Howard Norman - What Is Left the Daughter

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

or an excuse to stay

on deck. And love's the burning boy.

In a few minutes, my aunt opened her eyes and said, "Mrs. Oleander, the librarian, brought this poem to Tilda's attention. Tilda then copied it out for me. What Mrs. Oleander found thrilling, and so do I, is that it was composed by a woman who had some of her upbringing in Great Village. Practically a neighbor! This very poem was actually published. The magazine's called New Democracy. Granted, it was published in 1936, but the poet, Miss Elizabeth Bishop, has published many others. According to Mrs. Oleander, Miss Elizabeth Bishop's something of a world traveler. But she visits our province now and again. And do you know what? Where you and I got on the bus this morning, the house across from the Esso station, is the very house in which the poet spent several years. She went to the Great Village school. Her mother — and this is actual fact, not merely gossip — the mother's in Nova Scotia Hospital. Across Halifax Harbor to Dartmouth. Some sort of nervous collapse or other. Nobody's business, really, but the family's. Poor thing, eh? Elizabeth was only a little girl when they sent her mother there."

I returned the poem to my aunt's handbag. "It'd take ten philologists to help me understand it as well as it's meant to be understood," I said.

"Don't sell yourself short," she said. "The way I see it? A poem reaches out exactly halfway, then you reach out halfway, then see what happens."

"Provisional, eh?"

"I only mean if you're thinking's willful and generous toward a poem, the poem'll be equally those things back. As for meaning, it'll mean something different to each person. That's all you have to know."

"'Poor ship in flames went down'—that's got a ring to it," I said. "And 'stammering elocution'—I know what that's like."

"See, already you've got a good start on coming to terms with it."

"Nope, that's enough homework for me, Aunt Constance. But I'm glad you like the poem so much."

"When I get back home, I'm pressing it into my daybook. Mrs. Oleander says there's every reason to have confidence that Miss Elizabeth Bishop will establish a permanent reputation."

"Already did, in Great Village, don't you think?"

"Of course," my aunt said. "But just imagine, letting dozens, maybe hundreds of total strangers in on your private-most thoughts. Poets suffer from this. Yet their suffering's to our benefit. Writing poetry, not just for the church bulletin, I mean, risks being too openly sophisticated. Sophisticated in ways the average person can scarcely comprehend. And right there I speak of myself as average."

My aunt looked out the window for a while, then did finally doze off. She woke up only when the bus wheezed to a stop at Halifax terminal. My uncle had rigged a kind of gurney to haul my aunt's trunk, basically a dolly made of planks sawed and hinged, about two feet wide and three feet long, with wheels taken from four children's scooters fitted to the underside. Mr. Harrison and I loaded the trunk onto it. Wobbled a bit but did the job nicely, and even drew some notice from pedestrians, all the four city blocks to the wharf, where a deckhand pulled it up the gangway onto the ferry St. Michael's. The St. Michael's would connect with the Caribou in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, then cross the Cabot Strait to Newfoundland.

"Enjoy yourself here in the city," my aunt said. "Take in a movie. Eat in a restaurant. A seat by the window makes you feel less alone, I'm told. But try to postpone moping aboutthings at home, at least till you get back home. I'll send a postcard, eh?"

"Have a wonderful time," I said.

"Wyatt, it's good for the soul, isn't it, to visit Joe and Katherine."

"I could go out to the cemetery straight from the wharf."

"You take care, darling," my aunt said. "And especially good luck at the recruiting office. Those young men in uniform on the bus — your age, about. I pray God lets them measure up, wherever they're sent. I love you very much. I think you'll decide things well for yourself."

We hugged, and I watched my aunt until she reached the top of the gangway. On deck she waved, then disappeared. I bet they serve tea and biscuits, and that's where she's gone, I thought. I opened my suitcase to take out a sweater and found a small tin of lemon cookies. Purchased from the bakery, I knew; my aunt never made lemon cookies. I opened the tin. Then I realized that while I was helping to get my aunt's wardrobe trunk on the dolly she must've inspected my suitcase, because she'd placed a note inside the tin: Adequate job.

Walking through the city, I stopped in at the Baptist Spa on Morris Street. The proprietor, a Mrs. Campion, was cordial. I paid for a room, number 4, left my suitcase on the bed and set right out for the cemetery. My parents' graves were near the entrance, to the right of the iron gate. Very easy to locate.

Which reminds me, Marlais. In Nova Scotia, your mother's favorite of all the cemeteries she'd come to know was the one in Great Village. And believe me, Tilda was tough in her judgments. Again I jump ahead here, but one time — after the war— Tilda came home from being a mourner in McCallum Settlement. "The cemetery there's a disgrace," she said. "No one's weeded there for ages. Hoodlums have scrawled up a number of stones and the road in is badly rutted. Still, I did a good job and was paid on the spot. Yet it was everything I could do not to criticize the caretaker. The deceased was named Darwin Timbertea, age ninety-one, succumbed to pneumonia. Other than clergy, the only one there was a nephew. After the service, the nephew drove me to the bus. In the car, I couldn't hold back and harshly criticized the caretaker, and the nephew said, 'My uncle Darwin was the caretaker.'"

At four P.M. I went to the recruiting station, corner of Duke Street and Argyle. The desk attendant, in Navy uniform, was direct. "You're here to kill Germans, I hope, and to do Canada proud, I hope. What's your name?"

"Wyatt Hillyer, from Middle Economy."

He said, "Did they teach you to write in Middle Economy?"

"I already knew how by the time I got there."

"Fill out these forms, then."

"I'm not decided yet," I said.

He leaned forward over the table filled with recruiting pamphlets, his face an inch from mine. "See that poster?" he said. He grabbed my shoulders and spun me toward the wall and I saw a recruiting poster. It showed a Navy warship dropping depth charges down at a German U-boat with Hitler's face on its hull.

"I'm not here to help you not piss your pants, Hillyer. You want to be on that ship, doing what that ship's doing, sign up. Me, I'm from Nells Harbor — men from there get their sea legs in the womb, eh? How about boys from Middle Economy?" I signed the papers. He said, "Spend Christmas at home and come back January fifteen. Right here. My desk." He saluted and I saluted back.

It remained for me to pass a physical examination, but for all intents and purposes, I was in the Royal Canadian Navy.

I ate supper in a restaurant on Lower Water Street, lingering long past dark, looking at the harbor, thinking I'd write Tilda a letter that would begin, "Well, I'm going off to war." But to what purpose? The letter, I mean.

Directly from the restaurant, I went to a pub on Bedford Row. Among the customers were some students from Dalhousie University, men and women, talking about philosophy and music. I heard "Beethoven." I thought Hans Mohring might know them. I felt envious. I had philosophies of my own. But I didn't invite myself to join them. After an hour or so, in walked the Navy recruiter, accompanied by three other men in uniform. Ashamed to say, at the bar I spent far too much money, throwing back shot after shot. In the wide mirror back of the bar I noticed that the fellow who'd recruited me kept looking over, shaking his head, all mockery and disgust, I thought. Who knows, really, but you get my frame of mind.