View From a Kite (29 page)

When Elaine finally realized that Evvie is two inches shorter than we said she was, she bought her a pair of five-inch heels to wear to bring her up to an acceptable level. Evvie, whose usual footwear is slippers at the Alex and gumboots at home, practices walking in them every spare minute. So, to avoid broken ankles and bloodshed on the happy day, we're going to sneak in and desensitize Evvie tonight. We'll march her up and down past those hot-house bouquets until she can mince along without getting weak in the knees, wanting to bury her head in the dizzy smell of roses and carnations, and falling off her shoes.

“If you have one blue eye and one green eye, can you see two colours at once?” asks Evvie. Elaine's elderly male cousin has driven up from Yarmouth to give her away and we met him at the rehearsal. He has different coloured eyes and Evvie is still not over it.

“How many colours do you normally see?” Denise snorts. “Don't tell me you only see them one colour at a time.”

It's a good question, I think. If he looks at the ocean, for example, can he see two oceans, a blue one laid over a green one, and the whole thing not mushed into aquamarine? And what colour of eye do you need to see the wind? What is the colour we cannot see? That's one I've been asking since I was a kid and nobody takes me seriously.

“There's a fourth primary colour,” I tell Evvie, “and three more secondary colours it makes when it mixes with blue and yellow and red. And all the variations. Colour X mixed with red produces X-red, which we see only as red because our brains and eyes and central nervous systems and minds do not register X. Then there is X-blue and X-yellow, which look like blue or yellow to us. If you mix all the known colours together using paint you get black, but if you mix them together using coloured light you get white. I know because I saw it at a science museum once.”

“You're lying,” says Denise. “Don't believe her fairy tales, Evvie.”

“Not only that,” I tell her, ignoring Denise, “but if you mix black with X you get the colour of the shadow cast on the inside of a black hole, you get the colour of evil, and endless death, and if you mix white light with X-coloured light, you get invisibility. Everything wonderful we cannot see is X plus white light. Heaven, for example, is X plus white light. So is tomorrow, and thought, and potential, and generosity, and the smell of roses.”

“No, Gwen,” Evvie shakes her head. “Roses smells deep dark pink, like the sunrise, early on your birthday morning in summer.”

I am floored. She is right.

“You're right,” I say.

“You're both nuts,” says Denise.

CHAPTER 60

Evvie's losing it. We've had to get Mrs. Driscoll in here to steady her. Mrs. Driscoll is regal in royal blue, and how she got out of wearing a cartwheel on her head I don't know, but her hat is a smaller, more subdued version of ours, in the same watered silk as her dress, with the merest wisp of chiffon veiling. She is the essence of serenity; five minutes with her and Evvie's voice drops a half-octave and she stops hyperventilating.

“All eyes will be on the bride,” Mrs. Driscoll reminds her, kindly. “You look lovely, Evvie, but everyone will be staring at Elaine. The bride is always the focus of everyone's attention.”

Thank God, I think, and Mrs. Driscoll goes back down the hall to spread balm over Elaine, whose nerves of steel are finally beginning to show faint signs of metal fatigue.

Evvie has slowed down to a quiet whimper, but she's still afraid she'll fall off her shoes, trip on her dress, drop her flowers, and ruin the wedding. Denise forces a big slug of jam-jar juice down her protesting throat and Evvie starts to relax. I drag her down to the main bathroom, where one of two full-length mirrors is screwed to the back of the door (the other's been wrenched off its mooring and is leaning against the wall in Elaine's room). We put Evvie's hat on her head and stand her in front of the mirror.

She smiles and she's incandescent. Propped up on her heels, surrounded by yards of billowing lavender chiffon, with a little lipstick and blush on her face, a few pearls strung around her throat and clipped to her ears—she looks like a candy angel. The hairdresser has already been in and seen to us lower orders; he's smoothed and braided Denise and Evvie's hair into elegant chignons, low on the backs of their necks. The cartwheels sit nicely on top, the brims dipping gently in the breeze when they walk. Evvie's hair, after weeks of Denise's devoted attention, is silky, spun gold.

“Nelson will shit himself,” says Denise.

Evvie blushes, hairline to heels. She's getting out on a weekend pass right after the reception, and Nelson is a guest at the wedding. He's probably out there right now, shifting uneasily in shirt and tie and sports jacket, wondering how long it will be before he can grab Evvie and run.

“You pack those birth control pills of yours?”

“Course I did, you wicked thing!” Evvie starts to giggle and shoves Denise. Denise grabs for me, I grab onto Evvie, and we go down in a pile of lavender smoke.

“My dress! My dress! Don't tear my dress!” screams Evvie. Denise and I howl until we almost pee our pants. Other than bent hat rims there is no great amount of damage, and once we disentangle ourselves the hats are easily straightened out and reattached. Nobody's hair has budged, thanks to a zillion clips and enough hairspray to hold a grizzly bear's hide in frozen waves. The hairdresser's solution to my chopped-off mess was to yank it all back, glue it down, and then attach a false chignon to cover the stubble. I think he's stapled it through to the bone, because the hairpiece is not moving and quite a bit of metal seems to be spiked through to my brain. If there's a lightning storm before this is over, I'm toast.

Finally, we are assembled outside the chapel, sniffing at our flowers and fluffing up our skirts. The doors are closed so no one can peek out and see us until Elaine is good and ready. She sweeps into view and we get our first look at The Bride. She has tricked us out like party favours, but she has chosen elegance for herself, much to my surprise. I was expecting the worst: a kazillion petticoats and puffy monster sleeves and a dropped heart-shaped neckline displaying an acre or two of bony, freckled cleavage. But no—she's not pretending to be twenty-two, she's admitting to at least thirty-nine of her forty-seven years; she's wearing a two-piece outfit in heavy cream silk, a full-length gown with a simple A-line and a small train at the back; a bolero sort of long-sleeved jacket with a surprisingly delicate amount of lace and pearl trim. No veil. She's let loose with her hat, though, but she's six foot tall and thin as a rake, so she can manage a considerable amount of vegetation and debris on her head. This one's as big as our cartwheels and loaded with pearls, lace, white and pink roses, blue forget-me-nots, and streamers of pink and lavender satin ribbon trailing like a waterfall down her back. Her bouquet is another version of her hat. I swear, you could attach a string to that hat and fly it out the window. You could get great altitude with that hat.

She atomizes about a gallon of perfume in the hall around herself and us, and once we've stopped coughing she straightens Evvie's shoulders, twitches the ribbons on my bouquet, spit-cleans an imaginary smudge on Denise's chin—we almost lose Denise here, I have to poke her good and hard so she doesn't slug the bride—and lines us up. She doesn't touch Mrs. Driscoll. Then she arranges her own ribbons, cues the music, nods to Patrick to open the door, and we're off and mincing.

People are crying. Snivelling and weeping. Personally, I don't think we look that bad.

Nelson, I am pleased to note as I follow Evvie down the aisle, looks suitably thunderstruck. I can just about see the roof of his mouth. Evvie, demure, sashays on her stilt-shoes as if she was born with them stuck to the soles of her feet. When she reaches the front she smiles at Bernard and—this has got to be spur of the moment, Evvie's too shy to consider such a thing normally—she leans over and kisses him gently on the cheek. Everyone laughs and applauds and she, only slightly blushing, moves over to her designated spot. What the heck, I think, and I give him a kiss, too. I'm trusting Denise not to turn this into a burlesque and give him the tongue. She behaves for once, gives him a prim little peck, and joins us. Mrs. Driscoll gives him a matronly hug and we all bask in her smile of approval. Suddenly there's the big ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay from the organ and Elaine takes over, takes over the aisle, the chapel, the ceremony, the planet. Everybody is still weeping, for God's sake.

Bernard, that lump of civility, hand-knitted cardigans, and shoe-polished hair, has been transformed along with the rest of us by Elaine's firm hand. He's rigged up in a charcoal-grey suit—cut so he's got shoulders—over a silvery-grey vest, with a pink rose in his lapel. His hair is polished silver—no tacky shoe polish in this dream-come-true. For the first time since I met him he doesn't smell like shoe-polish, he smells like fragrant old leather and a hint of citrus. Sort of a nice solid background for the cloud of scent that billows from Elaine every time she moves.

The whole ceremony goes rather quickly; before we know it they're signing their freedom away, and Christine, all soulful eyes cast towards heaven, is warbling “Whither Thou Goes, I Will Go” so we won't fidget during the paperwork. Then, when the whole deal is down on paper and legal, we whoosh up the aisle, the audience flings rose petals and fires flashbulbs to blind us, and we all sail off to the dining room to have a party.

The Royal Alexandra Hospital Ladies Auxiliary has provided the food for the reception, a lot of little nibbly stuff in spring colours: lilac, turquoise, tender green, pink, yellow, lavender. Astonishing stuff. The fumes from the food colouring compete with our perfume. Everything that can be cut or pressed into the shape of a heart, is.

Everyone is in a merry frame of mind, merry, giddy, silly with a reckless edge. Not like birthdays, where after the guests leave, the cake has been shared around the ward, and the gifts (new bathrobe, flowered writing paper, fuzzy slippers) have been put away, sad and private weeping seeps under closed doors and stains the evening air. This is a party, a real party that isn't an imitation of something that is really happening somewhere else. It is all ours.

Elaine soars about the room, all coloured ribbons and flashing teeth and knockout clouds of perfume. This is my first sight of a human being perfectly centered in a dream-come-true and I suspect it is quite a rare event, so I study her carefully. Every ten minutes or so she attaches herself to Bernard's arm, like a big butterfly perching on a rock to rest. A big, grey rock. He says, “Thank you for coming,” and “God bless,” and “So kind,” to everyone who stops to talk with him. His silver hair shines like a lighthouse beacon.

Bernard is only five foot four, but today he seems to tower—partly this may be the lifts I suspect Elaine has put in his shoes. The goodwill of the crowd buoys him along and his spectacles gleam with happiness. Rose petals cling jauntily to his jacket. He delivers tea and plates full of pink-and-blue food bits to his ancient mama, who sits in her wheelchair looking befuddled and dribbling damp crumbs from a lower lip that has lost all its stretch.

Elaine has rescued “Mother Schwartz” from whatever dim room she's been inhabiting since Bernard first took ill, and has dressed her up in purple brocade for the wedding. Mother Schwartz is going home with Bernard and Elaine to live them when they get back from their honeymoon, and when her gaze falls on her new daughter-in-law an expression of awe, and something that looks like mild terror, descends upon her wrinkled, pleated face. Elaine periodically swoops down on the old lady to pat her hand and straighten her collar and ask her if she is comfortable. Mother Schwartz is too dumbfounded to respond, but Elaine doesn't seem to mind.

Sister Mary Clare has stayed to felicitate the happy couple and is persuaded to have a couple of cups of tea and a slice or three of cake. She claps her hands to the music and smiles a time or two. The room fills up with giggles, titters, roars, gales, waves, and crashes; the noise gets louder and louder and no one, no one says, “Hush.”

No one says, P
ATIENTS
M
UST
N
OT…

No one says, P
ATIENTS
A
RE
R
EQUIRED
T
O…

“Patrick's been doctoring the punch, is what I say.” Denise nods her head, she is adamant. “Everybody's too nice to each other, and much too silly.”

In case her suspicions are true we drink copiously and I, for one, feel giddy enough. Maybe it's just the occasion. It reminds us that there is a world and a life beyond the sanatorium grounds, that someday in the not-too-distant future it will be ours again. Most people don't think much about their health until it starts to go. They don't realize how good life is, and what freedom they have, as long as their body is kicking along. Then suddenly it's not, and there they are, in pain and adrift.

The staff, with one foot in each world, are regularly reminded of their good fortune. Every workday they have our example before them. Every day they herd us through our regimented, constrained lives and then leave when their shift is over. Today they turn their backs on all the rules. Seiglinde Grass does her bit by coming in for a short, formal well-wishing, and then considerately leaves town for the day. MacConnell—well, MacConnell swoops down on Bernard and two-steps him down the centre of the dining room, out into the hall, and back again. Then she does the same to Patrick. She leaves them breathless.

I decide to let bygones be bygones with Mark, to put my humiliating demotion to one-of-a-string-of-idiots behind me, to forgive him for not living up to my expectations, and I dance with him. I assume he forgives me for using him as a lab animal in my exploration of human sexuality and romance. Actually, he probably never even noticed. He invites me out to the stairwell, but I decline, graciously.