A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) (12 page)

The Sign of Jonas

I was not sure where we were, but the flock seemed higher than usual, the earth below more rounded, the vista more sweeping. A waving necklace of honking geese undulated in the distance, a flat ribbon of silver river coiling beneath us in the sun.

Time and space and memory unrolled into one giant net and we, black birds against the blue sky, slipped through larger holes and back through others. I imagined that I spoke to my grandmother, silent still, even now, explaining what I was seeing, what I was experiencing, wanting her to know, wondered if she was listening, knew that she was listening, inside me, outside me, somewhere, somehow, knew that she had not died, not really, because I could see her so clearly, and understood now that family is a memory that transcends words.

Time happened to the world below, froze there, forever, everything, and memory was needed to make time happen to my mind. And in my mind I heard women's voices, so many women, muffling the sharp silence of men who could not speak, who felt but could not share, could not touch. Alone.

My own family, small, lost in the numbers, in the crush of time, insignificant. Except to me. Except to me.

High, in the wind. Mother, Father. Talk to me. Oh, Maggie.

FIFTEEN

January-May 1926

1

It is 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, January 6,1926. We are in the kitchen at 10 Constance Street in the west end, near Bloor and Roncesvalles, our new flat of only two weeks.

Our first day here was the day before Christmas and Margaret and Jack got to celebrate by waking up to parcels under the tree. Mike, my brother, a widower with half his family grown and gone, now lives in a small place out on Queen East—on Lockwood Road—with his son Carmen, eighteen, and his two grown daughters, Ann and Kathleen. Mike has left Simpson's. For the past two years he has worked for the gas company, and has managed to get Carmen hired on with him. Still enamored of his wagon though, ever reliable, it was he who helped us drag our worldly possessions across the city.

Now that I am making twenty-four dollars a week, we are moving up in the world. The new flat costs thirty dollars a month. It has four bright rooms, a bath, water heating and oak floors, a telephone. There are rosebushes that will bloom in the spring and summer, a verandah. Maggie likes it because she feels that she is closer to her roots and to the Junction. Margaret, attending St. Joseph's Convent School, and Jack at De La Salle, both find it more convenient too.

At one end of the kitchen table Margaret finishes listing out her Latin verbs, conjugating each into its four parts. Jack is reading the comics from
The Toronto Star: Bringing Up Father, Gasoline Alley, Tillie the Toiler, Polly and Her Pals, Toots and Casper, Winnie Winkle—The Breadwinner.

Margaret takes a card out of her notebook as she closes it, handing it to me. "I got this Monday from Sister Josephine," she says. It is a picture of the sacred heart of Jesus. On the back is the inscription
To Margaret Radey, January 4, 192.6, for fifth place on the honor roll.

I look at her. She is a marvel. Yet her innocence unsettles me. She seems so easily pleased, so naturally happy.

Margaret, her mind elsewhere, changes the topic. "Did the new radios arrive at Simpson's?"

Even Jack looks up now, interested.

It was Monday at dinner, I recall, that I mentioned the shipment that we were expecting. "We got fifty of them. They came in today."

"When can we get one?" Jack asks.

I frown through my eyeglasses and cigar smoke. It would be nice, I think. Kate and Jim have a radio. Mike and Liz talked about getting one even back at the end of the war. But, I think, they waited too long.

It could be playing right now. We could all be listening to it. "Ain't We Got Fun," "I'm Sitting on Top of the World," "When You're Smiling."

"What kind are they?" Jack persists.

"Atwater-Kent," I say.

Jack listens intently. I notice Margaret and Maggie paying attention too. "Five-tube sets. One seventy-nine fifty. That's a lot of money," I add.

Their eyes waver. They know the phrase.
That's a lot of money.

But we gave ourselves a washing machine as a Christmas present, and it cost $120. Few have $120; but most, including us, can find fifteen dollars down and five dollars a month. The fact that the machine cannot equal the dirt-removing ability of the washboard and scrub brush and old-fashioned elbow grease, or that Maggie often calls on me to disentangle clothes from the sprockets, has not lessened our fascination with it. It is a marvel, and affordable. Payments are the key. Jock has bought a General Electric refrigerator on payments. Everything is available on payments.

The children wait. Even Maggie is smiling, knowing.

I have always wanted to give them everything, without having anything. I smile. Nothing is new. I am forty-five years old, living in rented rooms. I still have nothing, but I can afford the payment. Everybody makes payments nowadays. A radio, I think. Why not. I know the terms. Twenty dollars down, fifteen dollars a month. After all, I am making twenty-eight dollars a week. These are prosperous times. And there is the employee discount.

I think again of Mike, who waited too long. I think of all the things we have done without. I look at the three of them. Jack, especially, waits. This would be something for all of us. I say it aloud. "Why not?"

"Oh, Martin," says Maggie.

"Like the washing machine," I say.

Jack stands up, excited. Margaret smiles the smile that melts me.

Suddenly I am feeling magnanimous. Things are changing for the better. I can feel it. "This Saturday," I say. "We can all go together to get one, make a day of it." The idea grows, takes on its own life. I see a picture of us in my head as a family, doing something together. "We'll go in the morning, and then we'll have lunch at the Palm Room on the sixth floor. The chicken dinner is on special this week for a dollar." I have seen the signs in the cafeteria downstairs. "There's an orchestra."

Margaret gets up, surprises me by hugging me. Even Jack, his expression always wry, is nodding rare approval.

I look to Maggie, who even though pale, never fully well, is smiling. "There'll be giblet gravy, rhubarb pie," I say, waiting for her approval.

"Oh, Martin," she says, giving it, smiling. Knowing me.

2

It is a dream, a bad dream, beyond imagining.

I am out of body as I crouch down beside her where she has slumped on the bathroom floor. I must be somewhere else, I think, as I hear myself shouting her name.

Margaret is beside me, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide. Jack is standing in the doorway, face frozen in shock. The tap is still running.

Even squeezing her, holding her, I cannot make her talk to me. Maggie! I shout. What happened? What happened? Her skin beneath my fingers is white, like chalk.

She just fell, says Margaret. Call your father, she said. And she fell. She was washing my face.

Jack! I shout. Go downstairs. Tell Mrs. Birnbaum I need help. Tell her quick. Hurry!

I loosen her collar, shout her name again, again, try breathing into her mouth, shout her name again. Come back I think. Not now, not now or ever, oh, God, no, please, no.

My mouth is on hers, her lips cold. No, I think. No.

My eyes blur with water, I cannot see. I cannot think.

Margaret is crying. I am crying. I am holding her now, squeezing her, desperate. Maggie, oh Maggie.

And in my head I hear her say it as I clutch her, although her lips, that curl downward at the corners, even now, especially now, do not move, will never move again.
Oh, Martin.

I'd say it was myocardial failure, a Dr. Harcourt tells me, using words I have never heard before. How old was she? he asks.

Forty-seven, I hear myself say. She would have been forty-eight in three weeks. On January 29.

It just happens, he says. Nothing could be done.

I look around me, at the faces of Margaret, Jack, Mrs. Bimbaum.

I don't know what he means, nothing could be done. I don't know what he means.

What should I do? I ask.

You'll need to call a funeral home, he says.

Margaret and Jack are both crying.

I don't know a funeral home, I say, scarcely believing that I am saying it.

He nods, takes a pen and piece of paper from his bag, writes on it. Here, he says. Lynett's, on Dundas. They'll take care of everything.

I look at him, at the piece of paper, make no move to take it. I cannot talk. He realizes this, folds it, puts it in his pocket. I'll call them he says. Do you have a phone?

Mrs. Birnbaum is crying too now.

Yes, I say. Yes. We have a phone.

I cannot just let them take her. It isn't right. I go with them without knowing why, since there is nothing that I can do. We sit in a room on opposite sides of a large desk and I am asked questions while forms are completed and I sign them. They are good enough to bring me home, and after I come home, in the middle of the night, my hands shaking, dizzy, I sit on the bed between Margaret and Jack, my arms around them, and we cry, all of us, finally, for as long as it takes.

* * *

RADEY—Suddenly on January 6, at her late residence, 10 Constance Street, Margaret

(Maggie) Curtis, dearly beloved wife of Martin J. Radey.

Funeral from above address Saturday 9th at 8:45 a.m. to St. Vincent de Paul

Church. Interment in Peacemount Cemetery, Dixie, Ont.

The Toronto Daily Star

Thursday, January 7, 1926

MR. MARTIN RADEY and FAMILY

acknowledge with grateful appreciation

your kind expression of sympathy

in their bereavement

10 Constance Street

Toronto

* * *

On March 1, we leave 10 Constance Street. We cannot stay here. It will never be the same. Jack, Margaret, and I, with Mike's help, move to a flat on Margueretta Street. It is not as nice or as big, but it does not matter.

My brother and I have always been close, but now the bond runs deeper. First his wife, Liz, then Maggie. Even so, something is bothering him. He is not himself. He tells me that his mouth is sore, that he thinks there might be something wrong with his teeth. He worries about gum disease, which Da always talked about, but neither of us know exactly what it is, so we drop the subject. He says that if Liz were here, she would know what the problem was, know the right medicine.

I go to work daily. Margaret and Jack go to school. On the sixteenth of the month, I pay the woman at the accounts wicket in Simpson's five dollars for the washing machine. Nobody mentions the radio again.

On Tuesday, April
6
,
before I can even get my coat off, Jack comes to me when I come in the door after work. "Father?"

I take off my hat, place it on the table. "What is it?"

"My arm hurts."

"Where?" I ask, trying not to seem annoyed. I am tired.

Patience, I think. Patience.

He touches his right forearm with his left hand. "Here," he says. "It hurts here."

"What did you do to it?"

"I fell."

"Where?" I ask. "When? How?" Jack tells me nothing voluntarily. I must ask for everything.

"On the way to school. I was leaping from a fence, grabbing onto a tree branch, swinging. I fell. I landed on the sidewalk. It's been hurting ever since."

"That sounds like a stupid thing to do."

He says nothing.

"You went to school though?"

"Yes."

"It can't be too bad then."

He drops his eyes.

I watch his face. He is in a pain of some kind. "Let me see it," I say.

Gently, he lifts it, holds it out. I take it carefully, unbutton the cuff, roll up the sleeve. There is some swelling. I touch it.

Jack winces, tries not to pull away.

I do not know what to do. Maggie would have cradled it, kissed it, held him, stroked his hair, soothed his woe. I know this. I have seen her do it.

But I cannot do it. I have never done it.

"Can you move your fingers?"

He wiggles them.

"There. It can't be too bad then, can it?"