Guy Vanderhaeghe - Homesick

There was longing in her voice when the thought escaped her. “It would have been a lovely evening for a drive in the country,” she said.

All the next week Vera avoided bumping into Thomas and readied the explanation, the excuse she would offer when he asked her out again. On Friday, he crept down from the projectionist’s booth while the first reel was running and accosted her. “I got one,” he said, evidently highly pleased with himself. Vera thought he looked like the cat who had got the canary.

“Got what?”

“A second-hand Dodge so’s I can take you for those rides in the country you were hoping for. What do you say Sunday we take a spin out to Niagara Falls?”

Vera was speechless. Was this misunderstanding her fault?

“My old man claims I’m crazy,” said Thomas. “One minute I’m saving every penny I earn so’s I can establish myself in business and the next I blow a big chunk of it on a car when the streetcar gets me to and from work, no problem. But what Thomas says is this: If you can give a little pleasure to somebody you care about, what’s money?”

Vera knew she ought to say something right then and there. But how could she? How could she spoil his fun with him looking like that, like a little boy with a new train set? She couldn’t. They went to Niagara Falls. Vera and Thomas stood side by side staring at the hypnotic sheet of falling water, drenched by the fine spray diffused in the air. “Isn’t this just about the most romantic place on the face of the earth?” said Thomas.

“I’m never getting married,” Vera put in quickly.

For the next three Sundays in a row Vera consented to be chauffeured about southern Ontario by Thomas. Barns, cornfields, and red-brick towns slid by her dazed eyes. She was absorbed in a difficult calculation. Exactly how many outings did she owe Thomas because of the car? What it had cost him and was costing him was never long out of his mind or conversation. She wouldn’t believe what oil and gas alone added up to. Then he had had to buy a new battery. “But,” he added graciously, “it don’t seem much when you’re pleasing somebody.”

When could she, in good conscience, make an end of it? And what did it mean to end with Thomas? End what? Was there anything to end? Everything was mixed signals, confusion, ambiguity. On one hand he seemed to assume they were sweethearts, yet he had never so much as kissed her. His behaviour towards her was always scrupulously proper, almost brotherly. The most he permitted himself was to hold her hand while he walked her to and from the Dodge. But on other occasions his talk became suggestive, even smutty. In particular, what Thomas had said about Mr. Buckle had left her feeling uneasy – not about Mr. Buckle but about Thomas. She wasn’t sure she believed his story.

“You watch yourself when you’re alone with Mr. Buckle,” he said one golden Sunday afternoon as the Dodge whirled through a shower of autumn leaves.

Vera hadn’t really been paying attention. “What’s that?” she asked.

“I said,” repeated Thomas with emphasis, “watch yourself when you’re alone with Mr. Buckle.” “I’m never alone with him.”

“You will be,” said Thomas, oracularly. “All the female employees are, sooner or later. It’s when he gets you in his office, alone, that you’ve got to be on your guard.”

The thought of Mr. Buckle pursuing her around his desk like some figure in a bad cartoon amused Vera. “Buckle chasing a woman would be like a dog chasing a car. Neither would know what to do with it if it caught it.”

“He doesn’t chase anybody. He just sits behind his desk. Ask Doris and Amelia if he ever gets out from behind his desk when he scolds them.”

The significance of this was lost on her. “So he sits behind his desk. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe more goes on than meets the eye.”

“Thomas, if you’ve got something to say, spit it out.” Vera was getting mightily annoyed by these riddles.

“I don’t think I should say.”

“Fine,” said Vera. “Good. If you can’t say, you can’t say. The subject is closed.”

It was obvious Thomas didn’t want it closed. He licked his lips before proceeding. “Well, I came into his office right after he had Doris and Amelia in there about them not watching the kids stealing gum and candy and like that. When I came in he was tucking something away – if you get my drift. It seems he likes to give something an airing when he gives you women hell. Under his desk, I mean.”

Vera stared.

“You get my meaning? He exhibits himself sort of. Under the desk, that’s how.”

“I see,” said Vera. She turned her face away. A horse was standing alone in a field behind a snake fence.

“Would you say that’s sick? That’s pretty sick, isn’t it?”

Vera didn’t answer him.

“So if he ever pulls any of those tricks with you, just let me know. I’ll make him sorry he was ever born. You can count on it.”

It was this story and the queer sensation it left her with that prompted Vera to concoct one of her own stories. This one involved an elderly female relative whom it was necessary to visit every other Sunday. It was the first step in a plan to wean Thomas from her company. On the Sundays she supposedly spent with her female relative the phone in the rooms she had rented after leaving Mrs. Konwicki’s rang all afternoon, at intervals of an hour.

Vera’s feeling of uneasiness about Thomas began to grow. Nothing he had done so far was extraordinarily peculiar, but many things were slightly off, unfocussed, like a blurry film which had you wiping at your eyes as you watched it. The gifts he was constantly presenting her with were a case in point. These were small, inexpensive presents which he rather ceremoniously gave her before they embarked on their Sunday rides. His tributes, however, were strange ones, the sort of gifts given to people in hospital but not to your best girl: a bag of plums, magazines, a package of cigarettes. Never flowers, chocolates, or perfume. Not, of course, that Vera hoped for anything intimately associated with an avowal of love. Far from it. Still, his gifts were so eccentric that Vera sometimes wondered if she wasn’t the butt of a subtle and devious practical joke. Were these offerings an elaborate form of sarcasm? What did he mean to say with a bag of plums?

Then on the last Sunday in October, at a time when Vera’s exasperation with Thomas and his antics had reached the breaking point, she saw an opportunity to clear the air. Mixed in among five or six screen magazines he had presented her with (a case of carrying coals to Newcastle if she had ever seen one) she discovered an issue of Vogue devoted to bridal gowns.

What was the meaning of this? she demanded, flourishing the magazine.

“I wondered when you’d get around to it,” said Thomas. He was sitting on Vera’s davenport and the light coming in the window made him resemble a self-satisfied cat basking in sunshine.

“Get around to what?”

“What’s on every girl’s mind. Marriage. I thought I’d make it easier for you to bring it up.”

“Excuse me,” said Vera. She strode to the bathroom, bolted the door, and sat on the toilet. Think, she urged herself. Think. Think. But she couldn’t. For five minutes, for ten minutes, she crouched on the toilet seat, her heart drumming every solution to her predicament out of her head. All she could be certain of was that she had handled all this very wrong, wrong from the start.

After twenty minutes she heard fingernails politely scratching on the door. The cat wanting to be petted, or given a saucer of cream. “Vera, are you all right?” he said forlornly.

“Yes, but I’d appreciate a little privacy all the same.”