Sunny Dreams (9 page)

On that Saturday, July 11th, the temperature reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit, an all-time record. People were dying every day, mostly older folks. The day before, the Friday, a nine-year-old Norwood boy had died of a heart attack at Winnipeg Beach. I didn’t know him. He lived on the other side of St. Mary’s Road. But I think that Saturday was the worst day for dying. We hadn’t had a day under 90 for over a week.

Isabelle came and called on me that night. I introduced her to Dad and Helen and Jackson, who were all sitting on the verandah.

“Hi,” she said. She nodded at Jackson. “I’ve heard about you.”

We all laughed, a bit nervously

“Yeah, I’m famous,” he said, and we laughed a little more.

Isabelle and I went up to my room and she convinced me that we should go for a swim in the Red River. I was hesitant, never having done it before.

“I can’t believe that,” she said. “How could you live so close to the river and never have swum in it? That’s what it’s there for.”

Just sixteen, Isabelle was several months younger than me, but she seemed older, not to look at — she was just a little bit of a thing — but she knew stuff: she knew where the lady bookie lived, she knew where to get booze if you didn’t care how good it tasted, she had seen a dick, as she called it, before she turned seven, one that hadn’t belonged to her dad or brother. Stuff like that. I admired her.

Dick was a good word for it. I decided to adopt it.

Isabelle had transferred in to our school last fall from one that was run by nuns. Isabelle had a thing about nuns; she didn’t like them. That was the first thing she ever said to me: I don’t like nuns.

“Why?” I had asked.

“Because they made my knuckles swell and my ears ring.” She’d rubbed one hand over the knuckles on the other.

In June she had told me that that year, grade eleven, was her last at school. She had to quit to help support her family.

“Oh no,” I’d said. “You have to go back in the fall.”

“Can’t,” she said.

“You have to.”

“Can’t,” she said again and that had been that.

I hadn’t seen her since that conversation in June.

“So did you find a job?” I asked now as we made our way in the quickening dark down Lyndale Drive toward the rowing club.

“Yeah, I work as a courier,” Isabelle said. “I use my bike and go to different offices downtown.”

“That sounds all right,” I said.

“Yeah, you hear lots of gossip when you deal with so many people in a day,” she said. “It can be kind of fun. That’s how I heard about the guy with the two casts.”

“Jackson.”

“Yeah.”

“Really?’

“Really.”

“Gee whiz, news really travels.”

“Yup.”

“What exactly did you hear about him?”

“Just that some punk hobo fell off a roof in the Flats, broke both his arms and was staying with a family here, right inside their house. I didn’t know it was your family.”

“He’s not a punk hobo,” I said. “He was educated by Jesuits.”

Isabelle laughed. “I’ll pass that on.”

“Please do.”

I don’t know why I defended him. I wanted to tell Isabelle about what my aunt had done but the words caught in my throat. Another day, perhaps, when it had had more time to settle.

Instead I told her about my job at Eaton’s and the nutty letters I had to answer.

“Sitting at a desk would be hard for me,” she said. “Too much like school. God, I hated school!”

Soon we were standing on the dock at the rowing club with our bathing costumes under our clothes. I had told Dad and Helen that I was walking Isabelle partway home.

I couldn’t find the moon or even one star behind the clouds and dust. The river was low and black and almost quiet. The smell was wet and good — the same as always. Helen would disagree; she thought the river stunk of unmentionable things. Just for fun I used to try to get her to mention them but she never would.

Isabelle sat down and took off her sneakers. I did the same. Then we took off our damp clothes and laid them on the dock. I tried the water with the toes of one foot. Warmish cool. I was worried about the certain filth, Helen’s unmentionables, but kept it to myself. I didn’t want Isabelle to think I was squeamish; she was so doggone brave.

“Don’t dive,” said Isabelle. “You never know what’s in there.”

I was sweating from fear as much as from the hot night air but I followed her into the water, slipping in feet first and pushing out from the wooden dock. I very much didn’t want to touch the bottom.

“Can you feel the current?” asked Isabelle.

“Yeah, but it’s okay.” I’d been worried about that, too. You heard so much about the swift current of the Red and how it sweeps you away before you know it.

“It’s not so strong when the water’s low like this from no rain,” Isabelle said. “But there are always swirling eddies near the bridge. We won’t swim too close to it.”

I’m a strong swimmer. My dad taught me on excursions to Lake Winnipeg since as far back as when my mum was alive. One of my favourite memories is learning to float. I can’t remember his instructions, but whatever they were they worked. One moment I was flailing about, all frantic arms and legs, and the next I was calm, riding the gentle movement of the lake, face down in gladness.

“Look,” said Isabelle and pointed toward the dock.

Two dark forms moved about in the vicinity of our clothes.

“It’s the Willis brothers,” said Isabelle.

“Stay away from our clothes, creeps!” she shouted.

I heard a high-pitched giggle, almost girlish.

“There’s someone else with them,” Isabelle said. “There’s three of them.”

“I only see two,” I said.

“It’s that ugly Botham guy.”

“Dirk? No, it couldn’t be,” I said. “What would he be doing hanging around with the Willises?”

“It’s him all right,” said Isabelle.”

“Unh-uh, no way,” I said. “You think Dirk is ugly?”

“Ugleee,” shouted Isabelle.

I didn’t have much hope for our clothes.

We swam out into the middle of the river. I did the breaststroke mostly and the sidestroke, not keen on losing my face in the water. I wasn’t comfortable enough to give myself up to the experience like Isabelle, who dove under and came up yards away, did the butterfly, hooted quietly as she did the back crawl. She positively frolicked.

There was moving silver on the water from the lamplight and vehicles on the Norwood Bridge. It looked like the liquid mercury we had messed around with in the chemistry lab last term. I kept the dolphin movements of my friend in sight as I swam steadily toward the far shore. The current was slight and I gradually surrendered to the water and felt as though I could swim forever.

When I reached the other side I clambered up the bank, grasping hold of the sturdy stems of weeds. It felt like wild rhubarb, overlooked by tramps and wives scouring the banks for something to round out their evening meals.

Isabelle was more puffed out than me, her energy depleted by her playfulness.

We laughed for a while at nothing in particular.

“Let’s walk back over the bridge,” Isabelle said when she caught her breath. “I’m too exhausted to swim anymore.”

I could have swum Lake Winnipeg that night but I didn’t want to go alone so I climbed alongside her up to the bridge, stepping on thistles and sharp stones all the way. Shouts and wolf whistles bounced off us as we crossed the bridge. Finally we reached the dock and our shoes; at least they had left us our shoes.

That night it didn’t drop below 82 degrees and on Sunday we were back up to 104. In the morning I walked back to the rowing club to look for our clothes in the light of day. They were hidden in some bushes not far out of sight. Good. Stupid boys! Then I saw that they had been torn to shreds. Not so good. Some of the cuts were so clean I knew they had used knives. I didn’t like knives.

I looked out across the brown river to where the water met the dried gumbo on the other side, several feet of it, above the water line, naked in the sun. It shouldn’t have been that way. The water yielded to the land far too soon. I knew that I would never swim in the river again; it had been a one and only thing.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the boys would destroy our clothes. I had thought the worst that could happen was that they would hide them or maybe take them away so that we’d never find them. This was past being mean and it scared me.

Surely it couldn’t have been Dirk with the Willises. Gwen couldn’t be in love with a knife-wielding maniac. I was pretty certain that Isabelle was mistaken about that. I picked up all our clothes and took them home. It wasn’t clear to me what I would do with them or even if I would tell Isabelle about it, but I wanted to put our shorts and shirts somewhere safe. I stuffed them into a brown paper bag and stashed it in the back of my closet.

Fraser Foote phoned me on Sunday afternoon and we made a date for the following Friday.

Clouds drifted around all day on Monday, tantalizing dark clouds that promised more than dust. I stared out the window on the far side of the office and thought about the rain that hadn’t fallen yet. When I left the mail-order building at five o’clock, the temperature felt downright cool. Someone said it had dropped fifteen degrees in three hours. The wind was fierce and on my short walk to the streetcar I held my head down against the driving uptown dirt. I started to run when the thunder began. It was so close it felt like it was inside of me tearing me up like a crazed fetus.

“Please don’t let lightning strike my house,” I said out loud, “or me, or anyone. Don’t let it strike that horrid Jackson Shirt.”

I didn’t make it home before the rain came, but I did make it onto the streetcar. When we got over the Norwood Bridge the driver stopped to wait out the torrential downpour. It didn’t last long, maybe half an hour, but a huge amount of rain fell. Sirens screamed from every direction. They sounded like they came from a giant firehouse in the sky.

“Good luck!” the driver said when he let me off at Walmer Street and Claremont, by the Buena Vista Court.

I took off my shoes and stockings; under the circumstances I didn’t care who saw me. My sandals were new and my stockings pure silk with no snags so far; I didn’t want to ruin them.

A tree and a hydro pole were down at the corner of Walmer and Lawndale. A small crowd of boys and mothers had gathered round to stare. The dads, like me, were making their way home from work. The streets were mud soup on my trek home. Even where gravel had been laid the dirt won out.

Jackson’s casts would have washed away in a rain like that; I was glad the loathsome beggar had a roof over his head.

He and my dad and Aunt Helen were out in the front yard surveying the damage when I trudged up with my shoes in my hand. The sun was already trying to poke through as the fast-moving clouds shifted and then covered it again. I saw an invisible spidery thread, impervious to catastrophe, joining Helen and Jackson through branches and air currents.

“Thank God you’re home,” Helen said when she saw me.

“Violet!” said my dad.

I swear, I don’t think he realized I was out in all that weather.

“Go in and change your clothes, honey,” he said. “You’re soaking wet.”

I looked down at my drenched self. My brassiere and garter belt were clearly defined beneath my flimsy summer dress and slip. All my small curves and tiny bumps showed themselves through the sodden material.

They all stared; Helen stared the worst. My dad looked away as I started toward the steps.

“If it was any less than two inches of rain that fell I’ll eat my hat,” he said as he piled fallen branches to one side of the yard.

“I’ll turn on the radio and see how the rest of the city’s coping,” I said.

“The power’s out,” Jackson and Helen said together.

I barrelled into their spidery thread to get to the house. It didn’t stop me but it didn’t break either — just stretched and stretched.

Upstairs, I looked in my full-length mirror and saw what the others had seen. I didn’t care. I cared that my dad saw, but not the other two. I knew that if I were compared naked to Aunt Helen in any contest, anywhere, I would win. Unless the contest was for most matronly figure or lowest hanging breasts.

I pictured Aunt Helen at the top of the Ferris wheel at the Casey Shows. I watched her lean over to wave at someone far far below. She toppled clear out of her seat and fell end over flowery end into the complicated machinery of the rickety old ride. Maybe she had been waving at Jackson and now he was left to pull her twisted body from the wreckage. Her arm came off in his hand. And he was horrified to see that her head was no longer attached to her body. He ran screaming from the scene into the path of a pair of runaway horses and met his own bloody end.

It was eerie how the inside of me transformed without my being aware of it, changed over short time periods like the combined liquids in my Petri dish in chemistry class. These altered feelings toward Jackson and Helen tripped me up far more than any experiment in that unfathomable laboratory.

I put on new underwear and a clean but well-worn sundress that I wore for working around the house and yard. After throwing my wet clothes into the bathtub I towelled my hair and looked out my bedroom window at the destruction.

Thank goodness for my dad. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have known where or who to be. His befuddlement at watching me walk out of the aftermath of the storm and his dismay at my see-through clothes were typical Dad behaviour and I savoured it. It was normal, unlike so many other things going on around there. I would have appreciated a bit more concern for my well-being as opposed to my transparent clothes, but I supposed I hadn’t been in any real danger.

Back downstairs, I tried the radio. The power was still off. I helped my dad with branches while Helen went inside to fix supper. I didn’t know where Jackson was, but he was out of the way of my dad and me.

The four of us ate at the kitchen table. It was a subdued supper; my dad did most of the talking — about the storm and the destruction and the state of the roads and how he was going to eat his hat. His ignorance of what had occurred between Helen and Jackson saved us. The three of us could manage it. The four of us wouldn’t have had a chance.

After supper we ate ice cream on the front verandah in the silver afterlight of the rain. A car drove by and raised no dust. Warren, Gwen’s little brother, came along with his dog, Tippy.

“Anything I can help you folks with?” he asked.

He had his red Super-Streak wagon with him. He and his wagon and his dog were covered in mud from stem to stern. His slingshot stuck out of the back pocket of his trousers. At the ready.

“Thanks a lot, Warren,” said my dad. “I think we’ve got things pretty well under control here. We didn’t get hit as badly as some.”

“Would you like some ice cream?” asked Helen.

“Yes, please!” said Warren. “Ma’am,” he added, a little late.

The Walkers had to watch every penny, so ice cream didn’t turn up often at their table. They were more likely to have bread pudding or many times nothing at all.

I went to get him a bowl of Neapolitan and he sat in his wagon to eat it so we didn’t have to tell him that he was too filthy to come inside, even as far as the verandah. When he was done he left a little in the bowl for his dog to finish up.

Tippy was the best dog, a quiet dog. She never barked. She was so smart you’d swear there was more going on in her head than regular canine thoughts. She was a mongrel, a cross between a collie and something that didn’t have a pointed nose.

“Thanks kindly,” Warren said and set his bowl on the top step. So long, now.”

“So long, Warren,” we called out, one big happy family.

“I wish Warren belonged to us,” I said and then I wished I hadn’t when I saw the look on my dad’s face.

Sunny rarely came up, all these years later. It wasn’t like with Gwen’s dad — we were allowed to talk about her — we just didn’t. But she hung in the moist air now, hovered at about chest level for a few moments.

“He’s a good little fella,” Dad said, breaking the silence. “I like him, too.”

“No one deserves Gert Walker for a mum,” I said.

“She couldn’t be all bad if Gwen and Warren have turned out as well as they have,” said my dad.

“Gwen’s not so great,” I said.

“Violet, she’s your best chum!” said Helen.

“Actually, I don’t think she is,” I said. “I think I’m starting to prefer Isabelle.”

“Honestly!” said Helen. “The fickleness of youth!”

“Yeah, well, that’s me,” I said. “Youthful. Fickle. It could be worse. I could be a nymphomaniac.”

I don’t know why I said it; I hadn’t realized I was going to. Maybe it was the small sense of well-being I felt in the aftermath of the storm: we had all survived, had we not?

My dad’s mouth opened after I said it, but no words came out. Maybe he thought he misheard me. Helen stood up and ordered me to help her carry our empty dishes into the house. Major Helen. Jackson laughed out loud for just a second, an abrupt, heh! and then stopped himself.

It turned out it was more like one and a half inches of rain that fell so we teased my dad the next day about which hat he was going to eat.

“I think it should be your winter hat with the ear flaps,” said Helen. “Now that’s what I call a hat!”

Even Jackson joined in. “I think your straw hat might be the easiest to digest,” he said.

My dad laughed.

That day was as hot as Hades after the sun came up, but after that there was a break in the heat for a few days.

One person had been struck by lightning during the storm, a man from Ile des Chenes. We read about it in the paper.

Norwood got off easy compared to some sections of the city. St. James and Fort Garry were the worst hit. There were roofs blown off buildings, windows smashed and power lines down all over the place. A streetcar burned on Logan Avenue when wires fell down on top of it.

A few downed branches and a little seepage in the basement where an eave fell away from the house were hardly worth mentioning compared to having your roof blown off.