Loddy-Dah Read online

  Loddy, overwhelmed with sudden exhaustion, pulled out a cigarette as though the activity would keep her awake and vigilant. The scene at the Limelite-A-Go-Go replayed itself — the burnt bodies, the screams, the body bags, the guy tossing the lit cigarette into the puddle of gasoline ... the cigarette ... puddle of gasoline ... the puddle of gasoline. She pulverized her cigarette, grounded it into the bench and hurled the entire package of Cameos towards the river. She vowed never to smoke again.

  The red sun shrank behind the trees beyond Nun’s Island and impaired her vision. The Blonde, like Jesus, walked on the water towards the river’s edge.

  It’s your fault! All those people! Your fault! If you hadn’t been so fat, the fire escape wouldn’t have fallen and hurt all those people. Your fault!

  Two teenage boys appeared from some hidden cave under the boardwalk to salvage the package of Cameos. She yelled out: “Hey, you guys! You can’t smoke. You can’t smoooooooke.”

  They vanished before Loddy even thought of chasing them. She kneaded her eyes with the heels of her hands and, when she regained her composure, The Blonde too had disappeared. Loddy laid her canvas tote bag flat at one end of the bench, a pillow for her head.

  Just for a few minutes, just a few ...

  And fell asleep.

  She dreamed of river rats nibbling at her ass and swarms of shadflies playing in her hair. She brushed them away, but they kept returning, brushed them again, her hand slapping nothing but air. When she woke up, it was night with only the street lights on LaSalle Boulevard beaming and the two teenagers hovering over her. They pinched her bum, rumpled her hair and yanked the tote bag from under her head. The shadflies fled before Loddy could make sense of anything. Not a soul around, and no idea of the time, she dragged herself to Alma’s, the full impact of the weekend weighing down on her.

  xxx

  Loddy rang the door bell once, twice, and then remembered the soundless bell-push. Alma’s frugality extended to the landlord who increased her rent for every repair so she never complained. Loddy pounded her fists on the wooden door, twisted the knob until she heard the light switch inside the stairwell and a hustle of feet descending.

  “Christ, Loddy!” Bettina said. “Don’t you know what time it is? You’ll wake Maw.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What happened to you? You look like something the cat dragged in, didn’t like, and dragged out again.”

  “That bad, huh.”

  Loddy was overcome by a subtle vertigo. Perspiration dotted her forehead and dampened her hairline. She needed a cigarette.

  “You okay?”

  “Just tired and I haven’t eaten all day. Plus I quit smoking.”

  “Ha! Well that would do it. Come on, I’ll make you a peanut butter and jam sandwich with a glass of milk.”

  They sat sister-to-sister, across from one another, at the kitchen table where so many of their battles had been fought. Bettina picked at a cigarette hole in the plastic table cloth. A centre piece of artificial red miniature carnations in an empty pickle jar complemented its floral pattern, and the still life rested on one of Alma’s doilies.

  “Maw was really mad at you when you didn’t show up for supper. You missed Senor Wences on Ed Sullivan. At least it made her forget. The guy cracked her up.”

  Loddy wolfed down the sandwich and let the milk slosh around like a mouthwash which made Bettina wince in disgust. A final burp and Loddy shifted back into the chair: “You still seeing the therapist?”

  “I’ve gained 10 pounds.” Bettina’s face, pale and angular under the fluorescent light, lacked credibility.

  “Really? Take off your robe. Let me see.” Loddy lunged forward, tugged on the bulky garment and tried to untie the belt, while Bettina slapped this way and that until they heard Alma stirring.

  “Stop it.” Bettina gnashed her teeth. “Just stop it before you wake up Maw.”

  “Like, I’m just worried about you.”

  Bettina shrugged and resumed toying with the cigarette hole, which was getting bigger with each peck. “You look lousy yourself.”

  “Like, it’s been a rough weekend, okay.” The old fridge, which leaked water, whined and whirled and squelched the rancid noise of Alma’s squeaky bed.

  They moved their conversation to the back veranda and ensconced themselves on the ratty, rattan loveseat, shoulder-to-shoulder, and buried their thighs under Alma’s colourful granny-square afghan, a shroud of warmth against the cool air breezing from the river nearby. These cozy moments were rare and usually occurred in Alma’s absence.

  When they were toddlers, newly-arrived immigrants, Loddy and Bettina would wait by the living room window in the early hours of the morning for their mother to end her night shift on an assembly line at Red Rose flour mill. They knew that, as soon as they saw the sun, Alma would appear around the corner like clockwork, a bundle of new comic books under her arm, consolation prizes from an absent parent — Little Lulu for Loddy and Bugs Bunny for Bettina. They loved the colours and cartoon images.

  One day, the two toddlers giggled over Bettina’s defacement of the living room window with Alma’s Monroe Red nail polish. Loddy took the punishment, as she was the older, and spent the entire day erasing the squiggly hieroglyphics with nail polish remover.

  As a teenager, it became apparent to Loddy that Alma was the instigator of much of the animosity between her and Bettina. Their mother played one against the other, like a tennis game, stretching a lie to sound like a truth, then sat back to referee the match of words between her daughters.

  “Can’t you see? She’s not happy unless everyone else is miserable like her.” Loddy had exploded after one of Alma’s manipulative outbursts.

  “How can you talk about our mother like that? After everything she’s done for us. She’s a saint.”

  There was no convincing Bettina, so Loddy caved in after one too many battles and moved out.

  Now Bettina’s curiosity overcame whatever animosity she held against her sister.

  “You probably heard about that fire at the Limelite?”

  “Yeah, a bunch of us from school were going to go.”

  “I was there.”

  “Really?”

  “Ulu got hurt, but she’s going to be okay. They’re releasing her from hospital in a couple of days.”

  Loddy shut her eyes and relived for Bettina an album of snapshots that haunted her: the two men with the can of gasoline, the suffocating smoke, searching for an exit. She sputtered about sleeping on the boardwalk bench, fighting off belligerent shadflies, and waking up to the two boys stealing her bag.

  As though she hadn’t been listening, Bettina jumped in with her own tale to tell. “We decided to go to a movie instead that night. Good thing. I never told Maw about going to clubs. Didn’t want her to worry, or go off the deep end.”

  Loddy became agitated at Bettina’s lack of sympathy. “Oh, goodness no. After all, you’re what? All of eighteen and you’re supposed to be the goody-two shoes, the favourite. Mustn’t spoil that image.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic,” Bettina said, her voice rising.

  Loddy held her breath, afraid her words might escalate into regrets. They surveyed the sky like astronomers searching for the Milky Way.

  Bettina broke the silence first. “Promise not to tell Maw about my going to clubs?”

  “Oh, heck, why should I be the one to start World War III?”

  Their eyes, like lasers, pierced across the lane into the neighbour’s yard, and followed the stealthy movements of an alley cat on the hunt for mice, or maybe a loving home.

  “Bettina, when you were a kid, did ... did anyone touch you where they shouldn’t? Like Mr. Legault or your father?”

  “He was your father too, Loddy, and no, nobody touched me. I had a perfect childhood.”

  “Yeah, you were the bab
y.”

  “I don’t want to talk any more, Loddy.” She anchored the afghan under her armpits and folded her hands.

  “You’re beginning to sound just like Alma. Why do you hate me so much?”

  “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you,” Loddy said. “You’re my sister.”

  “Well, do you remember when we were kids playing in the park and a couple of boys made fun of my little foot and you know what you said?”

  “No, I don’t remember.”

  “You said it was all in my head. In my head, Loddy. This is not real?” Bettina thrust her bad foot outside the safety and warmth of Alma’s afghan.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You are, like, so sensitive. I said that because I wanted you to believe there was nothing wrong with you. At that age, I wanted you to have the self-confidence I never had. When I looked at you, I never saw Bettina with a club foot, but Bettina, my sister, whom I loved and was proud of. It makes no difference to me if you have a bum foot or your skin is purple. And if you mistook that as something else, then, like, talk to a therapist.”

  Bettina slid under the afghan, exposing only her eyes above the rim of fringe, and Loddy could hear her mewl.

  “Did you want me to feel sorry for you, Bettina? Is that it?”

  No response from the afghan. Nothing.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” Loddy said. “I didn’t mean it.”

  The afghan quivered. Bettina re-surfaced and re-joined her sister in their meditative quest to unearth questionable galaxies. “There,” she said. “There. See those stars over there. If you connect them dot-by-dot, they look just like a cross, don’t they?”

  “I can still see the bodies falling, the screams, and I can’t find my way out.”

  “What’s that, Loddy?”

  “The fire. The fire escape fell and it was my fault. I couldn’t find Ulu, and then she was in this body bag, still alive.”

  “It’s okay, Loddy. It wasn’t your fault.” Bettina squeezed her sister’s hand.

  They both examined the sky as though they had lost a constellation and, if they could find it, their lives would be complete.

  “Do you know that she was working there so she could pay her tuition to McGill?”

  “Ulu?”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  “Speaking about McGill ... Ah, I’ve ... oh never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell Maw. But I’ve changed my faculty. I’m not going into social work.”

  “So, like, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Promise not to tell Alma.”

  “Christ!”

  “A poet. I spoke to Professor Dudek, showed him my poems, and he says I have talent.”

  “Oh, my God, Bettina! Maw cashed in half her retirement savings from working in factories and cleaning houses so you could go to McGill, get a decent job, and you want to be a poet? She’ll understand being a teacher, even a plumber, but a poet? There’s no money in it. She’s going to have a fit.” Loddy’s voice, on edge, carried across the veranda and into the alley.

  “Shhhhhh. Don’t tell her, please, please.”

  “She’s going to find out anyway.”

  “I’ll let her know before school starts in the fall.”

  “Fine, but I won’t be around for that little disaster.”

  “Maybe I just won’t tell her.”

  Loddy had absorbed her own melancholy all weekend, and now it erupted into a sober indignation, indignation for a nothing life while her precocious little sister defied everyone, including Alma, and dared to honour her dreams.

  The night yawned, folded into daylight. There was nothing more to say. Loddy and Bettina fell asleep in each other’s arms just as the sun bowed to another day. Sister-to-sister. That was how Alma found them.

  SCENE 14:

  Thrown off the Wagon

  Autumn 1968

  Loddy became even more consumed by food. Boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese lined her pantry shelves again, and the weight she had worked so hard to lose returned with a vengeance. Alma called and there was that familiar incomprehensible frenzy of distress punctuated with calls to the Lord: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Bettina had a relapse and was back in hospital. Loddy downed four chocolate donuts and hurried to her sister’s bedside.

  “Well, I guess this is one way of getting out of telling Maw you want to be a poet. Like, kind of drastic, don’t you think?”

  No response from the bed; only the beep from the heart monitor and the occasional disquieting cry from the room across the hall. Loddy held a vigil for an hour, hypnotized by the chest of the emaciated doll, its rise and fall, and when she twisted round to leave, Alma, in a fit of nerves, burst into the room. Smart and dapper in her Sunday best, she was a study in the comfort and practicality of knitwear — coat, dress, matching cloche, gloves and scarf, a vision in two-ply wool, the colour beige.

  “Like, I think the more Alma goes crazy, the faster she knits,” Loddy had once confided to Ulu.

  She hadn’t seen Alma since June when the three had gathered in front of the television with trays of salami on rye, pickles on the side, and a jar of prepared mustard to watch Pierre Elliot Trudeau become the 15th Prime Minister of Canada. Loddy had accompanied Dewey the previous day, Saint-Jean Baptiste, to capture the parade on film. An ocean of giant fleur-de-lis flags flooded Dorchester Blvd. and chants of “Québec Libre” became a rallying call again. Rioters turned the celebration into a rainstorm of bottles and rocks directed at Trudeau who stoically remained in the grandstand defying his security. Loddy, in a show of trust, followed Dewey as they threaded their way into the mob.

  “He’s not leaving, Dewey. Shit. He’s going to get killed just like Robert Kennedy. I just know it.”

  “Got to admire the guy’s guts,” Dewey said as he pointed his lens at the viewing stand.

  The following day, Trudeau won the election. Alma thanked the Lord by lighting a votive candle at the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary at her parish church, Our Lady Gate of Dawn.

  The rest of the summer for Loddy was an eating marathon of ice cream and pizzas and some rare work at The Garage Theatre. Samuel now mostly rented out the theatre to amateur drama groups, or for corporate and family affairs. She broke down and registered with a temp agency as a typist to supplement her meagre income while ignoring Fury’s insistent phone calls.

  On this day, Loddy had planned a day-trip with Ulu and Dewey to the fruit orchards in Hemmingford. It was a yearly event, one of life’s joyous moments in her otherwise vacuous existence. The air, rich with the heady sprays of cider and plump crunchy apples, always had a hypnotic, almost meditative effect. Ladders, solid and square, leaned against tree trunks; crooked branches, heavy with produce, bowed towards the earth as though ducking in anticipation of the next storm. Loddy didn’t ask much from life, and grabbed pieces of heaven wherever she could. Today, heaven would have to wait. Alma had called.

  “She go up the stairs and then fell. How she hurt herself so bad, Loddy?” Alma said, greeting her outside Bettina’s hospital room.

  “The doctor said she had a minor stroke but she’ll be okay.”

  “What? She too young.”

  “Maw, she fooled us again. She lost too much weight and damaged her heart.”

  “Her heart?”

  “Good you’re here, Maw. You don’t need me.”

  “Where you go? Loddy! Where you go?”

  She was already at the elevators, and Alma, a muffle of desperate words. The door slid shut just in time.

  xxx

  Loddy wandered along Pine Avenue, past the Ernest Cormier house with its Art Deco architecture, past the old mansions, now refurbished ro
oming houses for students and young professionals, past the high-rise where Percy lived. She could have dropped by as the invitation always stood, but she didn’t want any consolation from a friend. If Loddy could settle anywhere in Montreal, it would be on this street, in the proximity of the mountain, with a view of the city below. Maybe one day, she thought. Right now something sweet and rich with calories would suffice.

  “Black Forest Cake. Make it a double,” she told the waitress at Dunn’s as though she were ordering martinis.

  Two giant slices presented themselves. She tore into the first as though she had just returned from a Hindu fast in the Himalayas, but force-fed the second. It occurred to her that’s what farmers do to their pigs to fatten them up for market. Loddy rolled herself out of Dunn’s, drunk on whipped cream, chocolate curls and cherries and continued her gluttonous journey towards St. Lawrence Boulevard, crossing that invisible divide that defined cultures, and shuffled into the Montreal Pool Room. She figured the walk alone had burned enough calories to warrant a hot dog, aka steamie, and fries, real potatoes soaked in oil and dribbling in kosher salt. Vinegar and ketchup seeped through the brown paper bag and enhanced the flavour even more. As a child, Alma had brought her to the Main every Saturday to purchase European products, Baltic bread or Polish kielbasa. Every Christmas, they shopped for fabric and other non-perishable goods for shipment to Alma’s sister and her family in Lithuania.

  Loddy’s last stop was Verdun, Woodland’s restaurant, and there she ordered two medium all-dressed pizzas to go, then took the bus to Alma’s. She wanted to die. Like Bettina, food was her weapon of choice.

  xxx

  Winter 1968

  The scene: a New Year’s Eve party at Samuel and Marvel’s apartment on Park Avenue. The end of a terrible year when the world witnessed too much violence, too many political assassinations, protests against the war in Vietnam, student riots, civil rights marches, terrorists, and killings. Loddy’s theory was that for every bad year, the following one would be better; a semblance of hope as one year collapsed into a new one. This time, she wasn’t sure.