Bishop's Road (28 page)

When John let her come home from the hospital the children hardly knew her. They cried when she picked them up and didn't trust her. A long time passed before they kissed and laughed again. Joanie can't risk losing them so now she tells John where they went when he was away. Waits for her punishment. “I have to take the car. When your behavior becomes erratic like this I have to ensure that you don't do anything we'll both regret. I'm doing this for your own good. You understand that, don't you, Joanie? We can't allow Beth to be warped by this sort of nonsense. You understand that, don't you Joanie?” As though she's an idiot. As though she has lost her mind. He must go to the office now to catch up. Joanie puts the children to bed and washes her panties.

Ruth and Patrick have set a date for their wedding. As soon as summer's over, first day of fall because Patrick won't get a vacation until then and he wants a nice long honeymoon in Maine and Vermont when the leaves turn. Ruth thinks he is crazy and tells him so. Why can't they just live together for God's sake, and why go to Maine when the leaves here are as pretty as any-where, but he wants the whole shebang. Wants Ruth to wear a long dress and get himself done up like never before. As formal as you'd want. With a five-tiered cake and a best man.

Ruth says, “I'm not that fond of people. I can't think who I'd want to invite other than the crowd I was living with on Bishop's Road and a few of the old dolls at Zellers. Peter and Sarah. Matthew and Joanna. My side of the church is going to look pretty pathetic.”

“We won't have sides. Just throw them all in together.”

He brings Ruth to meet his mom. Ruth has never met anyone with Alzheimer's disease and it takes about half an hour to get used to being greeted every two minutes. “Hello. Are you Pat's friend? My you have wonderful thick curls on your head, dear.” And then when Ruth finally gets the hang of it, mom decides that she must be an old friend from school a thousand years ago and wants to chat about all the badness they got up to when the nuns weren't looking. Ruth can identify with that one and they have a good time.

“I like her,” she tells Patrick.

Dorrie's business is doing very well. She can't keep up with the demand for custom-made Barbie clothes and has hired two seamstresses to do the work while she serves tea and chats with her clientele. And the wind might be cold enough to re-arrange your face and you can't remember what you look like without a winter coat, a cap pulled down over your eyes, a scarf pulled up over your nose, but if one thing in your life is strapless and sequined and elegant you'll be all right until the thaw. It's a girl thing. Not a bad thing. And if it doesn't follow the rules then you'd best question the people who wrote those rules and carry on, because there's not a woman out there who doesn't want to feel as lovely as Dorrie's dolls when the paint peels in the bath-room and the siding falls off the house and no one cares that you put cilantro in the meatloaf for a change.

This place is grey brown - nondescript. This place is a small bird on a winter willow. Waiting. Wanting something to sing about. If you put your ear to the city's heart you will hear life but only the mad are wont to do such things, the earth being wet and soggy and you'll never get the mud out if you lie down in it. Most people wait and listen to the trees for the beat later on - when the buds begin. But the mad need to hear now. It's lucky if you can find a little rise where the water runs down and away. Not as messy but certainly as satisfying.

Bishop's Road readies itself for spring. Mr. Palfrey, not a patient man, is digging the snow out of his backyard and dumping it on the street so it will melt a little faster. So the rhubarb won't have to work so hard. So he can find the spiderwort. Any day now the forsythia will burst into flame the way it always does and young Aiden Porter will be losing his mittens all over the place because if he can feel the sun warm on his little face then it can't be as cold as his mom says and he just leaves them wherever they land. And where the sidewalks are bare there's hopscotch and just to the side in the gravel a few alley pots. Some boys still play marbles in this place and the girls skip rope. Their songs are as old as the hills.

Mrs. Miflin goes to her house every day and sits on the front steps. She has taken her money from the bank and carries it around in a brown paper bag with handles. A copy of the
Catholic Chronicle
tucked over it so no one will see what she has there. She can't get anywhere with Joanie and waits for John to come home from work but her backside gets numb or she gets hungry and thirsty and it's too cold and Joanie won't let her in so she usually wanders off by three o'clock. Joanie hasn't told John about Mrs.
Miflin and she never comes by in the evenings.

Whether it is fortunate or not that John pays a surprise visit when Joe Snake comes again looking for Harvey so he can take a new picture for Ginny Mustard, is difficult to say. Might take years to find out for sure. But Mrs. Miflin is on her perch when he pulls up and is so upset with that heathen Indian in her house and she, a God-fearing woman, having to sit outside in the freezing cold, she decides to tell John all about the affair Joanie is having behind his back. “As soon as them youngsters is out of the house in the morning that one is over here and they're going at it all day long. You can hear them out in the street. You should put a stop to it right now Mister. There'll be talk for sure, if you don't.”

And John races into the house to confront the lovers. Finds them in the kitchen drinking coffee and looking at drawings of some sort. It might be the sudden rise in his blood pressure that makes him appear so threatening, eyes bulging and he is shaking, even drooling. How else to explain why Harvey makes a mad dash for his throat, pushes him to the floor and holds him there, jaws wide open and teeth pressing against John's skin, just enough to let him know not to move. Growling for effect, pleased that he can, never having tried it before. Waiting for someone to say, “And who's the best dog in the world?” Rub his head and give him a treat.

Joanie stares for several seconds before going to John's rescue. Pulls Harvey away and helps her husband to his feet. He tells her she's gone too far now but what else should he have expected from a woman like her. Joanie assumes he's upset because she has company. John doesn't care for guests unless they're his.

Mrs. Miflin comes in and starts counting out her money on the kitchen counter next to the stove. “It's all here. Every last penny of it. I hardly think you'd want to be living in this place
now what with your wife carrying on like that. It's a good thing I came along when I did. I knew she was no good the first time I set eyes on her. Messing around with that Indian and his pregnant wife in prison for killing my poor husband, God rest his soul. Right there in the living room she did it and I in my sick bed at the time and couldn't even get up to stop her. She got what she deserved, you know. Justice will always prevail when it comes to her kind.”

Now it's John who is bewildered. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am Mrs. Jessie Miflin and I'm here to buy my house back. I made a mistake. Though not as big as the one you made by the looks of it, marrying the likes of her. I'm going to get all my lovely furniture and move in as soon as you sign it over to me. I hope that doesn't take too long. I'm just about driven cracked in old Mrs. Pretty's place. My God, but she's slovenly. There's no other word for it. I can't understand the city not shutting her down. But we'll see about that once I get settled.”

Judy enjoys her new-found fame and fortune - to a point. “It's all fun and games,” she says, “until someone loses an eye.” She's making truckloads of money and even after The Great Simon Grace gets his cut there's more than she can spend. She sends Joe Snake the $1,000 she borrowed in a really fat, padded envelope and no one can tell there's cash in it. Mails it from New York so he can't trace her but since he never opens the bank statements he doesn't have a clue that he and Ginny Mustard have been ripped off and can't figure out why someone would send him so much money. Gives it to his parents so they can buy a new sofa, something nice for their house.

Judy told the officers who pulled her from the fight that
her name is Felicity so that's what she's stuck with now and just as well, though if anyone from home should see her face on a magazine cover they wouldn't recognize her anyway, she's that made over. After a few months she started to be bugged by the whole thing. Standing around in the friggin' cold waiting for a cameraman to take his friggin' pictures, and that after getting out of bed before the friggin' sun comes up. And Simon always measuring every bite of food she puts in her mouth. Telling her she has to watch her weight because no one wants to see a fatty on the cat-walk. Simon getting pissed with her when she doesn't get enough sleep as if she's going to be in friggin' bed by eight just to please him. And if that wasn't bad enough, he decided to put the make on her and he says it isn't true, he was just kidding around, and if he hadn't put his hand on her backside it might have passed, but he did and she slugged him one and split his lip.