Blue Moon (13 page)

I prepared for my final stay at Hamilton Mountain hospital as the anxious wife of Mr. White, who was still away at war. If they believed in the existence of Mr. White, the nurses must have thought it strange that he was in Hamilton to impregnate me but always away when it came time for birthing.

Steeling myself for a new series of lies, I entered the hospital just after Labour Day. Peter David was born on the fifth of September. A beautiful, strong baby, he weighed nine pounds, two ounces. As one of the nurses later recalled, I had no visitors but used the phone extensively in my private room and had a good supply of funds. That woman recalled I happily bottle fed the baby: she “seemed quite happy and did not seem to be suffering from the loss of her husband.” My mother did not visit, I explained, because she had to look after my small daughter. The day before we left hospital, Peter was circumcised.

Bill, who was at work, was not able to pick me up at the hospital and so I took a Yellow Cab home. Although I had been on the phone with Bill a great deal (I had forbidden him to visit me because he would be recognized and then accused of being the father), I had spoken on the phone to my mother once; and to my father, not at all. When the taxi pulled up to Rosslyn Avenue, I was certain my new life was about to begin.

I had known the great cruelty of which my parents were capable, and their scorn for the baby was evident as soon as I opened the door to the bungalow. Only little Heather showed the slightest interest in her new brother, asking to hold him before I even had a chance to sit down. Mother avoided making eye contact with me, and father, in his habitual way, retreated to the basement. That night, I slept in Heather's room, Peter David's crib next to the bed; Heather, who had been sleeping with Mother since my confinement, was quite happy to continue usurping my place. The baby nursed his bottle vigorously and slept soundly.

I had arranged with Bill the day before to take a short drive with him in the afternoon the next day, provided the baby was settled. Bill
arrived promptly at two, at which time the baby was soundly asleep. I informed Mother I would be gone for only an hour and asked her to warm a bottle for the baby should he awake. She sullenly nodded her head in agreement. My last memory is of the sleeping baby on his stomach, his parchment-thin perfect little hands moving rhythmically back and forth in reverie.

When I arrived home an hour later, the undercurrent of tension which had previously enveloped the house had vanished. Heather was sobbing inconsolably; my very distracted mother was trying to keep her quiet; my father was nowhere to be seen. Uncertain of what kind of domestic maelstrom I had entered, I looked at my mother.

“The baby's dead.”

“Dead! How can he be dead?”

“Just after you left, he had some sort of convulsion, a seizure. His face became bright red, and he was screaming in a demonic way, like some sort of mad creature. I picked him up, trying to comfort him, but that did no good. I put him down on his back, he rolled over, tried to lift himself and then became very quiet. He must have died then.” I rushed to Heather's room, where the corpse of the baby was on its side. I noticed the tiny red necklace-like marking around the neck, but I must not have wanted to deal then with this very obvious clue as to how the baby had really met his end.

I returned to the bedroom I had shared with my mother, threw myself on to the bed, and began to weep inconsolably. Quite soon, my tears dried up; my screaming stopped. Part of me did not wish to frighten my daughter. Another part knew I would receive absolutely no sympathy from my parents. The only real audience for my strong feelings was myself—that had always been the case throughout my entire life. That afternoon, I was rendered mute as if I were a silent witness to my own destruction. I would have to find a way of coping, of making my vulnerabilities invisible.

Only Heather offered me any comfort. I must have remained there for three or four hours, at which time I returned to my daughter's bedroom. The baby's corpse had vanished. When I asked my mother where Peter David was, she told me that my father had taken him to the undertaker, to be, as she put it, “disposed of.” I was too numb to register a protest.

Bill tried to comfort me, but I could detect relief in his voice on the phone that he need not worry about another man's baby. The depression which now clothed me was a heavy one. I even found it difficult to move, as if I were walking through a thick fog that pressed against me, preventing me from moving forward. My screams may have been silent, but I uttered them to myself every day. I still do.

Three days after the death of my son, I met Rosie downtown at the restaurant in Robinson's, the department store. Her blond face was eerily white that day as I recounted the story of the baby's death. She grasped my hand, tears filling her eyes. I told her I had resolved to move on with my life, to turn over, as it were, a whole new leaf. For the first time, I confided to her the new plans Bill and I had made. We were going to escape Hamilton with Heather, marry and set out for Arizona or New Mexico.

Obviously worried about what I was telling her, she waited a bit and then blurted out, “Bill can't marry you. He has a wife.”

“He told me he had a serious relationship, which he ended.”

“What I know is that his wife, called Helen, abandoned him a few months ago because of his philandering ways. She now lives in the States.”

“That can't be right. He would have told me if he was married.”

“He lied to you.” She paused: “You better think this matter through. He's a very attractive man with a wandering eye. With him, you might be going from frying pan to fire.”

Upon my return home in the afternoon, I phoned Bill and arranged to meet him that night at Smithy's. I was waiting for him at our usual booth when he arrived. I had not seen him since the baby's death, although I had spoken to him on the phone numerous times. He took my hands in his huge paws and proceeded to kiss them. Without any preface, I confronted him with what Rosie had told me.

“Is it true?”

“Yes. Sort of”

“How can it be 'sort of?”

“I am legally married to Helen, but our marriage is over.”

“You never breathed a word of her existence. Why?”

“I thought it would complicate things. I don't know where she's living. I can't ask her for a divorce.”

“So we can't get married. You knew that all along, unless you meant to become a bigamist.”

“I was going to tell you. Before we left. I was waiting for the baby to be born.”

“You're a gold-plated liar who's been stringing me along.”

“No. Honestly. I've been waiting for the right moment.”

“Well, you waited too long. We're over.” With those haughty words, I got to my feet and headed out of the bar. If I had been in a better frame of mind, I might have listened to Bill, been willing to receive his assurances about his true intentions. In September 1944, I simply could not do that.

A few days after my break with Bohozuk, I informed my mother that I was going to change the course of my profession. I was no longer going to visit hotel rooms; from the 1st of October, I was going to rent one of Samuel Henson's apartments in a nineteenth-century converted mansion on James Street South, in the heart of Hamilton's most prestigious neighbourhood. I would continue to live with her and father, but I would transact my business from the new location, where a phone would be installed. I would handle all my own bookings henceforward.

My clients appreciated the convenience of being able to visit me in a location near their own homes. The stained glass and the mahogany pillars in the entrance way on the ground floor of the building reminded me of the chapel at Loretto. One of my Catholic clients told me he shuddered every time he walked through those portals: “It's gloomy, just like the vestibule in Christ the King Cathedral.” For some of my clients, it was entirely appropriate that they were reminded of sacred things. They had, after all, replaced conventional religion with that of the body.

This new arrangement lasted nine months, until my father assaulted my mother on the seventh of June 1945. On that occasion, he almost murdered her. Faced with this horrendous possibility, Mother, Heather and I moved into the apartment. Mother and Heather would have to leave the apartment in the afternoons and evenings when I worked. In the afternoons, Mother would take Heather for strolls; in the evenings, the two would taxi to and from
Rosslyn Avenue. Old Mr. Henson later recalled: “I saw Mrs. Maclean more frequently than Evelyn White because the child, Heather, used to be taken out for exercise. I do not recall seeing Mrs. White with her as much as the grandmother.” An innocent, kindly man, he concluded: “We considered them excellent tenants.”

Our frail, festered lives continued on their precarious, uneven keel until I announced to my mother in late September that I was to marry John Dick, a streetcar conductor, on October 4, 1945.

Almost five months to the day of our marriage, John Dick was murdered. In all accounts of his existence, he is depicted as a frightened, bewildered, nondescript man waiting to be deprived of his life. He came by that reputation honestly.

Why would Hamilton's most celebrated woman of pleasure marry a mere bus conductor? If there is an answer to that question, it is at the heart of the Evelyn Dick mystery.

The common assumption is that I met John, who drove the Number 20 Belt Line, at the office of the HSR, where Heather and I had gone to meet my father. That is correct. That autumn, my mother and father were planning—at long last—to divorce; since violence
was an integral part of their exchanges, I occasionally, in the role of go-between, visited with Father at the HSR.

Although descriptions of John emphasize his lack of distinguishing characteristics and the fifteen-year discrepancy in our ages (I was 24, he 39), he was a well-built blond, similar in physique to Bohozuk. He spoke in an awkward way because of his Silesian accent—he had immigrated to Canada when he was 17. Unlike most of my clients and Bill, John had a hesitant, almost self-effacing manner. I didn't think much of him or the encounter until I came across him three afternoons later as I was leaving a matinee at the Tivoli. He doffed his hat, asked about Heather and myself and suggested we have a cup of coffee at the nearby Liggett's Drug Store.

During our talk, I was impressed by his modesty, his seemingly chaste existence and—if I own up to the entire truth—his naivety. He indicated he was the heir to a small caning factory in Beamsville, where I had been born. He was only putting in time at the HSR before he came into his inheritance. He was so different from my clients, who often boasted about their remarkable successes as captains of industry, judges, lawyers, and professors. Unlike Bill, he was not a local hero, lionized by an appreciative audience. At this point, I was still determined to leave Hamilton, even if it only meant getting swallowed up in Toronto.

John's work experience was eminently transportable; he showed a great deal of interest in four-year-old Heather; he seemed to be a man who would make few demands upon me. Financially, his future seemed bright. Escape. The word filled my consciousness. I needed to show Bill I could make my way in the world without his assistance. I had no wish to see my father or mother again.

That afternoon, I courted John. My openness took him by surprise, as did my willingness, on the briefest of acquaintances, to confess I had fallen in love with him at first sight. He had an annoying nervous habit of pushing his thinning hair back, and that day he did it more than usual. Without any serious thought of the consequences, I used low cunning to entrap him. Over the years, manipulated by mother, I had become an expert in that art. I deliberately led John Dick on, giving him the distinct impression I was taken with him. I wanted to get married again, I assured him. It was tough for a widow to bring up a child alone, no matter how supportive her parents were. I needed a man because
Heather and I were essentially on our own. I appealed to his sense of duty and responsibility, realizing full well he was entertaining the fantasy of having an instant family. His heart melted; he asked me to marry him.

Rather than exacting revenge on those who deserved it (my parents and Bohozuk), I entrapped a seeming innocent. Unconsciously, I was preying on someone I thought was vulnerable, like myself.

From the earliest days of childhood I had been superstitious, convinced that the souls of the dead could provide guidance to the living as they tried to sort out the muddles of daily life. In this instance: like mother, like daughter. One of my mother's favourite activities as we snuggled up to each other in bed was to seek guidance from the ouija board. Since those spirits simply issued directives that underscored advice or orders already given by Mother, I soon realized that the various messages from beyond were really from her.

Nevertheless, I remained fascinated by the spirit world. Old Mr. Washington, a garrulous black man who was a conductor at the HSR, told fortunes using Tarot cards. He was a descendant of slaves who had escaped from the southern United States by means of the Underground Railway and had a considerable local reputation as a communicator with the world beyond.

Once a month I visited him and his family on Cannon Street. Since he liked me and refused to take any money for his services, I would descend upon the family with flowers and candies. The “readings,” held in a narrow parlour at the back of the house lighted by a single candle, were usually inconsequential. Assurances of financial stability, vague promises of a better future. Yet I could always glimpse a deep sadness in Mr. Washington's eyes when he looked into mine. “He's worried about me,” I would tell myself.

Mr. Washington and I had one common client—an accountant. One day, this man confided to me that the fortune teller had referred to me—with great sorrow in his voice—as “that poor woman.” Washington's wife—overhearing this snippet—immediately leaped in: “Poor woman! She drives a new Packard every year, wears the finest clothes. What are you talking about?” Mr. Washington refrained from saying anything more, sagely nodded his head and walked Mr. Cunningham to the door.