The Divine Ryans, page 12
‘How did he die?’ I said.
‘Who?’ Aunt Phil said.
‘The boy,’ I said. ‘The one we’re going to see.’
She paused, perhaps to consider which would be more effective, telling me the actual details or letting me make up my own. ‘Never mind,’ she said.
It was a rare occasion when at least one of the Divine Ryans was not present at a wake. People expected one of them to be there at all times, Aunt Phil said. Even Uncle Reginald had to take his turn, though he was more or less on call for when the others couldn’t make it. I remembered that my father had been as reluctant as Uncle Reginald to take his turn at Reg Ryan’s. Luckily, Aunt Phil had preferred not to have him there too often. It was not that she was worried that he would misbehave. Rather, it was what he didn’t do while he was there that bothered her. Instead of leading prayers as the others did, or circulating among the mourners, he merely sat or knelt where people could see him.
Which one of the Divine Ryans was sent to sit with you often depended on your social standing. The lesser families rated no better than my father, the least famous, least recognizable member of the family. My father must often have sat at Reg Ryan’s among people who had no idea who he was. On one occasion, I had gone with him. As Aunt Phil and I walked along Fleming Street, I could still see my father in the red room, his hat on his knees, enduring the morbid tedium of wakes for his family’s sake, sitting there among a crowd of grieving strangers, not knowing what to say to them – half the room staring at him because they knew who he was, the other half staring because they didn’t.
He had dreaded what he referred to as the Call, the call to attend a wake, that is. The Call could come at any time, he told me. It hadn’t been so bad before Father Francis had gone to South America. But for the last few years before his death, the Call had been coming more and more frequently. If not for Sister Louise, who spent more time at Reg Ryan’s than anyone, who knows how often he would have had to go there? Sister Louise was something of a fixture at the home, her chair almost as familiar a sight in the red room as a casket.
When we reached Reg Ryan’s, it was three-thirty. Everyone going into, or even going by Reg Ryan’s knew the exact time, for, on top of the sign out front that in bold, black letters read ‘Reg Ryan’s Funeral Home’, there was a clock with Roman numerals, a clock that, no matter how disinclined you were to read the sign or to notice the funeral home, you could not help looking at. No-one can pass a clock without looking at it, Aunt Phil said, so it was simply good advertising to put one on the sign. That it was also good advertising to put so obvious a reminder of mortality as a clock on the sign for a funeral home, was a fact that went unmentioned.
There were jokes about that clock and Reg Ryan’s eagerness to make a dollar. ‘When time runs out, Reg Ryan runs in,’ people said. Others said the clock stopped each time someone died; still others that if it stopped while you were looking at it, you would die.
When we went inside and took off our coats and boots in the vestibule, there was no sign of my mother, whom I had hoped might still save me from my fate. Aunt Phil stood behind me, her hands on my shoulders. ‘Down we go,’ she said. ‘And remember where you are.’ As if I could forget. When we were but halfway down the stairs, I felt it rising up from below, a kind of tangible, wretched silence. I thought I had seen my last wake, but here I was, about to see another one. And what more likely place for my father’s ghost to turn up next? I made up my mind that until I reached the casket, where I planned to close my eyes altogether, I would try not to look too closely at anything.
I was glad to discover that today’s wake was being held in the blue room, for it was in the red room that my father had been waked, and I had no wish to uncover the still-buried memory of that event. Aunt Phil, her hand on the small of my back, pushed me inside. There was much commotion, much moving aside, as people saw who we were. Despite my determination not to focus on anything, I could not avoid the fact that there, in that sad, dim room, was this gleaming casket. It was almost absurd, the way the white casket outshone the rest of the room, and the mourners, most of whom were dressed in black. White for the innocence of childhood, white though his soul was black with sin and would go to purgatory.
As we neared the casket, I looked at the floor. And as we knelt, I closed my eyes in what I hoped would look to Aunt Phil like fervent prayer. I heard a kind of sibilant murmuring everywhere but in front of me, where I knew the boy was lying. I shut my mind’s eye, determined not even to imagine what he looked like.
If Aunt Phil noticed that my eyes were closed, she gave no sign – perhaps she did notice, but dared not say anything. Even when I felt her hand on my shoulder bidding me to stand up, I kept my eyes closed, first turning away from the casket towards where I knew the immediate family was sitting, then rising to my feet. Finally, I opened my eyes to find the dead boy’s parents looking at me. That I might remind them of him was something I had not foreseen; no sooner did her eyes meet mine than the woman began to cry, and the man stared wistfully at me.
Then, as if the important thing the day after their son’s death was that some stranger not be embarrassed or frightened, they recovered. The woman stopped crying and smiled at me, and the man held out his hand for me to shake. As I took it, I felt so sorry for them I might have started crying had Aunt Phil not put her hands on my shoulders, at which the dead boy’s father all but jumped to his feet. He looked as if suddenly the crisis was not that his little boy had died, but that Philomena Ryan was standing in front of him. Aunt Phil bent down and whispered in my ear. ‘Go sign the book,’ she said, ‘then wait for me outside.’
I needed no second invitation. I left the blue room and climbed back up the stairs. There were two books at Reg Ryan’s. One, which Uncle Reginald called ‘the Doomsday Book’, lay open on a lectern in the vestibule. In this book were recorded the names and the dates of death of people who were waked at the home. On display on a table exactly opposite the Doomsday Book was the Visitors’ Book, which all those who attended wakes were asked to sign. We went through two or three Visitors’ Books a year, but there had only ever been one Doomsday Book. My father’s name was in it, as were the names of all the Ryans who had died since the home had been established. I went to the Visitors’ Book and, for the umpteenth and perhaps world-record-setting time for nine-year-olds, signed my name. Aunt Phil was just coming up the stairs when I went outside. Reg Ryan’s clock read 4:15.
On our way home, just after we had passed the orphanage, a dog belonging to one of our neighbours began to follow us, running along inside the wire mesh fence that marked his owner’s property, barking quite savagely as if we were trespassing. He was a much-feared Dobermann known on Fleming Street as Tom. His ears were taped up straight above his head – this, according to his owner, was quite usual with Dobermanns, being the accepted way to ‘train’ their ears. The true Dobermann, he said, had ears that stood straight up.
The first time I saw Tom, I thought that the tape was some sort of joke, that some brave, foolhardy soul had wrestled him to the ground and somehow managed to tape his ears together. No matter how accepted was this method of training the ears, it made Tom look ridiculous. Because the tape was black, the same colour as his ears, it looked from a distance as if his ears had fused together above his head, as if, far from being the kind of specimen that would win a prize at a dog show, he was deformed. Now, close up, the tape looked like a bandage of some kind, and the erect ears made his head look strangely bare, as if he had just come from having his hair cut. Combine with this the typical Dobermann expression, that look of vigilant amazement, and you have some idea of what was chasing us.
‘Thank God for that fence,’ Aunt Phil said. No sooner were the words out than Tom leapt up against the fence, his four paws clinging to the mesh and, with his great hind legs lewdly thrusting, he began poking his furry and, it seemed to me, pee-swollen bud through one of the holes, in which it barely fit. What a strange sight it made, Tom with his ears taped up, as if this was somehow necessary to the act, Tom spreadeagled on the fence, looking at us as if we were his inspiration, his furry bud going swiftly in and out, as if it was making repeated attempts to escape, making run after run for it, only to have Tom pull it back.
We could not have been looking at Tom’s mad bid for satisfaction for more than one or two seconds when Aunt Phil grabbed me and put her hand over my eyes, my whole face in fact, then proceeded to more or less drag me down Fleming Street. As I stumbled along, trying desperately to get away from her, as much at the thought of how I must look as at the outrage of it, she kept me from falling but said nothing, her hand so firmly on my face that it might have been my mind’s eye it was covering, preventing me from even recalling what had happened, telling me that what I had seen was something that I must not even think about again, let alone ask questions about.
Only when we were well past Tom’s owner’s property did she release me, wordlessly, as if nothing had happened, as if my face could not still feel the grip of her hand, as if I had not been wrestled along the sidewalk in broad daylight in what must have looked to passersby like a kidnapping. For thirty seconds, my whole face had been stifled by her hand, her one hand, contained by it. But this was a fact that would never be acknowledged between us.
‘Aunt Phil,’ I said, ‘what was that dog doing?’ I knew full well what her answer would be – it was only to assure myself that the dog really had existed that I asked.
‘What dog?’ Aunt Phil said. ‘There wasn’t any dog.’
For the rest of the day, I wondered how to tell my mother about my visit to Reg Ryan’s without sounding like a tattletale. That I had to tell her seemed certain, for I did not want to be dragged off to wakes once a week for the rest of my childhood. Before dinner, I kept looking at her, waiting for the right time to mention it. As it turned out, however, she already knew, for she had come down to the blue room after we had left and someone had told her we had been there. After dinner, when I had all but given up trying to tell her about it, she raised the subject with Aunt Phil. It was one of the rare occasions when Aunt Phil looked positively uncomfortable.
‘Wakes can do no harm,’ she said, with eyes downcast. She and my mother were facing one another across the table.
‘Draper Doyle is my child,’ my mother said. ‘I’ve told you before that I don’t want you taking him to wakes and I’m telling you now. You had no business taking him without my permission. I’m sure I can trust you not to do it again.’
The silence that followed was long and embarrassing for everyone. My mother had not only spoken sharply to Aunt Phil, but had done so in front of us. Nor had it been her usual kind of outburst, spoken impulsively one minute and all but retracted the next, but a carefully worded, obviously rehearsed reprimand. Aunt Phil, looking as incredulous as Mary and I, her face blushing deeply, got up from the table and began to do the dishes.
That night, I dreamed that I was in the Forum, on the ice, standing with Aunt Phil in a line of people who, like us, were wearing street clothes. It might have been one of those Depression-era breadlines for the way that we were dressed and the way that we shuffled forward, heads bowed, with no-one speaking. Though, throughout the Forum, every seat and inch of standing room was occupied, a kind of church silence hung over everything. There was something naggingly familiar about the scene, but though I tugged on her hand, wanting her to bend down so I could ask her what was happening, Aunt Phil ignored me.
The line was moving slowly towards centre ice where a group of people was standing in a circle, as if some sort of pre-game ceremony was underway. Some of the people in the line were holding candles, others flowers. I saw each one of them enter the circle, then emerge, seconds later, empty-handed, to rejoin the line on the other side of centre ice. The line stretched from one end of the ice to the other, people coming in through a gap in the boards at one end and leaving through a gap at the other end, pausing only within the circle to leave their candles or their flowers.
When we drew close to the circle, a strange whispering began among the crowd. I strained to listen and discovered that everyone in the Forum was whispering, ‘Morenz.’
‘Morenz.’ The very name seemed full of death. I now realized what was happening. It was exactly as Uncle Reginald had once described it to me. Aunt Phil was taking me to see the great Howie Morenz, who was being waked at centre ice. Morenz was the fastest skater who had ever lived, or ever died for that matter, for his speed had killed him. Morenz had died in 1937, only a few weeks after crashing into the boards at the Forum and breaking his leg. No-one knew exactly what killed him, but it was said that after being told that the broken leg would mean the end of his career, he had lost the will to live.
Morenz was Uncle Reginald’s favourite among the Habs, as much because his funeral had been held at centre ice in the Montreal Forum as because he had been a great hockey player. ‘The ultimate funeral’, Uncle Reginald called it, the Forum filled with 20,000 people, all come to say goodbye to Morenz whose open casket lay at centre ice almost buried in flowers. After the funeral, the casket was drawn by horse and carriage through the city streets which were lined with people, many of whom had been turned away from the Forum, and had waited for hours to catch a glimpse of the funeral as it went past. How he would have liked to have worn his top-hat in that procession, Uncle Reginald said, to have driven the horse and carriage that took Morenz to his final resting place.
I felt less afraid, now that I knew where we were. Aunt Phil and I were taking part in one of the greatest moments in Habs history. ‘Morenz,’ the crowd kept whispering. ‘Morenz,’ I said, as the circle slowly broke to let us in. There in front of us, laid out in what might have been a bed, with a blanket of flowers pulled up to his chin, was the great Morenz. As we moved towards the casket, the whispering grew louder, as if something especially momentous was about to happen. ‘Morenz,’ they said, as if the first rumours of his death had just begun – the very name was like a moan, a sigh of grief.
I was surprised to see that Aunt Phil was crying. When we reached the casket, she stood behind me, then put her hands beneath my arms and lifted me. I looked around at the circle of mourners, suddenly realizing that all of them were members of my family. Aunt Delia, whom I’d only seen in photographs, was there with Uncle Reginald. Father Seymour and Father Francis were standing on either side of Sister Louise, who held, in one clenched fist, a set of black prayer beads. My mother was there, her arms around Mary who was staring at me.
‘Kiss him,’ Aunt Phil said. ‘Kiss the man goodbye.’ She began to lower me towards the casket.
‘Kiss him,’ Aunt Phil said.
I looked down to see, not Morenz, but my father, his hair slicked back, a kind of spectral handsomeness about him, my dead father, waiting for a kiss from the one person who could bring him back to life.
‘Kiss him,’ Aunt Phil said.
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘No!’ as she lowered me towards him. Closer came my father’s face, closer, until soon the dream was nothing but his face, a great, looming death mask.
‘Kiss him!’ Aunt Phil shouted, all but dropping me on top of him. I turned aside at the last second so that we did not so much kiss as bump faces, my forehead nudging his cold cheek, jiggling his flesh in a way I could still feel when I woke up screaming.
11
Of all the sessions of oralysis I had with Uncle Reginald, the ones I liked best, the ones that came closest to being worth the fifty cents I had to pay for them, were the ones he collectively called ‘The Mid-season Review’. For several weeks in a row we talked about hockey, about how the Habs were doing, what their chances looked like for a third straight Stanley Cup. The biggest obstacle, Uncle Reginald said, would likely be, not our nemesis, the Leafs, than whom there had never been an NHL team more aged, more decrepit, or less talented, but the Chicago Black Hawks, led by the Golden Jet, the awesome Bobby Hull, in whose massive shadow the entire league was playing. The Black Hawks were in first place, an incredible fifteen points ahead of Montreal, who were barely keeping pace with the Leafs and the lowly Rangers. Montreal, Uncle Reginald said, would have to find a way to stop Hull, who once again, was well on his way to scoring fifty goals.
The favourite phrase of the colour commentators that year was, ‘You can’t stop what you can’t see.’ They used it whenever Bobby Hull wound up for a slapshot. That’s all people talked about, the speed of Bobby Hull’s shot. How fast was it? people wondered. During oralysis, Uncle Reginald solemnly informed me that Bobby Hull’s slapshot was faster than the speed of light. Hull’s shot, said Uncle Reginald, was so fast that it went backwards in time, so that Hull was literally rewriting the record books, scoring goals, not only in the present but in the past, changing the outcome of games played thirty, forty, fifty years ago. This is how Uncle Reginald imagined Montreal’s colour commentators, Dick Irvin Jr and Danny Gallivan, talking about Hull’s shot:
‘We’ve just gotten word, Danny,’ Dick said, ‘that Hull’s last slapshot, the one that disappeared at the blueline in the second period, turned up in the Stanley Cup Final of 1965, April 17 to be exact, a game which the Habs won 3–2, but which has now been tied up 3–3 by Hull’s blistering slapshot and is going into overtime. Habs fans will recall that the Habs won that series in seven games, which means that, if the Hawks should win in overtime, the Cup for 1965 will go to them.’
‘I bet I can guess where Hull’s slapshot is going,’ said Danny Gallivan.
‘You betcha,’ said Dick. ‘Right back to 1965. I hope the Gumper is ready.’
‘I pity Gump Worsley,’ said Danny. ‘Those slapshots from the future must be almost impossible to stop.’
‘Definitely,’ said Dick. ‘I mean, how do you cut down the angles on a shot that won’t even be taken for another two years?’
