Читать книгу Border City Blues 3-Book Bundle - Michael Januska - Страница 33

“HOW ROTTEN THEY WERE UNDERNEATH”

Vera Maude took one look at the streetcar packed with elbows, long faces, and crying babies and decided it would be a good day to walk home. She watched it pull away.

Standing alone on the curb she suddenly felt cut loose, set adrift. She became anxious and was overcome by a powerful urge to smoke.

The impulse passed through her like an electrical charge. She looked around before taking the pack out of her purse. When she popped it open the odour of the tobacco wafted out. She breathed it in.

Here goes nothing.

The filter was hard and dry on her lips. She struck a match on the side of the box and held the flame to the tip.

She had to yank the cigarette out of her mouth so she could cough without swallowing it or spitting it onto the sidewalk. When she caught her breath she replaced it and continued walking up Dougall Road.

She held it the way she had seen men hold it. The first time she exhaled she walked into her own cloud of smoke and started coughing again. The second time she turned her head and made like she was blowing out birthday candles — not particularly graceful, but very effective.

When she finished it she took a moment to gauge its side effects.

Dizziness: only slightly more than usual.

Shortness of breath: no worse than the experience of riding in a hot, cramped streetcar.

Lingering tobacco odour: a little perfume can fix that.

Dry mouth: So? It’s a hot day.

She pulled a fresh cigarette from the pack and got it going without missing a beat. She was developing a rhythm. Now she could call herself a modern woman.

Yeah, like that’s all it took: a pack of Macdonald’s.

She was reminded of the first truly modern woman she ever met. It was at a Club meeting.

Following a dinner in her honour at the Elmcourt Country Club at which 32 members and friends of the Music, Literature, and Art Club were entertained, Miss Grace Blackburn, assistant editor of the London Free Press, London, Ont., and a Canadian writer of merit, gave a program at the Y.W.C.A., last evening.

Vera Maude felt that it probably took more courage to be a modern woman than it did to be a soldier in the Great War. Where the doughboy ran away with his buddies to take pot shots at strangers huddled in trenches, women were facing violence and injustice on a daily basis, oftentimes in their own homes.

Maudie, honey, you need a man.

Vera Maude hated hearing that all the time, especially from Hazel and Lillian. She’d met some of the boys they went out with and in her humble opinion they were all duds.

At Erie Street she dropped the butt and mashed it under her heel. So far there was nothing about this smoking business she didn’t like. She drew another cigarette out of the pack and got it going. She stood there with it sticking straight out of her mouth, waiting for a break in the traffic. A few heads turned, particularly among the men folk.

They were noticing how her body forced that demure library attire down some dangerous curves; how her wild and wavy hair was struggling to break free from a battery of clips and pins; and how her dark-rimmed cheaters barely hid her wide, girlish eyes.

“Zowie,” exclaimed a fellow in a passing car.

Euh.

There were two kinds of guys, according to Vera Maude: guys that were all talk and guys that were all hands.

And never the twain shall meet. Oh to meet a guy that can woo me with fine words while groping me in his roadster.

Vera Maude’s mind was like a needle skipping across a gramophone record.

Miss Blackburn, who is a most interesting and vivid personality, as well as the composer of many delightful poems and plays, was introduced by Miss Hazel Scott, president of the M., L., and A Club, who presided for the evening.

Each of Miss Blackburn’s contributions was made even more delightful by a short preface. Her first number was a charming little play, entitled “The Little Grey,” given with a wealth of dramatic expression and atmospheric charm.

Vera Maude regretted opening up to Hazel and Lillian the way she had. She let her guard down. And it was such a stupid thing to say.

Then how come I feel so … empty?

Her angst probably didn’t even register with them. She hoped that was the case; the last thing she wanted was for them to report the whole thing to her father.

She froze for a moment on the sidewalk.

Shit — that’s what it was all about.

The other day her father asked her why she was acting so peculiar. She got defensive. Was she acting peculiar? She wasn’t sure. At any rate, she should have let it go, or told him something so personal, so girlie it would have scared him and sent him running. He would probably have gone straight to the family doctor.

Is there anything you can prescribe for her modern ills?

A woman glared at Vera Maude and her cigarette, and Vera Maude glared right back. She was getting herself worked up. She thought about taking a break and counting to ten, like her father always told her to do.

“Futz that.” She dropped another shell and reloaded. “I got me some butts to smoke.”

Miss Blackburn also gave a stirring war poem, and another play, this a tragedy of a French murder, depicting dramatically the self renunciation of a simple old French priest, who, absolving his servant and housekeeper from the murder of her lover, receives with silent lips her accusation of the crime, and goes wordless to his doom on the scaffold. Miss Blackburn here presented a charming picture of the lovely Breton country, its continual sunshine, gorgeous vegetation, and charm of landscape. Not long ago she spent considerable time among the French peasants there.

Vera Maude wondered if romance was restricted to people who lived in lovely places like Brittany. Was there no possibility of romance among the automobile factories and distilleries along the Detroit River? Her mind skipped over to Braverman.

Nice girls who fall for bad boys fall for nice girls like me. I’ve never fallen, not really.

She added nausea to her list of side effects from tobacco-smoking.

She has a very forceful and interesting personality, and a keen appreciation of the dramatic and the ideal. Asked her opinion on the flapper, and the so-called outrages on convention perpetrated by modern young people, Miss Blackburn asserted her admiration of today’s girl. “She is more sincere, more honest, infinitely more capable than her grandmother,” said she. “Whenever I think of all this commotion in regard to the manners of the young people of today, I conjure up a vision of the lovely court ladies of the Louis periods, I see them pirouetting gracefully, bowing charmingly, curtseying, their manners, perfection, yet, ah! their morals. How rotten they were underneath. Do manners mean morals after all? If the young people of today have discarded this superficiality of mannerism, they are at least honest. I think if they haven’t manners, they have the morals. Indeed, I love them.”

To top it all off, or bottom it all out, Vera Maude’s feet were getting worse. She took off her shoes and walked in her stocking feet for a while.

We have met too late for you to be influenced by me.

So what was with Braverman and the Book Review? She would have to look for that article in her scrapbook and check it again for clues. She was on her block now.

Not a moment too soon.

She dropped her butt in the gutter and pinched her feet back into her shoes.

Sweat was rolling down her back and behind her knees. She managed to get in the house before vomiting all over the front steps. Inside it was quiet and relatively cool. She used the handrail to pull herself up the stairs. Once in her room she unhooked her dress, let it fall to the floor, and collapsed on her bed.

Miss Blackburn composed the following poem especially for the club:

A scowling softly scudding sky

Green as the mist on the lagged sward

Grey boughs the brave buds glorify

Brown earth the tulip’s lance has bored.

A waft of wings and a shiver of song,

Rain, and at heart, lain of the sun

For you who have wearied and waited long,

April is won.

“Maudie? Is that you?”

Futz.

Vera Maude lifted her head and hollered back. “Yes, Mrs. Richardson.”

“I was wondering about you, dear.”

Vera Maude groaned.

“Better wash up; your supper’s ready.”

Vera Maude let out another groan and rolled over onto her back. She could smell the cigarettes in her hair.