Lily's Story Read online

  Lily cried out; her body thrashed as if it were being jerked on a fish-hook attached to her belly-button. Quickly both of Sophie’s hands were laid on Lily’s convulsing muscles, like a phrenologist’s divining truth from a skull’s topology. “Wonderful...wonderful...Such power for a pretty little sunfish like you.” She kneaded and soothed. Her milkmaid’s fingers seemed to communicate directly with the rolling, berserk musculature under them.

  “We got about half an hour, I’d say,” Sophie said, “so let’s get you off of this junior-cadet cot and on to somethin’ soft an’ motherly.”

  Lucille started across the room to help. “I told you to stoke that fire, ma’amselle from la dell, and I mean it.” Then she reached down, wrapped both arms around Lily, and lifted her into the air where Lily floated, at ease. Sophie’s arms were like goosedown lined with stanchions. Lily could see the lamplight wash across plump, pink flesh – not in the least fat or lumpish but rather more like a peach or nectarine that’s just passed the penultimate point of its ripeness. It exuded vigour and lusty health. Its sweat slid over her own. However, when Sophie breathed extravagantly on her, Lily caught the echoes of garlic, herring-smelt and improvised whiskey.

  While Sophie held Lily aloft, Lucille controlled her trembling satisfactorily enough to cover the bed with the oil-cloth and several layers of clean sheets. She fluffed up two feather pillows. Sophie laid Lily down as carefully as she would a bruised baby. “Hang on,” she said, clasping Lily’s right hand just as the convulsion struck and double-struck. Lily’s scream brought Lucille to her toes with an hysterical snap. “It’s okay, la petite,” Sophie said in a different voice. “It’s Nature’s way. I been through this myself many times. You gotta holler or you’ll bust open like a milkweed pod. Now you go on outside an’ bring Sophie in her medicine kit.” The cramp had eased off, but Lily kept her hand in Sophie’s.

  Suddenly there was a clatter and a thump outside the house – on the stoop or just off it.

  “Shit,” Sophie hissed, “I forgot all about the bastard.” She rumbled past Lucille spilling her onto the bed, and could be heard intimidating the door, cursing, and then returning with a kind of scraping clutter across the plank floor of the big room. The tea-table Tom had made for Lily’s birthday went over without a whimper. Sophie’s generous figure ballooned in the bedroom doorway. She had one hand behind her back. She glared at the startled women. Lucille had begun to sob again. Sophie then laughed. And her laughter was gargantuan. It rose like throttled thunder from the paddled drum of her belly up through the great organ-loft of her lungs whence it whistled through the bass-tuba of her voice-box, thrummed over a tongue that could stun an ox and roared in ecstatic release across the countryside of parlours, vestibules and unresisting gardens.

  “I found him pissed to the gills in Car-teer’s pig-sty,” Sophie said, and hauled out her catch for display, letting it dangle a bit from her hammerlock before she dropped it on the rope-rug in a shaggy heap. “Carted the silly-ass as far as the back-garden an’ plunked him down in the compost heap where I figured he’d feel more at home. Some sight, eh?” And she released another trumpet-blast that made the baby lurch in its nest. “I reckoned he belonged to you!”

  Tom moaned and tried to sit up, in which position he hoped that his eyes might actually open and see something familiar.

  “I couldn’t find him nowhere,” Lucille sobbed to Lily. “I try real hard. When I get to Mrs. Potts, she says she knows where he be an’ she goes –”

  Lily came right off the sheets, her nightshirt flung as wide as her cry.

  “Oh Maman, Maman,” Lucille sobbed.

  Sophie put one paw on Lucille and the other on Tom. “Go put some coffee on,” she said to Lucille with such force that the girl stiffened with more resolve than fear, “stick a funnel down his throat an’ start pourin’.” With that she jerked Tom out of the room and dumped him onto the cot. It collapsed. There was a shriek, like cloth tearing.

  “I’m sorry, Lil, real sorry,” Tom said with great effort, not realizing no one was near enough to straighten out his slur.

  “You stay put,” Sophie shouted back to him from the doorway. “We don’t need you. You done your damage about nine months ago, though I’m damned if I know how you managed it.”

  “Would ya’ like some coffee, Mr. Marshall,” Lucille said from a safe distance.

  “Just keep him quiet and outta the way,” Sophie said. “The missus and I got work to do.”

  Lucille got the coffee boiling in a saucepan and somehow managed to administer it to Tom, who was progressively jolted out of his fog by the staccato of cries from the other room. Tom winced, then shuddered as each one nicked him like a sniper’s bullet. These cries were not Lily’s: they had no voice; they were not even animal; they surfaced from something farther down the chain of being, some phylum where salt-blood and the composition-of-bone contended, or perished.

  Sophie came out of the bedroom with the baby in her arms. Lucille at her side. Tom was seated almost upright at the kitchen table. “It’s a boy!” Lucille cried.

  “How’s Lily?”

  “Lily’s fine,” Lucille said, beaming and peeking into the blanket.

  “Thank God,” Tom said, rising.

  “Thank me an’ Mother Nature,” Sophie said, opening her treasure to display the bawling, rubber-red being, blood-smeared with its knotted umbilical sticking out raffishly.

  Tom peered into its bluish eyes, astonished that already they were staring back, that some primitive, fearful thought about the world was even now collecting in its tiny brain. Tom reached out and touched the protruding umbilical, its ruptured stub.

  “That ain’t his do-hickey,” Sophie chuckled, “if you was worryin’.”

  “How can I ever thank you,” Tom said.

  Sophie gave him a steady, mocking appraisal. “First, I charge five bucks,” she said with a sort of sly cackle as she turned to lead them all back into Lily’s room. “An’ second, I’d like a nip of that hair-straightener you tore into this evenin’.”

  Lily, pale as the flower of her name, held the child close to her; her eyes were drooped with fatigue but refused to give up consciousness, wanting to seal the baby’s presence with their unceasing adoration.

  “He’ll be here when you wake up,” Lucille whispered tenderly in her ear. “So will we, certain.”

  Sophie took several jars from a knapsack and put them on the dresser. “Now Lucille dear, you soak them cloths in this here linseed oil, then put on plenty of this powder, then put the whole shebang onto your lady’s injured parts – three times a day. An’ throw out the rags when you’re done.”

  “What’s this bottle for?”

  “That’s nerve tonic. Special recipe. Good for just about everythin’ bad.”

  “How often do Lily have to take it?”

  Sophie snorted. “It’s not for Lily,” she said. “It’s for the patient.”

  Lily smiled just before she fell asleep.

  Tom walked Sophie as far as the windbreak. The night-air was bracing. He held onto Sophie’s arm. She turned to him. “She’s gonna be fine, Mr. Tom Marshall,” she said. “Your son came out slick and easy.”

  Tom gave her a thankful squeeze on the wrist.

  Suddenly the moon landed in both her eyes. She flashed Tom a broad-beamed grin. “There’s really nothin’ to it,” she said. “You oughta try it sometime. It’s as simple as shittin’ a watermelon.”

  Tom lay beside Lily. In the kitchen Lucille hummed a Norman ditty of some kind. The kettle steamed. Young Robert had both chubby hands on his mother’s breast, sucking health and strength into his sturdy body with abandon and no particular thanks. Lily was quite happy to have their firstborn named for Bags Starkey. It seemed right, in so many ways.

  “You get to name the girl,” Tom said.

  I already have, Lily thought.

  “And ain’t that Pott’s woman the fattest, most foul-mouthed creature you ever laid eyes on?”

  Lily
changed breasts, and smiled. “She was nice, wasn’t she?”

  16

  1

  Robert Marshall was born into the pastoral world of Canada West on June 19, 1863, just about three weeks before the Union armies under General Meade and the Confederate rebels under General Lee butchered one another among the meadowlands of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. No odour of the exhalations of the dead made its way this far north on any prevailing wind. Not even the drought which had scorched the crops from Kingston to Windsor could disturb the quietude that had settled over the Marshall homestead this summer. Robert suckled lustily and his green limbs grew apace. The Grand Trunk, inspired by a government loan, took on extra help, including past miscreants, so Tom went back to his part-time labour with a light and willing step. Lucille stayed on, her good cheer interrupted only by occasional periods when she would stop in the midst of an act – scrubbing a pot, feeding the stove – and stare across at mother-and-child, overcome by a sense of wonder, pure and inexplicable.

  Lily felt little separation between herself and her baby. He was never more than an elbow’s length from her, day or night. She cupped her breasts for his pleasure and satisfaction alone, feeding them like succulent pomegranates into his avid ‘O’ and gauging the crease of ecstasy across his eyelids as the hunger inside him overwhelmed them both. She could not yet bring herself to call him Robert; he was just ‘baby’, then ‘nubbins’ – a miraculous miniature-being she and Tom had formulated out of their own ecstasies and who, for the moment, served only to extend and refine the sensual tips of her body: lips, nipples, grazing fingertips, nuzzling nose. Thus it was that sometime about the middle of July when Tom lifted the sleeping babe from between them, laid it in its bassinet, re-entered the warmth of that vacancy and draped his angular, urgent length along her own – Lily was astonished to find her legs opening, as of old, to accommodate her husband’s pulsive lullaby stroke, yet finding it equally strange, as if the connectors among her senses had been scrambled and recomposed. She was not completely surprised, then, when the climax (that shook her sideways and brought her upright with gazelle’s eyes) propelled her exaltatious salute for miles over field and fallow. Lucille moaned in her sleep, and hung on.

  Only two things eventually made a ripple of discontent over Lily’s perfect summer. Lucille was asked by Aunt Elspeth to accompany her back to Toronto, permanently. That good woman had, as promised, made the train trip unescorted and breathless on the Grand Trunk day-express, which she was convinced, with all its shaking and clatter, had designs on her sanity. Nevertheless, she arrived safely at the Point Edward station, where she was greeted by her ‘dear Tippy’ who had at last settled down and made a man of himself. If she needed further proof of his conversion, it was forthcoming on her arrival at the Marshall homestead, where she was introduced to Robert, the spitting image of the dead Colonel, and pleased to offer her blessing. She was also discreet (or resigned) enough not to ask if the babe had been duly Christened: not knowing was, in this particular case only, the more bearable of the alternatives.

  In almost every way Aunt Elspeth seemed her old, vital self. She showered Lily, Lucille and the infant with small, lovingly selected gifts. Her unaffected warmth spread through the household and the neighbourhood. During her week’s stay, she left her mark (and money) in every store and establishment along Michigan Ave. She had set up ‘rooms’ in the Grand Truck station-hotel, insisted on dining lavishly there with Lily and Tom, then Lily and Lucille, and finally Tom alone. She left a trunkful of clothes for Lily – “Use them for rugs or your quilts if you find them too old-fashioned, but I don’t need them any more, a woman of my age and advanced reputation,” and she laughed in that wonderful way she had of including herself in the joke and sharing it with the listeners as if she were doling out secrets one joy at a time. On the day of her departure she spent a long, quiet minute alone in the bedroom with Robert while Lucille fidgeted by the door and Tom held the horses of the buggy he’d rented for the occasion. Aunt Elspeth had insisted that she sleep at least one night “in the abode of the people I love the dearest.” They put her in Lily’s old bedroom with Lucille. Everyone, it seemed, had spent most of the night listening to the baby’s soft, unanxious breathing. Aunt Elspeth smiled bravely through Lucille’s weeping as the goodbyes were said. “Buck up, girl, we’ll be back for Christmas, that’s a promise. And as soon as the little tyke’s old enough, we’ll have him on the train to Toronto to see us.”

  When she hugged Lily goodbye, Lily felt the crushing, desperate clench of the embrace. She felt herself shuddering through her own smile.

  Tom’s face told most of the story. He told her the rest at noon when he returned from his half-day’s work in the sheds.

  “Her health’s all right. The stroke left her weak but you can see she’s capable of exerting herself when she has a will, and a reason.”

  “What’s wrong, then?”

  “She’s broke. Bankrupt.”

  “But how?”

  “She had to sell the house and everything in it. Last month. The sheriff and bailiffs did it all. That’s why she moved to Toronto, I think. She didn’t want to be there when it happened. The Colonel left her little but the property. She should have sold half of it and lived off the money, but she had no head for business. She just mortgaged the place twice over till it was time to go. Her sister-in-law’s taken her in. My eldest aunt; she’s not well herself. Aunt Elspeth sold some jewellery to pay for this trip. I got it all out of her at lunch on Thursday. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

  “What can we do?”

  Tom shook his head. “She always detested my Aunt Sylvia.”

  One evening in September, Tom and Lily walked farther than usual. They turned north at the River to skirt the squatter’s shacks and strolled along the beach below the dunes. It was an Indian summer evening, thin yet still mellow, the heat of day snoozing on the cool night-air drifting in from the placid lake. Small waves nibbled at the stretch of sandy beach curling before them. Herring-gulls hovered, letting their wings sing for them. Sandpipers skittered at their approach. Somewhere past the dunes, the last bluebirds gathered for a valedictory chorale. Lily and Tom continued to walk, afraid to add any word to their walking. ‘Nubbins’ slept – as always: peaceful, free of colic and dream – in the papoose frame Tom had made and strapped on to his broad back.

  Out on the Lake several ships were visible in the middle and far distance, their funnels puffing smoke that barely smudged the vast ocean of sky overhead. Then as they reached the end of the curved beach at Canatara and turned to retrace their path, a large four-masted schooner hove into view around the bend at Sarnia Bay and entered the Lake. Among the last of its breed, the old grain-carrier seemed cocky and defiant as it caught the southerly breeze square on its main-sails, its lacquered masts bent to the limit of their deep, ravelled grain, its rigging dotted with nimble circus-creatures adjusting the jib as they gambolled and tossed aloft their swallow-cries of delight. Slim, wind-sure, graceful as an aging eland, it angled into the open water and nosed its prow towards the unmappable horizon where it was said magnetic north linked up with a polar star.

  Just then a spotted dog with floppy ears came skidding down a dune ahead of them, closely pursued by two young boys. Lily watched them tumble in the sand while the dog snapped at their heels and fists. The more they giggled, the louder the dog barked. Lily felt her hand tighten in Tom’s. She stopped, involuntarily turning with the pressure of her husband’s grip until she was beside him once more. He had paused with his eyes on the schooner, and as it sailed into the hazy, westering sky, he had turned with it, and his gaze never left it till it was a faded dot indistinguishable from the horizon-line.

  “I’m expectin’,” Lily said.

  “What?”

  “Gonna have your baby, sailor.”

  The winter in its own way was as happy as the summer. The baby was weaned, answered happily to ‘Robbie’, began to crawl over the floor and furniture – terrifying everyo
ne but himself – and started crying for more than his food. He was a robust, healthy creature with his father’s sandy hair and clear blue eyes. He rode his father’s arms like a bronco, giggling hysterically as he was whirled through the high air and complaining only when he was let down. On hands and knees he trailed Tom into the bedroom or into the forbidden territory of the woodshed and worse. When the snow came, Tom built him a wooden sled, and only Tom was permitted to tuck him in, in a special way, before they all set out for Little Lake or a hike to the village to be shown off. When he was tired, his sweet temper turned decidedly cranky, but Lily didn’t mind at all. She let him thrash some in her arms, her breasts reminding him of what he had abandoned for these risky new pleasures, her lullaby as soothing as ever against the edges of his fatigue. “Go to sleep, little Nubbins,” she’d say, and look up warily to check on Tom who was always watching. I must not be jealous, she thought, inexplicably frightened. The child is between us, we made him together, he can never be outside either of us, he likes it here: between, being one and then two.

  Tom went back to the job he liked in the car-shops. They had spent all their savings just to survive Tom’s partial lay-off and the disastrous drought that sent food prices soaring. Neither of them mentioned a new house in the village; it would be a while, but still it would come. For Lily this third pregnancy did not go as smoothly as the first two. She had morning sickness all fall, was intermittently nauseous and cramped thereafter, and did not seem to gain any strength from the general state of well-being she felt. However, when Gimpy Fitchett announced in January that he was going to marry Clara Grocott, a farm-girl from up the Errol Road who worked in Redmond’s grocery, Lily was overjoyed and for a while, at least, stopped feeling sorry for herself, as she told Maudie Bacon. Clara was added to the Wednesday teas at Maudie’s, and Lily found that she liked the girl. She even joined – when she could – in the many discussions about the wedding dress and the details of the reception afterwards in one of the parlours of the Grand Trunk station. She promised Clara a quilt for her wedding night and set about completing it with considerable zeal.