Instead BS coolly offered, ‘When Vank hoovers and Sku Gogs and Skoota Mattas.’ Boss, a new triple play. Mom had plenty-twenty time to match it but, as I bet Jordan expected, Mom began contesting ‘Skoota Mattas.’
‘Of course it counts,’ Jordan leisurely explained. ‘It’s the Scootamatta River. ‘Skoota mattas’ is ‘Skooter matters’ if you’re from the Bronx. Skooter’s a real name; she’s Barbie’s little sister, and ‘matta’ is like ‘Wossamotta U,’ the college on Rocky and Bullwinkle.’ Good BS, BS. The ensuing debate exceeded thirty seconds. So Jordan proclaimed, ‘I’ve named the new and learned the calls, I stand alone’ – we all joined in – ‘when Fenelon Falls!’
Mother nods. Dad flips to CHUM. A temporary victory, lasting only till in range of Lindsay’s CKLY, when we’d have to suffer through the every-three-minute singsong ad for ‘Lynnn-say Cleeeaners and Dyyyyyers,’ and hear Dad wonder yet again how a little town like Lindsay could employ so many people who dropped dead for a living. Mom would shhh us for the incessant updates on the floating whereabouts of the CKLY Courtesy Cruiser. That always pissed me off. Why did anybody need to babysit a thirty-foot yacht? But we were beggars, not choosers. The choosers contentedly sang along with Mitch Miller, Steve and Eydie or Bob Goulet. ‘Just walk on by, wait on the corner. I love you but we’re strangers when we meet.’ Mom’s favourite. That’s what you hear when you’re fifteen and haven’t got a gun.
I remember the moment exactly. We’d just earned CHUM. We were sliding down Leaskdale Hill, passing the gold brick house with the blue plaque, the historical home of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. On cue, Jordan was muttering ‘That goodie-two-shoes, Anne with-a-stupid-E Shirley,’ when Tony Joe White’s grinding drawl invaded the car, thrusting ‘Polk Salad Annie’ like a giant tongue into my parents’ primly closed mouths: ‘Down in Louisiana, where the alligators grow so mean, there lived a girl that I swear to the world, made the alligators look tame.’ Jordan smiled. Tony Joe grunted. He moaned. They who spawned me but wanted all to believe it happened like salmon, achieved without touching, shot do something looks at each other in the overhead mirror.
‘Filthy,’ MC announced, reinstating CFRB, ‘like he’s mating with a bullfrog.’
‘Unsuccessfully, it would appear,’ my father added.
‘Thomas Cranston March, when you get to your church tomorrow, you’d better kneel down and pray for a cure for that nasty hoof-in-mouth disease!’ Dad tried to make a joke of a proverb, to say, ‘Every man to his taste, said the man when he kissed his cow,’ but proverbs were no joke to MC and she talked right over him. ‘Please attempt to remember that any little pitchers attached to the big ears in the back seat are yours.’
That crack about his church? Attending summer service in Rosedale, in the tiny green-and-white church where Grandpa had been minister, was both the prime directive of March and an order MC refused to follow. Annoyed now at the children in both the back and the front seats, she turned the radio off and a frown out the window. Silence: the sound most likely to be perfected by a March. Insert it here.
As we crossed into Cannington, passed Woodbridge, and the Argyle General Store, to swing down Glenarm Road from shoulder to wrist, the only one making any noise was Tessie. At the turnoff, Mom didn’t join in for the requisite refrain: ‘This is Fenelon Falls all right, so pitch your tent where the fishes bite!’
One hill past Cameron – as always, just past the spot where legend had it a suicidal cow jumped right through the barn wall – Jordan peered through the trees and called it: ‘I see Balsam Layyy-ake!’ As we sighted the canal bridge and neared the green highway sign, she threw herself over the front seat to plaster her hand against the windshield and claim her victory in sing-song: ‘I’m the first one in Rowws-dale!’
March litany dictated that Dad should immediately turn to her and intone what I’ve always considered the most nonsensical of family sayings: ‘Don’t get excited. Don’t turn pale. We didn’t go to Harvard, we went to Rosedale!’ But before he could speak his lines, MC upstaged him. Insert MC’s moment of kindness here: ‘Excuse me, Little Miss Hooligannie!’ She shoved the interloper into the back seat. ‘Are you my daughter or a changeling abandoned by gypsies?’
Jordan slouched down and into her hair. ‘Both,’ she whispered in my direction. ‘And don’t we all know it.’
HAZEL #17
When I finally made it down to the lobby, no one was there but the Boy Scout with his bushel of apples still half full. That darn Walter had kept me so late that Angus had given up and gone home. Can’t say I blame him. I did feel sorry for the Scout; he’d been there since lunch, so I stopped to buy an apple. I was fumbling with my gloves and change purse, encouraging him to go on home, and he was saying he couldn’t because he’d promised his Akela not to quit his post until all his apples were sold. That’s when I felt a hand on my arm.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ said a thick American accent. ‘Perhaps I can offer some assistance?’
I turned. He took off his hat. A tall man with wavy red hair and a crooked smile, sporting a beautiful blue cashmere overcoat and a dark paisley scarf, silk. He turned to the boy. ‘Son, I was a Scout myself, and you’re absolutely right. A promise is sacred, especially one made to your Akela, your commanding officer.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘So, had you sold all your apples today, how much would you have made?’
The boy just stared. ‘Perhaps a good ten dollars?’
He nodded. ‘Right. So I’m buying these fine apples, all you have left, please.’ He peeled an American ten from a gold money clip, then added, ‘And if it’s all right with you, I’d also like to buy this fine basket to carry them in?’ He passed him another ten. I thought the boy was going to pop! ‘Now do as this kind young lady says and get home safely.’ With that the boy burst into Thank you, sirs and exploded out the door.
We laughed. I smiled, ‘Yes indeed! Thank you, sir. That was most generous of you.’
He smiled, ‘Don’t thank me, miss. I only thought of it because I saw you doing it first.’ He held out the basket. ‘So, how do you like them apples?’ We laughed again.
We chatted and he introduced himself, by first name only, though I thought nothing of it at the time. He said he was in town to check on a family business interest but since his return to the States had been grounded, he’d been advised to stay at a place called the Royal York. Could I point him in the right direction? I was going that way myself, so off we went.
Once we got outside, the wind was so strong he had to move his arm from my elbow to my waist. Again, I thought it nothing more than a gentleman’s courtesy to a lady. It should have taken us only a few minutes but he walked more slowly than I expected. Of course, he was fighting the wind with that huge, heavy basket. Since the storm rendered conversation all but impossible, I waved goodbye at the front door and stepped away to cross over to Union Station. He gripped my hand and spoke into my ear, ‘Please, miss, a moment more?’
A doorman in red, complete with gold braid and a peaked cap, opened enormous brass doors. We climbed a mahogany staircase to a marble lobby and plunked down in two deep velvet chairs. Chandeliers! Five of them! I counted seventeen fur coats without even trying! It seems the Torontonians with the nicest homes to go home to were the first to give up on getting there.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said, rising up slowly with an involuntary hand to his back, which he covered by leaning forward with a smile. ‘You wait right there.’
Too embarrassed
