A Boy of Good Breeding Read online

  For now she would wrap her breasts in strips of gunny sack and cotton and pray to God they wouldn’t start to leak as she sat at the supper table with her family. She would, inconspicuously, drink a lot of black currant tea and if the pressure grew too great, she would squeeze the milk out herself in the john. Maybe she could even save some of it and mix it in with the formula when nobody was looking. Over time she would squeeze out less and less milk as though she were weaning a baby. Euphemia hoped her breasts could be fooled. When Flora Marsden’s baby was born dead, she had drunk huge amounts of black currant tea to stem the flow of her milk. Euphemia remembered her mother talking about it to a friend of hers. Her mother and her mother’s friend had been outraged that a neighbour of Flora’s had suggested she hire herself out as a wet nurse to mothers too busy farming to feed their babies. “I know I was never too busy to feed my own baby, that’s for sure,” Euphemia’s mother had said in a rather convoluted, self-serving indictment of Flora’s neighbour.

  “Well, he’ll need a name, won’t he, Phemie?” asked Minty. The sun was coming up now. Euphemia’s mother went to the china cabinet and came back to the cradle with the black Bible. She yanked a bobby pin from her hair and stuck it into the shiny pages of the big book. It opened at Hosea. “There,” she shrugged, “Welcome to the world, Hosea.” And she stuck the bobby pin back into her hair.

  Hosea Funk lay in his bed in his house on First Street, watching the sun come up over Algren. Thank God that health food store hadn’t worked out, he thought. If the couple running it hadn’t packed up their rice cakes and moved back to Vancouver Island last week, the recent arrival of Knute and her daughter would have put Algren’s population at fifteen hundred and two, and that would have been two too many. Hosea closed his eyes and thought about his letter, the one from the Prime Minister. Well, okay, it wasn’t a personal letter, it was a form letter, but Hosea’s name was on it, and so was a photocopied signature of the Prime Minister’s name, John Baert.

  The Prime Minister had promised to visit Canada’s smallest town on July first, and Algren, the letter had noted, was one of the preliminary qualifiers in the contest. Everybody in Algren knew it had been short-listed, why wouldn’t it be? After all, check out the sign on the edge of town. Even the Winnipeg daily paper had mentioned, in one line, on a back page, that Algren had been picked as a nominee for the Prime Minister’s visit. But the people in Algren went about their business with very little thought of July first, other than looking forward to the holiday from work, and the rides and the fireworks. If Algren had the smallest population at the time of the count, great. If not, who really cared? After all, they thought, the Prime Minister had made promises before. Of course, they knew Hosea Funk was extremely proud of Algren’s smallest-town status, he was proud of everything about Algren. Good for him, they thought, usually with a smile or a raised eyebrow. Might as well be. But nobody in Algren knew what Hosea knew, or what he thought he knew, or just how determined he was to be the winner.

  Hosea wanted to relax, to savour the early morning calm, to stretch out in bed, enjoy his nakedness, and happily welcome the new day. A small part of him wished his mornings resembled those in the orange juice commercials where healthy clean families bustle around making lunches and checking busy schedules, kissing and hugging and wishing each other well. But he was alone. And he hated orange juice. It stung his throat.

  So Hosea lay quietly in his huge bed. For the last year or so he had been working on his panic attacks. Mornings were the worst time for them. And for heart attacks. His buddy Tom had had his in the morning just about an hour after waking up. Hosea suspected, however, that his determination to stay calm was a bit like overeating to stay thin and so he tried not to think about it too much. Instead he tried to relax his entire body starting from his toes and working his way to the top of his head. The alarm on his clock radio came on, as usual, ten minutes after he woke. It was set to a country station, and Emmylou Harris was wailing away, Heaven only knows just why lovin’ you would make me cry, and Hosea thought, Ah Emmylou Harris, a voice as pure as the driven snow, a real class act, all that hair and those cowboy boots with the hand-painted roses …

  Hosea lay naked in his bed and whispered Emmylou, Emmylou a few times and closed his eyes and mumbled along with her, Heaven only ever sees why love’s made a fool of me, I guess that’s how it’s meant to be … He thought of Lorna and the last time they’d made love and then tallied up the days, and the weeks. Almost two months.

  He tried to leap out of bed, just as his own personal joke, but ended up getting tangled in the sheet, knocking the radio off the bedside table, and yanking the cord out of the outlet, so that Emmylou Harris was cut off and fifty-two-year-old Hosea Funk, mayor of Algren, was left alone again and aching.

  But not for long because by now the sun was up and he had work to do. Fifteen minutes on his exercise bike, a piece of whole wheat toast with honey, black coffee, half a grapefruit, a freshly ironed shirt, and a shave, and Hosea was out the door of his modest bungalow and driving down First Street in his Chevy Impala, humming the Emmylou tune on his way to the Charlie Orson Memorial Hospital.

  The town of Algren had four long streets running north-south, one of them being Main Street, and ten short avenues running perpendicular to the streets. It was possible to walk anywhere in town in less than fifteen minutes, but Hosea almost always drove.

  Driving down First Street towards Hospital Avenue, Hosea continued to think about Lorna. She had been his girlfriend for about three and a half years. About the same length of time it had been since Euphemia Funk had died. They had met at an auctioneers’ convention in Denver. Auctioneering had been another thing Hosea was involved in, following Euphemia’s death, but had since abandoned. For a guy who had trouble finding the right words to say hello, auctioneering wasn’t the best hobby. Lorna had been wearing a name tag that had said, “Hi, my name’s …” then nothing—she hadn’t filled it in and Hosea was smitten by her for this reason. He looked at everybody else’s properly filled-out name tags and thought how ridiculous they all were. And his, too, Hosea Funk, how absurd. Who was this mysterious Mona Lisa with the blank name tag, anyway?

  Throughout the convention, Hosea stumbled about hoping to catch a glimpse of her, tugging fiendishly at his shirts and not giving a hoot about cattle calls or estate auctioneering protocol. He had been forty-nine at the time, but he felt like a sixteen-year-old-kid, creating impossible scenarios in his mind whereby he could prove himself worthy of this mysterious woman with the blank name tag.

  On the plane home from the convention he had all but given up, when, to his amazement, he saw her stroll down the aisle towards him. She had stuck out her perfect hand and introduced herself. Lorna Garden. It turned out she lived in Winnipeg, was divorced with no children, worked as a medical secretary, and dabbled in auctioneering. The name-tag thing had been an oversight on her part. But Hosea was in love and Lorna thought he wasn’t too bad and the rest is history.

  “And my relationship with her may be history, too,” thought Hosea, “if I don’t get my act together.”

  Hosea couldn’t make up his mind, it seemed. Did he want her to move out to Algren and live with him or not? He knew Lorna wanted to, but now, with Hosea’s hemming and hawing, Lorna was starting to play it cool. “Whatever,” she’d said the last time they’d talked about it. Hosea hated that word. Whatever. All through his childhood on the Funk farm and then in town living with his mother he had heard it being used, oh, almost daily. Whatever, Euphemia would say if Hosea asked if he could have ten cents. Whatever, she’d say if he told her the U.S. had invaded Korea.

  It wasn’t a question of damaging his public reputation, having Lorna live with him. The townspeople of Algren would have been happy for Hosea to have a woman living with him. And it wasn’t a question of room or money. Hosea had enough of both. And it certainly wasn’t a question of wavering commitment. He loved Lorna with all his heart. It was just … well, would she have been one
person too many for Algren? For Algren’s status as Canada’s smallest town.

  And soon Lorna might just give up on him, thought Hosea as he pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. But what could he do?

  Hosea focused on the task at hand. He had a question to ask Veronica Epp—just one and he’d leave her alone. Veronica Epp was expecting her fifth child. This fact alone irked Hosea. But now there was some talk around town that she was expecting twins. If she had two babies instead of one, which he had figured on, Hosea would have to do some fancy footwork.

  “Good morning, Jean Bonsoir,” said Hosea, with one slight tug at his front, to the hospital’s only doctor, an import from Quebec. His name was Jean François, but Hosea like to think his alternative pronunciation was funny and helped to break the ice.

  “Hosea,” the doctor returned with a nod. He was counting the days until he could leave Algren for Montreal, where he could do something other than minor surgery and routine obstetrics and where people would pronounce his name correctly. It still peeved him to think of Hosea Funk calling his girlfriend, Genvieve, who remained in Montreal, Jenny Quelque Chose.

  “Uh, listen, Doctor, I need to talk to Mrs. Epp for a minute, tops. Then I’ll be out of your hair. Fair enough?”

  Jean François had understood the Mrs. Epp part and shrugged Hosea down the hall. “Room four, Hosea, but be quick because she needs to rest.”

  “Will do,” said Hosea, already moving towards Veronica’s room.

  He had begun to walk into her room as if he was entering his own kitchen but stopped abruptly. Veronica Epp was lying with her back towards him and, unfortunately for Hosea, her blue hospital gown had come untied, exposing her buttocks and lower back. Before turning away, Hosea thought to himself how a woman could look, well, like normal, from the back, even while she was ballooning out in the front, and he wondered if he himself looked thinner from behind. It was something to consider. But now, he grabbed at his shirt and took three steps backwards, returning to the hallway and standing on the other side of the doorway.

  This was the type of situation that completely unnerved Hosea. Was Veronica sleeping? Should he wake her up? How? Just then he heard a godawful moan coming from across the hall. A tiny tuft of white hair and an atrophied face poked out from beneath a blue sheet. The body attached to it looked like that of an eight-year-old girl. Hosea looked closer. Oh my God, he thought, it’s Leander Hamm, Lawrence’s dad. Nobody had told him old Mr. Hamm was in the hospital, and, from the sounds of it, he wasn’t long for this world. Well, thought Hosea, it could be a good thing. Not that he invited death upon his townspeople regularly, but, after all, Leander Hamm would have had to have been almost ninety-five, and that’s a good long life. If he were to buy the farm sometime soon, then Veronica Epp’s alleged twins might not be as big a problem. Though it didn’t bode well for having Lorna move in with him.

  Which reminded him. He cleared his throat and stretched out his arm to knock on Veronica’s door, keeping the rest of his body safely behind the wall. He had to find out from Veronica what the story was and he didn’t want the doctor coming around and wondering what his problem was.

  “Come in?” Veronica called out to the empty doorway. Hosea had quickly pulled back his arm after the knock and was still standing behind the wall next to her door.

  “Uh, Mrs. Epp, it’s, uh … Hosea Funk.”

  Dead silence then except for the swishing of stiff sheets.

  “Oh, Mr. Funk? Well, come in.”

  Hosea had thought that Veronica Epp would have recognized the name right off the bat. He was the mayor, after all, but then again, she had just woken up and was in a somewhat groggy condition. He wouldn’t let it bother him. And besides, as he stood there, far from her actual bed, a look of recognition came over her face and she smiled warmly.

  She rolled over, on her back now, and Hosea was truly alarmed at how enormous her belly was. Darnit, he thought. That’s gotta be twins.

  “How are you feeling, Mrs. Epp?” Hosea planted his gaze on her face to avoid having to look at her stomach.

  “Fine, thanks. The doctor just thought it would be a good idea to come in a bit before I go into labour, because I’m a high risk.”

  “I see,” said Hosea. “Well, that’s good.”

  Veronica Epp looked slightly puzzled.

  “I mean it’s good that you’re here, being observed like this. It’s a very good thing.” Hosea coughed twice but resisted the urge to tug.

  “Yes, Dr. Jean is very attentive, very good. And, love ’em dearly though I do, it’s rather a nice break from my other kids, you know.”

  No, Hosea did not know. And what was this business with calling Dr. François Dr. Jean? That was rather personal, wasn’t it? He knew he would have balked to be called Mayor Hosea instead of Mayor Funk, but then again that wasn’t usually a problem in Algren as most people just called him Hosea or Hose. The few times someone like Tom had called him Mayor Funk he had detected just the slightest hint of sarcasm. But, of course, that might have been because Tom was his friend and why would friends be formal? But still.

  “Hmmm …” Hosea nodded, trying to smile. He stepped towards Veronica and put his hand briefly on top of the mysterious machine making beeping noises and showing various squiggly lines on its screen.

  “Handy contraption, this, eh?” Hosea stared at the lines in deep concentration as if he knew what they meant. What he was trying to do was figure out how he could best ask the question without appearing to be prying, that is, inappropriately curious about what was so obviously none of his business.

  Veronica strained to turn her enormous body towards the machine to get a better look. The sight of her shifting startled Hosea and he stared, wide-eyed, hoping her gown would not slip off and expose her privates.

  Hosea was beginning to feel very warm. Veronica looked uncomfortable. She grimaced slightly, then scratched her stomach. As she did so her gown shifted over a bit, and what was revealed to Hosea was just about the most gruesome thing he had ever seen. He thought he would be sick. What was it, he wondered, a scar? A birth defect? A smallish, round, bluish disk of smooth skin with what looked like lips in the centre of it stretched across the middle of her stomach. It wasn’t a tiny head pushing through, was it? Hosea knew it couldn’t be. He knew, of course, that babies did not just poke through the abdominal skin of their mothers for a look around or a bit of air. However, it looked like it would burst any second and Hosea did not want to be around when it did.

  “Ha, would you look at that?” Veronica laughed. “Wouldn’t know it was a belly button, would you?”

  A belly button! thought Hosea. Of course! And suddenly Hosea felt very lonely. Something so simple, so tender and common as a belly button and he had not been able to identify it. He had been scared of Veronica Epp’s belly button. He was fifty-two years old. He should know about these simple things by now. Old Leander Hamm, all shrivelled up and dying, he had a belly button, too. And Lorna Garden and Tom and Dory and Jean François. For some reason the thought made him sad, momentarily. He had to get on with the job here. He would have to get directly to the question, just simply ask it of Veronica and hope she wouldn’t think it was strange.

  “So you’re high risk, are you? Why exactly is that?” There it was. He had popped the question. Hosea braced himself, waiting for the worst.

  “Well, they think it’s triplets.” Veronica Epp now beamed up at Hosea. For her it was like winning the lottery. Hosea’s gaze moved down to her mountain of a stomach and then out the window towards the tiny trickle that was Algren’s Main Street. Lawrence Hamm’s dad moaned from across the hall. Hosea felt like he had just been kicked in the groin.

  “You mean three?” he whispered.

  three

  “Knutie!” Dory had said after a week of Knute’s hanging around the house trying to help. “Didn’t Hosea mention some kind of part-time job or something or other?”

  “Ick,” said Knute. She wasn’t so resistant to
the idea of working for Hosea Funk as to the idea of working, period. She was still licking her wounds from the awful experiences of her last two part-time jobs. And, of course, she was working. She was taking care of Summer Feelin’, getting her acquainted with the few kids in the neighbourhood, organizing tea parties, trips to the park down the street, keeping her amused in her relatively new environment. Also, she was helping out around the house. She helped Tom with things like changing the oil in the car. He knew it needed to be changed but had forgotten why. She tried to explain as best she could. She helped him set a trap for a skunk that had been lurking around the back door. She hacked away all the ice on the sidewalk so he wouldn’t slip when he went outside. She took him grocery shopping in the hope that they could find something healthy and delicious for him to eat. She experimented with new chicken and fish recipes and tried to spruce meals up for him with wine and candlelight and a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. And she was teaching him how to juggle.

  He loved to juggle. So far he had two balls mastered. Summer Feelin’ would scurry around picking up dropped balls and throw them back at Tom and he’d try again. “Remember, Dad,” Knute would say, “one and then the other. The right goes over to the left, and the left to the right, okay? One, two, three, catch them. Good. Try again.”

  The time that she spent hanging out with Tom and Summer Feelin’ was the time that Dory could escape. Tom was distracted and didn’t mind as much if she left when he was busy. Usually she’d go out for coffee with her friends or to her office where she did some part-time bookkeeping for the farm labour pool. Or she’d shop at the Do-It Centre in Whithers for wallpaper and carpets and flooring and cupboard fixtures and curtains. She was re-doing the entire house, one room at a time. It had been twenty-five years since anything had been changed and now suddenly she was attacking every square inch of her house. She was getting rid of everything that was beige, brown, avocado, or moss green (which was everything) and replacing it with light sunny colours or pastels or white.