Howard Norman - What Is Left the Daughter

"My call was an order from management, Mr. Hillyer," she said.

"So, Mr. Brockman asked you to call me."

"Yes, Mr. Brockman," she said, "the hotel manager."

"Can I speak to him, please?"

"It won't do any good, Mr. Hillyer. I've made inquiries around town, and Mr. Brockman suggests the Homestead Hotel at 6 Duke Street. Their rent is twelve per month more reasonable than ours, if you catch my meaning."

"This isn't good news."

"It could be worse," she said. "Mr. Brockman's not charging you this month's rent."

"That's very decent of him," I said.

"The Homestead has a room reserved under your name. Mr. Brockman took the liberty."

"The fact of why he had to call them couldn't be much of a recommendation for me," I said.

"It's not so undignified as all that, Mr. Hillyer," she said. "You're hardly the first we've made such an arrangement for. And hotels in Halifax try to accommodate each other. Whenever possible."

I needed only two days to move. I was now in room 301 at the Homestead Hotel, which was a bit shabbier than the Waverly, but my room looked out through clean windows onto Duke Street, and there was a closet spacious enough to hold the radios. The bed had a good mattress, and my neighbors on either side, and above and below, were fairly quiet. I'd persuaded two bellmen from the Waverly to help me carry my possessions across town. I bought them each a beer at Rigolo's.

A week later, I'd come back from a long, exhausting day of gaffing in rough weather. Still in my work clothes, I sat at my one table, eating halibut, green beans and carrot sticks off the hot plate and listening to Corelli, the gramophone turned low, when I had the idea to telephone Cornelia. It may be that I wanted to hear a familiar voice, even though there may not be much to say. Just to speak with an old friend. I tapped the receiver buttons half a dozen times and the switchboard operator said, "How may I help you, room 301?"

"I'd like to call a Mrs. Cornelia Tell in Middle Economy," I said. "I have the number right here. Should I read it to you?"

There was a long silence. Maybe the switchboard operator was new on the job, didn't know how to connect a long-distance call. But finally she said, "Wyatt Hillyer, I noticed your name in the hotel registry."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's your old neighbor Reese," she said. "Reese Mac Isaac."

I can guarantee you, Marlais, that I almost fell off my chair. It wasn't so much that Reese was still living in Halifax. In fact, I thought I'd seen her a few times across some street I was walking on, and once through a restaurant window, but on those occasions I couldn't really be sure. More, it was the fact that she'd described herself as "your old neighbor." As if a whole world of incidents and experiences had been reduced to that.

"You know, I saw you that day," she said. "How many years back? You were standing with two people quite a bit older than you, and I was boarding the Victoria, going to New York City. This wasn't long after Katherine and Joe had died and I was being hounded by newspaper reporters and had to get out for a while. I stayed in New York only a short time. Foolish me and all of my foolish ambitions, eh? I actually considered trying to find acting work, but when I consulted the trade papers, there were hundreds of people looking for the same kind of work. You can't imagine. I didn't know how to go about things there. I walked around a lot and sat in my hotel room and came back within a couple of weeks. Job to job to job — and I ended up here at the Homestead about two years ago."

"You've traveled widely in Halifax," I said. "Same as me, hotel to hotel."

"That's right."

"It seems being a switchboard operator suits you," I said.

"I need a job and I know this job," she said. "In that sense it suits me."

"My parents and I saw you in Widow's Walk. "

"Were you surprised I wasn't nominated for an Academy Award?"

"As it turned out, what surprised me was what you meant to my mother and my father," I said. " That's what surprised me."

"It surprised us three as well," she said.

"Yeah, it surprised them both off a bridge."

There was a long silence.

"I'll try and connect your call now, Wyatt," she said.

In about ten minutes Reese Mac Isaac called back and said, "I let it ring thirty times or more, but your Cornelia Tell didn't pick up. Shall I try again later?"

"Maybe tomorrow," I said.

"I'm not supposed to use the switchboard for personal business," she said, "but I'm in my same house, 60 Robie. Just for your information."

"Goodbye, switchboard operator," I said.

"Did you ever know that old Paulson Lessard got a public notice and was fined for disturbing the peace?"

"I'm not on speaking terms with Mr. Lessard," I said.

"Nobody is, since he's dead and buried, Wyatt," she said.

"He pawned off my mother's radios."

"That was unkind."

"It was out-and-out theft."

"Him receiving a fine and citation, it's a small piece of news, I know. I mean, we've been through a war, haven't we? It's a small, small piece of news, but what happened was, when you moved out of town, you apparently had arranged for Paulson Lessard to look after your house. You gave him a key."

"That's true."

"Well, one Sunday night he had all of Katherine's radios blasting music at top volume. More noise than if a ghost walked through a zoo. You see, I'd only just come back from New York and was asleep when it happened. I woke up and looked through my kitchen window, but I didn't see anyone in your house. A neighbor from across the street called the police. I went out on my porch. The neighbor was standing on your front lawn. I wasn't on speaking terms with her. Nobody was on speaking terms with me, really. Except news paper reporters, and what they printed was unspeakable, all sorts of trash about me and Katherine, me and Joe. I was even offered tabloid money to tell my true story, so to speak."

"The harlot's true story," I said.

"Yes, harlot that I was," she said. "Anyway, a police car arrived and two officers knocked on your door. By this time, maybe ten or a dozen neighbors were on your lawn. I was looking out my kitchen window again. An officer stood on your porch and shined his flashlight in through your dining room window, and that's when I caught a glimpse of Mr. Lessard standing on your dining room table, naked as a jaybird. Not a lovely sight. And he was waving a spatula over his head like he was conducting an orchestra."

"What happened then?"

"They opened the front door and walked in and had a sit-down with Paulson Lessard," Reese said. "He'd wrapped the tablecloth around himself. In the end, he was charged only with disturbing the peace."

"I guess that didn't improve the reputation of my house any," I said.

"I'll say this for him, though," Reese said, "he watered the plants. He kept the lawn clipped and the snow off your driveway. He was old, but he got up on a ladder and washed windows."

"He pawned my mother's radios," I said. "But I got them back."

"From the pawnshop?" Reese said.

"That's right."

"Oh, my, you had to purchase your own heirlooms."

"That's one way to look at it."

"Wyatt, my shift is four to midnight, seven days a week, though Sundays I might shut down the switchboard at ten. Management allows me that. So if you want to avoid me, and why wouldn't you, don't ask me to connect a call during those hours, okay?"

"I might have to move hotels," I said.

"That would work, too," she said.

I heard the switchboard's electric buzz-buzz-buzz in the background — Reese had to connect a call but didn't put me on hold. She just rang off.

When I thought about it, it didn't seem all that big a coincidence, Reese Mac Isaac working in the same hotel where I rented a room. Being a switchboard operator had been Reese's one steady employment. Most of the hotels in Halifax had switchboards. If I could change hotels so often, why not Reese? That's how I saw it.