Smoke (10 page)

“All right.” Isabel steps in between them. “All right you two, that's enough.”

“You want to deal with this?” says Tom. “Fine. He's all yours. I'm turning in.” He stomps off, and slams his bedroom door. On the other side, he sinks his weight against the wooden frame and stares at the unmade bed where his wife was reading one of her dime-store novels only minutes before. The book is face down on her pillow, its smooth pages spread like paper wings. He closes his eyes to it and to the room. For the first time the full implications of Buster's deformity reach him. No son of mine, he thinks. No son of mine should have to defend himself. That's my job.

In the hall, Buster drops his shoulders an inch as Hank leans in and whispers in his ear. “Can I borrow it sometime? I've got a few scores of my own to settle.”

“Scoot,” Isabel swats him. “I want to talk to your brother alone.” With the others out of earshot, she hands the pistol back to Buster and he feels a certain remedy with the weapon, as mighty as any two pounds of steel can be, sitting in his sweaty palm. His breath uncoils, his posture straightens. He lifts his eyes to meet his mother's. For an instant he misses her—the way things used to be between them. She leans against the wall for support, her joints loose and hollow, getting ready for the coming baby.

“Your father's right. I don't like guns in the house. I don't like them at all in fact. Someone could easily be hurt. You included. I thought you'd know better.”

“I know, Mom. I'll be more careful.”

“You must never threaten anyone again. Promise me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And wherever you got it you'll take it right back.”

“Yes ma'am.”

The disapproval on Isabel's face fades and she appears once more gentle, proud. She knows she should stay angry about something this serious for longer but can't help herself. Buster was, until this recent pregnancy, her baby, her last great accomplishment, and she's never been able to feel anything other than impressed by him for long. Now she can't bear to make his life any harder than it already is. “Promise me,” she repeats. Buster nods, sensing her tacit approval, and doesn't try to stop her from ruffling his hair. Her fingers banish his migraine. “That's my little man,” she says, turning to follow her husband to bed. From behind, except for the waddle, she hardly looks pregnant at all.

In his bedroom Buster finds his hat. Plunks it on his head. He will return to school with the gun. He can't help what he understands through the jump in his blood and the itch in his bones; this place feels smaller now and is shrinking daily. It's a world in which he is forever marked as damaged goods. He glances in the mirror above his dresser, holding the gun at the side of his head with the barrel pointed at the ceiling. He looks as though he's modelled himself on an outlaw.

“That's better,” he tells his reflection.

One unusually warm November morning, Alice pulls aside the Barkcloth curtains and wonders what in the world is keeping Hazel this time, and there's John bundled into two sweaters, sitting in a floral-cushioned chair on the veranda rocking and voraciously reading
The Tillsonburg Observer. The Detroit Free Press
and
The American Journal of Medicine,
which he sends for from time to time, are piled in disarray beside his chair. His walking cane leans up against the porch banister. At his feet sits a black leather clarinet case and an open letter from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The College is checking up on his books, as is usual. He stands, stretches and sits back down and Alice drops back behind the curtain unnoticed. From inside the house she listens for his movements the way a new mother listens for her baby's breathing, and hearing him slurp tea that she made from a bag, goes back to clearing the kitchen table.

Marriage is a strange, almost feverish condition, she thinks. You wake up one morning and ask yourself, Who is this man I'm married to? It's the way a new hat sits on his head or the fact that he knows the geography of cities to which he's never been, or maybe it's the faint birthmark you one day discover on the back of his neck. How could you have missed it all this time? Why has he never pointed it out before? Who is it really, lying next to you in bed? No one can say for sure. Time goes on and before you know it, it's twenty-five years later and you've stopped asking. You just accept. You accept more than you're willing to admit.

Hazel steps onto the veranda. “Getting some fresh air?”

“You caught me.” He waves with the paper. Alice slides the side door open and sticks her head outside. She motions to Hazel.

“C'mon, I'll make us a fresh pot.”

Once inside Hazel takes the chair closest to the window where there's a slight draft. At her age, on the flip side of time, she's been feeling warm wherever she goes. “I saw the McFiddie boy on his way to school.”

“Looks dreadful doesn't he?” Alice shakes her head, runs water at the sink. “My word! He's lucky to be alive. John won't say it but I know.” Alice sets the kettle on the stove burner, turns it on high.

“I think Judy was sweet on him. Completely out of the question now of course.” Alice's eyes widen with interest. A faint sadness. “Don't look at me like that, Alice Gray. Don't you even start. You know exactly what I mean. He's
changed
.” Hazel whispers this last part.

“I know he needs our sympathy. I'm sure Buster's still a good boy.”

Hazel gives one of her dismissive snorts, the sort that remind Alice of George Walker's hogs. “Good isn't good enough. I want my daughter to have what's best. Better than I have, at any rate. You'd feel the same if you were a mother.” She pulls out her needle and thread and begins sewing on the quilt.

Alice knows that Hazel's husband, Walter, is a Mohawk, that his parents lived beside the canning factory and the railway station in the east end of Smoke, supervising seasonal workers for decades until it closed and then returning to the Six Nations at the forks of the Grand. Everyone knows history. But only Hazel refuses to accept it. “What do you mean, better?”

“You know full well that I was two months along when Walter and I married. I never should have gone with him in the first place, but then the war was on and so many of our men were overseas. I guess I didn't want to be alone.” She pauses, looking for Alice's reaction, and when Alice nods uncritically she continues. “So, am I the only one who's wondered what life would be like if she'd taken up with someone else?”

“What are you saying? You without Walter? And me, with someone other than John?” Alice takes a seat at the table opposite and waves her hand in the air. She laughs. “Maybe I should have. I mean, John can fix broken bones, heal abscesses and infections. I've even seen him tend a broken heart or two over time, but ask him to unplug my sink or rewire a lamp and you might as well be talking to the wall. No interest whatsoever in the practical side of life.” She shakes her head lovingly. “He's got a mind for medical things alone.”

“Well Walter isn't much for book learning and I'm
still
waiting for electricity in my canning room. I have a brand-new washing machine, like yours. Newfangled dryer even. I've got the best electric iron—saves hours of work. Just about every convenience a woman could want is mine, and on top of it I've got a husband who thinks he's whistling Dixie. But the things I
need?
Electricity in my canning room? No. My kitchen sink unplugged? No. The handle on the upstairs toilet replaced? No.” Hazel lowers her voice, drops her eyes. “Someone more … well someone more like me?” There is a long pause then. “From where I'm sitting, Alice, your life looks simply perfect.”

Alice is embarrassed by her friend's declaration and by her own lack of honesty. There were indeed times when she reflected that she might have done well to have married differently, perhaps George Walker who'd made his feelings plain once, a long time ago before John ever took up residence in Smoke. Or the plumber from Zenda township who'd come courting before that. Who didn't have doubts? “Nothing is perfect, Hazel. You ought to know that by now. Besides, I've never been sick a day in my life. Some useless insurance policy my marriage turned out to be.”

Hazel smiles at this. “But still. You couldn't ask for more.”

“No babies,” Alice hears herself blurt, shocked by the force of her own words. “That's been
my
cross to bear.”

Hazel is still and silent at last, the womanly score now even between them. “Of course. I'm sorry. Sometimes I can be so insensitive. John's injury, I forgot.”

Alice begins to sew tight stitches along the edge of a large blue square. She recites the facts as neatly as if she's had them folded in her breast pocket all this time and is just now taking them out. “Three ribs snapped when the other vehicle slammed them head on. He was only sixteen months you know? His lungs are still weak from the puncture. Can't run for falling short of breath. Even the stairs are hard for him now. I worry.”

“I've noticed he's using his cane more often.”

“Yes. Any support lessens the strain.” Alice's voice bends towards shyness. “The rest couldn't be helped though.”

Both women work steadily, until the kettle calls out, and with every stitch pulled Alice remembers. She remembers how a year into her marriage talk of the Dionne Quintuplets was all over the radio, frustrating for a newlywed couple trying unsuccessfully to conceive. She'd felt like a failure, a barren bride. The greasy aroma of fried pork chops permeated the air after dinner. The doors in the house were shut and she'd double-checked the pilot light on the stove. She climbed into her old spool bed beside John and soon he rolled over on top of her, began kissing her softly, more urgently. They were tentative, apprehensive from so long trying and being disappointed but soon John moved inside her, unravelling that inner quake she'd been craving. After, he fell off to one side and took a deep, mournful breath. He pulled her to him and held her reverently as if to say, You are my wife. Alice felt the itchy sensation she sometimes gets in her right palm whenever something bad is about to happen. She lifted herself up onto her elbows.

“What is it? Was that all right?” She was stinging with a slight stain of rejection.

“It's me,” he admitted. “I can't.” His voice cracked. “I'm unable to give you children.”

“Nonsense John.” Alice reached for his hand.

“I mean it. I'm physically unable.” He pulled back. “There was an accident.”

Alice remembers being stunned hearing about it for the first time. What a story that was! How his reckless father had been driving too fast again, how the other car was bigger and its driver intoxicated. How no one had died, thank goodness for small blessings. But little John's lower body had been trapped between the dashboard and seat. He didn't meet her eyes while he told it. She didn't believe one word.

“It's true,” he said, sensing her scepticism. He ran his tongue along his top row of teeth deciding how much to confess, how much was too much. “I'm not the man you think I am.”

Alice felt the damp cotton of her nightdress clinging to her rib cage. Her fingertips had turned blue with cold. You can't live with someone for a year and not notice that he's hiding something. She'd simply never found a way to ask what she hadn't wanted to know. After all, she was the only child of a minister, sheltered from life's greatest intimacies but wise enough to understand that sometimes living with a question was easier, less complicated, than living with the answer.

The conversation hung in the air over their bed like a nightmare unhatched. Then came a joyless minute when a gulf stream rushed in between them, and finally the flood. “Do you mean we can
never
have children? And you
knew
. You knew this all along and still you allowed me to marry you?”

“I wasn't sure how to tell you. I thought maybe you'd—”

“Get away from me! Don't touch me. How
could
you? How could you deceive me? You tricked me!” Alice sat up, flicked the light on. She was sobbing, hyperventilating, she wasn't sure if she was angrier because of what he'd told her or because she had been an accomplice to the deception. And what about babies? “I've been blaming myself all this time. I've been thinking it was my fault.”

“It's nobody's fault.” He tried to reassure her but when she spoke again it was from a place so deep even she hadn't known it existed, a bottomless place.

“How dare you! How dare you come into my life and do this.”

He wanted to tell her that nothing needed to change, that they could stay together and be happy, the two of them, but in looking at her face—the mistrust flaring behind her eyes—he immediately regretted everything.

“If you want me to go …”

“Get out! Get out of my house and don't you ever come back. I hate you!” Alice threw a feather pillow at him and the cherrywood picture frame from their wedding that was sitting on her bedside stand. It smashed to pieces on the floor.