Handles me like a horse in a stall with a bad reputation for kicking, she thought. Nevertheless, she realized her own hand had gone out to rest gently on his forearm. She quickly withdrew it. “How’ve you been keeping, Dad?”
“As good as can be expected for a man who leads a clean life and pays his taxes. I have sore joints on bad days.” He held up a hand and stiffly flexed his fingers. “But a man my age – that’s got to be expected.” He paused. “Yourself?”
“Can’t complain.”
“I was thinking, standing in the door,” said Monkman, “how you’ve come to resemble your mother. It brought me up short there. I believed I’d come face to face with a ghost. I don’t recall your resembling your mother when you were a girl.”
“When I was a girl I had red hair. That might have had something to do with it.”
Monkman laughed. “It’s been a long time. I’d almost forgotten. Red hair that came out of a bottle.”
“Yes. Out of a bottle. You hated it.”
Her father gave her a measuring look. “I might have. My memory’s not what it once was.”
“Mine is. You did,” said Vera.
The old man shifted ground. “Is this the boy then?” he asked in a hearty voice, turning to Daniel.
“Yes.” Vera nudged Daniel forward. “Daniel, say hello to your Grandfather Monkman.”
“Hello.”
“Now how do we go about this?” said Monkman. “I don’t know how I introduce myself to a grandson I meet for the first time when he’s practically grown. Do I shake hands, or what?” He threw his daughter a sly glance. “I think maybe that would be best, don’t you, son?” he suggested, extending swollen fingers. The boy gingerly grasped them and Monkman pumped his arm once, twice. “So what do you go by?” he asked. “Daniel, Danny, or Dan?”
“It’s Daniel,” intervened Vera.
“Pleased to meet you,” said the boy.
“Who does he look like?” Monkman said aloud, apparently to himself. “I’m looking at him and thinking someone but I can’t put a name to him.”
“Daniel looks like his father,” said Vera firmly.
“Can’t be him I’m thinking of. I never met his father.” Monkman smiled at the boy. “I wasn’t invited to the wedding,” he explained. His next question was directed to Vera. “Would I have liked his father?”
“It’s hard to say. But I don’t think he was your type.”
“And what’s my type, daughter?”
“You’re your type.”
The old man adopted a confidential tone, drew closer to his grandson. “Your mother likes to let on I’m hard to get along with. But nothing’s further from the truth. Stutz here has been working for me for fifteen years and he’s never heard a harsh word from me. Have you, Stutz?”
“No, never just one,” returned Stutz on cue.
The two men laughed at an old joke, well-rehearsed.
Pleased with himself, Monkman fussed with his hands, scratching the back of one, then the other. “What do you say we have a drink to celebrate your homecoming, Vera? There’s a bottle of Crown Royal under the sink, seal’s never been broke. I’ve been saving it for an occasion and I guess this is one. Stutz won’t join us – religious principles – but it wouldn’t hurt you, Vera, to have one. It’d help you relax after your long trip. And the boy could join us. Very weak, mind you, plenty of water in his, just a drop of whisky. All for the sake of the ceremony. It couldn’t hurt.”
“Don’t let us stop you,” said Vera. “But Daniel and I won’t be having a drink.”
“Oh, Jesus, no, I suppose not,” said Monkman, winking conspiratorially at Daniel. “To hell with that then. But later can I feed the boy? I thought the four of us could take supper in the hotel. I told Rita to put roast pork and apple sauce on the special tonight. That’s Rita Benger, the cook. You’d remember her. She’s Charlie Benger’s sister that went to school with you. Charlie Benger with the limp?”
“Can we discuss supper in a bit?” said Vera. “I’d like to know what arrangements have been made for Daniel and me tonight.”
“Arrangements?”
“Yes, arrangements. Like where we’re to stay. Also, I’d like to know where and when I start work.”
“Why, you’ll stay here,” responded Monkman with determination.
“Until we find a place to rent.”
“This is Connaught, daughter. There are no places to rent. I’ve got the two bedrooms upstairs that I thought the boy and I could have. That’d leave you the one down here. More privacy for you that way.”
“I didn’t count on this,” said Vera, drawing together her lips. “I’ll see for myself if there aren’t places to rent.”
“Suit yourself. But looking won’t change anything. There are no places for rent. Unless you’re interested in a fire-trap suite over the poolroom.”
“All right then,” she said grimly, “there are no places to rent. What about work?”
“We’ll settle that in due course. Catch your breath.”
“What the hell do I live on while I’m catching it?” demanded Vera, suddenly exasperated. “All the money I have in the world is two hundred dollars in Canada Savings Bonds in that box,” she said, pointing. “I can’t afford to be a lady of leisure.”
“Christ, Vera, relax. The trouble with you is everything gets blown way out of proportion. Always did. You and the boy are home now. You’re taken care of. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t come home to be taken care of. I’m not a child. I came to work. You promised me a job.”
“If I promised you a job, you’ve got a job. I’m your father. What do you expect me to do? Cheat you? Put your mind at rest. You’ve got a job for chrissakes.”
“What kind of job?” Her voice was flat, controlled.
“An easy job. You said you wanted to be able to spend more time with the boy so I got you one. We’ll talk about it tomorrow when you’re not so tired and irritable from your trip.”
“I want to talk about it now. What kind of job?”
Monkman hesitated. “Housekeeper,” he finally admitted, reluctantly.
Vera’s face flushed. “Housekeeper to who?”
Monkman appealed to Mr. Stutz. “Is she serious? ‘Housekeeper to who?’ she says.” He swung back on Vera. “Christ, for who do you think? For me. And for him,” he added, nodding to Daniel. “For once you can be a full-time mother. You can look after your boy.”
“And you.”
“That’s such a hardship? You wash his shirt, throw mine in the machine, too. You boil him a potato, boil me one, too. Where’s the strain in that?”
“That’s not where I expect the strain to come in.”
“So where does the strain come in?”
“I’m a grown woman. I’m thirty-six years old and I want to have my own money. I mean to have a salary, not a housekeeping allowance. I don’t intend to snitch nickels and dimes from household expenses so I can buy myself a new bra when I need one. I want a wage. I’m not sixteen years old like before.”
The word bra caused Mr. Stutz to cast his eyes down to the toes of his boots.
“I was a poor man in those days,” her father announced.
“I get a wage or I’m dust. I’ll cash one of my bonds and climb back on that bus tomorrow and head right back where I came from.”
“Look at her, Stutz!” cried Monkman. “Look at her! There’s fire for you! Exactly like she was when she was seven, skipping rope with the other little girls. Going over that rope with her jaw set solid as iron and her pigtails cracking up and down like buggy whips. Little Miss Determination. When I saw that, I said to myself, Lord help and protect the man who gets her.”
“Let the Lord look after whoever He has to. I’ll look after myself. Do I get a wage or not?”
“What was it your mother did down east?” Monkman inquired of Daniel. “Trade horses? I got a feeling I’m about to be skinned. I best remember you don’t sup with the Devil unless you own a long spoon.”