The Birthday Lunch (26 page)

“Champagne,” Hal mumbles. He cannot remember the last time he drank champagne.

“Dom Pérignon,” Matt says. “I bought the last two bottles at the liquor store.”

The family gathers in the living room and Matt unstops the cork and after filling each glass, he lifts his own. “To Mom!”
he says, and the others lift their glasses and toast Lily. Convinced that the worst is over, they finish the second bottle of champagne before moving to the dining room.

Trish sets a platter of roast pork crowned with apples and wreathed with rosemary on the table beside bowls of roasted potatoes, new carrots, a plate of asparagus and Hollandaise sauce, a platter of sliced tomatoes, basil and cheese. The family has eaten little today and devour the food like starving paupers. No one speaks, no one mentions the accident though it is present, an unwelcome guest. Lily is dead but no one believes she has been laid to rest; they know that as long as there are stories about her, she will never be laid to rest.

Claudia asks her aunt to tell a story about her sister when she was a little girl. Laverne’s mind is blank but with Claudia’s encouragement, she tells the story of her little sister falling asleep in a neighbour’s boat. It was suppertime, months before Dorothy, their mother, died and when it grew dark and still Lily had not come home, Laverne and her father went out to search and called and called while supper grew cold. It was the neighbour’s dog who found Lily. He made such a racket he woke her up.

“What was she doing inside the boat?”

“Reading. As you know, Lily often hid herself away so she could read.”

“Wasn’t it too dark to read?”

“It was summer. There was plenty of light.”

“How old was she?”

“Eight. In Grade three. I taught her to read when she was five.”

“You were a teacher even then.”

“Depending on how she was feeling, when our mother was ill, she liked to have Lily sit on the bed and read to her after school, and if our mother was well enough to come downstairs for supper, our father would lift Lily onto the kitchen stool and she would recite one of her poms.”

“Poms?”

“That is what Lily called poems. She was missing some teeth.”

While the salad is being passed from hand to hand, Hal tells a story about Dorothy. It is not his story, it is Lily’s story, but depending on which way a conversation is going, Hal has managed to tell the story a number of times. The story is about how Dorothy was doing the washing in the basement when her hair caught in the wringer washer, but she refused to call Lou for help. He was upstairs waiting for his dinner, but she refused to call him. “Apparently she and Lou had had a spat and Dorothy refused to speak to him until he apologized and so she waited until she heard Lily come in from playing outside before calling for help.”

Claudia asks, “Where were you, Laverne?”

“I was in school. Lily was too young to go to school,” Laverne says. “The fact is Dorothy had a temper and so did Lily.” Before Hal can interject, Laverne proceeds to tell the story about Lily losing a stripe during her second year in training when a private-room patient rang for the bed pan nine times in an hour. “When the woman rang the tenth time, Lily told her that if she rang once more she would shove the bed pan down her throat.”

“Mom said that?”

“She did.”

Hal looks at his daughter. “It was during a flu epidemic and the nurses were run off their feet. But it made no difference to the matron.”

“When I was in med school,” Welland says, “I always gave the matron a wide berth. I never met a matron who wasn’t scary.”

“She couldn’t have been scarier than our father,” Hal says.

“True enough,” Welland says amiably.

By now the dinner plates have been taken away and thick wedges of the Black Forest cake are passed around. Matt pours more wine and although he knows the story, he wants to hear it again and asks his father how he and his mother met.

“We met in Petite Riviere,” Hal says. “Laverne invited me to a foursome of bridge and I accepted though I wasn’t a good bridge player.”

“Lily was an excellent bridge player,” Laverne says.

“So is Lanie,” Welland says. “She says she and her nursing friends spent their off hours in the nurses’ residence playing bridge.”

While Hal tells Matt he lost the game because he couldn’t take his eyes off Lily, Laverne resists the urge to tell the family that Hal grabbed the flowers given to her by Lily and gave them to her sister.

“Lily beat me at golf,” Welland says. “She said it was the first time she had played and she beat me.”

Laverne turns to him and says, “When she was in the mood, Lily knew how to concentrate, she knew how to focus. She beat you at golf because she was in the mood.”

Welland looks at Claudia. “You were a teenager at that time.”

“Yes, and you gave me a spin in your convertible.”

Hal remembers Lily telling him about his brother turning up in town out of the blue and asks what brought him to town.

“Well, the medical conference in Halifax was over and my flight home wasn’t until the next day so I decided to drive to Sussex.”

The stories keep coming, funny stories, spunky stories. Lily making wine in Dartmouth, stomping grapes in the plastic wading pool with Mary, the next-door neighbour, both of them barefoot.

“Did they wash their feet?” Welland says.

Hal says, “I asked the same question.”

“Did you try the wine?”

Hal makes a face. “Lily and Mary ended up pouring most of it down the drain.”

“What else did Mom get up to?” Matt asks.

“Well, she skied on Summerville Beach.”

“How could she ski on the beach?”

“She was towed on winter skis.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Lily’s.”

“Who towed her?”

“I did. In Natasha.”

“Natasha?”

“Lily’s name for the Nash.”

“How long ago was this?”

“When you were little kids.”

“I don’t remember,” Claudia says.

“You weren’t there.”

“What else did you and Mom get up to?”

“Never you mind.”

The family moves to the living room, except for Hal and Welland who linger at the dining-room table. By now dusk has fallen and only the grey outlines of the brothers are visible and at first they speak in the anonymous way of strangers who are guarded and careful with one another. Welland tells Hal he appreciates being told about Lily’s death and Hal tells him he appreciates him coming all this way. “You have great kids,” his brother says. Hal asks about Welland’s kids.

“My stepdaughters,” Welland says. “Our older daughter is anorexic. She and her sister don’t get along. Our younger daughter is expecting her third child any day now. Lanie is with her now.” After Hal tells Welland about his grandchildren, they lapse into a prolonged silence until Welland says, “Why didn’t you like me, Hal?” Startled by the question, Hal asks his brother if he minds if he smokes. “I don’t mind,” Welland says, but Hal cannot remember where he put his cigarettes because his mind is occupied with his brother’s question and he decides not to smoke. Finally he says, “You were Murray’s favourite and he always took your side, never mine.”

“Well, Grace took your side.”

“But she never thrashed you.”

“True.”

“And neither did Murray.” Hal asked if Welland remembered the Saturday Murray told the two of them to clean up
the cellar. Welland doesn’t remember. Why would he? So Hal tells Welland how he sat on the bottom step and watched Hal sort out the junk and stack the jars and boxes on the shelves. “I handed you the broom and told you to sweep the floor but you refused to lift a finger. Do remember what you said?”

“No.”

“You said, why should I sweep the floor when you’ll do a good enough job. So I smacked you and of course you ran bawling to Murray who came down to the cellar and gave me the thrashing of my life.”

“Back then, I was a jerk,” Welland says.

“I doubt you are now,” Hal says. If Welland was still a jerk, he wouldn’t have come all the way from Florida. Through the gathering dark he sees his brother’s yawn. “It is time I was going,” Welland says. Hal offers to call a taxi but Welland says, “No need, I was careful not to drink too much. I can drive myself.”

“Come for breakfast,” Hal says.

“Thank you, I will,” Welland says and pats his brother on the shoulder.

The family sits in the frayed light of the living room listening to Welland drive away. The stories have emptied them of speech and a deep silence settles in. But the mantle clock ticks on toward tomorrow and the coming days. It will be weeks before anyone in the room finds delight in small pleasures: the comfort of falling rain, sunlight on the wall, a familiar voice on the telephone. Later, much later, the family will remember how
close they were tonight. In the months and years to come, one way and another they will reclaim their lives. Without Lily their lives will never be the same, but they will find comfort in the familiar and unchanged.

Deep into the night Hal continues to seek solace in memory. He and Lily are on their honeymoon and Hal is half lying on the beach, elbows on the sand as he watches his bride of four days sitting in an inner tube bobbing on the waves, her arms outstretched as she dips her hands in the sea. Waves tremble in the sunlight as they lift her up and down, up and down, legs splayed, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. As Hal watches, the inner tube is seized by a rip tide and suddenly Lily is being spun around and around at the same time she is being pulled away from shore. On his feet now, Hal races along the beach, splashes through tidal pools, slides over slippery seaweed rocks, never once taking his eyes from Lily as she is being pulled farther and farther out to sea. Hal dives headlong into the rolling swells and ploughs through the waves until at last he reaches her. Flipping onto his back he tugs the inner tube free of the rip tide and tows it to shallow water where he picks up his wife, white-faced with fear, and carries her safely ashore.

N
ovember and Katjana, the last hurricane of the season, is winding down. Thunder rolls in from the Dutch Valley, wind cruises the Kennebecasis and a cold wind dashes the last autumn leaves to the ground. The cool wind is a relief to Hal. He has never liked hot weather and after moving to the apartment above his store, he told Corrie Spears that he found Ernie’s bedroom too hot for sleeping. “Serves you right,” she said. “You should have stayed where you were for a year or two.” Corrie has not yet moved from the house where she and Frank lived together for most of their married life.

Laverne was in Holland when Hal told his children he was moving to the apartment above Better Old Than New. Matt offered to spend a weekend helping him move but Hal said there was no need for him to come, that Claudia had been
helping out on weekends. He had hired a truck to move his mother’s antiques and the patchwork rocker; the remaining furniture was second-hand and would be rented along with the apartment. Hal did not mention leaving behind the queen-sized bed he could not bring himself to sleep in again; nor did he mention that rain or shine, every day he visits Lily’s grave. He told Matt that Claudia had already taken Lily’s clothing to the Salvation Army and donated her books to the library.

Claudia no longer comes home every weekend. Instead she telephones on Sundays and each time she calls, she asks if Hal has told Laverne that he has moved. When Claudia asked him again this morning, Hal assured her he would tell Laverne today.

“I’m surprised Auntie hasn’t found out by now,” Claudia said.

“I don’t know how she would find out. I didn’t put an ad in the paper.”

Attached to a clipping cut from the
Kings County Record
Hal received in the mail with Daryl Dexter’s version of the accident was a note:
For your files
somebody had written, somebody streaked with meanness. After he read the article, Hal burned it and hasn’t done business with the newspaper since. Instead of placing a rental ad in the
Kings County Record
, he spoke to the manager of the potash plant, who gave him a lead on a possible tenant. Hal told Claudia that the day before yesterday, he signed a rental agreement with an accountant. “He has already put down a deposit.”

“Then you should tell Laverne today.”

“I intend to.”

“You know she could make life difficult for you.”

“Life is already difficult for me.”

“I know, but she could make it even more difficult. She might tell the tenant that she is co-owner of the house but had not given her consent to the rental and on that basis she might insist that he will have to leave.”

Claudia is right: Laverne could make life more difficult for him, but that is not why he has been procrastinating. He has been procrastinating because when he tells Laverne the upstairs apartment has been rented out, he intends to show her the pearl-sized gold earring he found on the garage floor the morning he was working on the ditty box.

After Lily died, Hal’s memory was shot through with holes and he forgot he had picked up the earring from the garage floor and put it in a trouser pocket. The days dribbled away, each one following the pattern of the other with Hal driving to Kirk Hill and then on to Better Old Than New. Apart from attending Sunday morning church service and Kiwanis, Hal kept to himself and steered his thoughts from the accident until two weeks ago when he stopped at Northrup’s Garage and he and Joe fell to talking about who might have put water in the Impala’s gas tank. Joe said it could have been one of the young bucks who drove around town half the night in their souped-up convertibles. But why would one of those kids go to the trouble of putting water in a gas tank of a car that was out of sight inside a garage? It made no sense, which is why Hal was convinced that someone else tampered with his car.

It wasn’t until he had left Northrup’s Garage that Hal remembered finding the gold earring Claudia thought was her
aunt’s on the garage floor. And he knew who had put water in the gas tank. No question, it was Laverne. She had done it to spite him and prevent him from taking Lily to a birthday lunch. Laverne didn’t know much about the mechanics of a car, but Hal thought it likely that she knew enough to figure out that if she watered down the gas, the Impala wouldn’t go far. Hal remembered putting the earring in his trouser pocket and later putting it in the top dresser drawer where he kept his handkerchiefs, tie clips and address book.