Nights Below Station Street Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR

  Nights Below Station Street

  “One of Richards’s best works. … His voice is one of the most powerful and necessary to be found in Canadian fiction today.”

  –Ottawa Citizen

  “… the book must be honored for characters who brazenly step right off the pages into the reader’s hearts.”

  –Montreal Gazette

  “Richards [is] a unique and original voice in Canadian literature.”

  –Hamilton Spectator

  “David Adams Richards has, like Steinbeck and Faulkner, gained a solid literary reputation while confining his novels to a people and place he knows really well. …”

  –Winnipeg Free Press

  “Movingly human and satisfying.”

  –Calgary Herald

  “Richards is a very good writer who can give us with superb precision the feel and atmosphere of his time and place. …”

  –Kingston Whig-Standard

  “He knows how to use his powers of observation and sympathy to reveal his characters’ inner lives. …”

  –Toronto Star

  “He is required reading for anyone who believes life is far too serious to be treated with solemnity.”

  –Atlantic Provinces Book Review

  BOOKS BY DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS

  FICTION

  The Coming of Winter (1974)

  Blood Ties (1976)

  Dancers at Night (short stories, 1978)

  Lives of Short Duration (1981)

  Road to the Stilt House (1985)

  Nights Below Station Street (1988)

  Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990)

  For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (1993)

  Hope in the Desperate Hour (1996)

  The Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998)

  Mercy Among the Children (2000)

  River of the Brokenhearted (2003)

  The Friends of Meager Fortune (2006)

  The Lost Highway (2007)

  NON-FICTION

  A Lad from Brantford, & Other Essays (1994)

  Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn’t Play (1996)

  Lines on the Water: A Fisherman’s Life on the Miramichi (1998)

  Playing the Inside Out (2008)

  God Is (2009)

  “Everyone wants to change the world; but no one will change themselves.”

  LEO TOLSTOY

  “There is blood on their lips, you fight back, and it’s you they blame.”

  from Vampires, ALDEN NOWLAN

  It was the Christmas of 1972. A spruce tree was decorated in the corner of their living room against the pine-board wall. There was a smell of evening. Their house was below Station Street and down beyond the hospital.

  Adele said she never got anything. She went to bed before Midnight Mass, and then on Christmas morning got into a fight with her father and refused to open any of her presents, and instead sat on the stairs in her housecoat complaining about bad nerves and upsetting feelings.

  Joe was not drinking for the first Christmas in years. But Adele said that he would probably ruin it some other way, or in some other fashion. She was waiting for him to go for the bottle any second. He was a large heavy-set man, with a clumsy stride. He went out onto the street, a street that overlooked the river, near the rocks; and while Rita watched from an upstairs window, leaning back as if frightened that he’d see her. He paced back and forth. And there was a whistle from the mill.

  Rita liked to drink, but because Joe was not drinking she only had a few glasses of wine. And she was nervous too. She did not know why her husband was staying sober. But she was afraid that she was going to do something or say something to cause him to drink. She did not know what she would do or say – only she was sure she would. The last time he got drunk he had lit his pants on fire, falling asleep on the couch with a cigarette burning. Adele had woken up and, screaming, had run to the bathtub to get a plastic bucket filled with water. But she did not throw it on his pants. Instead she threw it at him, and it hit him in the face. This happened two months ago, on Hallowe’en.

  Adele was already bored and depressed. She wanted to go back to school. When they brought her her presents, with her little sister Milly begging her to open them, she kicked at them with her toes, which she was busy painting.

  Everyone else got a telephone in their room and she had been hinting to Rita to get her a telephone. But Rita had gypped her. Adele screeched at the television for getting blurry and then went into her room. Even the music from the radio depressed her at this moment.

  Adele would ignore Joe as she went about the house, and Joe would take out a cigarette and light it as she went by, nodding to her now and then. Once when he nodded to her she flew into him again and said that yes she was quite familiar with him, she already knew who he was. Then she smirked. And then she turned on the balls of her feet and marched off triumphantly upstairs.

  Ralphie came to the house and brought Adele her presents; he was tall with red hair. He had started going with her that fall, when she was fifteen, and she already had pictures of him in the house, two in her bedroom, one in the living room, and one more on the small dark paint chipped commode in the bathroom, which she wouldn’t allow anyone to touch.

  He stood at the door in a brand new pair of boots. His boots looked ridiculously new to her and he nodded seriously at whatever Joe or Rita said.

  The first time Ralphie got to talk to Joe (this was while Joe was still drinking), Adele had spoken in a rush: “This is Joe – here – he’s my father – my mother’s out earning our keep selling Amway.” Then she turned to him as Joe came forward to shake his hand. Ralphie had been hearing of Joe Walsh since he had been a little boy. He had heard that he hurt his back, and though he could still be called strong, and could still be capable of tremendous strength, he was acting at about half of what he had once been. Everyone in town had told him this also.

  “We want to be alone, Joe – go in the other room,” she said and then she began to walk about the kitchen table wiping it up.

  “I’m sorry to hear your dad died,” Joe said to Ralphie. “Yes – well, go in the other room, Joe,” Adele said again, blushing.

  Joe smiled slightly and he went into the other room. But as soon as he did, Adele had nothing more to say, became absolutely silent, and stared at the clock. Every time Ralphie spoke she would nod and look up at the clock, as if to say: “God this visit sure is taking a long time.”

  Then Joe came out a few minutes later with some pictures in his hand. “Here,” he said to Ralphie, “I have some pictures I’d like you to see of my camp at Brookwall.”

  “Well, he doesn’t want to see them,” Adele said, still looking up at the clock. When Joe went to hand them to Ralphie, Adele became so upset, so angry that she grabbed the pictures out of his hand and they fell and scattered over the floor.

  “There,” she said. “Well, now look at what you’ve done – and you’ve always done things just like that –”

  But then she jumped off the seat and began to crawl about the floor. Joe stood in his sock feet looking down at her. And then her temper flared:

  “You haven’t done any exercise for your back but then Wally Johnston wants you to lift an engine and you’re over at the house at midnight covered in shit and wrestling with a goddamn truck engine – ha ha – ha ha – ha ha ha, your old back might just fall off some day. And then Mom will have to keep shitty diapers for the rest of her life – but you won’t mind that because it will give you a chance to play pinball – which is all you seem to want to play lately.”

  Ralphie was standing against the kitchen sink with his eyes lowered.

  “Don’t be rude,”
Joe stammered.

  “Ha,” Adele said flaring up. “Rude – why don’t ya slap my cheeks off or stick a fork in my bum like ya did when ya were drunk. If it weren’t fer Mom we’d all be on the welfare – the whole herd of us would be downtown in the office – like Jesus Frenchmen.”

  “I might slap ya,” Joe said. He looked worried and curiously at Ralphie for a moment – as if at that moment he had no idea what Ralphie was doing in the house or why he was listening to the conversation.

  “Well – and even these pictures Mom don’t want you to maul and put a gross amount of fingerprints all over – and I don’t care,” she finished up, screaming.

  Then suddenly she stood, handed the pictures to him, and smirked. She had two big barrettes in her hair, both of butterflies, which looked as if they had just lighted there and were about to carry her away.

  Then she sat down again and as soon as Joe went out of the room she hauled a cigarette out of the top pocket of her blouse and got Ralphie to light it.

  She smoked her cigarette quickly with jerking movements of her thin right hand, snapping gum, and glancing towards the other room to see if he was coming back out.

  “Joe’s a big stupid drunk,” she said. “Too bad, but that’s the way it is – I never mention er as you can see – but it looks pretty grim. As far as I’m concerned, it looks pretty grim. How grim do you think it is, Ralphie?”

  “I’m not real sure,” Ralphie said.

  “Pretty fucking grim around this place,” Adele said, her mouth twisted unnaturally suddenly. “And I’m not the kind a girl to swear.”

  Then she smiled, butted her cigarette, and blinked quickly as if her eyelashes were stuck.

  Adele now led Ralphie about the house. As they moved from the kitchen to the living room, she held onto his hand and looked angrily at everyone, especially at her little sister Milly, who had run over to him as soon as he came into the house – as she did with every new person that came in.

  Later, when he got up to go, Adele led him to the door and looked at everyone, with her hair in a small net and her slippers sliding on the floor, with the same look of recrimination. Her eyes were large and blue. For some reason the whole time he was there these eyes stared about at everyone in disappointment.

  Trying not to be in her way, her mother stayed in the kitchen.

  But Ralphie’s boots caused Adele to fly off the handle. Why hadn’t her mother thought to bring them in out from the porch. She accused Rita of leaving them in the porch just because they were Ralphie’s, and if they had been anybody else’s it was certain they would have been brought in where it was warm. Her whole façade of acting grown up when Ralphie was there was lost, and she stormed off to her room, hitting Milly on the head as she went by.

  Rita told Ralphie to come back the next day, and told Adele to stop punching Milly, and roared at Milly when she went to bite Adele on the leg.

  Ralphie went, and stared back at them from the sidewalk, which was no more than a track in the half blotted-out snowbanks. Snow fell against his red hair as he stood there.

  “I don’t care,” Adele yelled. “I can’t have one friend in this here house ever in my whole life without someone trying to do something – and not one of ya take that inta consideration.”

  On Boxing Day, Adele walked about in her leotards, and Rita had to tell her a dozen times to get dressed because Ralphie was coming to pick her up for supper at his house, and she shouldn’t be walking about half naked. Rita stood by the sink, with her arms hanging at her sides, and the washing machine going again.

  When Ralphie did come she showed him her presents, and at everything she showed him, she said:

  “This here isn’t nothing compared to what I got last year.” Or, “This is from Myhrra – she tries hard, but she never gets me anything I want. She’s divorced, and just lives over there.”

  When Adele was showing Ralphie her gifts, Joe came into the room for a second and stood looking at them.

  “And Joe got me a lot of stuff that ain’t here yet,” Adele said.

  Joe was walking about with a cane because of his leg. Or was it his back. No one was quite sure. They were only sure that something was the matter, but as yet they had not found out exactly what. And yet today he wouldn’t admit that his leg was sore. He had also picked up his first chip at AA – that is, his one-month chip – but he would not tell anyone, even Rita, that he was going. So none of his family knew why he was staying sober this Christmas, and everyone was on pins and needles, sure that at any moment a taxi would come up to the door with a load of booze.

  Joe had always tried to get Adele the best present he could, and yet never seemed to have the money to do it. This year again he was planning to buy her something special, but when it came time to buy it, he only had fifteen dollars on him.

  She took Ralphie about the tree and showed him the bulbs she had placed on it.

  As she took him about the tree she said: “Milly put these ones here on – all in a mess – and I was coaxed to put this one on and this here one here. I like putting on the higher up ones.”

  “And who put on that one up there?” Ralphie asked.

  “He did,” Adele answered.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Him as all.”

  “You mean your dad.”

  “Of course him. He did, yes,” Adele said. Then she paused and breathed through her nose, her lips went as thin as a chalk line.

  “Him – he did – him!”

  Sometimes when she got home late from school, walking in like a ghost – which had become something of her trademark about the house – Rita would be waiting for her, and an argument would start over something. Where did you go? Who were you with? What in god’s name do you think you are doing? You have a home to come to. Do you know what time it is? I hope you’re not on that jeesless dope! And Adele coming to life would answer just as swiftly and saucily as possible: Nowhere, no one, Adele, home is a pigsty. It’s Atlantic time, no dope yet. And then Rita would chase her into her room with a broom.

  Then from behind the door she would tell Rita that she didn’t care, that it was no use, that everything was miserable in this life and that the world was going to end before too long anyway. So what did it matter?

  “Well the world isn’t going to end this instant – and I want you to clean up your room and pick up your good slacks and panties.”

  “The world might end this instant,” Adele would screech, “so who cares about it.”

  Their neighbour Myhrra was often over to the house when these arguments erupted. With a cigarette in her mouth, and her hair tinted blonde, she would come over to talk about Mike, her ex-husband. Sometimes she and Rita would fight and she wouldn’t be seen for a month or so. Then she would come back, some winter night – sending her son Byron in first, and then three or four minutes later she would appear, her face red from the cold, wearing white slacks with black boots that were zippered on the side.

  Myhrra often took Adele’s part – to show that she understood the concerns of teenagers better than Rita.

  Rita would feel outnumbered and Adele would feel an increase in her own status about the house, and she would walk about with a pompous little shrug of her shoulders telling Rita that she was only waiting for Ralphie to come and then they would take off in the Volkswagen for Calgary – the one place she wanted to go.

  “How are you feeling today?” Myhrra would say to Adele, keeping Rita at a distance. Adele would crouch down in the corner and look at her fingernails gloomily as if trying to stave off temptations to bite them. Wet snow would fall against the window, and melt.

  “I don’t feel very well at all,” she would sniff.

  “Upset, are you dear?”

  “I have melancholy feelings is all,” she would say. “As Mom is always down cleaning carpets at people’s houses –”

  “I know,” Myhrra would say. “But your mom has to earn a living.” Myhrra smelled of hair rinse and peppermint, and when she s
miled her false teeth would make her face slightly crooked.

  Adele would rub her fingernail along her panty-hose. Her white legs scraped and her hair smelling of winter sunlight.

  “Well, she has a boyfriend, and I suppose that has something to do with it,” Rita would announce, looking down at them both, and trying to smile.

  “Oh, Mom, are you so fooled by everything? I’m not talking about boyfriends – and I’m certainly not speaking about Ralphie, who is about as smart as Einstein, so I won’t bother speaking about him in this here house ever again. I have melancholy feelings – and,” she would say, screeching, “there is a load of dumps and pollution-making mills wherever you go!”

  There would be a pause.

  “And,” Adele would say, smirking knowingly, “every time I come home something is going on and Dad is always away and you have a big brood of brats hanging onto yer legs. There is always something – and Myhrra knows what I’m talking about – so I’m getting the frig out of here as soon as possible and starting my own life where there will be no such things as loads of kids and a father who stutters his head off whenever he talks to anybody half important, embarrassing his family to death. Like meeting an M.L.A. and asking for a job.”

  And, saying this, Adele would look at Myhrra who would in turn keep Rita away. Sitting on the floor and surrounded by people who worried about her, it seemed to Adele that everything she said was true, and that they were making a fuss over her because she was special, and that Joe was a stuttering bully, and that she would be special as long as they made a fuss over her – or at least as long as Myhrra was there.

  “And,” Adele would say finally, “Myhrra, you have friends, and Mommie has none – and that’s what I’m talking about time and again!”

  Sometimes Joe would come home from downtown with his pockets filled with applications he had gotten from the unemployment office.

  He would sit about on a snowy day filling them out while Milly sat beside him or rocked back and forth on the floor. Adele would walk by now and then and say: