I must have had the idea then that all books came free, wherever you found them. Like water from a public tap.
When Old Mrs. Crozier saw me with the book she asked where I had got it and what I was doing with it. From the bookcase, I said, and I had brought it upstairs to read. The thing that most perplexed her seemed to be that I had got it downstairs, but brought it upstairs. The reading part she appeared to let go, as if such an activity was too foreign for her contemplation. Finally she said that if I wanted a book I should bring one from home.
I Promessi Sposi was heavy going anyway. I did not mind putting it back in the bookcase. was heavy going anyway. I did not mind putting it back in the bookcase.
Of course there were books in the sickroom. Reading seemed to be acceptable there. But they were mostly open and facedown, as if Mr. Crozier just read a little here and there and put them aside. And their t.i.tles did not tempt me. Civilization on Trial. The Great Conspiracy Against Russia Civilization on Trial. The Great Conspiracy Against Russia.
And my grandmother had warned me that if I could help it I should not touch anything the patient had touched, because of germs, and I should always keep a cloth between my fingers and his water gla.s.s.
My mother said leukemia did not come from germs.
"So what does it come from?" said my grandmother.
"The medical men don"t know."
"Hunh."
It was Young Mrs. Crozier who picked me up and drove me home, though the distance was no more than from one side of the town to the other. She was a tall, thin, fair-haired woman with a variable complexion. Sometimes there were patches of red on her cheeks as if she had scratched them. Word had been pa.s.sed that she was older than her husband, that he had been her student at college. My mother said that n.o.body seemed to have got around to figuring out that since he was a war veteran, he could easily have been her student without that making her older. People were just down on her because she had got an education.
Another thing they said was that she could have stayed home and looked after him now, as promised in the marriage ceremony, instead of going out to teach. My mother again defended her, saying it was only two afternoons a week and she had to keep up her profession, seeing she would be on her own soon enough. And if she didn"t get out of the old lady"s way once in a while, wouldn"t you think she"d go crazy? My mother always defended women who were working on their own, and my grandmother always got after her for it.
One day I tried a conversation with Young Mrs. Crozier, or Sylvia. She was the only college graduate I knew, let alone being a teacher. Except for her husband, of course, and he had stopped counting.
"Did Toynbee write history books?"
"Beg pardon? Oh. Yes."
None of us mattered to her, not me, or her critics or defenders. No more than bugs on a lampshade.
What Old Mrs. Crozier cared about really was her flower garden. She had a man who came and helped her, someone about as old but more limber than she was. He lived on our street and in fact it was through him that she heard about me as a possible employee. At home he only gossiped and grew weeds, but here he plucked and mulched and fussed, while she followed him around, leaning on her stick and shaded by her big straw hat. Sometimes she sat on her bench, still commenting and giving orders, and smoking a cigarette. Early on, I dared to go between the perfect hedges to ask if she or her helper would like a gla.s.s of water, and she cried out, "Mind my borders," before saying no.
There were no flowers brought into the house. Some poppies had escaped and were growing wild beyond the hedge, almost on the road, so I asked if I could pick a bouquet to brighten the sickroom.
"They"d only die," she said, not seeming to realize that this remark had a double edge to it, in the circ.u.mstances.
Certain suggestions, or notions, would make the muscles of her lean spotty face quiver, her eyes go sharp and black, and her mouth work as if there was a despicable taste in it. She could stop you in your tracks then, like a savage thornbush.
The two days I worked were not consecutive. Let us say they were Tuesdays and Thursdays. The first day I was alone with the sick man and Old Mrs. Crozier. The second day somebody arrived whom I had not been told about. I heard the car in the driveway, and some brisk running up the back steps and a person entering the kitchen without knocking. Then somebody called "Dorothy," which I had not known was Old Mrs. Crozier"s name. The voice was a woman"s or girl"s, and it was bold and teasing all at once, so that you could almost feel this person was tickling you.
I ran down the back stairs saying, "I think she"s in the sunroom."
"Holy Toledo. Who are you?"
I told her who I was and what I was doing there, and this young woman said her name was Roxanne.
"I"m the ma.s.seuse."
I didn"t like being caught by a word I didn"t know. I didn"t say anything but she saw how things were.
"Got you stumped, eh? I give ma.s.sages. You ever heard of that?"
Now she was unpacking the bag she had with her. Various pads and cloths and flat velour-covered brushes appeared.
"I"ll need some hot water to warm these up," she said. "You can heat me some in the kettle."
This was a grand house, but there was only cold water on tap, as in my house.
She had sized me up, apparently, as somebody who was willing to take orders-especially, perhaps, orders given in such a coaxing voice. And she was right, though maybe she didn"t guess that my willingness had more to do with my own curiosity than her charm.
She was tanned this early in the summer, and her pageboy hair had a copper sheen-something you could get easily nowadays from a bottle, but that was unusual and enviable then. Brown eyes, a dimple in one cheek, such smiling and teasing that you never got a good-enough look at her to say whether she was really pretty, or how old she was.
Her rump curved out handsomely to the back instead of spreading to the sides.
I learned right away that she was new in town, married to the mechanic at the Esso station, and that she had two little boys, one four years old and one three. "It took me a while to find out what was causing them," she said with one of her conspiratorial twinkles.
She had trained to be a ma.s.seuse in Hamilton where they used to live and it turned out to be just the sort of thing she had always had a knack for.
"Dor-thee?"
"She"s in the sunroom," I told her again.
"I know, I"m just kidding her. Now maybe you don"t know about getting a ma.s.sage, but when you get one, you got to take off all your clothes. Not such a problem when you"re young, but when you"re older, you know, you can get all embarra.s.sed."
She was wrong about one thing, at least as far as I was concerned. About it not being a problem to take off all your clothes when you"re young.
"So maybe you should skedaddle."
This time I took the front staircase while she was busy with the hot water. That way I got a glance in through the open door of the sunroom-which was not much of a sunroom at all, having its windows on three sides all filled up with the fat leaves of catalpa trees.
There I saw Old Mrs. Crozier stretched out on a daybed, on her stomach, head turned away from me, absolutely naked. A skinny streak of pale flesh. It didn"t look so old as the parts of her that were daily exposed-her brown-freckled dark-veined hands and forearms, her brown-blotched cheeks. This usually covered length of her body was yellow-white, like wood freshly stripped of its bark.
I sat on the top step and listened to the sounds of the ma.s.sage. Thumps and grunts. Roxanne"s voice bossy now, cheerful but full of exhortation.
"Stiff knot here. Oh brother. I"m going to have to whack you one. Just kidding. Aw, come on, just loosen up for me. You know you got a nice skin here. Small of your back, what do they say? It"s like a baby"s b.u.m. Now I gotta bear down a bit, you"re going to feel it here. Take away the tension. Goody girl."
Old Mrs. Crozier was making little yelps. Sounds of complaint and grat.i.tude. It went on for quite a while and I got bored. I went back to reading some old Canadian Home Journals Canadian Home Journals that I had found in a hall cupboard. I read recipes and checked on old-time fashions till I heard Roxanne say, "Now I"ll just clean this stuff up and we"ll go upstairs like you decided." that I had found in a hall cupboard. I read recipes and checked on old-time fashions till I heard Roxanne say, "Now I"ll just clean this stuff up and we"ll go upstairs like you decided."
Upstairs. I slid the magazines back into their place in the cupboard that would have been coveted by my mother and went into Mr. Crozier"s room. He was asleep, or at least he had his eyes closed. I moved the fan a few inches and smoothed his cover and went and stood by the window twiddling with the blind.
Sure enough there came a noise on the back stairs, Old Mrs. Crozier with her slow and threatening cane steps, Roxanne running ahead, and calling, "Look out, look out, wherever you are. We"re coming to get you wherever you are."
Mr. Crozier had his eyes open now. Beyond his usual weariness was a faint expression of alarm. But before he could pretend to be asleep again Roxanne burst into the room.
"So here"s where you"re hiding. I just told your stepmom I thought it was about time I got introduced to you."
Mr. Crozier said, "How do you do, Roxanne."
"How did you know my name?"
"Word gets around."
"Fresh fellow you got here," said Roxanne to Old Mrs. Crozier, who now came stumping into the room.
"Stop fooling around with that blind," Old Mrs. Crozier said to me. "Go and fetch me a drink of cool water if you want something to do. Not cold-just cool."
"You"re a mess," said Roxanne to Mr. Crozier. "Who gave you that shave and when was it?"
"Yesterday," he said. "I handle it myself as well as I can."
"That"s what I thought," said Roxanne. And to me, "When you"re getting her water, how"d you like to heat some up for me and I"ll undertake to give him a decent shave?"
That was how Roxanne took on this other job, once a week, following the ma.s.sage. She told Mr. Crozier on that first day not to worry.
"I"m not going to pound on you like you must have heard me doing to Dorothy-doodle downstairs. Before I got my ma.s.sage training I used to be a nurse. Well, a nurse"s aide. One of the ones do all the work and the nurses come around and boss you. Anyway, I learned how to make people comfortable."
Dorothy-doodle? Mr. Crozier grinned. But the odd thing was that Old Mrs. Crozier just grinned too.
Roxanne shaved him deftly. She sponged his face and neck and torso and arms and hands. She pulled his sheets around, somehow managing not to disturb him, and she pounded and rearranged his pillows. Talking all the time, pure teasing and nonsense.
"Dorothy, you"re a liar. You said you had a sick man upstairs and I walk in here and I think, Where"s the sick man? I don"t see a sick man round here. Do I?"
Mr. Crozier said, "What would you say I am then?"
"Recovering. That"s what I would say. I don"t say you should be up and running around, I"m not so stupid as all that. I know you need your bed rest. But I say recovering. n.o.body sick like you are supposed to be ever looked as good as what you do."
I thought this flirtatious prattle insulting. Mr. Crozier looked terrible. A tall man whose ribs had shown like those of somebody fresh from a famine when she sponged him, whose head was bald and whose skin looked as if it had the texture of a plucked chicken"s, his neck corded like an old man"s. Whenever I had waited on him in any way I had avoided looking at him. And this was not really because he was sick and ugly. It was because he was dying. I would have felt something of the same reticence even if he had looked angelically handsome. I was aware of an atmosphere of death in the house, growing thicker as you approached this room, and he was at the center of it, like the host the Catholics kept in the box so power fully called the tabernacle. He was the one stricken, marked out from everybody else, and here was Roxanne trespa.s.sing on his ground with her jokes and her swagger and notions of entertainment.
Inquiring, for instance, as to whether there was a game in the house called Chinese checkers.
This was perhaps on her second visit, when she asked him what he did all day.
"Read sometimes. Sleep."
And how did he sleep at night?
"If I can"t sleep I lie awake. Think. Sometimes read."
"Doesn"t that disturb your wife?"
"She sleeps in the back bedroom."
"Un-huh. You need some entertainment."
"Are you going to sing and dance for me?"
I saw Old Mrs. Crozier look aside with her odd involuntary grin.
"Don"t you get cheeky," said Roxanne. "Are you up to cards?"
"I hate cards."
"Well, have you got Chinese checkers in the house?"
Roxanne directed this question at Old Mrs. Crozier, who first said she had no idea, then wondered if there might be a board in a drawer of the dining room buffet.
So I was sent down to look and came back with the board and the jar of marbles.
Roxanne set the board up over Mr. Crozier"s legs, and she and I and Mr. Crozier played, Old Mrs. Crozier saying she had never understood the game or been able to keep her marbles straight. (To my surprise she seemed to offer this as a joke.) Roxanne might squeal when she made a move or groan whenever somebody jumped over one of her marbles, but she was careful never to disturb the patient. She held her body still and set her marbles down like feathers. I tried to learn to do the same, because she would widen her eyes warningly at me if I didn"t. All without losing her dimple.
I remembered Young Mrs. Crozier, Sylvia, saying to me in the car that her husband did not welcome conversation. It tired him out, she said, and when he was tired he could become irritable. So I thought, If ever there was a time for him to become irritable, it is now. Being forced to play a silly game on his deathbed, when you could feel his fever in the sheets.
But Sylvia must have been wrong. He had developed greater patience and courtesy than she was perhaps aware of. With inferior people-Roxanne was surely an inferior person-he had made himself tolerant, gentle. When all he must want to do was lie there and meditate on the pathways of his life and gear up for his future.
Roxanne patted sweat off his forehead, saying, "Don"t get excited, you haven"t won yet."
"Roxanne," he said. "Roxanne. Do you know whose name that was, Roxanne?"
"Hmm?" she said, and I broke in. I couldn"t help it.
"It was Alexander the Great"s wife"s name."
My head was a magpie"s nest lined with such bright sc.r.a.ps of information.
"Is that so?" said Roxanne. "And who was that supposed to be? Great Alexander?"
I realized something when I looked at Mr. Crozier at that moment. Something shocking, saddening.
He liked her not knowing. I could tell. He liked her not knowing. Her ignorance woke a pleasure that melted on his tongue, like a lick of toffee.
On the first day she had worn shorts, as I did, but the next time and always after that Roxanne wore a dress of some stiff and shiny light green material. You could hear it rustle as she ran up the stairs. She brought a fleecy pad for Mr. Crozier, so he would not develop bedsores. She was dissatisfied with the arrangement of his bedclothes, always, had to put them to rights. But however she scolded, her movements never irritated him, and she made him admit to feeling more comfortable afterwards.
She was never at a loss. Sometimes she came equipped with riddles. Or jokes. Some of the jokes were what my mother would call s.m.u.tty and would not allow around our house, except when they came from certain of my father"s relatives who had practically no other kind of conversation.
These jokes usually started off with serious-sounding but absurd questions.
Did you hear about the nun who went shopping for a meat grinder?
Did you hear what the bride and groom went and ordered for dessert on their wedding night?
The answers always coming with a double meaning, so that whoever told the joke could pretend to be shocked and accuse the audience of having dirty minds.
And after she had got everybody used to her telling these jokes Roxanne went on to the sort of jokes I didn"t believe my mother knew existed, often involving s.e.x with sheep or hens or milking machines.
"Isn"t that awful?" she always said at the finish. She said she wouldn"t know this stuff if her husband didn"t bring it home from the garage.
The fact that Old Mrs. Crozier snickered shocked me as much as the jokes themselves. I thought that she maybe didn"t get the point but simply enjoyed listening to whatever Roxanne said. She sat with that chewed-in yet absentminded smile on her face as if she"d been given a present she knew she would like, even if she hadn"t got the wrapping off it yet.