Ivan Doig - Work Song

“The nomenclature, Sandy, I think you’ll find goes back to Middle English-the term recognizably became ‘holy day,’ and subsequent centuries of quickening pronunciation have given us-”

“Damn it, Morgan, did I ask for the history of the universe? Didn’t think so.” His shaggy gray eyebrows knitted, he contemplated me in either amazement or extreme irritation, it was always hard to tell which. “You have the damnedest brainbox ever created, I swear. Anyhow, get yourself caught up on the usual chores”-a near impossibility the way he kept adding to them-“the next couple of days. I have something I want you to do. Tell you when the time comes.”

GRACE HAD BEEN QUIET as a mouse at breakfast, as had I, out of respect for the kingsize hangovers Hoop and Griff brought to the table. I was unprepared, then, when I came home from the library and heard the urgent stage-whisper from the kitchen: “Hsst. In here, Morrie.”

Expecting to perform an act of rescue on whatever was cooking for supper, I stepped in and found Grace miserably seated at the kitchen table, her face a smeared mask of white. A bottle of calamine lotion was standing ready for more application. Wrapped around her forehead was a rag soaked, according to its eye-stinging odor, in vinegar. Not that I needed any further evidence, but the red welts on any inch of her skin not yet daubed with calamine told me I was seeing a prime case of hives.

“What on earth-?” I sat down quickly and reached over to hold her hand, trying madly to think what to do beyond that. If the goons had shown up here on a glory hole mission despite my warning, I was going to have to find some way to make them regret it; I did not look forward to that. She continued to gaze at me with a forlorn expression, her eyes smarting from the acrid vinegar cloth, which, truth to tell, did not seem to be cooling her troubled brow appreciably. “Grace, you have to put it into words. What’s the matter?”

“You are.”

This was worse than if she had said, “The goons were here, breathing fire.” My hand withdrew. Apprehensively, I asked, “How so?”

“By being you, whoever, whatever-” She started to scratch her arms, thought better of it, and instead dug her elbows into the table and leaned practically flat across to confront me. “I tossed and turned all night trying to figure out who am I with when I’m with you. Take yesterday. One minute I’m on the arm of someone I enjoy thoroughly”-her reddened eyes blinked more rapidly at that emotion-“and the next, you’re gambling away money like you’re feeding the chickens.”

“Russian Famine won by at least eleven yards,” I pointed out.

“All right, then,” she said, no less miserable, “half the time when you’re busy getting rid of any wrinkled money, the wind blows a little back.”

Still trying to catch up, I asked hoarsely: “What brought this on? Just a few bets I happened to place when the opportunity seemed ripe?”

Wordlessly she gazed past me, through the kitchen doorway, to the wedding portrait on the sideboard, and my heart sank. The ghost of Arthur hovered in from the next room, and how could I ever compete with such a paragon of domestic virtue? Her whitened, rag-wrapped countenance as tragic as a mummy’s, Grace leaned farther toward me as if to deliver that verdict more fiercely. But what came out was practically a whisper.

“Arthur was a betting man.”

Silence followed this shocking news. Grace sat back as if exhausted, scratched under an arm, and with an angry swipe slathered on more calamine. I still was trying to imagine which competitions of skill so manly a miner would be enticed to wager on. “Boxing matches? Drilling contests?”

“Dogs.”

My jaw dropped. “Believe me, I never have and never shall put money on the velocity of a canine.”

“Arthur was hopeless about it,” she half-whispered again, her voice carrying the strain of the memory. “He would be perfectly fine for a while, bringing his wages home, sweet as anything. Then would come a payday when he didn’t show up for supper and I knew he’d gone to the dogs again. The races, that is.” She folded her arms, wincing as she did so. “And there you were yesterday, one minute as perfect a companion as a woman could ask for, and the next, behaving as if you were trying to break the bank at Monte Carlo. Which one is the real you? I can’t tell from one moment to the next whether you’re the best creature that ever wore pants, or, or-I don’t know what.” Her tirade ran down. “How can a person ever hope to get a straight line on you, Morrie?”

I nervously smoothed my mustache, dreading where this was leading. It had to be faced, it always does.

“Grace”-I used her name as if patting it before putting it away for good-“I don’t know any cure for being myself. The lotion for that hasn’t been concocted yet.” The next had to be said past the lump in my throat. “Do you want me to pack my satchel and go?”

No man is a hero to his butler, it is said; nor is any boarder a model of perfection to his landlady. Grace Faraday straightened up and scrutinized me, blinking harder. “If I had a lick of sense, I should push you out the door right now, shouldn’t I.” As I watched, her dubious self struggled with the proprietorial side of her. “But when you’re not a pile of trouble, you’re no trouble. You’re on time with the rent every week, although heaven knows how. You aren’t a steaming drunk, at least since you gave up wakes. You don’t throw a fit when dynamite goes off under the place. And Griff and Hoop don’t seem to drive you crazy. That counts.”

Had she been ticking these off on her fingers, she now was out of fingers. Looking as doubtful as she sounded, she concluded:

“For now, you may as well stay. One more thing, though. We need to be as clear as we can about each other. Yesterday was too, um, too forward of me, Morrie, and it wasn’t really fair to you.” Something more than an itch was making her chalky face twitch. “You shouldn’t get the wrong idea and feel…” There she faltered.

“Taken up with,” I finished for her, and I was surprised at how sad it sounded.

THIS WAS ONE of the nights of the week when I had to go back to the library and lock up after the evening groups, and I trudged off to do it with the old weight of disappointment on me.

First Rose, now Grace. Rejection as soon as someone personable and pretty took a good look into me, whatever it was they thought they saw.

Women were the fairer sex? What was fair about their fingersnap judgments of me? Even Sandison, grumpy and flatfooted around women, had found someone to put up with him, the redoubtable Dora. While my best efforts caused them to dust their hands of me or break out in hives.

I felt lonely as a castaway, and, what was worse, from present indications I had better get used to it.

My acidic mood was at odds with the gentle summer dusk, spreading down from the Hill over the brick canyons of the city, casting the streets into picturesque shadow. That sank through to me, and a couple of times I whipped into a doorway and looked back. There was no sign of goons, at least. Brass knuckles seemed to get the job done, although I couldn’t see how to apply that to courtship.

In the library basement when I arrived, the Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Literary and Social Circle was still going strong. A balding young man with the look of a bank clerk was onstage, reciting in round tones: “… now when heaven holds starry night in its keep / and on moonlit Olympus, the Muses gently sleep.” Ordinarily I am all in favor of the Muses, but tonight I shooed the literature lovers mercilessly, and they filed out of the auditorium in shy pairings. The big room echoing with emptiness now, I was stacking away the chairs when I heard a single set of footsteps rapid on the stairs. The goons always traveled as a pair. Or did they? Just in case, I hefted a chair, ready to hurl.