The button factory picnic 1 page

The Labour Day weekend has come and gone, leaving a detritus of plastic cups and floating bottles and gently withering balloons in the backwash of the river's eddies. Now September is asserting itself. Though at noon the sun is no less hot, morning by morning it rises later, trailing mist, and in the cooler evenings the crickets rasp and creak. Wild asters cluster in the garden, having rooted themselves there some time ago-tiny white ones, others bushier and sky-coloured, others with rusty stems, a deeper purple. Once, in my days of desultory gardening, I would have branded them weeds and pulled them out. Now I no longer make such distinctions.

It's better weather for walking now, not so much glare and shimmer. The tourists are thinning out, and those remaining are at least decently covered: no more giant shorts and bulging sun-dresses, no more poached red legs.

Today I set out for the Camp Grounds. I set out, but when I was halfway there Myra came by in her car and offered me a lift, and I'm ashamed to say I accepted it: I was out of breath, I'd already realised it was too far. Myra wanted to know where I was going, and why-she must have inherited the sheep-herding instinct, from Reenie. I told her where; as for the why, I said I just wanted to see the place again, for old times' sake. Too dangerous, she said: you never knew what might be crawling through the undergrowth out there. She made me promise to sit down on a park bench, out in plain view, and wait for her. She said she'd come back in an hour to collect me.

More and more I feel like a letter-deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.

The Camp Grounds isn't much to look at. It's a stretch of land between the road and the Jogues River -an acre or two-with trees and scrubby brushwood on it, and mosquitoes in spring, from the swampy patch in the middle. Herons hunt there; you can sometimes hear their hoarse cries, like a stick scraped on rough tin. Now and then a few bird-watchers poke about in the woebegone way they have, as if looking for something they've lost.

In the shadows there are glints of silver, from cigarette packs, and the pallid, deflated tubers of tossed condoms, and discarded squares of Kleenex lacy with rain. Dogs and cats stake their claims, avid couples sneak in among the trees, though less than they used to-there are so many other options now. Drunks sleep under the denser bushes in summer, and teenaged kids sometimes go there to smoke and sniff whatever they smoke and sniff. Candle stubs have been found, and burned spoons, and the odd throwaway needle. I hear all this from Myra, who thinks it's a disgrace. She knows what the candle stubs and spoons are for: they aredrug paraphernalia. Vice is everywhere, it seems. Et in Arcadia ego.

A decade or two ago there was an attempt to clean this area up. A sign was erected-The Colonel Parkman Park, which sounded inane-and three rustic picnic tables and a plastic waste bin and a couple of portable toilet cubicles were placed there, for the convenience of out-of-town visitors it was said, though these preferred to guzzle their beer and strew their trash somewhere with a clearer view of the river. Then a few trigger-happy lads used the sign for shotgun practice, and the tables and toilets were removed by the provincial government-something to do with budgets-and the waste bin never got emptied, although it was frequently pillaged by raccoons; so they took that away as well, and now the place is reverting.

It's called the Camp Grounds because that was where the religious camp meetings used to be held, with big tents like a circus and fervent, imported preachers. In those days the space was better tended, or else more trampled down. Small travelling fairs pitched their booths and rides and tethered their ponies and donkeys, parades wound themselves up there, and dispersed into picnics. It was a place for gatherings of any outdoor kind.

This was where the Chase and Sons Labour Day Celebration used to be held. That was the formal name, though people just called it the button factory picnic. It was always the Saturday before the official Monday Labour Day, with its earnest rhetoric and marching bands and homemade banners. There were balloons and a merry-go-round, and harmless, foolish games-sack races, egg-and-spoon, relay races in which the baton was a carrot. Barbershop quartets would sing, not too badly; the Scouts bugle corps would honk its way through a number or two; squads of children performed Highland flings and Irish step-dances on a raised wooden platform like a boxing ring, the music provided by a wind-up gramophone. There was a Best-Dressed Pet contest, and also one for babies. The food was corn on the cob, potato salad, hot dogs. Ladies' Auxiliaries put on bake sales in aid of this or that, offering pies and cookies and cakes, and jars of jam and chutney and pickles, each with a first-name label: Rhoda's Chow-chow, Pearl 's Plum Compote.

There was horsing around-hijinks. Nothing stronger than lemonade was served over the counter, but the men brought flasks and mickeys, and as dusk came on there might be scuffles, or shouting and raucous laughter through the trees, followed by splashes along the shore as some man or youth was thrown in fully dressed, or else minus his pants. The Jogues was shallow enough along there so almost nobody drowned. After dark there were fireworks. In the heyday of this picnic, or what I recall as its heyday, there was also square dancing, with fiddles. But by the year I'm remembering now, which is 1934, that sort of excess gaiety had been curtailed.

About three in the afternoon Father would make a speech, from the step-dancing platform. It was always a short speech, but it was listened to attentively by the older men; also by the women, since they either worked for the company themselves or were married to someone who did. As times got harder, even the younger men began to listen to the speech; even the girls, in their summer dresses and semi-bared arms. The speech never said much, but you could read between the lines. "Reason to be pleased" was good; "grounds for optimism" was bad.

That year the weather was hot and dry, as it had been for too long. There hadn't been as many balloons as usual; there was no merry-go-round. The corn on the cob was too old, the kernels wrinkled like knuckles; the lemonade was watery, the hot dogs ran out early. Still, there had been no layoffs at Chase Industries, not yet. Slowdowns, but no layoffs.

Father said "grounds for optimism" four times, but "reason to be pleased" not once. There were anxious looks.

When Laura and I were younger we'd enjoyed this picnic; now we didn't, but our presence was a duty. We had to show the flag. That had been drummed into us from an early age: Mother had always made a point of going, no matter how unwell she might have been feeling.

After Mother had died and Reenie had taken over the running of us, she'd paid scrupulous attention to our outfits for this day: not too casual, because this would be contemptuous, as if we didn't care what the townspeople thought of us; but not too dressed-up either, because that would be lording it over. By now we were old enough to pick out our own clothes-I'd just turned eighteen, Laura was fourteen and a half -though we no longer had as many options to choose from. The overblown display of luxury had always been discouraged in our household, though we'd had what Reenie calledgood things, but recently the definition of luxury had narrowed down so it had come to mean anything new. For the picnic we both wore our blue dirndl skirts and white blouses from the summer before. Laura had my hat from three seasons ago; I myself had last year's hat, with the ribbon changed.

Laura didn't seem to mind. I did though. I said so, and Laura said I was worldly.

We listened to the speech. (Or I listened. Laura had the attitude of listening-eyes wide, head cocked attentively to one side-but you could never tell what she was listening to.) Father had always managed to carry off this speech, no matter what he might have been drinking, but this time he stumbled over the text. He moved the typed page closer to his good eye, then further away, with a perplexed stare, as if it Was a bill for something he hadn't ordered. His clothes used to be elegant, then they'd become elegant but well worn, but by that day they verged on the seedy. His hair was ragged around the ears, in need of a trim; he seemed harried-ferocious even, like a highwayman cornered. After the speech, for which there was no more than dutiful applause, some of the men gathered in close groups, talking among themselves in lowered voices. Others sat under the trees, on outspread jackets or blankets, or lay down with handkerchiefs over their faces and dozed off. Only men did this; the women remained awake, watchful. Mothers herded their young children down to the river, to paddle at the gritty little beachthere. Off to the side a dusty baseball game had started up; an eddy of spectators watched it groggily.

I went to help Reenie at her bake sale. What was it in aid of? I can't recall. But I did this helping every year now-it was expected. I told Laura she ought to come too, but she acted as though she hadn't heard me and strolled off, dangling her hat by its floppy brim.

I let her go. I was supposed to keep an eye on her: Reenie didn't waste any sleep on my account, but Laura in her opinion was altogether too confiding, too cosy with strangers. The white slavers were always on the prowl, and Laura was their natural target. She'd get into a strange car, open an unfamiliar door, cross the wrong street, and that would be that, because she didn't draw lines, or not where other people drew them, and you couldn't warn her because she didn't understand such warnings. It wasn't that she flouted rules: she simply forgot about them.

I was tired of keeping an eye on Laura, who didn't appreciate it. I was tired of being held accountable for her lapses, her failures to comply. I was tired of being held accountable, period. I wanted to go to Europe, or to New York, or even to Montreal -to nightclubs, to soirees, to all the exciting places mentioned in Reenie's social magazines-but I was needed at home. Needed at home, needed at home -it sounded like a life sentence. Worse, like a dirge. I was stuck in Port Ticonderoga, proud bastion of the common-and-garden-variety button and of lower-priced long Johns for budget-minded shoppers. I would stagnate here, nothing would ever happen to me, I would end up an old maid like Miss Violence, pitied and derided. This at bottom was my fear. I wanted to be elsewhere, but I saw no way to get there. Once in a while I found myself hoping that I would be abducted by white slavers, even though I didn't believe in them. At least it would be a change.

The bake-sale table had an awning over it, and tea towels or pieces of waxed paper shielding the goods from flies. Reenie had contributed pies, not a form of baking she ever truly mastered. Her pies had gluey, underdone fillings, and crusts that were tough but flexible, like beige kelp or huge leathery mushrooms. In better times they sold well enough-it was understood that they were ceremonial objects, not food as such-but they weren't moving briskly today. Money was in short supply, and in exchange for it people wanted something they could actually eat.

As I stood behind the table, Reenie in an undertone retailed the latest news. Four men had been thrown into the river already, with the sky still blazing white, and not altogether in fun. There had been arguments, having to do with politics, said Reenie; voices had been raised. Apart from the usual river shenanigans, there had been scuffles. Elwood Murray had been knocked down. He was the editor of the weekly paper, having inherited it from two generations of newspaper Murrays: he wrote most of it, and took the pictures for it as well. Luckily he hadn't been ducked, as that would have damaged his camera, which had cost a good deal of money even second-hand, as Reenie happened to know. He had a nosebleed, and was sitting under a tree with a glass of lemonade and two women fussing around him with dampened handkerchiefs; I could see him from where I was standing.

Was it political, this knocking-down? Reenie didn't know, but people didn't like him listening in on what they were saying. In prosperous times Elwood Murray was considered a fool, and maybe what Reenie called a pansy-well, he wasn't married, and at his age that had to mean something-but he was tolerated and even appreciated, within decent limits, as long as he put in all the names for social events and got them spelled right. But these were not prosperous times, and Elwood Murray was too nosy for his own good. You don't want every little thing about you written up, said Reenie. Nobody in their right mind would want that.

I caught sight of Father, walking among the picnicking workers with his lopsided gait. He was nodding in his abrupt way at this man and that, a nod in which his head appeared to move back on his neck rather than forward. His black eye-patch turned from side to side; from a distance it looked like a hole in his head. His moustache curved like a single dark sideways tusk above his mouth, which clenched now and then into something he must have intended for a smile. His hands were hidden in his pockets.

Beside him was a younger man, a little taller than Father, though unlike Father he had no rumples, no angles. Sleek was the word you thought of. He was wearing a natty Panama and a linen suit that appeared to emit light, it was so fresh and clean. He was very obviously from out of town.

"Who's that with Father?" I said to Reenie.

Reenie looked without appearing to look, then gave a short laugh. "That's Mr. Royal Classic, in the flesh. He certainly has the nerve."

"I thought it must be him," I said.

Mr. Royal Classic was Richard Griffen, of Royal Classic Knitwear in Toronto. Our workers-Father's workers-referred to it derisively as Royal Classic Shitwear, because Mr. Griffen was not only Father's chief competitor, he was also an adversary of sorts. He'd attacked Father in the press for being too soft on the unemployed, on Relief, and on pinkos generally. Also on unions, which was gratuitous because Port Ticonderoga did not have any unions in it and Father's dim views on them were no secret. But now for some reason, Father had invited Richard Griffen to dinner at Avilion, following the picnic, and on very short notice as well. Only four days.

Reenie felt Mr. Griffen had been sprung on her. As everyone knew, you had to put on a better show for your enemies than for your friends, and four days was not long enough for her to prepare for such an event, especially considering that there hadn't been any of what you'd call fine dining at Avilion since the days of Grandmother Adelia. True, Callie Fitzsimmons sometimes brought friends for the weekend, but that was different, because they were only artists and should be grateful for whatever they were given. They would sometimes be found in the kitchen at night, raiding the pantry, making their own sandwiches out of leftovers. The bottomless pits, Reenie called them.

"He's new money, anyhow," said Reenie scornfully, surveying Richard Griffen. "Look at the fancy pants." She was unforgiving of anyone who criticised Father (anyone, that is, except herself), and scornful of those who rose in the world and then acted above their level, or what she considered their level; and it was a known fact that the Griffens were common as dirt, or at least their grandfather was. He'd got hold of his business through cheating the Jews, said Reenie in an ambiguous tone-was this something of a feat, in her books?-but exactly how he had done it she couldn't say. (In fairness, Reenie may have invented these slurs on the Griffens. She sometimes attributed to people the histories she felt they ought to have had.)

Behind Father and Mr. Griffen, walking with Callie Fitzsimmons, was a woman I assumed was Richard Griffen's wife-youngish, thin, stylish, trailing diaphanous orange-tinted muslin like the steam from a watery tomato soup. Her picture hat was green, as were her high-heeled slingbacks and a wispy scarf affair she'd draped around her neck. She was overdressed for the picnic. As I watched, she stopped and lifted one foot and peered back over her shoulder to see if there was something stuck on her heel. I hoped there was. Still, I thought how nice it would be to have such lovely clothes, such wicked new-money clothes, instead of the virtuous, dowdy, down-at-heels garments that were our mode of necessity these days.

"Where's Laura?" said Reenie in sudden alarm.

"I have no idea," I said. I had gotten into the habit of snapping at Reenie, especially when she bossed me around. You're not my mother had become my most withering riposte.

"You should know better than to let her out of your sight," said Reenie. "Anybodycould be here."Anybody was one of her bugbears. You never knew what intrusions, what thefts and gaffesanybody might commit.

I found Laura sitting on the grass under a tree, talking with a young man-a man, not a boy-a darkish man, with a light-coloured hat. His style was indeterminate-not a factory worker, but not anything else either, or nothing definite. No tie, but then it was a picnic. A blue shirt, a little frayed around the edges. An impromptu, a proletarian mode. A lot of young men were affecting it then-a lot of university students. In the winters they wore knitted vests, with horizontal stripes.

"Hello," said Laura. "Where did you go off to? This is my sister Iris, this is Alex."

"Mister…?" I said. How had Laura got on a first-name basis so quickly?

"Alex Thomas," said the young man. He was polite but cautious. He scrambled to his feet and reached out his hand, and I took it. Then I found myself sitting down beside them. It seemed the best thing to do, in order to protect Laura.

"You're from out of town, Mr. Thomas?"

"Yes. I'm visiting people here." He sounded like what Reenie would call anice young man, meaningnot poor. But not rich either.

"He's a friend of Callie's," said Laura. "She was just here, she introduced us. He came on the same train with her." She was explaining a little too much.

"Did you meet Richard Griffen?" I said to Laura. "He was with Father. The one who's coming to dinner?"

"Richard Griffen, the sweatshop tycoon?" said the young man.

"Alex-Mr. Thomas knows about ancient Egypt," said Laura. "He was telling me about hieroglyphs." She looked at him. I'd never seen her look at anyone else in quite the same way. Startled, dazzled? Hard to put a name to such a look.

"That sounds interesting," I said. I could hear my voice pronouncinginteresting in that sneering way people have. I needed some way of telling this Alex Thomas that Laura was only fourteen, but I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't make her angry.

Alex Thomas produced a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket-Craven A's, as I recall. He tapped one out for himself. I was a little surprised that he smoked ready-mades-it didn't go with his shirt. Packaged cigarettes were a luxury: the factory workers rolled their own, some with one hand.

"Thank you, I will," I said. I'd only smoked a few cigarettes before, and those on the sly, filched from the silver box of them kept on top of the piano. He looked hard at me, which I suppose was what I'd wanted, then offered the package. He lit a match with his thumb, held it for me.

"You shouldn't do that," said Laura. "You could set yourself on fire."

Elwood Murray appeared before us, upright and jaunty again. The front of his shirt was still damp and splashed with pink, from where the women with the wet handkerchiefs had tried to get out the blood; the insides of his nostrils were ringed in dark red.

"Hello, Mr. Murray," said Laura. "Are you all right?"

"Some of the boys got a little carried away," said Elwood Murray, as if shyly revealing that he'd won some sort of a prize. "It was all in good fun. May I?" Then he took our picture with his flash camera. He always said May I before taking a picture for the paper but he never waited for the answer. Alex Thomas raised his hand as if to fend him off.

"I know these two lovely ladies, of course," Elwood Murray said to him, "but your name is?"

Reenie was suddenly there. Her hat was askew, and she was red in the face and breathless. "Your father's been looking all over for you," she said.

I knew this to be untrue. Nevertheless Laura and I had to get up from the shade of the tree and brush our skirts down and go with her, like ducklings being herded.

Alex Thomas waved us goodbye. It was a sardonic wave, or so I thought.

"Don't you know any better?" Reenie said. "Sprawled on the grass with Lord knows who. And for heaven's sakes, Iris, throw away that cigarette, you're not a tramp. What if your father sees you?"

"Father smokes like a furnace," I said, in what I hoped was an insolent tone.

"That's different," said Reenie.

"Mr. Thomas," said Laura. "Mr. Alex Thomas. He is a student of divinity. Or he was until recently," she added scrupulously. "He lost his faith. His conscience would not let him continue."

Alex Thomas's conscience had evidently made a big impression on Laura, but it cut no ice with Reenie. "What's he working at now, then?" she said. "Something fishy, or I'm a Chinaman. He has a slippery look."

"What's wrong with him?" I said to Reenie. I hadn't liked him, but surely he was now being judged without a hearing.

"What's right with him, is more like it, " said Reenie. "Rolling around on the lawn in full view of everyone." She was talking more to me than to Laura. "At least you had your skirt tucked in." Reenie said a girl alone with a man should be able to hold a dime between her knees. She was always afraid that people-men-would see our legs, the part above the knee. Of women who allowed this to happen, she would say: Curtain's up, where's the show? Or, Might as well hang out a sign. Or, more balefully, She's asking for it, she'll get what's coming to her, or, in the worst cases, She's an accident waiting to happen.

"We weren't rolling," Laura said. "There was no hill."

"Rolling or not, you know what I mean," said Reenie.

"We weren't doing anything," I said. "We were talking."

"That's beside the point," said Reenie. "People could see you."

"Next time we're not doing anything we'll hide in the bushes," I said.

"Who is he anyway?" said Reenie, who usually ignored my head-on challenges, since by now there was nothing she could do about them. Who is he meant Who are his parents.

"He's an orphan," said Laura. "He was adopted, from an orphanage. A Presbyterian minister and his wife adopted him." She seemed to have winkled this information out of Alex Thomas in a very short time, but this was one of her skills, if it can be called that-she'd just keep on asking questions, of the personal kind we'd been taught were rude, until the other person, in shame or outrage, would be forced to stop answering.

"An orphan!" said Reenie. "He could be anybody!"

"What's wrong with orphans?" I said. I knew what was wrong with them in Reenie's books: they didn't know who their fathers were, and that made them unreliable, if not downright degenerate. Born in a ditch was how Reenie would put it. Born in a ditch, left on a doorstep.

"They can't be trusted," said Reenie. "They worm their way in. They don't know where to draw the line."

"Well anyway," said Laura, "I've invited him to dinner."

"Now that takes the gold-plated gingerbread," said Reenie.

Loaf givers

There's a wild plum tree at the back of the garden, on the other side of the fence. It's ancient, gnarled, the branches knuckled with black knot. Walter says it should come down, but I've pointed out that, technically speaking, it isn't mine. In any case, I have a fondness for it. It blossoms every spring, unasked, untended; in the late summer it drops plums into my garden, small blue oval ones with a bloom on them like dust. Such generosity. I picked up the last windfalls this morning-those few the squirrels and raccoons and drunken yellow-jackets had left me-and ate them greedily, the juice of their bruised flesh bloodying my chin. I didn't notice it until Myra dropped by with another of her tuna casseroles. My goodness, she said, with her breathless avian laugh. Who've you been fighting?

I remember that Labour Day dinner in every detail, because it was the only time all of us were ever in the same room together.

The revels were still going on out at the Camp Grounds, but not in any form you'd want to witness close up, as the surreptitious consumption of cheap liquor was now in full swing. Laura and I had left early, to help Reenie with the dinner preparations.

These had been going on for some days. As soon as Reenie had been informed about the party, she'd dug out her one cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, by Fannie Merritt Farmer. It wasn't hers really: it had belonged to Grandmother Adelia, who'd consulted it-along with her various cooks, of course-when planning her twelve-course dinners. Reenie had inherited it, although she didn't use it for her daily cooking-all of that was in her head, according to her. But this was a question of the fancy stuff.

I had read this cookbook, or looked into it at least, in the days in which I'd been romanticising my grandmother. (I'd given that up by now. I knew I would have been thwarted by her, just as I was thwarted by Reenie and my father, and would have been thwarted by my mother, if she hadn't died. It was the purpose in life of all older people to thwart me. They were devoted to nothing else.)

The cookbook had a plain cover, a no-nonsense mustard colour, and inside it there were plain doings as well. Fannie Merritt Farmer was relentlessly pragmatic-cut and dried, in a terse New England way. She assumed you knew nothing, and started from there: "A beverage is any drink. Water is the beverage provided for man by Nature. All beverages contain a large percentage of water, and therefore their uses should be considered: I. To quench thirst. II. To introduce water into the circulatory system. III. To regulate body temperature. IV. To assist in carrying off water. V. To nourish. VI. To stimulate the nervous system and various organs. VII. For medicinal purposes," and so forth.

Taste and pleasure did not form part of her lists, but at the front of the book there was a curious epigraph by John Ruskin: Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and bairns and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savoury in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies-loaf givers.

I found it difficult to picture Helen of Troy in an apron, with her sleeves rolled up to the elbow and her cheek dabbled with flour; and from what I knew about Circe and Medea, the only things they'd ever cooked up were magic potions, for poisoning heirs apparent or changing men into pigs. As for the Queen of Sheba, I doubt she ever made so much as a piece of toast. I wondered where Mr. Ruskin got his peculiar ideas, about ladies and cookery both. Still, it was an image that must have appealed to a great many middle-class women of my grandmother's time. They were to be sedate in bearing, unapproachable, regal even, but possessed of arcane and potentially lethal recipes, and capable of inspiring the most incendiary passions in men. And on top of that, perfectly and always ladies-loaf givers. The distributors of gracious largesse.

Had anyone ever taken this sort of thing seriously? My grandmother had. All you needed to do was to look at her portraits-at that cat-ate-the-canary smile, those droopy eyelids. Who did she think she was, the Queen of Sheba? Without a doubt.

When we got back from the picnic, Reenie was rushing around in the kitchen. She didn't look much like Helen of Troy: despite all the work she'd done in advance, she was flustered, and in a foul temper; she was sweating, and her hair was coming down. She said we would just have to take things as they came, because what else could we expect, since she could not do miracles and that included making silk purses out of sows' ears. And an extra place too, at zero hour, for this Alex person, whatever he called himself. Smart Alex, by the look of him.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 655