More in Anger (28 page)

“Apparently not,” Viv agreed. Pearl heaved a great sigh of defeat. Might Viv be able to bring herself to help put up the Christmas tree, then, or was
that
beyond her too?

“I can do that,” Viv said. “But now? I thought we were going out for supper.”

“No, not now!”
Pearl said with exasperation, putting her drink down on a coaster with a thud. “
After
dinner, of course! I am
very
hungry because you are so late, and I
want
to go
now
! Ye gods!”

“Don't you want to finish your drink, Mum? It has rum in it.”

“I know it has rum in it. I'm not a moron. I don't
want
it right now. Right now I am
hungry
. As I've just finished saying! Are you deaf? And I am getting hot in this coat.” She stood up.

When Pearl removed her coat at The Manor and handed it to Evelyn, Viv saw that her mother was wearing four brooches and that they were pinned every which way onto her dress. She was
wearing two very different bracelets—the one made of stainless steel rectangles that Viv's father had given her years ago and the stretchy one with the sparkly baubles—on the same wrist. And she was wearing what must have been all of her necklaces—gold, silver, shells, stones, medallions—more than a dozen of them. All those together must be heavy around an old person's neck, Viv thought. And then she thought about what hard work it must have been getting all that on, with the arthritis in her mother's hands so bad. She wondered vaguely if something was the matter.

“You're looking festive,” Viv said.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Pearl said, and, turning to the waiter Evelyn had sent over, ordered a Singapore sling. “How is Stella?” she asked next. “How is my erstwhile son-in-law?”

“He's more than erstwhile, Mum. And Stella is just fine. Getting very chatty. Was I chatty when I was a baby, Mum?”

“Probably. I remember that you wanted to be held every second and what a trial that was, what with Amethyst's allergies and asthma needing attending to. Where is Amethyst? I thought she'd be here by now.”

There was definitely something the matter. When Viv asked if she was ready for another drink or whether she'd prefer some wine, she responded by quoting a line or two from a poem by Archibald Lampman, “Godspeed to the Snow,” which he had written in April, Pearl said, the month of her father's birth. After twenty minutes of a virtually incomprehensible explication of this poem (which Viv didn't know to begin with), Viv tried to butt in and change the topic. Without thinking, she inanely
asked her mother how her garden was doing. In response, her mother looked at her as though
she
were going off the deep end and reminded her that it was Christmas and so her garden was not doing much except, ha ha, sleeping.
“One short sleep past”
etcetera. She asked for another drink. She continued talking, telling Viv yet again how much she had loved playing badminton at McGill and how she had once waltzed there with a fellow with red hair, and another time with a Canadian poet, Louis Dudek. As they left the restaurant, she was in good spirits and began trying to sing “I Danced with a Man Who Danced with a Girl Who Danced with the Prince of Wales.”

Back at the house, Viv left her mother sitting in the living room with her knitting and a glass of cream sherry while she got the flashlight from her suitcase and went out to the storage shed, which was empty except for the box of Christmas tree parts, three boxes of ornaments neatly labelled, lights and garlands, and gardening tools. There was that stepladder too.

She was less pissed off now. What was doing it? Motherhood? Geographical distance? Age? God, she missed Stella. She closed her eyes and conjured her daughter, two now, the amber eyes, the curly dark brown hair, the open, sweet smile.

When she came back in, Pearl had resumed work on Stella's Christmas present, which was to be a toque and mittens. The hat and one mitten were completed. The toque was huge—too large for any human being. The knitting wobbled in and out like the edge of a nasturtium, hung limp and loose around a huge shallow brim. “I want to add a pompom to the top,” said Pearl. Then she showed Viv the first mitten, which was shaped like a high-heeled
shoe. She was still working on the second mitten, she said, and she held up her knitting. “See?” This mitten was much larger, about two feet long and over a hundred stitches across. “Thank you, Mum,” said Viv. “You've been doing a lot of work. Stella is going to love it.” Pearl answered that indeed it was a lot of work, and that she was less than satisfied with the results. When she finished, she would be writing to the people who published the pattern book to complain that their pattern was no good.

As they put up the tree together, Pearl worked with a high seriousness that reminded Viv of the way a five-year-old child might work, and she thought of Wordsworth's poem about the child being Father of the Man, and she didn't welcome the role, if that was what was happening here. Being Mother of Stella was all she was, and all she would be. Amen.

Pearl kept putting the branches in the wrong places. Viv tried to explain the colour coding, and then gave up and rearranged the branches when Pearl was absorbed with opening the other boxes. Viv hadn't finished testing the lights before putting them on the tree when she saw that Pearl had begun wrapping the garlands around it. She wished she was home, home with Frank and Stella, getting their Christmas under way, not her mother's. Out with the old, in with the new.

“I think you should wait on those until we get the other things on,” Viv said, but Pearl ignored her. Oh well. Perhaps her mother wouldn't notice there were no lights, and Viv surreptitiously put them back in the box. There were enough garlands for several trees, but Pearl put all of them on. She concentrated very hard
and it took a long time. Together they did the decorations next, and there was almost an air of fleeting camaraderie as they hooked the bells and balls onto the branches. It was nearly eleven by the time they were done.

“There,” Pearl said with satisfaction, stepping back to admire her handiwork. “Now turn on the lights. Santa can't come, you know, if he doesn't see the lights.”

At Easter it was her turn again, and when she arrived, Pearl was again at her kitchen table reading. Proust this time. She was dressed in her favourite gold shoes and red and gold dress, which badly needed cleaning. Her hair was a mess. She looked pale, and thinner. She smelled of urine; the whole house smelled of urine and something burnt. The sink was full of dishes. How long had it been since one of her sisters had been there? Viv propped the back door open to let in some air. Pearl told her to close it. She opened the sliding glass window. Pearl told her to close it. “Whose house do you think this is?” she said. Viv took the giant Easter egg she had brought her out of her shopping bag and set it in front of her mother.

“Shall I assume that's for me?” Pearl said, suddenly pleased as a child.

“Stella sent it. Stella picked it out.”

“Who is Stella?”

“What do you mean, who is Stella? Stella is my daughter. Stella.”

“I don't know any Stella. Now get out of my way. I am going through there.”

Two coffee cups sat on the burners of the stove, with black coffee dregs cooked into the bottom of each. The burners were still on and the cups were hot. The microwave was gone. Most of the dishes were gone. The kitchen floor was appallingly dirty. Viv offered to clean it, but Pearl wouldn't let her.

“I don't need any help from the likes of
you
,” she said.

“Okay, okay,” said Viv.

“Why is it always you who comes? Where are the others?”

“I don't know.”

“I am going to the bathroom. Don't you dare touch a
thing
, or I'll box your ears. Don't think I've forgotten how.”

On the kitchen table were various lists Pearl had begun on scraps of paper—including notes on yet another revision of her will. In this version, Viv wouldn't be inheriting books, but her mother's typewriter and her garbage can instead. On another scrap of paper was a list of belongings Pearl was going to sell, clothes this time. The hula outfit from her high school graduation trip to Hawaii. Her father's collapsible top hat. Her wedding dress from 1941. Another was a grocery list. Tuna. Cereal. Milk. Rum. Another was a list of items she had recently sold. The crystal carving knife rests, the toaster oven, a string of pearls, the vacuum cleaner, and all but five of her teacups. Something had to be done. But what?

Back at home, Viv was constantly clenched in her upper arms, her guts, her neck, her back, her jaw. She was impatient, touchy, and found herself handing Stella to Frank constantly.
Stella got on her nerves and she struggled not to snap at her, to remember to breathe, to pass her to Frank when she thought she was losing it. Maybe she was. She couldn't sleep deeply or long. In some weird way her mind seemed puzzled, she told Frank, as though it didn't know something that her body knew. It was like her body was getting a message from somewhere else and not telling her mind about it. “Do you think this is crazy?” she asked Frank. “Or do you think it's possible that my body feels some innate connection to my mother's body, and when my mother's body feels like it's in distress, it reverberates in mine as well?”

“Makes sense to me,” said Frank.

“God, Frank. When it comes to my mother, what I need is an epidural for my soul.”

“Those would be popular.”

Her mother emerged from her bedroom at three and came down the hall clearly displeased to find uninvited guests sitting in her living room. Viv had arranged for the geriatric psychiatrist and his assistant to arrive during Pearl's afternoon nap so that Viv could let them in. Pearl glared at Vivien as though it were her fault. At first Pearl tolerated her visitors' presence because the man was, in spite of his “foreign colour,” a doctor, which she noted flat out. But she had little patience with the tests he attempted to administer. He asked her the cost of a loaf of bread. “It costs what it costs,” she said. He asked her to remember three things, moved on to a different topic and then a while later asked her to recall the three things, and she did, easily and smugly. But
she was quickly fed up with the questions and said she was not interested in playing games with some Indian in a turban. She had an aunt, she said, who had married a fellow “like you” in London, and it had turned out badly. She then rose and invited the doctor and his assistant to leave. The doctor smiled and said they would be going shortly. But first, he said, he had to explain.

“Explain?” she said regally.

“Yes.” That if she would not agree to some conditions—taking up her throw rugs, adding rails in the bathroom, accepting help from caregivers and housecleaners on a regular basis—she would have to be removed from her home. The conditions, he said kindly, bore her safety and well-being in mind.

“
I
am not leaving my home,” she said stiffly.

“Mrs. Werner, I am sorry to tell you that staying or not staying in your house will not be your choice if you do not do these things I have explained. Now please remember: the mats, the rails, the home care worker to help you. Or else …” He lifted his shoulders and opened his palms.

“Or else?” said Pearl grandly. “Ha. Yours is an idle threat. Why don't you go back where you came from? And take your wife with you.”

Viv turned away to smile. She walked the doctor and nurse to their car, where the doctor turned to her and said, “Tell me, has your mother always been so … obnoxious? Or is this something new?”

“She has always been so obnoxious,” Viv said. “Usually she's worse.”

“She may not like you much after today,” the nurse said apologetically.

Viv laughed. “She didn't like me much before.”

Pearl was prepared for the home care worker who showed up at her door the following week. When the young woman knocked and called out her cheery “Hello!” Pearl jabbed a pair of tailor's shears through the chain-lock crack. “You git!” she said. “You git!”