The Latchkey Kid (3 page)

Mrs. Frizzell had been feeling that victory in this verbal exchange was hers and had been preparing to leave the garden. Now, bent over a box, she nearly choked at this reference to her daughters’ poverty. She jerked herself upright, just in time to intercept a charming smile from Mrs. Stych, as she looked back over her shoulder on her way to her own front door.

Mrs. Frizzell, in a red glare of rage, for a moment imagined Mrs. Stych as a neatly wrapped bundle of well minced beef.

Mrs. Stych had just set down the last of her bags of groceries on the kitchen counter and begun to unpack them, when there was the sound of a heavy truck drawing up outside her house.

“Mother!” almost wailed Mrs. Stych. “And the girls coming for bridge!”

She trotted into the living-room, where three bridge tables had already been set out, and peeped through the picture window.

Her mother was already clambering laboriously down from the seat beside the driver, displaying a lumpy mass of grey woollen stocking and woollen knickers in the process. Her brother was already changing gear, and as soon as the old lady was safely on the sidewalk the vehicle ground noisily forward, with its protesting load of smelly pigs, towards the market.

Mrs. Stych felt a little relieved. At least that humiliating old truck would not be parked outside her door when the girls arrived. She could just imagine the scathing looks with which Mrs. Josephine MacDonald, the president of the Noble Order of Lady Queen Bees, would have regarded it. Perhaps, she hoped guiltily, Joe would return to pick up her mother and take her home before any of the guests arrived.

The old lady’s footsteps could be heard, ponderous and threatening, on the front steps. Mrs. Stych vanished immediately into the kitchen and continued to put away groceries, as if unaware of her mother’s arrival.

The porch door clicked as her mother slowly entered. There was the sound of feet being carefully wiped on the doormat, as once sharply requested by Mrs. Stych soon after her marriage had taken her into polite circles. Two heavy farm boots were then heaved off. The door into the living-room was opened.

“Olga, where are you?” called her mother in Ruthenian, her brown, wrinkled face beaming. “I have come for three hours
while Joe is selling the pigs.”

Mrs. Stych, untying her apron, bustled out of the kitchen and tried not to show her despair.

“Why, Mother!” she exclaimed, embracing the stout shoulders and implanting a kiss on her mother’s cheek. Is it really necessary for Mother to smell eternally of hens? she wondered, and ushered her into the kitchen so that the unmistakable odour should not permeate her carefully prepared living-room.

Mrs. Palichuk sank onto a scarlet kitchen chair and eased off her drab grey winter coat so that it draped over the back, retaining, however, the black kerchief which modestly veiled her hair. She was dressed in a clumsy black skirt and a heavy grey cardigan, and, in honour of the occasion, had put on her best apron, which was white and had been exquisitely embroidered by herself. It always astonished Olga Stych that her mother’s horribly distorted hands, with their thick, horny nails, could produce such delicate embroidery and could paint with such skill the traditional patterns on eggshells at Eastertide.

Mrs. Palichuk planted her stockinged feet squarely on the white and beige tiles of the kitchen floor, and looked around her. She enjoyed exploring the intricacies of her daughter’s kitchen. The electric toaster which turned itself off when the toast was done and the electric beater enthralled her. She was happy enough, however, to return to her own frame house, built by her husband after their first five bitter years, spent living in a sod hut. It was heated by a Quebec stove in the kitchen and she cooked with wood on another iron stove, and no cajoling by her widowed son, Joe, was going to make her alter her ways now.

“Expecting visitors?” Mrs. Palichuk asked, speaking again in Ruthenian.

As usual, Olga answered her in English. “Yeah,” she said, setting the coffee pot on the stove. She took out the electric beater and arranged it to beat cream, while Mrs. Palichuk watched, fascinated. “Eleven for lunch and bridge.”

In her heart Olga Stych hoped her mother would take the hint and depart. Then she realized that the older woman could not go without Joe to transport her, and she wondered what in earth she was to do.

Dimly, Mrs. Palichuk perceived that she was in the way, and it hurt her.

“I won’t disturb you,” she said. “I’ve brought my embroidery – I’ll sit quiet while you play.”

Mrs. Stych rallied herself. “It’s all right, Mother. You’re very welcome. It’s just you don’t play bridge.”

“Oh,” said her mother with a sniff, “I’ll be entertained enough, watching your fine friends.”

Mrs. Stych cringed at this remark. It was bad enough to have to produce a mother who smelled of hens, worse to have all one’s guests disconcerted by the beady eyes of an old country woman. She said nothing, however, but continued her rapid preparations for her guests.

The back screen door slammed and a second later her son Hank padded silently into the kitchen. He was a tall youth with very broad shoulders and a deep chest, a trifle plump like most North American boys, but giving an impression of great physical strength. His skin had a yellowy tinge and he had the same deepset black eyes as his mother and grandmother.

He unzipped his black jacket and flung it on a chair.

“Hi, Ma,” he said mechanically, and then realized that his grandmother was also present. His face lit up. “Hi, Gran,” he said with more enthusiasm, went across to her and embraced her with a bearlike hug.

Laughing and fighting him ineffectually, his grandmother roared pleasantries at him in a mixture of Ruthenian and broken English. At last he let her go, and, puffing happily, she straightened her kerchief and skirt. “How’s school?” she asked in Ruthenian.

Hank spoke no Ruthenian but he could understand the simple sentences his grandmother used – more easily, in fact, than her garbled attempts at English.

He made a wry face and shook his head, his eyes holding, at that moment, the same merry twinkle as his grandmother’s, a gaiety missing from his mother’s expression.

“He don’t work,” said his mother disapprovingly. “Always out somewhere. Did you do your homework last night, Hank?” she asked in a voice devoid of real inquiry.

He was very hungry and answered her query absently. “Yeah, I did.” Then he asked: “What’s cooking, Ma?”

“Got the girls coming for lunch and bridge. Make yourself a sandwich.”

Obediently Hank got a plate, took two slices of bread from the
breadbox, and, after rummaging about in the refrigerator, found some luncheon meat, a glass of milk and a cardboard cup of ice cream. His grandmother watched, her toothless mouth agape.

In all the desperate, toiling years she had been in Canada, neither her husband nor her son had ever made themselves a meal, except on one or two occasions when illness had confined her to bed. Yet here was her grandson fending for himself, leaning amiably against a kitchen cupboard and eating a self-made sandwich, while his mother gave infinite attention to food for women who should have been at home attending to their own children. It was with difficulty that she refrained from making a sharp remark.

After a moment, she managed to say through tight lips: “Come out and visit us on Sunday.”

Hank looked uneasily at her. “I can’t,” he said. “Got a date.” Then, feeling that the reply was too abrupt, he added: “I’ll sure come out and help with any work Uncle Joe wants doing on the next weekend.”

Mrs. Palichuk smiled. “I know you will. Come then, work or no work.”

He agreed, and lounged away to his room, from whence the sound of his portable typewriter could soon be heard.

“He don’t really work,” said his mother crossly. “That typewriter used to go half the night. Now he don’t bring it home from school half the time.”

Mrs. Palichuk came to Hank’s defence.

“He seems to be keeping up his piano playing,” she said. “He was trying out the new one that Joe bought for his little Beth to learn on, and even I knew he was playing well.”

Olga grunted, and then admitted grudgingly: “Yeah, he practises on our old piano in the basement. Does some at school, too, I suppose. But he won’t try competing in the Festival – he’s too lazy.”

“You don’t give him enough time, you and Boyd,” said Mrs. Palichuk. “You never did encourage him. Always out gallivanting, and him home with a sitter or maybe nobody at all, for all I know.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “You didn’t even give him one of those fancy cookies just now,” she added in an aggrieved tone.

Mrs. Stych glared at the exquisite collection of cookies she was arranging on a tray. “He’s too fat,” she snapped. Her voice became defiant: “And what time did you and Dad ever spare for us?”

Indignation welled up in Mrs. Palichuk. She closed her tired, bloodshot eyes and saw herself again as a young woman, buxom and pregnant, set down in wild bush country, her only asset a husband as young and strong as herself. She remembered how, side by side, they had hacked and burned the underbrush, borrowed a plough and pulled it themselves, working feverishly to get a little harvest to last them through the first arctic-cold winter. In those hungry, freezing years she had born and lost two children in the small sod hut in which they lived, before Olga, coming in slightly easier times, had survived. She had fed the precious child herself and carried it with her into the fields, watching it as she wielded a hoe or a sickle, tears of weakness and fatigue often coursing down her dusty cheeks. A year later Joe had arrived, and the first doctor in the district had attended her in the first room of what was now a complete frame house. She remembered the doctor telling her, as gently as he could, that it was unlikely that she would have more children, and the shocked look on her husband’s face when he heard the news. They would need children to work the land when they became old. Her husband had been kind, however, had kissed her and said the Lord would provide.

And the Lord had provided, reflected Mrs. Palichuk. The farm was well equipped with machinery and did not need the hand labour of earlier years. Olga and Joe had been able to go to school, though they had plenty of farm chores as well. Olga, the brighter of the two, had clamoured to be allowed to go to college in Tollemarche, and both parents had encouraged her in this, hoping she would become a school-teacher; but she had met Boyd Stych and got married instead. It was not fair to say that her parents had had no time for her or for Joe; all four of the family had worked together, and, as the settlement grew, they had enjoyed churchgoing and Easters and Christmases with their neighbours.

Her exasperation, added to her feeling of being unwanted, burst out of her, and she almost shouted at her daughter: “Your father and I were always with you, teaching you to be decent and to work. Joe always makes time to play with his kids – he’s got to be both mother and father to them – in spite of having to run the farm alone since your father died. You’re just too big for your shoes!”

Mrs. Stych was unloading savoury rolls and a bowl of chicken salad from the refrigerator, and she kicked the door savagely, so that it slammed shut with a protesting boom. When she turned on
her mother, her face was scarlet and her double chin wobbled as she sought for words.

When the words came, they arrived as a spurt of Ruthenian, the language of her childhood.

“I’m not too big for my shoes!” she cried. “You just don’t know what it’s like living in a town – it’s different.”

Mrs. Palichuk wagged an accusing finger at Olga.

“Excuses! Excuses!” her voice rose. “You were always good at them. Anything to avoid staying home and looking after Hank. How he ever grew up as decent as he is, I don’t know.”

Arms akimbo, Olga swayed towards her mother.

“Let me tell you,” she yelled, “Boyd and I are somebodies in this town, and mostly because I was smart enough to set to and cultivate the right people.”

“Rubbish!”

“It’s not rubbish – it’s true.”

Mrs. Palichuk heaved her formidable bulk off the frail chair and thrust her face close to Olga’s.

“And what good will it do for Hank, if it is true?”

Olga drew herself up proudly.

“His name will be in the Social Register,” she announced.

Mrs. Palichuk was reduced to stunned silence for a moment. Then she roared, like a Montreal trucker stuck in a lane: “You’ll be lucky if his name’s not on a tombstone – like his friend who killed himself.”

Olga’s voice was as tremendous as her mother’s as she screamed: “Don’t be ridiculous!”

Hank materialized silently at the kitchen door, some school books under his arm. He surveyed the two women, who were oblivious of his presence as they tore verbally at each other. With a shrug, he retrieved his black jacket, pinched a couple of cookies from the carefully arranged plate, and drifted quietly away through the front door.

When he stopped to look back along the road, he saw two cars draw up in front of his home, one after the other. A sleepy grin spread over his face. The bridge-playing girls had arrived, a collection of overdressed, overpainted forty-year-olds. As the sound of their giggling chatter reached him on the wind, his amusement faded and gave way to loathing. There was Mrs. Moore, the dentist’s wife, mother of his friend who had committed suicide because life did
not seem worth living; and there was Mary Johnson’s mother looking as prim as a prune, not knowing that her daughter was no better than a streetwalker. Hank made a vulgar sound of distaste, shoved his hands in his pockets and continued on his way.

He remembered how, as a child, by dozens of small acts of perversity, he had brought his mother’s wrath down upon himself, so that she did at least notice his existence. His father, being a geologist, was away from home most of the time, so that Hank could, to a degree, forgive his neglect. But his mother had nothing to do except care for him, and this she had blatantly failed to do. Instead, she had toadied to these ghastly, grasping women in glittering hats, women who themselves seemed to have forgotten that they had husbands and families.

As he had grown older, his anger had turned to cold bitterness, and creeping into his mind had come the idea of revenge, something subtle enough to humble his mother, make her realize that he lived, without killing her.

After long consideration, he had decided that he would try to write a book so outrageous that the Presbyterian élite of Tollemarche would ostracize the whole Stych family, and thus put an end to his mother’s inane social life. He had worked at the idea with all the intensity of youth, and now it was about to bear fruit The book was, apparently, the kind of tale for which all young people had been waiting, and its heavy sales in the United States had amazed him; the first hardcover edition had sold fast enough to surprise even his capable publisher.