The Good Left Undone(81)

* * *





Grizelle McVicars stood at the window and watched her son John open the gate for his wife at the house on Tulloch Street. She groaned at the sight of the couple. She could not believe her son had the temerity to bring his Tally bride to her home.

“What did she say when you called?” Domenica asked as he let her inside the gate.

“Not much. This was your idea. Too late to turn back now.”

The front yard of his mother’s house was overgrown with long-necked lilies poking through gnarls of boxwood. Yellow paint peeled off the old clapboard, and the porch sagged where the wood had buckled from the storms that winter.

“You should’ve painted your mother’s house.”

John shot his new bride a look as he knocked on the door.

Grizelle McVicars met her son at the door. She opened it and extended her cheek as a greeting. She wore a modest black dress and brown shoes. Her white hair was pulled back in a plait.

“Mother, I’d like to introduce you to my wife, Domenica,” John said.

Domenica extended her hand. Grizelle did not extend her own in return. “Well, come inside then,” she said before looking both ways to see if her neighbors had observed them.

John looked at Domenica and rolled his eyes.

The couple followed her to the kitchen, where she had put out biscuits. The teakettle whistled on the stove. Domenica and John sat down at the table.

“Mother, I’ve received my orders.”

“I see you’re in your uniform. Where are you going?”

“I’ve been asked not to share that information.”

“But I’m your mother.”

“They ask us not to share details. This way, none are shared.”

“I see. Does she know?” she said, without looking at Domenica.

“Yes, Mum.”

“But you can’t tell your mother?”

“No, Mum.”

“What will she do?”

“I will continue to work as a nurse,” Domenica offered.

“Mother, are you going to offer us tea?”

“There’s the pot,” Grizelle said, and left the room.

“Did I say something?” Domenica looked worried.

John stood and turned to his wife. “Stay here.”

John went into the living room. His mother was not there. He looked through the screen door to the front porch. She wasn’t there either. He climbed the steps to her bedroom. He rapped gently on the door. “Mother?”

She didn’t answer.

John tried the door and pushed it open. His mother stood at the window. “Mother?”

“Get out of my house and never come back.”

“But, Mother.” John could see that she was pulling at her handkerchief nervously, with such resolve he was certain she would shred it.

“I told you not to come back to this house. You married behind my back. A Catholic. A Tally. You don’t bring her around to meet me before you run off, but you bring her here now when there’s nothing I can do to stop it? You expect me to accept this thing?”

“You did all you could to prevent this marriage. I came here to give you the opportunity to apologize.”

“Do you realize they are rounding them up? They are sending the Tallies away because they are involved in all sorts of treachery. They cannot be trusted. They’re dirty. They gamble, they sell liquor, they take jobs from our young men because in Scotland, swarthy is exotic. Well, you see how exotic they are as they are shipped out to sea as common criminals. Churchill didn’t move fast enough, in my opinion.”

“Mother.”

“Their women are whores. Surely you know that.”

“I will not have you speak against my wife. Glasgow is no longer safe for good people. It’s you and your kind that are responsible for the violence.”

“There are more people like me than you know.”

“I don’t doubt it. But I know for sure my father would be ashamed of you.”

“Do you think that concerns me? He was a sneak. Who saw him? He was always at sea. And when he was home, he drank.”

“He had good reason. He had a conniving wife. He would never open anyone’s mail but his own. How could you do that? Do you know how much time we lost because of you?”

“I wish I would have burned them. But I couldn’t destroy them knowing that someday, those letters might be all I had of you. But now I don’t care. I am glad you found them! What the war does with you, it does with you. I lost you for good when you married her.”

Domenica was waiting for her husband by the front door when he came back down the steps. He followed her out onto the porch.

“Let’s go,” he said, taking a look at the house for the last time. “I will never return to this house.”

“She’ll come around,” his wife assured him. Domenica Cabrelli McVicars would see to it.



* * *





John held Domenica’s hand as they took the trolley to the convent. She was stoic because she didn’t want to upset her husband after his mother’s rejection, and besides, what good would a display of emotion do now? Decisions were made by men who hadn’t considered women like her. The trolley bell clanged as they disembarked. The expressions on the faces of the passengers on the platform waiting to board were as somber as the overcast sky.