More in Anger (7 page)

By the end of July, Jimmy no longer left the bedroom, and the sounds of his suffering permeated the walls of the house and wafted through the doorways and out the windows into easy earshot of the neighbours. Mabel Maude said that every window of the house had to be open day and night to ensure they didn't all roast to death, and to get fresh air, even hot fresh air, circulating inside the house.

Jimmy lay thin and pale and weak, barely able to cough. He had been such a big man, too big, in fact, for a long while after he and M&M married. She was even better than Opal with pies and cakes, and oh, how Jimmy had loved his coconut cream! And now he had wasted away to jutting bones and hollowed eyes, and he turned his face away from food. Mabel Maude had grown thin as a shadow as well; she was worn and tired all the time now. Opal brought her flowers from her garden, and the tall stalks of bright gladiolus blossoms resting against M&M's pale face as she
cradled them like a baby made her look more grandmother than mother.

Opal came into Jimmy and Mabel Maude's the back way one morning to see how their garden was doing. As she passed the garage door, she smelled smoke. Tobacco smoke. She pushed open the garage's side door, and inside in the cool shadows she discovered Michael, not yet eight, waving his hands through the air in a futile attempt to disperse the smoke. Opal ran at him, smacked him around the head with her purse, smacked him while he ducked and wept, and then held him against her in the cool dark while his body shook with grief.

Jimmy died at the end of an unusually hot and humid August day. The boys were across the street fishing in the Elbow River. The two women sat beside his body, bathed in their own perspiration, tears and sweat coursing down their faces and between their breasts to their bellies.

As the family all left the house in Winnipeg together in their sombre grey and black funeral clothes, suits, dresses, coats and hats, in spite of the hot summer day, and filed past Melville in the porch where he sat in his favourite chair, he did not raise his head: he watched their feet as they went by. He was wearing his suit, but with a scarf of Pearly K's, red and white striped silk, tied in a bow around his neck.

“We thought you were getting ready to go, Mel,” said Opal.

“Guess you thought wrong,” he said.

“I didn't say you could wear my scarf,” said Pearly K.

“Tough,” said Melville. “I never asked if I could.” He would not speak another word to anyone, just sat there hunched over, smoking and mumbling and smoking. He would smoke uncontrollably
for days, Georgie told Opal, in his lap a carton of Jimmy's brand of cigarettes. He didn't use an ashtray, just ground out each butt on the porch floor with the heel of his boot after he had lit a fresh one.

Opal watched her elder daughter closely as Pearl approached the coffin at the front of the church, but no look of sadness or grief crossed her daughter's face. May snuffled and sobbed beside her mother. After standing at the coffin for about ten seconds, Pearl returned to the pew and sat down again. Opal kept watching her. How could anyone be so hard, so heartless?

Before the lid of the casket was closed, Mabel Maude approached the coffin with her three children one last time. She leaned into the coffin and kissed her husband goodbye. Her little sons were clustered around her, their bewildered faces full of sadness. One boy reached in and tried to hold his father's hand, but pulled away at the coldness and stiffness, and the look he gave in that split second was full of realization. Pearl's were surely the only dry eyes in the church as everyone watched this scene. Even the minister wept.

But when the church had been emptied of the living and the dead, Pearl couldn't be found to go with them to the interment, and Opal went back into the church to look for her. When she heard the sounds of sobbing and of moaning coming from inside the bathroom, she stopped outside the door. As she listened to the sounds of sorrow, a small but joy-filled smile of gratitude spread tentatively across her face, as though the sound of her daughter in anguish were a gift from God. Her daughter had a heart after all. Opal whispered a thank-you before she pushed open the bathroom door.

Inside, Pearl was leaning against the wall, her hot cheek against the small white tiles. Her shoulders slumped, she held herself in her arms as though she were in pain. Pearl's face was turned upwards, twisted and distorted, transfigured and wet, tears still streaming down her face. Opal approached her daughter tentatively, carefully, scrabbling to open her purse and get out a hanky, which she offered, saying, “Dear?” But when Pearl turned to her, the look on her face was instantly one of sheer hatred, and she hissed, “Get
away
.” And Opal, longing, aching, lamenting, went.

A week or two later, Opal and May climbed the hill home together after helping Mabel Maude sort through Jimmy's belongings and box them up for the Goodwill. May, wonderful daughter that she was, offered to get them both a lemonade and meet her mother in the summer house. Opal entered her back garden through the gate at the side of the house and began crossing the lawn, when she was stopped in her tracks by the smell of cigarette smoke, which seemed to be coming from the summer house. Perplexed, Opal approached. When her eyes met her daughter's, Pearl lifted the cigarette to her lips. “Hello, Mother,” she said.

The entire world, including her body, seemed that much heavier for Opal to carry around these days. Now that he had retired, Mac was at home
all of the time
except on the blessed days he played golf or went fishing. He helped her in the garden a little, and read copiously, but still there wasn't enough for him to do,
and his nitpicking was driving her crazy. Her territory had been invaded, and they fought constantly.

“There were few enough complaints before about how I ran the house,” she said.

“I hadn't the time to notice what was going on,” he said.

“Well, I wish you would go and play some more golf.”

“Wish away.”

There was a litany of her offences that she endured listening to at least once a month. Every time the bill from the Hudson's Bay arrived, Mac had something to say about her stupid extravagances or her extravagant stupidity. Her driving was another topic: Mac believed women were too stupid to drive, and it was better for everyone concerned if they didn't. But Opal liked driving, and until Mac had retired and started hogging the car, she had gone out nearly every day shopping or visiting. But it seemed Mac found there was something offensive about his wife's getting into
his
car and pulling out of
his
driveway and driving away, leaving him home alone, poor man, abandoned and carless. Why did she have to go out anyway? he complained. He decided he would drive her everywhere, but then he complained about that, and when he came to pick her up, often well past the agreed-upon time, it was terribly embarrassing, because he would lay so long and hard on the horn until she appeared. The experiences became so humiliating that she stopped wanting to go anywhere at all except places they were going together. Her licence expired and she didn't renew it. She would just stay home.

Of her two daughters, it was no surprise that it was Pearl who almost never wrote or called. It was understandable, to a point: now Pearl had children to look after, and with her and Tom's recent move to the coast, no doubt finding the time was a bit of a challenge. But after all they had done for her, surely Pearl could make a small effort. If, as Pearl said, telephone calls were too expensive, then a short note would be better than no letter at all. Opal wanted to hear about her granddaughters! On this point she and Mac agreed: the only time Pearl could be sure to write was if they had written first suggesting they come for a visit, and then they were assured an answer by return post, trying, though thankfully not always succeeding, to nip the suggestion in the bud and dissuade them. Or if she wanted money. Why she should still need money when she was well over thirty years old and married to a doctor was a good question, but there it was. “She doesn't like us,” Opal lamented. “Our daughter doesn't want us within five hundred miles of her.”

“Tell me something I don't know,” said Mac.

May, now living in Seattle with Fred, was much better. She at least responded, often at length, and she always answered questions. She and her father, especially, had a thriving correspondence. Since May had gone to take library science in Edmonton, she and Mac had great discussions by letter about books. Admittedly there had been rocky times right after May married Fred, when they had refused to visit her and made a point of staying north of the border on their few trips west. But it was better now.

There had been more than a decade between their daughters' weddings. Pearl had married Tom Mayfield of Banff in January 1941, in Montreal, where he was finishing his internship. For
some reason Pearl had not wanted to wait until summer, or even spring, when travelling would have been easier for both the Mayfields and the Macaulays. But maybe that was why. Pearl used some vague excuse about the war, and then everyone was expected to dance to her tune. Even Mrs. Clive Mayfield, Tom's mother, who struck Opal as a woman who would prefer to be playing the fiddle. It would be interesting to see how those two would get along in the years ahead. They started their married life in Banff, but then Tom had joined the RCAF and they moved to Regina for his training. It was there that the first grandchild for both families, Ruby, was born.

When Tom heard that he would be going overseas to Topcliffe, England, Pearl got the idea in her head that she and little Ruby would move in with Opal and Mac until his return, and Pearl pushed and pushed against all objections until she got her way. They had room: May was still away at university in Edmonton. Didn't they want her, their first-born, there? Didn't they miss her, after all her years away? How could they pass up the opportunity to spend virtually unlimited time with their first and perhaps only grandchild? Opal and Mac had succumbed.

Well, that had been a disaster, hadn't it? While Opal tended to little Ruby, Pearl had stayed in bed every day until the postman came, and if he didn't have a letter from Tom to deliver, there was
h-e-l-l
to pay for everyone else, little Ruby included, for the rest of the day. Pearl spent hours every evening writing Tom letters, which were often accompanied by angry tears. Opal, who had had misgivings about the plan from the word go, finally told Pearl that she had already done her child-rearing years in spades, helping her own mother with her siblings in Winnipeg and then
raising her own two. Pearl called her selfish and she called Pearl selfish and things deteriorated from there. The arrangement hadn't lasted six months.

Pearl had packed up Ruby and caught the train to Quebec, where mother and child stayed in rental accommodations until Tom's return. Relatives on both sides lost out. And Pearl hadn't even said thank-you—not for the months of help and support, not for the ride to the train station and the money with which she paid for her ticket, for heaven's sake! In fact, Pearl had barely said goodbye, though she did kiss her father on the cheek. Opal heaved a great sigh. Somehow she had managed to get on with
him
, while it was she, Opal, who had done all the work. Life, life was unfair. Unjust. At least little Ruby seemed sad to say goodbye to them, her sweet little face framed with white fur crumpling with tears, her small hands in their little white gloves, holding Opal's own.

Now Pearl and Tom were living on the west coast, and had bought a house and property of their own—with help from them for the down payment, of course.