Homesick (15 page)

It was a wretched, excruciating evening, a disaster. Thomas had the taxi drop them off in front of one of the better hotels where he proposed having supper. There his courage failed. He knew he had enough money in his pocket to buy the very best, most expensive meals the dining room served, but did he know how to act in such a place? Was he well enough dressed? He ran his tie between his fingers and said, “I just remembered something. I knew a guy who worked in the kitchen here once. The stories he used to tell. I don’t think we want to eat here.”

So they set off walking in search of another restaurant. Thomas was in a quandary. He had boasted to Vera of the superb meal she had in store for her. “There are only three decent places to eat in town,” he’d said, “and Thomas knows them all.” Now he was in a dilemma: he had to deliver what he had promised but he was afraid that if he went into a really high-class restaurant he wouldn’t know how to behave and would end up making a fool of himself. So he dragged Vera through a hot, humid July night, searching for a restaurant splendid enough to impress Vera but not so splendid as to bewilder him. He would lead her into a hotel, determined this was to be it, and then on the threshold of the dining room he would be
assailed by doubt and would hustle her away. His explanation for these sudden retreats was that the place was clearly not up to snuff, didn’t meet his demanding standards. “No,” he would say, gazing with a wistful air at the waitresses ferrying food from kitchen to table, “this isn’t it. I want you to enjoy something really special. I want you to have the best. Money’s no object with Thomas.”

There was always a better place just up the street, just around the corner. Making for it Thomas would swear to himself that this time there would be no backing down, no failure of nerve. This time he would demand a table in a firm voice, nothing would deter him. But at the last second something always did. Shamefaced he would make his excuses to Vera, invent implausible criticisms, and then bolt with her in tow. Each time his resolve collapsed he grew more desperate. He began to walk more quickly, like a man possessed, hurrying down the hot sidewalks from hotel to hotel with long, stiff-legged strides that almost jerked Vera off her high heels as she clung to his arm. “No,” she heard him mumble, “not good enough.”

Vera felt as if she were being asked to run a race in a steam bath. By nine o’clock she had had her fill of galloping around aimlessly in the heat with this maniac. She was starving, she had sweated clean through her girdle and was hobbled by a blister on her heel. Enough was enough. Vera made Thomas promise that they would eat in the next restaurant they happened upon, even if it was a greasy spoon. Although Thomas pretended to resist this eating house ultimatum, it came as a great relief to him. He saw to it that the next they passed was the sort of place he was comfortable and confident in, the kind that advertised working-man’s specials during the week. Vera was grateful just to be able to sit down and slip her shoe off. She was going to have to stand on that stinging blister through a matinee and two screenings the next day and the sooner she got off it now, the more endurable it would be tomorrow.

The restaurant was deserted and its emptiness made Thomas’s voice seem particularly strident and aggressive as he disparaged
what it had to offer. After he read each dish aloud from the menu he repeated the refrain, “What a joint. You mean they’ve got nothing better than this?” He insisted that Vera order the
T
-bone steak because it was the most expensive item listed. To shut him up she did. Thomas had the Sunday supper special: vegetable soup, roast beef, creamed corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, plus a choice of either vanilla ice cream or chocolate pudding for dessert. When Vera’s steak was served to her by a middle-aged waitress with powerful, spectacularly bowed legs, Thomas inquired anxiously, “Is it okay, Vera? Because if it isn’t, I’ll make them take it back and cook it right. You spend that kind of money – it ought to be done to your liking. Exactly so.”

Vera assured him it was lovely, perfect.

“Well, if it isn’t just give me the nod. I know how to handle them in clip joints like this.”

To deflect Thomas before he really got humming on this topic, Vera remarked: “My, wasn’t it hot today though?”

With passion Thomas agreed that it was. Damn hot. Weather like this made you awfully thirsty. Was there enough ice in her water? He could get her more if she wanted it. Boy, was he thirsty. To illustrate how thirsty he was, Thomas noisily downed a large tumblerful of water in one draught.

Never again, Vera promised herself.

Silence reigned for the remainder of the meal. When it came time for dessert Thomas pressed apple pie and ice cream on Vera. He only gave it up after she told him she was watching her figure. “I don’t mind watching it myself,” said Thomas coyly. Other gallantries were interrupted by the arrival of his chocolate pudding. He complained it had a skin on it.

“They all do,” said the waitress implacably. “Cook made them this morning. Can’t be helped.”

Vera watched, fascinated, as Thomas painstakingly skinned his pudding with the blade of his knife before he mined its goodness with a teaspoon.

It was no longer intolerably hot by the time they came out of the restaurant. Thomas was relaxing now that the evening was almost over. He decided that he had handled things rather well. He sauntered along with his suit jacket slung over his shoulder and a toothpick flicking up and down between his front teeth. “That wasn’t such a bad place after all,” he said. “But next time, we’ll go deluxe.”

Vera didn’t hear what he said. The softness of the warm night air had awakened memories of how her father and mother had taken her and Earl for evening drives in the country, to cool them off before they were put to bed. Earl, who was little, rode in the cab, seated between her parents, but she was allowed to ride in the open, in the box of the truck. That had been pure pleasure, her long hair whipping and streaming around her face as she leaned out against the rush of air, pretending not to hear her mother tapping on the rear window, signalling her to sit down, to be careful. And the tears springing into her slitted eyes so that the big-bellied white moon above actually seemed to be afloat and rolling in a vast black ocean.

There was longing in her voice when the thought escaped her. “It would have been a lovely evening for a drive in the country,” she said.

All the next week Vera avoided bumping into Thomas and readied the explanation, the excuse she would offer when he asked her out again. On Friday, he crept down from the projectionist’s booth while the first reel was running and accosted her. “I got one,” he said, evidently highly pleased with himself. Vera thought he looked like the cat who had got the canary.

“Got what?”

“A second-hand Dodge so’s I can take you for those rides in the country you were hoping for. What do you say Sunday we take a spin out to Niagara Falls?”

Vera was speechless. Was this misunderstanding her fault?

“My old man claims I’m crazy,” said Thomas. “One minute
I’m saving every penny I earn so’s I can establish myself in business and the next I blow a big chunk of it on a car when the streetcar gets me to and from work, no problem. But what Thomas says is this: If you can give a little pleasure to somebody you care about, what’s money?”

Vera knew she ought to say something right then and there. But how could she? How could she spoil his fun with him looking like that, like a little boy with a new train set? She couldn’t. They went to Niagara Falls. Vera and Thomas stood side by side staring at the hypnotic sheet of falling water, drenched by the fine spray diffused in the air. “Isn’t this just about the most romantic place on the face of the earth?” said Thomas.

“I’m never getting married,” Vera put in quickly.

For the next three Sundays in a row Vera consented to be chauffeured about southern Ontario by Thomas. Barns, cornfields, and red-brick towns slid by her dazed eyes. She was absorbed in a difficult calculation. Exactly how many outings did she owe Thomas because of the car? What it had cost him and was costing him was never long out of his mind or conversation. She wouldn’t believe what oil and gas alone added up to. Then he had had to buy a new battery. “But,” he added graciously, “it don’t seem much when you’re pleasing somebody.”

When could she, in good conscience, make an end of it? And what did it mean to end with Thomas? End what?
Was
there anything to end? Everything was mixed signals, confusion, ambiguity. On one hand he seemed to assume they were sweethearts, yet he had never so much as kissed her. His behaviour towards her was always scrupulously proper, almost brotherly. The most he permitted himself was to hold her hand while he walked her to and from the Dodge. But on other occasions his talk became suggestive, even smutty. In particular, what Thomas had said about Mr. Buckle had left her feeling uneasy – not about Mr. Buckle but about Thomas. She wasn’t sure she believed his story.

“You watch yourself when you’re alone with Mr. Buckle,” he said one golden Sunday afternoon as the Dodge whirled through a shower of autumn leaves.

Vera hadn’t really been paying attention. “What’s that?” she asked.

“I said,” repeated Thomas with emphasis,
“watch yourself when you’re alone with Mr. Buckle.”
“I’m never alone with him.”

“You will be,” said Thomas, oracularly. “All the female employees are, sooner or later. It’s when he gets you in his office, alone, that you’ve got to be on your guard.”

The thought of Mr. Buckle pursuing her around his desk like some figure in a bad cartoon amused Vera. “Buckle chasing a woman would be like a dog chasing a car. Neither would know what to do with it if it caught it.”

“He doesn’t chase anybody. He just sits behind his desk. Ask Doris and Amelia if he ever gets out from behind his desk when he scolds them.”

The significance of this was lost on her. “So he sits behind his desk. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe more goes on than meets the eye.”

“Thomas, if you’ve got something to say, spit it out.” Vera was getting mightily annoyed by these riddles.

“I don’t think I should say.”

“Fine,” said Vera. “Good. If you can’t say, you can’t say. The subject is closed.”

It was obvious Thomas didn’t want it closed. He licked his lips before proceeding. “Well, I came into his office right after he had Doris and Amelia in there about them not watching the kids stealing gum and candy and like that. When I came in he was tucking something away – if you get my drift. It seems he likes to give something an airing when he gives you women hell. Under his desk, I mean.”

Vera stared.

“You get my meaning? He exhibits himself sort of. Under the desk, that’s how.”

“I see,” said Vera. She turned her face away. A horse was standing alone in a field behind a snake fence.

“Would you say that’s sick? That’s pretty sick, isn’t it?”

Vera didn’t answer him.

“So if he ever pulls any of those tricks with you, just let me know. I’ll make him sorry he was ever born. You can count on it.”

It was this story and the queer sensation it left her with that prompted Vera to concoct one of her own stories. This one involved an elderly female relative whom it was necessary to visit every other Sunday. It was the first step in a plan to wean Thomas from her company. On the Sundays she supposedly spent with her female relative the phone in the rooms she had rented after leaving Mrs. Konwicki’s rang all afternoon, at intervals of an hour.

Vera’s feeling of uneasiness about Thomas began to grow. Nothing he had done so far was extraordinarily peculiar, but many things were slightly off, unfocussed, like a blurry film which had you wiping at your eyes as you watched it. The gifts he was constantly presenting her with were a case in point. These were small, inexpensive presents which he rather ceremoniously gave her before they embarked on their Sunday rides. His tributes, however, were strange ones, the sort of gifts given to people in hospital but not to your best girl: a bag of plums, magazines, a package of cigarettes. Never flowers, chocolates, or perfume. Not, of course, that Vera hoped for anything intimately associated with an avowal of love. Far from it. Still, his gifts were so eccentric that Vera sometimes wondered if she wasn’t the butt of a subtle and devious practical joke. Were these offerings an elaborate form of sarcasm? What did he mean to say with a bag of plums?

Then on the last Sunday in October, at a time when Vera’s exasperation with Thomas and his antics had reached the breaking point, she saw an opportunity to clear the air. Mixed in among
five or six screen magazines he had presented her with (a case of carrying coals to Newcastle if she had ever seen one) she discovered an issue of
Vogue
devoted to bridal gowns.

What was the meaning of this? she demanded, flourishing the magazine.

“I wondered when you’d get around to it,” said Thomas. He was sitting on Vera’s davenport and the light coming in the window made him resemble a self-satisfied cat basking in sunshine.

“Get around to what?”

“What’s on every girl’s mind. Marriage. I thought I’d make it easier for you to bring it up.”

“Excuse me,” said Vera. She strode to the bathroom, bolted the door, and sat on the toilet. Think, she urged herself. Think. Think. But she couldn’t. For five minutes, for ten minutes, she crouched on the toilet seat, her heart drumming every solution to her predicament out of her head. All she could be certain of was that she had handled all this very wrong, wrong from the start.

After twenty minutes she heard fingernails politely scratching on the door. The cat wanting to be petted, or given a saucer of cream. “Vera, are you all right?” he said forlornly.

“Yes, but I’d appreciate a little privacy all the same.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Minutes later he was back. “Please come out, Vera,” he said. “I know you feel embarrassed but there’s no need to be. I want exactly what you do. It’s natural for people our age to want to get married. You needn’t hide. We both want the same thing.”