District Attorney Joseph Forrester said that some of the chief objections had to do with a too frank expression concerning a woman’s dress when the woman was in the clothes described. The court held that parts of the story seemed to be harmful to the morals of the community.
Vera Maude was a voracious reader, and there was evidence of that in her room: newspapers strewn about the floor, volumes of Shakespeare alongside detective stories and romances, a pile of magazines on her night table. When she read it was never as simple as opening a book and reading it through. One idea always led to another. A history might lead to a memoir, which in turn might lead to a novel, then Scribner’s, Black Mask, or last Sunday’s Times.
She was lying diagonally across her bed, facing the window, with her scrapbook opened up next to her. Feeling a little light-headed, she set her cigarette down on a saucer on the windowsill and took a deep breath.
She loved how the streetlights lit the humid air that hung from the trees. It was picture-still. At the core of this quietude she felt anticipation, of what she couldn’t say. She noticed Braverman’s light was on.
The bohemian toiling away in his garret, or the gentleman bootlegger waiting for nightfall?
Who’s this Mister Braverman?
Smuggler, spy, or lover-man?
Why, he crosses the border
To fill your special order.
But what’s he brought Vera Maude?
Not trouble, I hope — dear God!
Don’t you worry ’cause Maudie
Hasn’t time for anybody.
It occurred to her that while she did select every picture and article in her scrapbook, none of it was by or about her. And while she knew this wasn’t all that unusual for a scrapbook, she suddenly felt that it was evidence of a life being lived somewhat vicariously, and she closed it up.
People were often telling Vera Maude that she had a smart mouth. She’d met enough smart people that never spoke up and dumb people that never shut their mouths to know she should take that as a compliment. She learned at a young age how to turn her thoughts into words. What she was having trouble with now was turning her words into actions. She was twenty-two years old, as old as the century, but by her own accounts she hadn’t really lived.
Braverman is living. What am I doing? Watching from across the street, like Mrs. Richardson staring through the curtains at the neighbours. Maybe I really am all talk.
She rolled over and listened to the crickets for a while. Then, on impulse, she sat up and looked out the window. The light was out in Braverman’s room.
Gone to bed or just plain gone?
Vera Maude knew that day would come soon. He’ll catch up with his friends in Paris while she would have resigned herself to an unhappy, unfulfilled life in a booze-soaked, car factory of a town, bitter, smart-mouthed, and hateful with no one to blame but herself.
That’s the gin talking.
It was just her and the night now, two stragglers left alone in a bar. Night had its charms but clearly had no intention of going all the way. Night seemed to listen; night was easy on the eyes; night even seemed to understand the needs of a girl like Vera Maude. But night was non-committal. Night wanted to be able to trade up in the event that a certain someone’s moon was on the rise. And this time Vera Maude was looking for more than just a “one night stand.”
She had drunk Mrs. Richardson’s gin, hoping it would settle the riot in her head. It was crowded with people these days: her father, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Cousineau, Hazel and Lillian, streetcar passengers, Miss Lancefield, library patrons and society matrons, Daphne, Clive, Isabelle, and the woman with the big hat that always seemed to sit in front of her at the cinema, just to name a few. It was getting to be a bit much. Something or someone had to go.
Me, I have to leave this party before I get cornered and talked at by some horrible relative or stupid boy or silly girl. While you’re all punching back the hors d’oevres; when you’re not looking and raising your glasses and congratulating yourselves, I’ll be slipping quietly out the back door.
The to-ing and fro-ing of boxcars could be heard in the distance. She imagined them, boxcars from western New York and southern Ontario, getting strung together and pulled through the tunnel up into the rail yards of Detroit.
I just don’t want to get switched to the wrong track or hitched to a bunch of clunky boxcars.
She wondered how long it would take Mrs. Richardson to notice that her gin bottle was now full of nothing but water. Mrs. Richardson never seemed to take anything from it. Vera Maude always found it just the way she left it, level with the top of the label. Maybe it belonged to Mr. Richardson.
Pilfering a dead man’s gin.
Vera Maude had seen him in photos, the sweet little gin blossom standing next to the droopy old sourpuss. The awkward body language of Mr. and Mrs. Ian Richardson: newlyweds outside the church; on their honeymoon in Niagara Falls; at family picnics; next to the Christmas tree; and during a surprise snowfall one day in May, the same expressions, year after year. Did the photographs tell any kind of a story? Did they do the marriage justice? One split second, several times in a lifetime. Unbeatable odds for a dime store Brownie. Vera Maude wondered if Mr. Richardson’s tippling took the edge off. And now that death did them part, the bottle stood silent in the cupboard above the icebox. Did Mrs. Richardson keep it as a souvenir? Perhaps she drank from it on special occasions, like their anniversary.
Here’s to old what’s-his-name.
It was still dark over at Mrs. Cousineau’s. Braverman had probably gone home or found some other place to hang his hat tonight — an all-night party, a brothel on Pitt Street, or a speakeasy, anything but the room he rented from an old widow at the bottom of Dougall Road. Vera Maude wondered what kind of room it was. She imagined it full of paints and varnishes from Paris, prints and sketches bought from street vendors, handmade paper and rolls of canvas, charcoal and oil pastels.
“Supplies for work … and he gets letters all the time.”
Earlier, Vera Maude had found the Book Review article in her scrapbook. She read it over and over again, looking for clues. She found nothing but was amused again at the account of Joyce attempting to get into the cinema business.
The Cinematograph had come in and an Italian company had theatres in many European cities. Joyce was over to open one in Dublin. That was in the foredawn of the movies. His “Volta” Theatre was opened, but I never heard that it was successful.
Vera Maude wondered how anyone could go wrong opening a cinema back then. It would have been like the early days of sliced bread.
More screens in this town than you can shake a dead stick at. Swing a dead cat from. Stick in a dead cat. Jesus, I’m drunk.
She had never heard Braverman speak until today. Until today he was nothing more than a moving picture show, a serial she caught between features.
Who does he look like? Sam De Grasse? Or maybe Elliott Dexter in The Affairs of Anatol. Or younger, like Gaston Glass in The Lost Battalion. All the world’s a silver screen.
She opened her scrapbook again and flipped through it until she found the article from the Review. “He talked about walking the streets of Paris, poor and tormented, and about the peace that the repetition of his poems brought him.”
She flopped back on her bed. The sheets were warm. She hated that. Some girls left them in the icebox all day. She’d have to remember that tomorrow.
Still no rain. Maybe I’m praying to the wrong gods.
Her hair was sticking to her. Her camisole was sticking to her. If only she could find the energy to strip down, turn out the light, and just go too sleep. She felt too drunk and too tired to perform either task.
Isn’t that what boyfriends are for?
The