All Saints (16 page)

The horse doesn't like that thought. She can tell by the white of eye it flashes at her through the dark.

It's all right. You're here for me.

That settles it back down. She says the words a few times in her mind, soothingly. But underneath, there is the new thought. More like the thought of a thought.

And I'm here for you.

 

She has to do it.

She opens her black notebook. Clicks her pen. Begins to write.
I have been in possession of a horse that is not mine to keep. I have come to realize that it is now my responsibility to return this horse to its rightful time and place. And in doing so, I set out on a quest. Or I gird myself for battle. Or I begin the slow gnawing away of a trapped limb.

“Particularity,” she used to say to her students. No.
Does
say.
Will
say. “Quiddity. Thingy-ness. Whatever you want to call it. Don't write about ‘the man' and ‘the woman' in ‘the city.' Call them Fred and Frieda and give them a bungalow in Etobicoke. Ground them in the stuff of living. Give them your Aunt Irene's teeth. Your Uncle Harvey's foot fetish. Stop worshiping them like stone idols and bring them to life. Ordinary life. Give them the possibility of stepping off a curb and being hit by a bus. Give them the gift of their own death.”

Behind her, the horse does a little dance with its front hooves. Nickers in alarm. Turns and canters as far away as it can get.

I'm sorry,
she calls to it
.
But she does not stop writing.

It came to her in the early morning. A memory? Or a dream? It doesn't matter. She just woke up knowing.

The horse,
she writes
,
is a draft horse. Not a slender, light-hoofed thing of myth. No, a heavy, thick-bodied worker with dirty yellow hair furring its feet. Glue runs from its eyes. It smells of sweat and straw and dung.

But to me, because it is the only horse I have ever seen, it is beautiful.

I am perhaps four years old when this memory or story or dream is taking place. Young enough and old enough.

Young enough to believe things will never change. Old enough to know they do. Young enough to tune out the boring talk of adults. Old enough to cock an ear. Young enough to love unreservedly. Old enough—almost—to know better.

 

Hate.

She hates everything. The beige-painted steel of her hospital bed. Her walker with its stained handgrips. The smudges on the walls of her room. The stupid bulletin board with that stupid sign about walking. The same view, day after day, out her one window, of the lovely grounds. She hates the lovely grounds. She wants streets. Sidewalks. Stores. Noise. Dirt. Police sirens. She hates the menu card with its little boxes to tick. She wants a martini. In a bar. She wants to grocery shop. Pick six tomatoes from a big red pile. She wants to make a meal for herself. In her own kitchen.

She throws the menu card down on the floor. Throws her pen down after it. Bursts into tears again. Says she's sorry again.

“It's all right, Emily. Most people go through this right away after a stroke. You just took your time. But we knew you'd get around to it.”

She hates their patience. Hates their understanding. They do
not
understand. How could they possibly understand?

“Just cry, Emily. It's all right.”

“No! It! Not! It's! Not!”

Nothing is all right. The chemical smell of the place. The sight of her fellow rehab patients—pale as skinned potatoes, slack on one side like marionettes with half their strings cut. Does she look like that? She has to get out of here. She has to get home.

“I. I'm. Sorry. I'm sorry.”

“Can you hear yourself, Emily? Your speech has taken a quantum leap. Practically over night. You're starting to say exactly what you mean.”

She's not talking to them, damn it. She's talking to the horse. Look, just look, at what she has done to the horse. What she has had to do to it.

It stands in harness. A thick collar around its neck. Leather straps along its sides and back. Blinkers on its huge eyes. The field is gone, replaced by grey asphalt under its iron-shod feet. Whenever she tells it how sorry she is, it lowers its head and shakes its mane. The bit and bridle make a clinking sound.

 

I'm waiting on the sidewalk. I know without my mother telling me that this is ice day. I have seen how small the block is in the top of the ice box, and I have watched her unscrew the cap underneath to drain the melt water. Ours is the only house left on the street now that gets a visit from the ice wagon. I believe this makes us special. Better.

I hear the ice wagon before I see it. First there's the clopping sound, like wooden sticks knocking together. Then the creaking. And now here it is, coming round the end of the street.

His name is Billy. He's white, but not all white. The long hair on his neck is yellow and crinkly, like his tail. There's more crinkly hair below his knees, too, almost covering his feet. He bobs his head with every step he takes.

Billy wears black blinkers that look like dark glasses, and a black harness. The reins lie slack along his white back. The ice man never has to slap them or pull on them. He just calls Ooohhh for stop and Eee-up for go.

Billy's coming closer. Can he see me yet from between his blinkers? I can see the dark streaks of sweat on his white hide, and I can smell his smell—kind of like dust and kind of like poo.

Billy is going to come and live with me when he doesn't have to pull the ice wagon any more. He's going to stay in the backyard in summer and the garage in winter. He's going to eat grass and the carrots off my plate. And whenever I want him to, he's going to let me ride him around the block.

Billy knows he's my horse. He looks forward to seeing me every ice day. He turns his head around now the way he always does and gazes at me while the ice man gets down, goes to the back of the wagon and finds me a clean chunk of ice to lick.

 

She has completely filled the black spiral-bound notebook. The team have promised her a new one, but they've gone home for the night. She can't wait till tomorrow.

Standing on her right leg and bracing herself with her left, she reaches up to the shelf above the bulletin board. Winkles the robin's-egg blue notebook out from between the others. Sits back down.

The damned thing won't stay open. Impossible to write with one hand in a book that won't stay open. What was going through Della's head?

What was going through her own? How could she have entertained the idea of living with Della for a single second?

She lifts her inert left arm in its brace and tries to anchor it across the top of the open notebook. Too stiff. She pulls at the Velcro fastenings and slips the brace off. The skin underneath is damp and delicate. But thanks to all the therapy, the muscles haven't withered. It's like a perfect soft sculpture of an arm. A doll's arm.

She drapes it across the top of the open notebook. Arranges the hand in a curve. Clicks her pen. Writes.

 

I'm patting Billy's nose the way I always do. From the top of his head to the bottom of his nose is almost as tall as I am. The ice man is supposed to be lifting a block of ice in big black tongs like spiders' legs and carrying it into our house. But this time my mother has come outside, and is talking to him about something. Whatever it is, it makes him put his tongs back down and take his cap off and run his hand through his hair.

Billy nudges my shoulder with his nose to remind me that he's there. He lowers his head to look at me with his big black eyes.

My mother is trying to give the ice man money now. He says he doesn't want it, but then he takes it from her anyway.

“You're just about my last,” I hear him say. My mother asks him what he's going to do when he doesn't have any more customers. “Milk, maybe. Or bread. Always something somebody wants delivered. Be getting a truck, though.” She asks him something else, in a voice too low for me to hear. He answers in the same low voice. All I can hear are the words glue factory, which make him laugh and make my mother say hush.

My chunk of ice is burning in my hand and running cold down my wrist. I hold it flat on my palm the way I've seen the ice man do when he gives Billy an apple. Billy lifts the ice in his big front teeth and crunches it. Water dribbles from his lips onto the hot pavement. My mother tells me to stand back now, so the ice man can be on his way.

“Eee-up!”

“Why didn't we get any ice?”

“Because we don't need any, that's why.” She sort of sings it, the way she sort of sings things on Christmas morning. “We're getting a refrigerator.”

Billy starts to pull the wagon. I wait on the sidewalk the way I always do and watch him until he turns the corner out of sight—tail swishing, ears just barely showing above his back.

 

She stops writing. She knows without having to look that the horse is gone. She lifts her hand and wipes her face.

Freed of the weight holding it open, the notebook falls shut.

 

“Hello. Simon. How. Are you?”

He looks at her for a long moment before speaking. “I'm just fine Emily. And it's nice to hear my name. Except I think I'm going to miss being your boatswain.”

She points with her left hand at her backside. “This one. Critical enough. For an All Saints. Pew?”

This time it takes him a little longer. “Next show's Sunday at eleven. See you there.”

 

EMILY
WALKED TODAY
is going home

 

 

 

 

 

 

October Song

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Simon,

 

Thank you for inviting me to use your given name. (Perhaps it would be more in keeping with your station for me to say, your Christian name?) It shouldn't really have surprised me to learn that no one has addressed you as Reverend for several years. I am permitted books and newspapers and magazines, and I do have occasional access to television, so I am not entirely unaware of how casual the world has become.

But I have grown somewhat rusty when it comes to letter-writing, or indeed almost any form of social intercourse. For decades now, my only meaningful relationships have been with fictional characters. Even the so-called real-life figures in the news can seem to be the stuff of story. After all, I have no influence on them—can't argue with them or make suggestions or attempt to alter their path. So it was something of an event, I must say, to address a living correspondent. And to have him address me in turn, with a small suggestion of his own.

Nevertheless, Simon, would you think it strange or presumptuous of me to ask you to continue to address me on paper as Miss Vipond? It was a shock—albeit a pleasant one—to see those words on the envelope. My first letter in—well, my parents are no longer living, and I have no other family.

Here, to the ones who speak to me, I'm simply Alice. Have been for decades. It took me back, therefore, to see what was once my professional name. To hear it too, for I whispered it to myself. Miss Vipond. All at once I remembered the first time I ever chalked that name onto a blackboard. My hands were shaking. The chalk squeaked. “My name is Miss Vipond,” I said. “Every morning I will say to you, Good morning, boys and girls. And you will say to me, Good morning, Miss Vipond.” And they did. Good MOR-ning Miss VI-pond. Every morning. Without exception. Ragged, slightly off-key little sing-song. Good MOR-ning, Miss VI
-
pond.

Yes, I do think about my former students. Not constantly. But often enough. Does that surprise or offend you, Simon? You did encourage me to write about anything that was on my mind. And you assured me that you were trained and practised in accepting whatever you were told without judgement. But you must understand that I have had that sort of thing said to me many times over the years, with varying degrees of truthfulness. Even those of my minders who have strings of letters after their names can, for all their professional veneer, turn out to have an essentially prurient interest in who and what I am. So forgive me if, in our letters, I seem at times to be testing the waters.

I must say it caused a bit of a stir when I agreed to take part in this correspondence program. Why now, my minders wanted to know—especially the ones who come with their questions and write the answers down on their clipboards. (Refusal to answer is not an option. If you do refuse, they simply write the fact of your refusal down on their clipboards, making it, in effect, your answer.) Why now, they kept asking. Why would I finally be taking an interest, after decades of saying no to all their little plans and initiatives and experiments? The ones to which, at least, I was in a position to say no.

Well, it was very simple. They could probably have worked it out for themselves, if they had bothered to try. I needed something to think about. Something new. You can exhaust your own memory, you see. It does have its limits, like a town. Limits you inevitably reach. And if you're never allowed to leave that town, to go to different places, to do different things—well, then you have nothing from which to make new memories. Books, newspapers, television—for all they are my constant—indeed, my only—companions, have an unreality about them. They don't serve to push the boundaries back. So the memory-town stays the same size. No. It actually seems to shrink. There are certain corners of it you just get sick and tired of visiting, so you close them off. And there are others you can actually forget about. Until something jogs.

Which is what happened when I was told that you had not only been approved as a volunteer correspondent, but were actually willing to write to me.
Rector of All Saints Church
. In the city in which I grew up, no less. Such a coincidence. One of those corners of my memory that I'd neglected, almost to the point of forgetfulness. It was a bit of a shock, truth to tell, but not an unpleasant one. Though I should say that, for anyone in my circumstance, any new sensation, even a painful one, is welcome by virtue of being new. So you can imagine how gratifying it is for me to know that a letter of mine will be leaving this place and being received by someone not of this place. Someone who in turn will send a letter back, from a place that is not this place.

Oh dear. As you can see, I am coming to the end of my allotted pages. I am only allowed so many at a time, and I am watched as I write. My minders are afraid to leave me alone with these new treats—loose-leaf paper, and a pen I must hand back. It was years before they would allow me to read without supervision. I could assure them that I would only put the pen and paper to the use for which they were intended. But I learned long ago that trust is a privilege I must earn the hard way, in increments.

Still, I have a week of anticipation ahead! Whether or not you find the time in your busy day to reply, Simon, I will nevertheless enjoy composing in my mind what I will, in seven days' time, address to you.

 

Yours sincerely,

(Miss) Alice Vipond

 

*

Dear Simon,

 

So kind of you, not only to reply, but to take the trouble to find my name in the old parish records. Yes, I was indeed both baptised and confirmed at All Saints. I also attended the church school every Sunday until I was fifteen, at which time I became one of the teachers. I taught church school until I was eighteen and started normal school, as we called teachers' college then. But of course, you must already know that from your parish records. Not to mention the parts of my file that my minders will have shared with you.

If I may be allowed to boast a little, as a church school student, I received more perfect attendance certificates than any of the others in my class. But I really should attribute that to my mother, who had very high standards for such things. Attendance and punctuality—they added up to courtesy in her eyes, and duty and good citizenship. I was never once late for regular school either, nor my father ever late for work. We could not possibly have been, not with my mother there to feed us our breakfast and get us out the door.

She only came to see me once, after I was put in this place. She came with my father, who continued to come faithfully every month as long as he was able to make the drive. To this day, I wish she had not even come that one time, that my last sight of her had been other than her staring down at the purse in her lap, expressionless and silent for the entire hour, while my father struggled not to weep.

Oh, but I shouldn't be wasting my precious paper. I must remember that this is not a diary, but a letter that someone else will be reading. And that my reader is none other than Rector of All Saints Church.

Tell me—for it will soon be Thanksgiving—do you still decorate the church with vegetables and fruits and autumn leaves for the harvest festival service? And are the flowers on the altar an arrangement of yellow and russet chrysanthemums?

I must confess to being a little proud of myself for remembering that it will soon be Thanksgiving. It is very easy, in a place like this, to forget what time of year it is. When I was teaching school, I was constantly aware of the seasons. But then, there were so many reminders, everywhere I looked. Not just outside, but in the classroom too. Little sweaters hung on hooks in a row, then little coats, with boots lined up underneath. Problems with buttoning. Lost mittens. And the way we used to decorate the classroom. I'd have them cut shapes out of coloured paper to put up. This time of year, it would be red and yellow leaves and turkeys and pumpkins. Then, later in the month, black cats and witches. Little white ghosts. Oh yes, the seasons ruled the day when I was Miss Vipond. When I could casually look out through a window and watch the weather change.

Of course, in this place I'm kept away from windows. Under such circumstances, the seasons disappear. Or, more accurately, they meld into one long season without any specific beginning or end.

But that seems to be changing now, Simon, thanks to your letters. Just yesterday, when they were escorting me to the exercise room for one of my thrice-weekly walkabouts, I saw a brown oak leaf on the carpet. Must have blown in or been tracked in on one of the staff's shoes. I'm convinced I would not even have seen it, much less remembered it, save for the effect on me of our correspondence. It would merely have been an odd shape, soon forgotten. But since we have been writing to each other, since these letters—sent and received—have begun to punctuate my week, I have become so much more aware of what is around me. I pay attention to the taste of my food, to the different tones of my minders' voices. I notice now if a wall needs repainting. I can't say I exactly care, nor would I ever point it out to someone in authority. Nevertheless, I notice.

And now I notice that I am coming to the bottom of my last allowed page. I haven't even begun to address the questions you were so kind as to pose in your letter. Do forgive me. I will be more attentive next time. Though I am not allowed to keep your letters in my room, they are kept for me, and I may ask to review them, under supervision, whenever I wish. So that is what I will do. I will memorize the questions you have already asked, as well as any you may ask in any subsequent letters. And I promise you that I will answer them. Until then, I remain,

 

Yours sincerely,

(Miss) Alice Vipond

 

*

 

Dear Simon,

 

Again, my thanks for your prompt reply, and for that lovely compliment about my prose style. I must give the credit for that to other authors, however, particularly the authors of the classics, who have been my constant companions for most of my life. I've absorbed their diction, and have had little by way of conversation to dull its edges.

I confess I do envy you your freedom to write as much as you choose. And since, as I need not remind you, envy is one of the seven deadly sins, let me attempt to counter it with gratitude for your having written at such generous length. I feel very lucky to have you as a correspondent, Simon. I have no idea what kind of letters any of the others in this program receive. For my own safety, I have almost no contact with anyone but the staff.

But let me get on with answering your questions. You are curious about what All Saints was like when I attended it as a girl. I'm sorry to hear that your Sunday gatherings seldom exceed fifty in number. I remember a typical service attracting three times that, or more. But of course, this was decades ago, when so many things were so different. A woman, for example, would not so much as enter a church unless her head was covered. There were even little handkerchief affairs provided for her to put on with hair pins if she had managed to forget her hat. Which, as I am sure you can deduce from some of my comments about her, my mother never did. Any more than did her daughter.

From my reading of magazines and the bits of television I sometimes catch a glimpse of, I gather that one can now attend almost any function—even a church service—in very casual dress. Blue jeans appear to be the norm, and the only hats to be seen are baseball caps, frequently worn backwards. I would be interested to know your views about that, Simon. Be as frank as you please, even to the point of saying what you would prefer your parishioners not hear. After all, it's hardly going to get back to them, is it? My gossip circle here is rather small.

Oh, but there I go, talking about this place again, when I promised to focus on what you had asked me. So. Back to All Saints in the nineteen thirties and forties.

What I remember is a place of great correctness. Correct dress, correct deportment. Many conclusions, none of them flattering, would have been drawn about a man who loosened his tie before he was out the door of the church, even on a hot summer day, or a woman who wore white shoes and carried a white purse after Labour Day. And of course, any change in the liturgy, however small—even the choice of an unfamiliar hymn—was subject to great debate and condemnation. As a result, church was—yes, a bit of a bore. But also, in a way, comforting. There was a reliable sameness to it that one could, if not look forward to, at least count on.

And all that correct behaviour, all those rules religiously followed, the rituals from which no deviation was ever made, added up to—well, you might say anonymity. A sort of polite mask to put on. Everyone knew the mask was there. Everyone knew the identity and something of the nature of whoever was behind the mask. But that anonymity—both individual and corporate—was something we all agreed to and supported. Without, of course, ever speaking of it.

How the world seems to have changed. Though I have never and likely will never so much as put my hands on a computer, I understand from my reading that it is possible to share the most intimate details of one's existence with the world. I can't imagine wanting to do such a thing. Privacy, when I was growing up, was more than a right or expectation. It was a necessity, almost like air or water. You simply could not live in the world as it was then without keeping yourself to yourself and minding your own business. There were questions that you did not ask, not even of family. And there were facts of your existence, large and small, that you did not impose on anyone else. I remember my mother, for example, insisting that we come and go through the side door of our house, rather than the front door that faced the street. She never had to explain why.