Jack of Diamonds (22 page)

‘Of course.’

‘So you want my opinion – move or stay – is that it?’

‘Yeah. I’d like to know what you think.’

‘That’s simple, Mac, you move to High Park North. The other day you called Cabbagetown a shit hole and you’re dead right, I can’t think of a better word to describe it.’ I laughed. ‘Mind you, perhaps we’ve got something to be proud of. I read in the paper the other day that Cabbagetown is the largest Anglo-Saxon slum or, if you like, shit hole in North America.’

‘You think we should then?’ he asked. After a moment or two he said, ‘I don’t know, buddy. Have you seen them big houses and gardens in High Park? There’s garages for cars!’

‘C’mon, Mac, how long is it since you walked down one of our streets? The buildings are shit houses, bug- and rat-infested and in need of repair. Everywhere smells of rot, old wallpaper and mould. In the winter it’s dirty snow and coal smoke. It’s a bit better now the chemical factories have closed – at least your eyes don’t water – but all of Cabbagetown still smells of shit. I mean, do you really have to think about staying or vamoosing?’ (Like conversating, vamoosing was a ‘Joe word’ I’d decided to adopt.) ‘Cabbagetown is a broken-down old whore and High Park is a sassy lady.’ I’d read that somewhere and enjoyed being able to use it.

‘Yeah, but still and all, it’s what we know, where we come from,’ he mumbled.

High Park was pretty swanky – one of the better suburbs in Toronto, with this big park right at the centre with fancy houses and low-rise expensive-looking apartments surrounding it. My mom and I used to occasionally go there on our weekend walks. Just by visiting the High Park neighbourhood you definitely got the impression you were a long way from the scruff and general deterioration of Cabbagetown. But still, vehement as I’d been about his moving away, I knew exactly what Mac was worried about. It was about fitting in; he was scared of sticking out like a sore thumb.

‘Well, it’s a nice thing the twins have done for you both and for my mom and me, but you say Dolly’s not sure?’ I replied.

‘Yeah. Devil you know, sort of.’ He looked at me. ‘Know what I mean, Jack?’

‘Mac, why bother asking me for my opinion? Whatever Dolly decides will happen. A house is a woman’s decision; men don’t come into it.’

‘Yeah, I know, but the twins are no longer under their mother’s thumb and they take none of her bullshit no more. They want it to be
my
decision. As a matter of fact, they’re insisting it’s what I want to do that matters.’

I threw back my head and laughed. ‘And if you make the wrong decision, guess who lands in the shit.’

Mac grinned. ‘So what’s new?’

There would never be a better opportunity to ask him, so I said, ‘Mac, what does Dolly think about the twins returning and . . . you know what I mean . . . the rest of it?’

Mac grinned again. ‘You
really
want to know?’

I nodded and smiled a little sheepishly. ‘It’s a bit personal I know, so don’t say if you don’t want, but I’ve often wondered how she felt when they returned from Montreal.’

‘Okay, the whole of Toronto seems to know about the twins, so what the hell. It doesn’t matter now anyhow. Well, after a while Dolly couldn’t ignore the rumours no more, you know, what was staring her in the face, so she sat me down one night and handed me a bottle of Molson’s. She’d actually opened it for me. “Siddown, Mac, I’ve got something to say to you,” she says. Well now, handing me a Molson’s wasn’t her usual way of going about things, except maybe on Christmas or my birthday, but when she went and fetched a glass as well I started to
really
worry. So, hoping for the best, I poured the beer and sat down, not sure what to expect. Then she drew up a chair and sat right up close to me, I mean real close. She sort of clamped my knees between hers. I couldn’t move an inch. You know how big she is. I reckon if she’d clamped them any tighter I’d’a lost me circulation and never took another step again!’

I’d never heard Mac talk in such a personal way about his wife before. He must have really wanted to get this off his chest, but maybe he hadn’t the courage, or felt too ashamed or something. Now he continued.

‘She seemed to fill the room, you couldn’t see nothing either side of her.’ He laughed, recalling the moment. ‘If I’d wanted to take a sip of my beer I’d have needed to lift the glass over her boobs. I tell you, buddy, I could barely breathe.

‘“What is it, Dolly?” I ask.

‘“Now don’t you go judging the twins, you hear, Mac?” she says right off, leaning forward so I can smell her breath.

‘“Judging? How do you mean?” I ask her.

‘“Just judging!” she shouts. “Every woman has to do her duty when there’s a war on. If they can’t fight, they can send our boys away happy. Some of them kids ain’t comin’ back and God understands this!”

‘“You mean when there’s a war on, God grants women special permission to . . . yer know, be extra kind to soldiers?”

‘“Only the good ones, not the Germans. It’s our special women’s way of thanking them for protecting our families. The twins have decided to help the war effort. They’re doing their bit for their king and country!” She stabbed me in the chest with her finger. “Yer hear me now, Mac, I don’t want no judging!”

‘“Dolly, you’re not serious!” I say, flabbergasted.

‘“Don’t you
dare
look at me like that! Mr Mackenzie King says what our women do is just as important for Canada as the men going overseas: working in the factories making war supplies, farming, driving ambulances, doing hospital work and all that.”

‘“But he didn’t say they should, you know . . . ”

‘“Oh yes he did! He said we should
entertain
the boys, give them a good time, that it’s all a part o’ the war effort.”

‘“Dolly, that’s bullshit. Everyone knows Mackenzie King used to find prostitutes and persuade them to give in their trade and turn to God.”

‘“Mac, you callin’ me a liar, are ya? I just told you that’s peacetime. War’s different. They’re not only doing it for Canada but also for our nice new King George and not his shameless brother that’s took up with that American woman Mrs Simpson! Gawd only knows where that one’s been! Our boys deserve a good country, a nice king and a beautiful memory to take with them when they go overseas to fight.”

‘“You mean they’ll take a memory of the twins with them? Not all of them, I hope?”

‘“Don’t be smart, Mac!” she yells, not seeing I’m joking.

‘“Have the twins said all this to you?” I ask.

‘“Don’t have to, I know personal from the last war,” she says, calm as anything. “We knew our duty them days.”

‘Holy smoke!’ Mac looked at me, his eyes grown wide. ‘She says it right off, like she’s not ashamed and she’d only done what’s right and now the twins will be doing the same.’ He stopped and squinted up at me. ‘You know something, Jack, I think she’s proud of them following in her footsteps. Now the war’s come they’ve got a true purpose that both the prime minister and the king would say was okay. What were a sin yesterday is now being a loyal Canadian that’s helping win the war.’

I couldn’t help thinking that even as a young woman Dolly would have been a very big girl and she probably would have been capable of making an entire platoon happy prior to their day of departure overseas – Dolly’s last hurrah for king and country.

Mac stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. ‘Jeez, Jack, life has a strange way of turning out, don’tcha think? I took them in the streetcar to the railway station to send them off to Montreal to work with Dolly’s sister in her fish-and-chip shop. Who’d have thought, eh? I remember we had to sell and pawn some stuff to buy their tickets, but I didn’t have any money over so they could eat on the train. They had a bread and dripping sandwich each and two apples I bought at the station kiosk with my streetcar fare home.’

‘I remember you were dead concerned they’d go off the rails.’

Mac sighed, shrugged and spread his arms. ‘Well, it turned out different. Between them they now own their own apartment downtown, and the one at High Park and the house we both live in.’

‘That’s not just because they’re pretty, that takes brains,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, damn right. Dunno where they came from, though. Dolly and me don’t have a decent brain between us.’

‘You’re selling yourself short, Mac.’

He propped and turned again. ‘Jack, when Dolly told me about, yer know, her war effort, sending them soldiers away happy, it all fell into place.’

‘What did?’

‘The twins; you’d agree they don’t – thank gawd – look like me, nor Dolly neither. More like, you know, refined, better class.’ He looked at me steadily. ‘Well now, that ain’t entirely impossible, Jack. We were both just kids when we sort of started going together, not all that regular neither. I was doing my apprenticeship with an upholsterer out the lakes way, staying at a boarding house during the week and comin’ back to Cabbagetown weekends to see my folks and also to squire Dolly.’

‘How’d you meet?’ I asked as we continued to walk.

‘Meet? We didn’t, we’re the same age and we’d been at school together since we were little kids. It just sort of happened. My parents and hers were friends. They lived just three doors away from us. It was always, you know, expected; her and me were an item.’ Mac shrugged. ‘That’s mostly how it happened them days.’

‘You didn’t love her or anything?’

Mac laughed at the thought. ‘Nah, nothing like that. Dolly was getting taller and I wasn’t growing none too fast. I suppose we were both kinda misfits. She was already six foot in her teens and I’m five foot one inch. I have to say it, she was big but not fat back then, and not too bad on the eye neither.

‘I had to work until midday each Saturday and Dolly was working as a waitress downtown all week and Saturday until 7 o’clock at night. In them days unless there was a dance or a party at someone’s place you didn’t go out Saturday night. So I’d only see her mostly Sundays, when we went to church and then we’d have lunch with my folk or hers, alternate like. Then I’d have to start back to the lakes. We were sort of engaged but goin’ to wait until my apprenticeship was over and we’d both be eighteen. But the war broke out, of course, although I was too young to join up.

‘Anyhow, Dolly started to volunteer at night as a waitress, doing her duty for king and country at an officers’ canteen. She’d get home real late and sleep in Sunday mornings, so I was lucky if I saw her for an hour before lunch. We’d go for a walk along the Don or to Queens Park.

‘I completed my apprenticeship just before my eighteenth birthday. The war had been going for two years, and Dolly had changed a lot. She was much more worldly in her ways and used different words, like more lah-de-dah ones, and even swore sometimes. She was always goin’ on about the officers at the canteen, but somehow we were still together.

‘As soon as I turned eighteen I wanted to join up, but my birthday was on a Sunday. I remember we went for a walk along the banks of the Don, and we were walking along chatting – well, she’s chatting and I’m listenin’ – when suddenly we came to this group of bushes a bit away from the path. “Come on, soldier boy, it’s your birthday!” She laughs and takes me by the arm and drags me into the bushes. “Get your pants down!” she says.’ Mac laughed. ‘I’m still a virgin. I didn’t know a thing except how to jerk off.’

I laughed nervously. I wasn’t used to adults talking like that, and also because Mac might as well have been talking about me. ‘Jesus, Mac, what did you do?’ I was trying to imagine how I would have acted but all I could see in my mind’s eye was the Dolly I’d always known – a giant – in the bushes and it wasn’t a beautiful or seductive vision, I can tell you.

‘Jack, you’re about the same age as I was . . . I don’t know how much I should tell you,’ Mac said a little sheepishly. He’d gotten carried away telling me the story and forgotten my age, and I suppose he was now remembering my innocence as well.

‘Mac, I’m going scuffing. I’m a virgin like you were, so maybe you can tell me something useful, you know, in case I find myself in a similar situation.’

‘Okay, but understand, Jack, I’m no expert. I knew damn all then, and I still don’t know that much. You’d be better asking Joe Hockey or one of the musicians at the Jazz Warehouse.’

‘But what happened in the bushes? You can’t just leave it like that,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m too surprised to, you know, get a hard-on. “I ain’t got no rubbers,” I say.

‘Dolly just reaches into her bag and hands me one. “Your second birthday present,” she says. Then she unbuttons my fly and gets to work on me, and we fit the rubber and I’m up for it. She lifts her dress and pulls down her bloomers and . . .’ Mac pauses. ‘I’m not sure how she managed it, but next thing I know I’m in. Holy shit! But I ain’t no Casanova, it’s biff-bam-thank-you-ma’am. I’m ashamed of meself because I should’ve lasted longer or something.’

I couldn’t help laughing but I was curious too. ‘How come Dolly knew all that stuff?’

‘At the time it don’t occur to me, only much, much later. I apologised and Dolly said it don’t matter, at least I ain’t going to the war a virgin and she’d done her duty for king and country and happy birthday.’

‘How did it feel?’ I asked. ‘I mean, did you feel any different afterwards?’ It was a serious question.