Lily's Story (74 page)

When Sophie heard, she was shocked, then
enraged, then consoling – offering to give Lily every dollar she
could “squeeze out of Mr. Flintskin, esquire, when he comes home.”
The only concrete form of assistance she contributed, though, was
to tell Lily’s story to Hap Withers, Dowling’s factory foreman and
father of ten. Hap came right up to Lily’s place the next day and
made the offer in that quiet, direct way of his that had endeared
him to both sides of the village tracks. His own house lay on
Prince Street, a hundred feet from the Alley. He proposed to pay
Lily’s fifty-dollar fee to the council himself, take temporary
ownership of the property only, and rent it back to Lily for a
dollar a year and taxes. “I’ll have a contract drawn up,” he said,
“to say that you have a right to buy me out for fifty dollars
anytime over the next five years – and of course I won’t be able to
sell the land. If you don’t want or need the place by then, I’ll
buy your house and give it to one of my sons.”

Well, Lily mused, watching Hap whistling
down the lane, I’ve got half a root down, and five years to grow
the rest of it. There’s lots in this world who’ve got less than
that. By Halloween Rob had a deed and Lily became a tenant.

30

1

Stoker arrived home unexpectedly at the end
of the first week of November. His ship had run aground near
Goderich and limped into dry dock there. With only three weeks left
in the season, it was possible the crew would not be asked to make
another trip. Stoker usually headed north to the Bruce lumber camp
on the first of December. So it was three weeks at home – with
Sophie. Lily did not go over, of course, but she kept a wary eye on
the Potts’ place and at night slept lightly, listening for the
telltale sounds.

After a snowy Halloween, Indian summer had
returned more perfect and fragile than ever – a thin, sweet
stratosphere distilled of all impurities. Lily and Violet went for
long strolls across the river flats and the blanched, silent
marshes. They gathered bulrushes and feathered cattails and
milkweed pods whose silk parachutes sailed happily anywhere the
wind swivelled them. Coming home from Hazel’s late one afternoon,
Lily saw Stoker and Sophie with Bricky between them (Wee Sue had
gone ‘into service’ in September), ambling towards the flats at the
back of their property with a slow ease that bespoke comfort,
familiarity and trust. Against the setting sun they were a single
etched silhouette. Lily hurried on, repassing a pang of envy or
regret. Next morning she woke with a start at the slap of a screen
door, and stumbled to the window in time to see Stoker and Bricky
walking north-east towards First bush, their claret hunting caps
winking in the early sun. Later in the morning, after her first
wash was complete, she saw Sophie flopped in her rocking chair on
the verandah, fanning herself languorously. She had somehow
squeezed into her orange print dress, the effort leaving her
strapped for breath. She waved at Lily. Lily waved back, then
rejoined Violet in the steaming laundry room. At dusk she heard
singing and looked out to see Stoker and Bricky cavorting around a
huge bonfire onto which they were tossing, on the off-beat, armfuls
of stubble, husks and other refuse of the spent harvest. Sophie was
watching them as the hens eddied about her feet and the sow sighed
a few yards away among her suckling.

The next day Bricky went off with Rob to
sleep overnight in “the little barn” and join in a squirrel-shoot
organized by the McCourt boys. Stoker had given him a new .410
gauge with instructions that he was to use it only under Rob’s
supervision. To Lily’s surprise, Rob walked over to Potts’ and
spent several hours with Stoker (“shooting the breeze, he’s a great
guy, Ma, he’s got a million stories”) before leading Bricky off on
his first all-male expedition. Even though Brad was staying over
with one of his Sarnia chums and the house was strangely empty,
Lily fell into the first deep sleep she’d had in some time.

She was wakened, not ungently, by the twang
of a banjo, a quarter-note chord – tart and sensual. Then Sophie’s
laughter in the rich full calliope of its range from skirring
giggle to braying chortle – rude, skeptical, and embracing: a
chocolate taunt. Then: low musical murmurings that might have been
leftover choruses from a dozen love-songs. A long quiet. Then the
crash of flung glass followed by a descanting, tittering hysteria
(that could have been meant as hilarity) rescued at the brink by
the banjo’s bawdy accompaniment. This lewd invitation reached
Lily’s ears intact and aflame, until Sophie crushed it with a
stuttering guffaw. Words now: projectile and buckler; Sophie’s
taunting mockery above the lumbering accusation beneath it. Lily
was half-way across her yard and flinging a kimono over her shift
when she heard the clatter of struck furniture and Sophie’s
gloating whoop. Then she heard Stoker grunt reflexively and the
smack of flesh on flesh. Lily flung open the door and barged
straight into the Potts’ kitchen.

Two lamps had been smashed
and lay smouldering in corners. Only one small oil-flame illumined
the faces which froze before Lily’s intrusion. Sophie was sitting
on the table where she’d landed after being struck by Stoker, a
frying pan distended from her right hand, the left side of her face
still bearing the livid imprint of his fingers, her eyes braced for
the coming shock of pain but still able to bring a glance of
incomprehension and dismay upon Lily’s presence. Stoker had raised
his fist again in such a way as to strike a backhand blow on
Sophie’s other cheek, but at the sound of the door opening he had
stopped it long enough to stare down anyone foolhardy enough to
enter this territory. He turned the alcoholic jet of his gaze upon
the interloper: “
Who the fuck are
you?
”

Lily edged slowly into the pool of light.
“You know who I am, Stoker Potts,” she said as softly as if they
were at tea together.

“
Go home, Lil, go home,”
Sophie said in a ghastly whisper just before the pain hit and she
crumpled noisily to the floor, tipping over the table.

“
No good layin’ there like
a whimperin’ pig,” Stoker said, turning away from Lily and
advancing towards Sophie, “get your fat ass off the floor an’ take
your lumps.” An egg-size bump wobbled at the base of his
skull.

Sophie put up a hand, not to protect herself
but to sooth the stinging welts on the left side of her face. She
began shuffling backwards like a paraplegic tortoise, whimpering
and all the while attempting to find a way to get herself upright.
Lily stepped between Stoker and Sophie. She looked directly into
Stoker’s eyes, less than a foot away from him.

They were infernos, not merely of the rage
and outrage and brute animosity she expected to see but also of
self-loathing and frantic, contending appetites. “Get outta my way,
you interferin’ bitch, or I’ll bash your face in, too.”

Behind her Sophie was scrabbling to her
feet. “Do what he says. It’s none of your business.”

“
Hear the woman, eh? She
wants you to butt outta our business.” Despite the slurring of his
voice, Lily could see plainly that he wasn’t stupid drunk, that he
probably
never
was, since he appeared to use alcohol as some sort of fiery
fuel which he rapidly consumed.

“
Get outta here, Lily
Marshall,” Sophie cried from the narrow hallway behind them, her
words sandwiched between choking sobs. “What right’ve you got
pokin’ your nose in here?”

Stoker was trying to peer around Lily to see
where Sophie was going, but Lily wouldn’t release him from her
gaze.

“
You hear me, Lily? Get the
fuck otta here!”

“
Don’t you try runnin’ off,
woman!” Stoker shouted, his spittle sizzling on Lily’s cheek. But
he didn’t move an inch. He was trapped between the sideboard and
the overturned table, with Lily ahead and a coward’s retreat in
back of him. His quarry’s sobs were fading down the hallway towards
safety.

“
You gonna move, bitch, or
do I beat the shit outta you, then outta her, an’ then come back
here an’ give you somethin’ you been needin’ for years!”

“
Go ahead,” Lily said
quietly, “beat up a woman half your size an’ brag about it all over
the Alley.”

Stoker went back on his heels.

“
You don’t think I’d keep
my mouth shut like that poor creature back there?” Lily
said.

For a second nothing moved, or spoke. Then a
door rattled, squeaked open, slammed shut, and a latch dropped into
a slot.

“
Well, you bitch, she’s
safe now.”

“
I ain’t leavin’ here till
you promise not to touch her,” Lily said.

Stoker turned upon Lily the full blaze of
the bottled fury in his eyes. They burned like bitterroot. They
scalded the tears that assaulted them.

“
Have a drink with me,”
Stoker said, tilted forward in the chair with his head in his
hands. “Please.”

Lily drew up a stool beside him and steadied
his grip as he poured out two glasses of whiskey from a jug. Lily
sipped at hers while Stoker downed his in two gulps.

“
I need to
talk.”

“
People’ve told me I’m a
good listener,” Lily said.

Stoker dredged up a smile for her but it did
little for his face which, drained of its prevailing animus, was a
hollow, devastated mask. The voice he chose came from a person deep
inside and intricately hidden, unaided by external expression. Lily
stared into the moon-shadows around the stove and simply
listened.

“
Nobody on this Alley would
believe it, but I love that woman. I never meant to hurt her, not
once. We been together a long, long time, ever since we was
practically kids ourselves, and I only hit her a few times. I love
her; I never, never meant to hurt her.” He took Lily’s silence as
reassurance of some kind, and continued.

“
We got married real young,
an’ God we was happy. We lived in Sarnia for a long while an’ we
took some boat trips together an’ when Burton an’ Marlene was born,
I was the happiest soul alive. Sophie was beautiful then; I know
you find that hard to believe, but she was, and I worshipped the
ground she walked on. I swear it.”

He paused while they both
contemplated such an improbability, and Lily poured herself a half
a glass of whiskey. “Everybody on this lane thinks I’m a
wife-beatin’ bastard, and I guess I am, but they don’t know what I
been through. It was her idea to move here when I first went
stokin’ on the boats, an’ she promised on her grandmother’s grave
we’d move into a nice house for the kids’ sake just as soon as we
got the money. And I made plenty of money, slavin’ in the boiler
rooms of a dozen stinkin’ tubs an’ cuttin’ timber in the township
before we cut all the trees down. But she would spend it, every
penny of it; I’d leave her with the money an’ by the time I got
back she’d squandered it, spoilin’ the kids or givin’ it away to
her poor relations up in Huron an’ havin’ buggerall to show for it.
It drove me
mad
,
so I started hidin’ some of it an’ savin’ up to move out of this,
this
pig-sty!
”

He assumed Lily was
assessing the room they were in, its smell of unwashed dishes and
vegetable rot. “At first I tried to keep it lookin’ respectable,
’cause I could see the older kids was gettin’ ashamed of it; I
built the verandah an’ the back sheds an’ shingled the roof an’ put
a coat of gray paint on the outside. Then she took up midwifin’ an’
things got worse; she was never home night or day, the house turned
into a garbage dump, I was desperate to move so I told her about
the money I’d hidden away; an’ it was then I knew she would never
move from this place, she actually
liked
it here. I bought the seven
kids we had then some new boots an’ clothes and I went off for the
winter to the bush up north.” He located the whiskey glass and
drank. “
I ran away from it
all.
”

Lily listened for any sound from the back
room.

“
I know I’m to blame,
that’s what drives me crazy sometimes. I should’ve come home an’
grabbed her an’ carted her off to a nice home in Sarnia an’ laid
down the law an’ took care of my kids. But you don’t know how
Sophie can be. She’d see me thinkin’ that way an’ she’d start to
sweet-talk me an’ get ’round me like she’s done since she was
sixteen. Even now, as fat an’ ugly as she seems to other people,
she’s got a way with me. Till I get mad,” he added
softly.

“
Sophie has a way with
folks,” Lily said.

Stoker finally looked up. He continued to
speak calmly but his words were blurred by the aftertaste of rage.
“She drove my children away. All but Bricky. She spoiled them an’
beat them an’ doted on them an’ left them to fend for themselves.
She was a slob and a heathen. But they loved her, every last one of
them, an’ yet every time I come home, she’s driven another one
away.”

“
An’ Marlene?”

Stoker stared at Lily as if
realizing for certain what he had assumed all along: that Lily
might be made to understand. “Every hypocrite on this lane knows I
slapped Marlene an’ that she left an’ ain’t never spoken to either
of us since. But none of ’em knows why. Only me. An’ Soph.” He
hesitated, then went on with vehemence that was more menacing by
being whispered than shouted. “That
hooer
in there did it right in front
of her own children! Can you imagine that? Hardly a curtain between
her an’ Marlene lyin’ there in the next room, listenin’ to such
disgust an’ filth.” His hands shook helplessly on his knees and he
started to rock back and forth in the chair.