The Birthday Lunch (22 page)

Clive Alyward is waiting in the driveway. In half an hour he must attend Polly Virtue’s funeral at St. Paul’s United Church where Polly was organist for fifty-odd years. Clive told Hal’s son that he would be here until 2:15. It is now 2:20 and if the son does not appear within five minutes, Clive will leave; he would wait ten minutes for the daughter but for the rude son, five minutes.

At 2:25 Clive sees the rental car turn into the driveway and there is Hal sitting beside the son. Clive approaches the passenger side of the car. “It is good to see you, Hal,” he says. Under the circumstances, some clients would be offended by this cordial greeting but not Hal McNab. Clive nods toward the wooden box balanced on Hal’s knees. “I assume that is the container.”

“It is.”

The son leans across the seat “We thought we would leave the container and ashes with you and pick them up later.”

“That will not be possible,” Clive says, meaning inconvenient. “Now is convenient.”

The son gets out from behind the wheel, opens the trunk and hands Clive the cardboard box. “I will bring the container,” Hal says and follows Clive up the steps to the office. Clive sets the ashes on the desk and takes the container from Hal. “I’ve never seen a box like this,” he says.

“It’s a ditty box,” Hal says. “Sailors in the merchant marines used to keep their personal items inside them. That’s why it has a key.” Hal turns the key and opens the box. “I sanded and oiled the wood and lined the inside.”

“A beautiful job,” Clive says. In all his years of undertaking, he has never seen a more elegant container for the deceased.
“The transfer will only take a few minutes,” he says. “Why don’t you and your son sit on the front veranda where there are comfortable chairs?” In the summer, Clive will sometimes sit on the wicker settee behind the ivy where he cannot be seen by passersby. It was there that he finished reading
A Judgement in Stone
. Clive expects the son to remain inside the car, but the young man is not so angry and contrary today and joins his father on the front veranda.

Fifteen minutes later, the ditty box is stowed on the floor of the rental, which is parked in the driveway of Better Old Than New. Matt follows his father through the front door. Hal opens the red velvet drapes and light pours into the showroom. Matt is impressed.

“Quite the place you have here, Dad,” he says.

Hal points to the cranberry-glass chandelier above Matt’s head. “That belonged to my mother.”

“Grandmother Grace,” Matt says. When their family lived in Dartmouth they used to drive across Macdonald Bridge on Sundays and have noon dinner with his father’s parents. Matt was fond of his grandmother but not of his grandfather. “I liked Grandmother Grace,” he says, “but I was afraid of Murray.”

“So was I,” Hal says.

Matt follows the scarlet runner to the back wall. “What’s behind that curtain?” he says.

“The stairs to Ernie Thompson’s apartment.”

“He lives here?”

“Ernie’s dead but when he owned the store he lived upstairs.”

Matt strolls around. “Two more long-case clocks,” he says.

“I have four altogether: these two here and two at home, but none of them work,” Hal says. “The parts are expensive and have to be installed by a clockmaker.”

Nodding toward the cherry wood étagère and the fruitwood armoire, both in prime condition, Matt asks what price Hal is charging.

“The cherry wood is twelve hundred and the armoire a thousand.”

“That’s low,” Matt says. “You could make three times that in Calgary.”

“Well, I am not in Calgary and I know the market here. You set prices right or you won’t be able to sell.”

“Have you sold any big pieces?”

“I sold a corner cupboard,” Hal says and before Matt can ask the price, Hal explains that for the time being he is relying on items that tourists can take away in their cars: mirrors, chairs, washstands, end tables, boxes, hooked mats, wall hangings.

Matt checks the prices on some of the smaller items: a marble top washstand, $550; a rocking cradle, $600; a red-haired doll on skis, $275.

“That’s a Mary Hoyer doll I picked up at an estate auction,” Hal says. “They don’t make dolls like her anymore.”

The doll would be perfect for Jenny who is learning to ski: the red hair, the red ski outfit, the skis and poles. Matt knows that if he tells his father Jenny would like the doll, Hal will give it to him. He cannot afford to give it to him but he will give it to him. When Matt and Trish moved in together,
Hal showed up at their Halifax apartment with an electric frying pan, a toaster, a kettle and a coffee percolator. If Trish had not insisted that Matt choose one, his father would have given them all four.

“Are there many customers who try to beat you down?”

“A few.” Hal points to the tasteful sign:
Prices Non-negotiable
. “I had that printed after a customer bought your great-grandmother Harriet’s desk for half what it was worth.”

“You should put a sign on the Trans-Canada Highway.”

“I know,” Hal says, “and I will when the money isn’t so tight.”

Matt doesn’t mention the witness statements signed by Curtis Parlee and Corrie Spears, but before he and Trish leave, he will tell his father that they are being sent to the insurance company on his behalf.

Claudia leads the way down the tractor path, the same path she and her mother walked many times when they wanted what Lily called a quick dip in the river. Trish has had the presence of mind to bring a pair of scissors and a basket that she holds while Claudia snips the flowers: purple phlox along the embankment; daisies, buttercups and asters edging the meadow. Trish asks if the farmer minds them picking flowers on his land.

“Mr. McKnight?” Claudia says. “He doesn’t mind. When my parents lived up there …” Claudia nods to the house at the top of the hill, “he told my mother to pick whatever weeds she wanted.”

Trish points to the silky fronds at her feet. “Snip those, will you?”

“What are they?”

“Squirrels’ tails. When I worked in Banff I used to pick them for my bedroom. They’re like ferns.”

Banff. Claudia asks Trish if she and Matt were living together in Banff. A bold question but Trish doesn’t mind. She laughs. “Not right away. Before we met I had been living with a ski bum and your brother with a divorcee, but after Matt and I met, that all changed.”

Claudia did not know about the divorcee.

Trish asks Claudia if she is with somebody.

“Not
with
exactly. He’s more than twice my age and one of these days I intend to break it off,” Claudia says.

On the way back to town, they pass wild roses growing beside the road. “Stop!” Trish says and Claudia pulls the Honda onto the shoulder. Oblivious of the thorns, Trish snips clusters of roses and hands them to Claudia. “Cut more!” Claudia says. “I want to give some to Sophie Power.”

They are approaching Roachville when Trish says, “I almost forgot: We have to stop at Dominion to pick up the crown pork roast I ordered. And apples, I need apples.”

“I hope my brother remembers to pick up the dry cleaning and the wine.”

“He’ll remember,” Trish says, “Matt never forgets the wine.”

——

Sophie Power is in the kitchen making cinnamon buns for the after church coffee hour when she hears the doorbell. Passing through the front room, she picks up a whiff of the newspaper she burnt this morning, the newspaper that will set tongues wagging. Sophie opens the door and there stands Lily’s daughter. “Hello Mrs. Power,” Claudia says, “I brought you some wild roses.”

“Wild roses. Oh my, when I lived on the farm, I used to grow roses,” Sophie says, thinking of the roses that grew outside her kitchen window.

While Claudia tells her neighbour that the family appreciates the meals she has given them, Sophie stares at the scuff marks on her sneakers, but she looks up when Claudia asks if she will join the family for supper one day soon. Sophie is about to refuse when she remembers her daughter’s lecture about learning to receive as well as to give. “Thank you, Claudia,” Sophie says, “I look forward to that.”

The McNabs have finished Sophie’s chicken stew along with a bottle of wine and any minute now are expecting to hear from Welland. Matt opens a second bottle and they continue sitting in the kitchen where a soothing breeze slides through the open window and the glowing circle of Hal’s cigarette bobs up and down in the fading light. “Welland should have arrived at Adair’s by now,” Hal says.

“Maybe he is waiting for a moose to get off the road,” Trish says, but nobody laughs.

“Instead of calling he might have decided to come straight here,” Claudia says. “He did say he wanted to see us tonight?”

Matt hasn’t seen Welland since those Sunday dinners on South Park Street when he was a boy. He asks his father what his uncle is like.

“I don’t know.”

“Were you close?”

“No. We had nothing in common except our parents.” Hal butts out the cigarette and lights another. “Father favoured my brother because he was the smart one and always brought home a perfect report card. I was ashamed to bring home my report card and when I told Father I threw mine away, he took off his belt and thrashed my backside.”

“Was Welland ever thrashed?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Why was Grandfather so brutish and cruel?”

“Mother blamed it on Father’s having served as a medical officer with Strathcona’s Horse in the Boer War. She told me that when he returned from the war, he was not the gentle man she had agreed to marry.”

Hal is not in the mood to tell the story of how Welland was so smart he skipped a grade, which meant that Hal had to endure the embarrassment of being in the same grade as his clever brother. One afternoon when the teacher had to attend a meeting, Welland was called upon to take over the class. As soon as Welland stood at Mr. Sinclair’s desk, Hal became the class clown, cracking jokes, making faces whenever Welland wrote something on the blackboard. Hal was counting on the fact that his classmates liked him better than they liked his brother and kept the ruckus going until Welland began to stutter. By the time Mr. Sinclair returned, Welland had retreated
to his seat and the class was in an uproar. To his credit, Welland never told Mr. Sinclair, or their parents, that he had been humiliated by Hal and the brothers finished the term avoiding one another.

There are more Welland stories but Hal is too tired for stories. He and his family sit in exhausted silence until Claudia reminds them of tomorrow. Tomorrow, the day they are dreading, the day they would rather not arrive. “You go to bed,” Claudia says, “I’ll phone Adair’s and leave a message for Welland to call us first thing in the morning.”

Downstairs, Laverne has already laid out tomorrow’s clothes: a black suit and white silk blouse, black shoes and her mother’s pearls. She has had a long bath, washed and pincurled her hair, put on her nightgown, painted her fingernails and is now sitting on the bed. Beside her on the night table is the pale green vase and a bundle of mail. Without Hennie’s reminder, it wouldn’t have occurred to Laverne to take her post-office-box key with her so that she could pick up the mail on the way home. Laverne opens the sympathy cards. It seems the entire high school staff including the janitor, Wally Danson, has sent individual sympathy cards. And there is a flowery card from Wendy, the insolent student who Laverne has caught making faces behind her back. She does not open the envelope with
Robbie Devine
written on it and puts it aside. A Grade 11 student, Robbie has the striking dark looks of Thomas Kimble, the student whose presence in Laverne’s trailer prompted her sudden departure from Middle Musquodoboit.

The upstairs apartment is in darkness but Hal is wide awake, worrying about how he and the kids—he still thinks of Matt and Claudia as kids—will get through tomorrow without breaking down. Lily would not want them breaking down, she would want them to keep their heads up. Back in the days when he, Lily and the kids lived in Dartmouth and Hal was still selling prophylactics, douches and vaginal jellies for a cheap outfit called Templeton, Lily would often tell him to keep his head up.
Keep your head up and hold on
, she would say.
Something better is bound to come along
.

If Hal had not been silenced by exhaustion, he might have told his children that thanks to their Uncle Welland, something better did come along. Apart from Sunday dinners with their parents on South Park Street, the brothers seldom saw one another: Welland and his then wife, Marilyn, lived on the Halifax side of the harbour near the university and Hal, Lily and the kids on the Dartmouth side of the harbour. But one Saturday out of the blue, Welland telephoned Hal and asked if he would like to join him and his med-school pals for a beer at the Lord Nelson. Would he? Well, of course he would. Leaving Lily and the kids to their supper, he put on a shirt and tie and drove over the Macdonald Bridge, parked on Dresden Row and made his way to the tavern. After Welland introduced Hal to his buddies, he ignored him. Unused to being shut out of a conversation, Hal nursed a beer and wondered why Welland had asked him to come. Half an hour dragged by and Hal had pretty well decided to head home when Welland waved over a latecomer and urged him to sit beside Hal. “Hal,” Welland said, “I’d like you to meet a former med-school buddy of mine,
Phil Seaborn. Phil is regional manager for Merck Pharmaceuticals.” Hal never asked Welland if he knew Phil was looking for another salesman. He might have known but Hal wants to believe he was offered the job because he and Phil hit it off so well.

Working for Merck was a whole different ball game. For one thing, it wasn’t a two-bit, cheesy company and offered Hal twice the salary Templeton paid. Later, when Hal began working out of Sussex, Merck not only paid the moving expenses, they leased a ’
61
Dodge Challenger for him to use. Hal earned every cent Merck paid him. The pill, cortisone, Valium and the crazy drugs were coming down the line and coming down fast and Hal spent weeknights in one motel after another hunched over the
Merck Manual of Medical Information
to keep himself informed. Hal rarely missed the chance to drop the names of the doctors McNab and was quick to mention that he attended Dalhousie University and had first-year Chemistry under his belt. Armed with these tactics and a glib, good-natured charm, Hal bluffed his way into doctors’ offices carrying samples of the newest pharmaceuticals in his briefcase along with a bottle of Glenfiddich. In the sixties, a pharmaceutical salesman was expected to dispense gifts of malt whisky and cartons of cigarettes. But you had to time it right, showing up in the waiting room just as the last patient was leaving. You had to know which doctors were willing to take the time for a wind-down drink while he—not often was the doctor a she—looked over the newest brochures and samples. Hal was a confident, instinctive salesman who was able to bring even the most arrogant doctor round with patience and
humour. Also, he took care to wear a shirt and tie, a Harris tweed jacket, polished shoes.