniteness. Make up your mind and stick to it. Mr. Macaulay must know what to wear too, tails, or tux, or dark suit, and he'll expect you to tell him. Is anyone singing? Your cousin Charlotte, perhaps? Will you have William for best man or organist?