More in Anger (25 page)

“Dear heart. I'm sorry to hear that.” He patted her shoulder. “Come in. What have you been doing to get so wet? Maybe you should get changed. I think that what you need is a drink. Would you like a drink? I'm having one.”

She pulled angrily away. “I don't drink. Remember? Why don't you ever remember, Dad?” She followed him into the house and up the stairs. “Dad? Why didn't you help us? When we were little, why didn't you tell her to stop being so wretchedly bloody awful to us? Dad?”

“I didn't know, dear! I was at work, you know.”

“Not all the time, you weren't. Not at night, and on weekends.”

He paused, spoke more coolly. “Well, I don't know about that. Maybe I was on call. Would you like a drink or not?”

“
No!
I told you. You never listen to me.”

“I do, dear.”

“Dad, Mum was horrible to you too. You
must
remember that. And surely you must have been able to figure out that if she treated you like that, chances were you weren't the only one. Or did you just
believe
her when she said we were just plain
bad
?”

“Dear, you are sounding quite fierce and you've only just arrived. I don't remember her saying that.” He opened the fridge.

“How convenient for you.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

In the bedroom that used to be hers, she found a hot pink track suit of Amy's in the closet. Amy, Amy. She announced her presence everywhere, oh sweet and obedient daughter, and unlike Viv, was welcomed and at home everywhere she went. Must be nice to have the “good” market cornered. Must be nice to be so nice. Viv peeled off her wet clothes and put on the track suit. It was too big and she hated pink.

“You look better, dear,” her father said when she entered the living room. “Less dishevelled, overall. Certainly dryer. Pink is a nice colour on you. Now sit down over here. I have something to show you. Have you heard about Cecilia Bartoli? She's quite a girl. With quite the voice. Everyone's talking about her, you know.” He waved the video box in Viv's face.

“Don't, Dad. I've seen that video about ten times.”

“She's a lovely girl. I don't think you've seen this one. Not this particular one. Sit back down, dear, and I'll put it on for you. It'll take your mind off things.”

“I said I've seen it.”

“I'm sure you haven't.”

“Dad, I just got here. I don't want to watch TV.”

“Sit down on the couch and watch this video with me. You'll feel better.”

“No, thank you.”

He stood up. “Vivien—”

“Dad! Quit telling me what to do all the time!”

“You are really quite fierce,” he said mildly, as the video began and Bartoli's voice filled the room. “You know, Vivien, you can't possibly fight the whole world. And I think you are fighting it
more than it is fighting you. Make love not war, you know that bumper sticker, dear? Now be a good guest and sit down.”

The idea of their mother's falling in love at all—or anyone's falling in love with her—verged on the obscene. Viv had laughed when Amy called to tell her. “Who with? With whom? You have
got
to be kidding,” she said. But there was Pearl, and there was Roger Werner. (Where had she found him? Surely not at the hair-dresser's, she and Amy giggled. Did she meet him at Safeway? At the doctor's?) And now, after a mere six months' courtship, they were getting married. Pearl's giddy behaviour, which included a rusty kind of giggling on the phone, was unsettling. Her attempts at being coy with wedding details, her bizarrely girlish response to Roger's mooning and fawning over her (which was so odd in itself), were downright strange. But. Maybe a transformation was possible. None of her daughters would have believed it to be possible, but it was beginning to seem that they were wrong. Miracles did happen, right? She certainly seemed happier, said Amy. Well, maybe now they could visit without going into emotional contortions, said Ruby, while Laurel's comment was that maybe now they would be able to have a real relationship with their mother. Dream on, said Viv. But. Maybe she was mistaken. And it seemed to be so: during the coming year Pearl seemed capable of being genuinely nice.

On her first visit to her mother in her new married state, Vivien hadn't felt the weight of dread descend as she turned in
her mother's driveway, and what an amazing, hopeful feeling that absence was. And then the sun had come out and spattered the driveway with light. Pearl hadn't answered the door, and since for once it was unlocked, Viv just went right in, thinking that maybe the light and the unlocked door would prove to be symbolic of her mother's rebirth, her enormous and astounding change of heart and mind. A change of essential character. Who could have predicted such power in love? She could hear her mother talking to someone down in her bedroom, and wondered if Roger hadn't gone to visit his son after all. She was at first unable to distinguish words—she heard only her mother's familiar, monotonous voice boring the walls and floating lethargically down the hall like a lazy carp. Viv put her bag down in the living room, took a deep breath and tiptoed down to peer into her mother's bedroom. Her mother was sitting alone on the edge of her bed with one of her jewellery boxes open beside her, the blue leather one with the suede pillows inside. She was just lifting out a pair of gold earrings and a chain, which, she was telling an invisible audience, she would wear when she went out for dinner with her youngest daughter, Vivien, who was late.

“Hi, Mum,” Vivien said, entering.

“Oh. It's you.” Her mother's voice was completely flat.

“May I come in?”

“I don't see why not.”

Vivien approached the bed. “What are you doing, Mum?”

“What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting ready for dinner. My aunt Pearly K, after whom I am named, used to show me her jewellery when I was a little girl.”

Viv sat down beside her mother, made the bed bounce a little, and Pearl frowned.

“I remember,” Viv said, “how you let Amy and me see in your jewellery boxes when we were small. You'd open them on your bed just like this. We loved it, too. It was like the treasure in Aladdin's cave, I used to think. So magical. Special.”

Pearl looked again at the pieces of gold jewellery she was holding in her crooked, gnarled hands. “Your sister Amethyst owes me a letter,” she said. “You all do.” Then she said, “The K stood for Klondike, after the gold rush that started the year she was born. She hated her name.”

“I would have too. Klondike. Imagine!”

“I thought it was a rather clever idea.”

“I guess. Mum? I also remember how you'd get dressed up to go out, to go into the city, and I'd think you were the most beautiful mother in the whole world. I was so proud of you.” Vivien paused. Her mother said nothing. Feeling a mild desperation, Viv went on. “You know, I can feel your velvet jacket against my cheek if I think about it. I can feel the thick, furry pile of that chocolate brown fake fur coat you used to wear. I can smell your VO5 hairspray, and your Max Factor powder, and I can see the bright poppy red of your lipstick. Mum?”

Pearl was looking into space. “Your father liked those hospital balls. Beresford high society. Ha! I detested them. They were a trial.”

“Amy and I always liked it when you left us a kiss on our cheeks with your lipstick. Remember? And remember how you wore a French roll for a while? I thought that was so elegant.” Viv
stopped then, and for a while there was nothing at all in the stale, disturbed air. Then Pearl, who had still not acknowledged her daughter's opening of her heart, rose, and slowly made her way over to her dressing table, took two more boxes out of the second drawer and brought them over to the bed. One red box, one grey.

“My aunt Pearly K never married. She should have;
she
would have made a wonderful mother. But when she was a young woman, she acquired an appointment working for an MP in Ottawa, and off she went to see the capital. However. Shortly after she started the job, the man made inappropriate advances towards her, and she packed up and came right home. She stayed in Winnipeg after that, and became a dental assistant, which proved much more satisfactory.”

“And that was it for men?” Viv asked, admiring three of her mother's dinner rings on her hands.

“You can put those back. She did become engaged once, but she broke it off. His name was Wherrit, and he worked in a bank.”

“Maybe that's why in the pictures she looks so sad.”

“
I
wouldn't hazard a guess as to the reason.
I
wouldn't have said she looked sad. And I wouldn't say she was unhappy, either. She liked the horse races. And wearing stripes.”

“I like looking at your old photo albums,” said Viv. “May I see one?”

“I don't,” said Pearl.

Viv flopped back on the bed and stared at the light fixture on the ceiling. Her mother could suck the joy out of Jesus. Why couldn't she be nicer? The light fixture was full of bugs, and one
of the light bulbs was out. Still, she was a million percent better than she had been before Roger came along. Viv could see cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. She could see a big fat spider. Waiting.

“I barely know what's in here anymore,” Pearl said, returning to her project. Slowly she unzipped grubby satin bags, opened the soiled drawstrings of flannelette pouches, unwrapped wrinkled old tissue paper and lifted out more strings of beads, brooches, earrings and chains.

“That French roll hairdo was a ridiculous amount of work.”

Viv rolled over on her side and reached over to pick up a yellow sparkly brooch with matching earrings and lined the three pieces up on the bedspread. She put on another ring, one with a large pale green stone. “These were my favourites when I was small,” she said.

Pearl picked up a bracelet made of rectangular stainless steel blocks and draped it over her wrist. “Your father gave me this. On a day when he was feeling artsy.” Then she looked up and said bitterly, “When I was having a miscarriage in my parents' house, your precious father was downstairs in the living room
playing the damned piano
. The nurse attending me was afraid to interrupt him to ask if she could give me heroin for the pain. In the end she gave it to me anyway,
without
his permission. Ha! Imagine ignoring the plight of his wife! And him a doctor. Right in my parents' house in Calgary, on Montcalm Crescent.” Pearl gave her daughter a look as though she blamed her and stuffed the bracelet into a pink satin bag and zipped it up.

“Mum?”

“What is it?”

“When Dad proposed, why didn't you say no?”

Pearl answered slowly, guardedly, “Well, no one else had asked me.”

“So? You weren't exactly over the hill.”

“You have to marry
someone
.”

“No you don't.”

Pearl looked at her daughter hard. “Well, a lesbian wouldn't marry, I suppose.”

Viv laughed. “But did you even
like
each other? Ever? Did you have anything at all in common?”

“We played badminton. Our fathers both worked for the CPR.”

“And that's it?”

“Well,” Pearl said, a strange coy smile in her voice. “There was a strong … sexual attraction.” She looked Viv in the eye. “
You
would understand
that
.”

“Yes,” Viv said, mortified.

“
And
do you know what else?” Pearl said, still looking at Viv as if assessing the wisdom of confiding in her. “Your father's mother told me that I must ‘make myself available' to my husband in bed
every night
—and you know what
that
means.”

Viv laughed. Again. Had she ever laughed in this house before? “Good thing you were sexually attracted, then.”

Pearl paused, gave Viv an icy look and said, “I don't know why you find this all so amusing.”

“I don't—it's just that you've never told me most of this before and I'm excited. Maybe even happy. And a little nervous.”

“I see. Well, here is something else. Eleanor Mayfield, your grandmother, loved to give advice, and she gave me much more
than I needed or wanted. And she was a very good bridge player. When your father and I were engaged, she kept trying to get me to take up bridge. But I did not, and do not, like playing bridge. Nor did I join the ladies' auxiliary or the church choir in Banff, much to her chagrin.”

“Mum? Did you ever have an engagement ring? I don't remember your having one.”

“Yes, I did. I didn't like it, though. The one from Roger is much nicer.”

“What happened to the one from Dad? Have I ever seen it?”

“No, you haven't. It was more from his mother than from him, if you must know. What happened to it? Bill Garbageman came right into the house one day and took it from beside the kitchen sink.”