Nights Below Station Street (2 page)

Later, when he got up to go, Adele led him to the door and looked at everyone, with her hair in a small net and her slippers sliding on the floor, with the same look of recrimination. Her eyes were large and blue. For some reason the whole time he was there these eyes stared about at everyone in disappointment.

Trying not to be in her way, her mother stayed in the kitchen.

But Ralphie’s boots caused Adele to fly off the handle. Why hadn’t her mother thought to bring them in out from the porch. She accused Rita of leaving them in the porch just because they were Ralphie’s, and if they had been anybody else’s it was certain they would have been brought in where it was warm. Her whole façade of acting grown up when Ralphie was there was lost, and she stormed off to her room, hitting Milly on the head as she went by.

Rita told Ralphie to come back the next day, and told Adele to stop punching Milly, and roared at Milly when she went to bite Adele on the leg.

Ralphie went, and stared back at them from the sidewalk, which was no more than a track in the half blotted-out snowbanks. Snow fell against his red hair as he stood there.

“I don’t care,” Adele yelled. “I can’t have one friend in this here house ever in my whole life without someone trying to do something – and not one of ya take that inta consideration.”

On Boxing Day, Adele walked about in her leotards, and Rita had to tell her a dozen times to get dressed because Ralphie was coming to pick her up for supper at his house, and she shouldn’t be walking about half naked. Rita stood by the sink, with her arms hanging at her sides, and the washing machine going again.

When Ralphie did come she showed him her presents, and at everything she showed him, she said:

“This here isn’t nothing compared to what I got last year.” Or, “This is from Myhrra – she tries hard, but she
never gets me anything I want. She’s divorced, and just lives over there.”

When Adele was showing Ralphie her gifts, Joe came into the room for a second and stood looking at them.

“And Joe got me a lot of stuff that ain’t here yet,” Adele said.

Joe was walking about with a cane because of his leg. Or was it his back. No one was quite sure. They were only sure that something was the matter, but as yet they had not found out exactly what. And yet today he wouldn’t admit that his leg was sore. He had also picked up his first chip at
AA
– that is, his one-month chip – but he would not tell anyone, even Rita, that he was going. So none of his family knew why he was staying sober this Christmas, and everyone was on pins and needles, sure that at any moment a taxi would come up to the door with a load of booze.

Joe had always tried to get Adele the best present he could, and yet never seemed to have the money to do it. This year again he was planning to buy her something special, but when it came time to buy it, he only had fifteen dollars on him.

She took Ralphie about the tree and showed him the bulbs she had placed on it.

As she took him about the tree she said: “Milly put these ones here on – all in a mess – and I was coaxed to put this one on and this here one here. I like putting on the higher up ones.”

“And who put on that one up there?” Ralphie asked.

“He did,” Adele answered.

“Who’s he?”

“Him as all.”

“You mean your dad.”

“Of course him. He did, yes,” Adele said. Then she
paused and breathed through her nose, her lips went as thin as a chalk line.

“Him – he did – him!”

Sometimes when she got home late from school, walking in like a ghost – which had become something of her trademark about the house – Rita would be waiting for her, and an argument would start over something. Where did you go? Who were you with? What in god’s name do you think you are doing? You have a home to come to. Do you know what time it is? I hope you’re not on that jeesless dope! And Adele coming to life would answer just as swiftly and saucily as possible: Nowhere, no one, Adele, home is a pigsty. It’s Atlantic time, no dope yet. And then Rita would chase her into her room with a broom.

Then from behind the door she would tell Rita that she didn’t care, that it was no use, that everything was miserable in this life and that the world was going to end before too long anyway. So what did it matter?

“Well the world isn’t going to end this instant – and I want you to clean up your room and pick up your good slacks and panties.”

“The world might end this instant,” Adele would screech, “so who cares about it.”

Their neighbour Myhrra was often over to the house when these arguments erupted. With a cigarette in her mouth, and her hair tinted blonde, she would come over to talk about Mike, her ex-husband. Sometimes she and Rita would fight and she wouldn’t be seen for a month or so. Then she would come back, some winter night – sending her son Byron in first, and then three or four minutes later
she would appear, her face red from the cold, wearing white slacks with black boots that were zippered on the side.

Myhrra often took Adele’s part – to show that she understood the concerns of teenagers better than Rita.

Rita would feel outnumbered and Adele would feel an increase in her own status about the house, and she would walk about with a pompous little shrug of her shoulders telling Rita that she was only waiting for Ralphie to come and then they would take off in the Volkswagen for Calgary – the one place she wanted to go.

“How are you feeling today?” Myhrra would say to Adele, keeping Rita at a distance. Adele would crouch down in the corner and look at her fingernails gloomily as if trying to stave off temptations to bite them. Wet snow would fall against the window, and melt.

“I don’t feel very well at all,” she would sniff.

“Upset, are you dear?”

“I have melancholy feelings is all,” she would say. “As Mom is always down cleaning carpets at people’s houses –”

“I know,” Myhrra would say. “But your mom
has
to earn a living.” Myhrra smelled of hair rinse and peppermint, and when she smiled her false teeth would make her face slightly crooked.

Adele would rub her fingernail along her panty-hose. Her white legs scraped and her hair smelling of winter sunlight.

“Well, she has a boyfriend, and I suppose that has something to do with it,” Rita would announce, looking down at them both, and trying to smile.

“Oh, Mom, are you so fooled by everything? I’m not talking about boyfriends – and I’m certainly not speaking about Ralphie, who is about as smart as Einstein, so I won’t
bother speaking about him in this here house ever again. I have melancholy feelings – and,” she would say, screeching, “there is a load of dumps and pollution-making mills wherever you go!”

There would be a pause.

“And,” Adele would say, smirking knowingly, “every time I come home something is going on and Dad is always away and you have a big brood of brats hanging onto yer legs. There is always something – and Myhrra knows what I’m talking about – so I’m getting the frig out of here as soon as possible and starting my own life where there will be no such things as loads of kids and a father who stutters his head off whenever he talks to anybody half important, embarrassing his family to death. Like meeting an
M.L.A
. and asking for a job.”

And, saying this, Adele would look at Myhrra who would in turn keep Rita away. Sitting on the floor and surrounded by people who worried about her, it seemed to Adele that everything she said was true, and that they were making a fuss over her because she was special, and that Joe was a stuttering bully, and that she would be special as long as they made a fuss over her – or at least as long as Myhrra was there.

“And,” Adele would say finally, “Myhrra, you have friends, and Mommie has none – and that’s what I’m talking about time and again!”

Sometimes Joe would come home from downtown with his pockets filled with applications he had gotten from the unemployment office.

He would sit about on a snowy day filling them out while
Milly sat beside him or rocked back and forth on the floor. Adele would walk by now and then and say:

“Milly, roll over and play dead. Okay, now roll the other way. Okay, now sit up – okay, now speak, no don’t really speak – but speak, with your paws up. Okay, now scratch fleas, now kick your hind legs up.”

Then, bored with this, she would rummage through the fridge and take out a number of things, setting them on the table. Now and then she would look at her father quizzically as if wondering what it was he would be doing. Joe couldn’t write very well and so often printed out his applications.

“What does the A say, Joe?” Adele would snip, chewing on an apple as the snow fell over the oil barrel outside.

“The A says Angus, Delly. My middle name.”

“Ha some foolish; boilermaker mechanic – what’s that?”

“That’s what I am–”

“H’m?”

“Well,” Joe said almost apologetically, “I was a millwright when I worked at the mines, and I worked in the woods, and I was a diver when I was in the navy – so I guess I’m not just a boilermaker – but that’s the application I’m filling out.”

“Pretty poor job, is it?”

“No, Delly, it ain’t such a poor job – this job, if I get it, is eighteen thousand.”

“Then you won’t get it.”

Joe, his sandy red hair receding, and his shoulders sloped down, shrugged. His black heavy pants came over unlaced work boots.

At certain times Adele would go downtown after school, carrying her books in her folded arms, her tam down over her ears, and would see him going into the unemployment office or coming out of it. The streets would be wet with
dirty snow, and boys would call to her as she passed. Each time she saw Joe downtown she was scared he was going to be drunk, and would pretend not to recognize him.

One day she saw him talking to Vye McLeod. Vye was standing with some groceries in his arms, and looking in the other direction as Joe explained something. There were pencils, pens, and punch-board tickets in Joe’s pocket. His shirt was opened and his chest hair was exposed to the wind. Adele, who was meeting Ruby and Janet, ran into Zellers and stood behind a coat rack so Joe wouldn’t see her.

The winter before, Joe managed to get some welding, and two or three times he’d come home with a flash. When he did, he would come home and lie on the couch, and Rita would put tea bags on his eyes. He had sideburns that were cut off at the centre of his cheeks, his cheekbones were large and his face was massive. At times he grew a beard.

He would lie there with tea bags on his eyes, and every now and then he would take them off, blink, and say:

“I’m still blind – who are you?”

“Terra.”

“Terra – how are you, darlin?”

“Fine – why do you have tea bags up on your eyes, Joe?”

“Cause I’m blind.”

He would lie on the couch with a look of complacency and two tea bags bulging out of his eye sockets, as Rita took a measuring cup filled with water and watered them down to keep them soggy.

He would just lie there with tea bags on his eyes, and try to get as comfortable as possible.