Deafening (41 page)

On their way to Aunt Minna’s they buy postcards for Jim and Fry and everyone at home, even though they’ll be back in Deseronto before the cards arrive. They stop at the post office to buy stamps and a woman at the front of the line becomes agitated while they are waiting their turn. Grania watches the lips of the clerk behind the counter; he is speaking in anger to the woman. He makes a half-turn away and gestures rudely. The woman rushes out of the building.

“What is it?” Grania whispers. “What happened?”

“German,” Tress’s lips say.

“The woman?”

“He said so. She said she wasn’t but he wouldn’t believe her.”

“I read his lips when she turned to go out,” Grania says. “He said, ‘I hate the Germans.’”

That night, their last in Toronto, the sisters lie in bed, side by side, in the room that one of their cousins has vacated during their stay. So much has been seen in the big city, Grania goes over the wash of pictures in her mind. She is wide awake, and stares at the shadows in the unfamiliar room.

Tress is still; she must be asleep. But she feels Tress’s foot press against her own. It happens again. She is uncertain at first, and then she realizes. Two taps. She waits, and taps back. She is one tap, Tress is two. They begin to tap foolish, meaningless messages with their
feet and toes, and suddenly the mattress is shaking beneath their laughter. They carry on, tapping and laughing, and finally they stop, and go to sleep.

The next day, they say goodbye to Aunt Minna and Uncle James and their cousins, and they travel home, and when they reach Belleville and climb down, ready to change trains, there is the peach-basket lady, waiting to climb up. The jar of maple syrup sticks up above the clothing; the contents of the basket look the same as they did a few days before.

Grania reminds herself that a letter from Jim might have arrived while she was away. But she is glad there has been a diversion, glad that for a short time she and Tress were able to think of something other than Jim at the war and Kenan’s slow recovery.

They stand on Main Street in front of the house and hotel, and they look at each other.

“We’ve become serious,” Grania says, and they hug goodbye. “We hardly ever laugh any more.”

But Tress is anxious to get home. She places a palm on Grania’s cheek and gives a half smile. She hugs her again and then she turns and hurries towards Kenan and her own house at the end of Main.

We’ve missed each other, Grania thinks as she watches her sister go. But maybe things will be better now. We’ve missed each other and we seldom have a chance to laugh or have fun. All we do is wait out the war.

Chapter 18

If there is a sudden onset of what appears like a hard cold, one should go to bed, wrap warm, take a hot mustard foot-bath and drink copiously of hot lemonade. It is universally agreed that it is possible to perfect the powers of resistance of the human system so that it can throw off almost any infection, not excepting Spanish Influenza
.

The Napanee Express

In the dream it was winter. Jim was outside, shaving from a tin cup partly filled with ice and partly with melted water. He was humming. There was snow all around, and he wore a thick jacket and a close-fitting knitted cap. When he finished shaving—he had no mirror—he turned and told her he was going to make a perfect angel in the snow. He fell hard, straight back. She was shocked when his arms did not reach out to break his fall and by the violence of the way he went down. He looked up at her and flailed his arms and legs to make wings. Then he stood. He moved his feet a few inches to change direction, and fell again. Another hard fall, another perfect angel. No jagged edges, no footsteps between. “I’m coming back,” his lips said while he lay there in the snow. “I told you before, Grania, I am coming back.”

She had left the blind up the night before, and when she woke Saturday morning she could tell by the outside light that Mother must have slept in. Mother never slept in; she always came to Grania’s room to wake her. Every morning they were first up and
walked through the passageway together to start breakfast at the hotel.

Father was at Bompa’s farm. He had stayed away five days but would return today to take delivery of a new horse. The horse breaker was to arrive at noon, and that meant there would be plenty of men outside, around the back of the house. It would be busy at the hotel, too, with weekend steamer excursions stopping at the wharf. Bernard had said he would help out in the dining room at midday. Mrs. Brant had said she would come in, even though it was her day off. Grania thought of Mrs. Brant passing raisin cookies to her when she was a child. Now, she passed small paper-wrapped parcels to Mamo to store in the O’Shaughnessy trunk. But only when no one was around.

Grania’s head and throat were aching, but she rose quickly and opened the door of her parents’ room. She went to her mother’s side, bent over her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Mother,” she said quietly. “Mother. We’ve slept in.”

Mother opened her eyes, startled. She raised her head to look at the alarm clock, and sank back. “I forgot,” she said. “I forgot to wind it.” She reached up as if barely seeing Grania, and squeezed her hand.

Grania was shocked to look down at her mother’s face like this and see her looking so vulnerable. Mother seemed to have shrunk since Patrick had left. The soft lines around her eyes and mouth tightened as soon as she pushed herself up and sat on the side of the bed.

They had both gone to bed late. The night before, just after Grania had finished setting the tables for morning, she was leaving the dining room when a woman came running into the hotel, through the main entrance. She had a wide and ugly bruise across her left cheek and she kept looking back as if someone was about to come in behind her. Bernard came out of his office and spoke to her. Grania stood, waiting, wondering what she should do. She tried to read the woman’s lips, but it was difficult because the woman kept her head down and she was crying. Bernard was trying to make sense of what had happened. He had a hand on the woman’s arm
and was looking past her, out into the darkness of the street. He left her, and went to the door, and stood on the veranda outside and then came back in. He noticed Grania for the first time.

“Tea, Grainy. Can you make some tea? Let’s bring her to the dining room. There’s no one in there.”

The woman was perhaps forty, forty-five. Her hair was partly grey, partly black, and pinned back severely. Her cheek had begun to swell, and Grania went to the kitchen to get a sliver of ice from the ice box. She thought of something Mother had said not long ago, while speaking about a family in the town. “The husband,” she said, “does not treat his wife well.”

Grania knew what that meant. Words couched the actions, even though everyone knew what went on behind the family’s closed doors. And now, here was another woman, discouraged, defeated, her glance darting back to the doorway. She had stopped crying but she hadn’t stopped being afraid.

Mamo had already gone to bed, but Mother came through the passageway and talked to the woman, whom she knew slightly. An hour later, Bernard walked her to her brother’s home, where she insisted on going.

They had all been upset by this, and Grania and Mother had gone to bed very late. Now they would have to move quickly to make up time.

Grania left her bed unmade, and washed and dressed quickly, coughing several times, trying to clear her throat. Before going to see if Mother was dressed and ready, she paused to glance out the window. There seemed to be a high wind. She looked up to the sky, and a V of geese crossed her vision, a ragged, uncertain formation overhead. The flock was followed by a second, more orderly V. If she hadn’t looked up, she’d have missed both. One more season coming to an end. The day before, Mamo had announced that the birds would be heading south early; her bones could tell. Grania thought again of the woman with the bruised cheek the night before, and of the fear—not only that the woman had felt but that
Grania and Mother had felt, too. Before they’d finally gone to bed, Mother had stopped Grania outside her room, speaking carefully so that Grania could read her lips.

“In all the years your father and I have been together,” she said, “he never raised a hand to me in anger.” And then she added, “But I’ve lost his attention, and it is partly my own fault.” Grania, taken by surprise, had nothing to answer, but Mother turned abruptly anyway and went into her room, alone. Grania thought for a long time about what Mother had said.

Grania now looked at her reflection in the oval mirror and tried to steady herself. There were shadows under the eyes that stared back. Her skin was pale, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed this the day before. Had she looked like this when she was in Toronto? Tress hadn’t said anything. She hurried out of the room. Mother was on her way downstairs and Grania caught up, and they quickened their steps. Mother took her arm, leaning a little. They turned on the lights in the hotel kitchen and set to work.

By the time Grania was free again, it was twenty minutes before noon. She had not told Mother about her sore throat, but there had been no need. Mother had noticed her paleness right away. But there had been only a quick comment; they’d worked hard all morning, passing each other in the kitchen and dining room. Now, Mother wanted her to write up new menus, complaining that the old ones were stained and spattered, that the job had been put off too many times. It was Grania’s careful printing she wanted on the new ones. “Do something while you’re sitting,” she said. “Take one of the old menus with you.” When Grania nodded and was about to leave the room, Mother stopped her and put both hands on her shoulders. “You look as if you need more sleep,” she said. “Maybe you’re coming down with something.”

But Grania wanted to go out; she wanted to get away from the stifling air that was constricting her throat. She would do the menus later in the afternoon, when she went to sit near Bernard in the lobby. She knew the menu by heart and would not need an old one
beside her to start anew: Fried Eggs and Back Bacon; Hot Porridge and Currant Scones; Aggie’s Special Soup; Hot Pot and Irish Soda Bread; Chicken Pie; Upside-Down Cake. On Thursdays, Custard, or Raisin and Apple Pie. On Fridays, Panned Fish—Pickerel or Trout. Canned fish, too—Salmon Loaf. On Sundays, Roast Beef with Pan Roast Potatoes.

She returned to the house and looked out the back window. Father was outside now, speaking with Jack Conlin, who was chewing tobacco. The horse breaker was there, too. He was holding fittings in one hand and a whip in the other, although, by reputation, he rarely used the whip. Grania had her first look at Father’s new horse. It was nervous in the paddock, as if it knew that some outrage or defeat was about to take place.

Funnels of dust were whirling near the doors of the shed. Older boys from town leaned into the fence in a semicircle, waiting. Two younger boys were sitting on the top rail, their caps tilted in the attitudes of the older men. Other friends of Father came in from the Mill Street side and fastened the gate behind them. They stood back, a few feet away from the inside paddock.

Grania knew that if Mother looked out a window and saw her leaving, she would be sure to try to stop her. Still, there was so much hullabaloo in the backyard, she didn’t concern herself with Mother. The noon steamer would be docking shortly and Mother would be attending to dinner and the first course. Grania would not be missed.

She wasn’t sure where Mother kept her ruby salve, so she went to the small pantry, took an opened jar of beets from the shelf and dabbed a drop of purple juice onto each cheekbone. That would fix the paleness. She rubbed the drops vigorously into her skin. Mother could easily see through deception; she always did. She could see through shadow and beet juice and pallor—but Mother was not in the house.

Grania looked towards the back window as she left the pantry and saw moving paws—Carlow, scrabbling to get in. She was alone,
then. Mamo must be next door, and Bernard, too. She let Carlow in and he settled on the floor and watched her. She leaned over to pat him, feeling dizzy as she did. She went to get Jim’s brown jacket, and left by the side door, shutting it carefully behind her. She wondered if she would be too warm, but the wind gave a quick reply in gusts off the bay. Her legs wobbled as she moved in the direction of shore, heading west towards the woods where she and Mamo had always walked. She glanced at the station and the wharf on the left, and passed the coal shed farther on. A rawness scraped at her throat, and pain dug into her chest like a spade. She began to unbutton the jacket but, just as suddenly, she became cold again and tightened its folds around her. She walked past the Jamieson twins and watched the motion of their arms as they threw a ball between them.
Things that move…
The ball swerved wildly in the wind and veered in a wayward arc. It blurred out of sight just as Grania’s legs almost gave out. She believed, momentarily, that she had been struck. But that could not be—there was the ball in mid-air, between the twins again.

She thought of the letter she had received from Fry the day before. Fry had received her postcard from Toronto. She wrote that the new epidemic had struck hard at the school. They were doing their best to keep it out, and most children had been given the vaccine. Several had become ill on Monday. By Tuesday, four dormitories were filled with sick children. At the time she was writing, six. There’d been no point in moving children over to the school hospital—except for the serious cases.

Most have mild form of that influenza, but one girl has pneumonia. Everyone is tired, this is just beginning. It must run the course, Dr. Whalen says. I think school will stop mail coming and going. No parcels allowed from home. Children are not permitted to leave grounds and teachers are asked not to receive visitors at home. Picture shows and schools in city close one by one. Some people on streets of Belleville are wearing masks
.

But some good things happen. Apples are growing. Nothing keeps the trees—four thousand this year—from being loaded with fruit! Yesterday evening, I was tired but walked through orchard with Colin and picked a bushel myself. Colin helps farm boys when he can
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