The Wives of Bath (17 page)

One night, when Ismay had gone with the school to the Royal Winter Fair, a pigeon tumbled onto the windowsill of our room and fell with a soft thud onto the floor. I yelled, and Paulie jumped almost ten feet. We both crept closer to see—Paulie purposeful, me cowering, my hands near my face in case the pigeon flew straight for my head in the flukey way that birds and bats do. What if it was the mate of the pigeon I’d tried to kill coming for revenge?

“This is your last chance, Bradford.”

“Somebody will come in,” I stammered. At the sound of my voice, the bird’s pale eyelids slid apart, and two moist pink balls peeked sorrowfully up at me over the ridge of its beak. Then the gauzy lids slowly shut again. It knew—the way animals always do—what I’d tried to do to its wife or brother.

“Not if you’re fast,” Paulie said. “Do you want me to show you how?” Paulie held her pillow over the bird, which sat without moving—a puffed-up mass of beak and dirty feathers as round as a football.

“Don’t be weird!” I shouted. “This pigeon still has a chance to live. Leave it alone!”

“What do you mean, I’m weird, Bradford?” Paulie handed me her pillow and I stood like a dope holding it over the bird’s wilted head. Honest to God, I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t heard footsteps in the corridor. Paulie and I stared at each
other. There was no mistaking who it was. The door swung open, and there she stood, a study in toneless greys. Her bloodhound eyes flicked left and right. Then she saw the bird. “Don’t tell me that’s another sick pigeon. Why do people poison dumb creatures?” the Virgin said irritably.

“Well, they’re not very smart,” Paulie said.

The Virgin stared at her.

“I mean, they aren’t any smarter than turkeys. I don’t see that it’s any big deal.”

“Is that so? Take this bird to the infirmary, will you, Tilly?” The Virgin waved her hand, and Miss Phillips, who had been waiting outside in the corridor, walked in and carried off the frightened bird in Paulie’s towel. I was very relieved to see it being taken out of Paulie’s clutches. I sat down on my bed and waited. The Virgin didn’t just drop by for nothing.

“I know you must be wondering why I’m here.” The Virgin chuckled and waited for us to chuckle, too, but neither of us made a sound. “Well, Paulie knows, don’t you, Paulie?”

Paulie sat down on her bed and turned her back to us. She didn’t answer.

The Virgin walked over to look at the photographs of President Kennedy I’d pinned up on my bulletin board. “He’s a literary man, isn’t he?” the Virgin said. “You must like that. Have you read his
Profiles in Courage?”

“Yes, Miss Vaughan.” I stared down at the floor. In front of me rested the pair of snub-nosed pumps we all dreaded to hear in the hall. And the powerful legs that drove the gunboats. These legs were encased in support hose that squashed down the unshaved hair that grew in thick and lush just above her ankles. How gross! But at least the Virgin’s gunboats had more verve than Miss Phillips’s plain lace-up boots.

“I see you have asked permission to go out with your aunt and uncle this weekend. Are they going to take you to the Visitor’s
Luncheon at Kings College? You must be looking forward to seeing Victoria there.”

“Wait—wait! What about me?” Paulie asked. “Can I go?”

“Excuse me, Pauline. I was talking to Mary Beatrice. But since you’ve joined in, I have a question for you. Why haven’t you been keeping your promise to me about your visits to Dr. Torval?”

Paulie turned her back to us again and didn’t reply.

“Now, Pauline, listen to me. I’m asking you to give Dr. Torval a chance even if you don’t think he’s a suitable choice. Don’t you think she should go, Mary Beatrice?”

“Go where?” I asked.

“He’s a shrink, Mouse.” Paulie suddenly jumped up and addressed me as if we were alone in the room. “And he stinks! His B.O. makes me want to puke.”

“Pauline! Would you please show more maturity! You’re almost a grown woman.”

“I am not. I am not a woman!” Paulie cried.

“Is being a woman so bad, Pauline?”

“Yes, it is, and you know it.” Paulie paused. “And so does Mrs. Peddie.” I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew Paulie was referring to the incident we’d read about in their letters to each other.

For once, the Virgin had nothing to say. I wasn’t sure if the Virgin was silent because she realized Paulie knew more than she should about her personal life, or if she had just run out of patience. To this day I’m not sure, but I’ve often wondered why the Virgin didn’t keep a tighter check on Paulie than she did. Maybe she was trying to be “progressive” or maybe she didn’t want to upset Paulie in case Paulie spilled the beans about her lesbian love affair.

“Very well, Pauline. You may have your way on this matter. But if I don’t see a change in your behaviour, you won’t be able to room with Tory next term.”

“You promised you wouldn’t do that!” Paulie cried.

“If you break your promise, how can you expect me to keep mine?” The Virgin walked out, her left cheek twitching.

I timidly put my hand on Paulie’s arm.

“Why don’t you go and see this doctor,” I said. “And get her off your back.”

“That’s just what she wanted you to say. Why do you always let her trick you?” Paulie shrugged away my hand and walked out, slamming the door.

I watched her go sadly and began to pack my bag. The Virgin had given me special permission to stay with my uncle, Reverend Holmes, at the Park Plaza the following night. I should have been excited about getting out of school, but I dreaded having to spend my precious “out” weekend with my uncle.

I know I ought to tell you about my life with my guardian and Uncle Rev Winnie Holmes, or the Rev, as his parishioners call him. Then you could understand how Paulie’s crime affected me. But there isn’t a lot to say about things in Point Edward, except that my uncle’s guest bedroom has a view of the St. Clair River, where, at night, the lake boats float out like lighted Christmas trees into the black water of Lake Huron.

1. He has an embarrassing name—Winston Churchill Frederick Holmes (Winnie for short).

2. He talks too much. And always boringly, on subjects that sound like homework assignments. Take, for instance, the six Humours. That’s his description of the six geographical parts of Canada, which he’s matched up with human characteristics—i.e., Newfoundland is synonymous with devotion, because, he says, one hundred percent belong to a church. (He always has his own statistics, which nobody else has ever heard about.) Quebec, with its large number of religious and educational institutions, represents scholarly aptitude. And Ontario, with its financial center on Bay Street, stands for avarice. (He says sermons on the last point are well received in the other provinces.)

3. He makes up embarrassing poems. I.e., “It’s the Rev here,
to sing you cheer, to tell you what you need to know, and ask, God willing, for some dough.”

4. He puts on a father act.

5. He feels sorry for himself because Morley made more money than he does. (That’s the worst and scariest part, because I feel sorry for myself, too, on account of Morley, and I don’t want to be like my uncle in even the smallest way.)

6. He calls me Old Mouser and smiles like a cat swallowing a canary when he says it.

7. He likes me and spends time with me and he isn’t Morley.

Alice was bothering me the morning of the Visitor’s Luncheon at Kings College. She was making my chest tight and my breathing hurt, and I sat in the back seat of my uncle’s jalopy gulping aspirins and pretending I was made of see-through plastic. That’s a trick I do when I don’t want to be where I am. For one thing, I slow down and almost stop my breathing, which makes Alice happy. And for another, I concentrate on feeling weightless, which is the next best thing to being invisible. Sad to say, my trick wasn’t working because in the rear-view mirror I saw my uncle watching me as if he were trying to figure out what was wrong. So I stared out the window with a nice fakey smile. I didn’t want that blowhard to notice how dread was filling me from the tips of my dumb Mouse feet to the top of my old Mouse head. I’d never been to a mixed party before, and I didn’t think the boys would like Alice or me. Plus I was a boarder, which was a strike against me as far as the day girls were concerned. I knew Tory didn’t think this, and I longed to see her, but I couldn’t exactly spend the whole time talking to her.

In the rear-view mirror, my uncle quivered his chins at me.

“Old Mouser, what do you want to do when you grow up?” he asked.

I didn’t answer. A rushing stream of buses and cars flowed up and down the hill around us as we climbed north, heading for the tall stone gates of Kings College, which sat at the top of the busy avenue like pharaoh’s monument.

“Now, Winnie. Mary Beatrice doesn’t want to hear the story of the fuller’s teasel today.”

“It will only take a minute, Margaret.” His chins acknowledged the pale green spire of the school’s clock tower. “She may meet an important young man up there today. Isn’t that right, Old Mouser?”

“I guess so.” I bent down so he couldn’t see me and sneaked another aspirin. My upper back felt like one single jammed muscle, and I wished I could shake it out the way Sal shook the sand out of Morley’s beach towel.

“Now, you just hold your horses and listen.” My uncle’s double chins quaked. “Because to see the fuller’s teasel, you’d think it was good for nothing. Its flowers are covered with bristles, but it’s these useless-looking bristles that can be used to raise the nap on blankets.”

To my relief, my uncle stopped talking as he drove through the gates and past a small guardhouse near a row of boarded-up hockey rinks. Like me, he was gawking at the buildings and the vast, grassy field beyond us, where boys in bulgy blue sweaters hurled themselves at one another with the assurance of the professional football players Morley liked to watch on TV. I stopped breathing totally now. Behind us the noise of city traffic faded, and I could hear birds chirping in the trees lining the long drive. My uncle stopped directly in front of the main building; up close, its six-story clock tower looked as grand and costly as the Peace Tower in Ottawa. A stream of girls in raccoon and camel’s-hair coats were staggering up the wide stone steps between two chubby Grecian columns. They walked slightly knock-kneed, the way girls walk when they wear high heels for the first time. Even with their stupid walk, they
looked glamorous and better dressed than me. I had on the navy dress I wore for church and plain black shoes with low wedge heels. Only day girls knew that “dress casual” meant high heels.

“Aren’t they a little young to be wearing shoes like that?” my uncle asked. My aunt smiled. “You’ll have to keep up with the times, Winnie. They all wear high heels now.” I stared down fearfully at my feet. The shoe salesman had stuck in two extra soles in my right wedgie for support, but there was no way around it: I still walked favouring one side for every damn boy to see.

“As I was saying, Old Mouser, nothing else has ever been invented that can raise the nap on cloth this well.”

I groaned, and my aunt said impatiently, “Winnie, for heaven’s sake. Let the girl go.”

“Directly, Margaret. Only let me finish this first. You see, Mary Beatrice, if you start to think that there’s nothing you’re qualified to do, just remember the fuller’s teasel and ask, ‘What do I have that is special?’ Your aunt, for instance, used to ask this as a girl. Now she knows that taking care of me is what she does best.”

“That’s enough, dear. Have fun, Mary Beatrice.” My aunt opened the door for me, and I slid out. Several of the day girls turned to look, and I hoped they wouldn’t see who I’d come with, but my aunt and uncle both lumbered out of the car and walked me over to the school. My aunt wore a heavy brown coat with felt trim that matched her felt hat, and, in her low heels, she placed one foot after the other as if she expected the Kings College grounds to give way under her like thin spring ice. My uncle wore no coat, only a fedora, like Morley, and his black vest puckered in dimplelike creases over his stomach. I mumbled good-bye and slowly trudged up the steps after the day girls and into a large marble hall on whose walls I saw silver swords with maple leafs and pieces of faded material commemorating the school’s role in suppressing old rebellions in Upper Canada.

Just inside the entrance, I passed a full-length portrait of Queen
Elizabeth and her husband, the duke. They called him the Visitor, and the luncheon was in his honour, even though he was back in England doing whatever it is dukes do. He wasn’t as cute as President Kennedy, but in his nice dark suit he looked a lot more fun than the queen, who held her hands in a finky way in front of her silver gown as if she had a broken finger. I followed the stream of girls into a sitting room that was almost as big as our school’s gym. Its walls were lined with stiff wing chairs that looked as if nobody ever sat in them and shiny mahogany sideboards and lamp tables. Right away, I looked for the first thing on my mind: food. I spotted the starched white linen on the sideboards, where silver trays sat full of devilled eggs, jellied salad, and my favourite—chicken à la king in pastry shells. We got that at school, too. It wasn’t bad, even though the hot chicken had a habit of melting the jellied salad.

As I shuffled over, I snapped down another aspirin and noticed several Kings College boys in grey flannel pants and zigzaggy blue-and-white ties staring at me. I just knew they were looking at my shoulder, and when they whispered among themselves my stupid old Mouse heart stopped, as if somebody had pulled the plug. Now, Alice, don’t take it personally, I thought; those snobby boys aren’t worth the nail on your baby finger. But I could tell she didn’t believe me. I was about to pick up one of the porcelain plates when a stout woman in a white uniform like a nurse asked me to wait until I was invited. Mortified, I slouched past a group of boys and girls waiting to shake the hand of a man with a face like a skull. He stood at the end of a line of masters and wives, and I realized he must be the lieutenant governor, the old queen’s stand-in when the duke couldn’t make it. A lot of the girls wore white gloves and actually curtsied when he shook their hand. Then somebody called my name, and there was Ismay sitting with a group of boarders from Bath Ladies College on a long green leather sofa next to a cavernous fake fireplace. They had come on
Sergeant’s bus. I hurried, lightheaded with relief to see Ismay, of all things, and sat near my poor old fellow boarders in one of the enormous wing chairs. We huddled together like lost souls, mumbling among ourselves and staring enviously at the day girls, who strolled through the crowded hall with the confidence of adult women in stockings and high heels and knee-length tea dresses or tight wool suits.