Larry's Party (9 page)

Vivian, the branch manager, gave notice two weeks after the Flowercity takeover. She dreads what she sees coming in the eighties, and, besides, she’s ready for a career change. “I’ve worked my tush off,” she told Larry, “building this place up, establishing a loyal clientele here in the West End, turning out a reliable product. I’ve definitely decided to go back to school. Social work - that’s where the jobs are going to be in the future. I was reading the other day about squirrels and I -”

“Squirrels?” Larry interrupts, scratching his chest through his checked smock. His wife’s washed it twice now, but it’s still stiff with sizing.

“Seventy-four percent of the nuts that a squirrel hides never get found. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“You mean -”

“I mean I’ve been hiding nuts, too, in a sense. Forever making little improvements in the business? Remembering people’s names. Following up after weddings. Sending those little anniversary reminders. Bringing in white balls from Toronto at Christmas when no other outlet in town would touch them. All that stuff.”

“And?”

“And where has it got me?”

“I thought you loved it here.”

“Like now they want daily time sheets. The whole ball of wax. Wouldn’t you think, if they kept up with modern management, that they’d have figured out that it’s
people
who matter! Computerized inventory. Good God! Not that there’s anything wrong with computers per se, but they want it just so. And I have to turn up every single day for work in this dumb schoolgirl get-up. A checked smock at my age. I mean!”

“What do you mean
your
age? You’re talking like you’re -”

“Like I’m thirty-eight years old. A mature woman. Ha! If I wanted to be Little Bo Peep I’d go work at Disneyland. It’s different for you, you’re—”

“I’m thirty-one.”

“A mere babe.”

“But social work, Viv! How do you know you’re going to like social work?”

“I don’t. I’ll probably hate it. Poor people, sick people. Omigod. But at least I’ll have my dignity. You know, doing something useful.”

“Hey, Viv, wait a minute. You’re the one who’s always saying how flowers are important. Remember your Chinese story—”

“Chinese story? What Chinese story?”

“You know - about the Chinaman who has two pennies—”

“Two yen, you mean.”

“And he spends one on a loaf of bread and the other to buy a flower.”

“Listen, Larry, I’ve got to tell you something. I hope it won’t hurt your feelings.”

“Go ahead. Shoot.”

“Look, you’re a sensitive guy, you really, truly are, but there’s something you’ve got to know, especially working in a business that’s ninety-nine percent customer relations.”

“I can take it. Just go ahead.” “Well, look, you just can’t say Chinaman anymore. It sounds prejudiced. You have to say Chinese person.”

“Oh.”

“Saying Chinaman’s like saying Wop or Honky.”

“My old dad says Chink.”

“Exactly. There you have it. We’ve come a long way, baby.”

“I’ll remember.”

“You’ll have to, Larry. ’Cause it looks like you’ll be in charge here when I go.”

“Me? Are you kidding?”

“It’s not for sure, but there’ve been these teensie-weensie hints from the head office, those bastards. Little inquiries, you know? Like is this Weller person reliable? Can he make decisions? What are his interpersonal skills? That kind of thing.”

“I can’t believe it. I never thought -”

“Like those squirrels I was mentioning earlier? You’ve been burying your nuts all along — nothing personal, pal - and now it’s time to go find a few. You deserve it, Larry. You’ll be a great boss. I’ve written a recommendation, as a matter of fact. A whole page, typed, single-spaced. He’s a great guy, I said, or words to that effect. With capital O-Original ideas. Does this man know how to make irises stand up or what? And he’s well organized, keeps a neat work table,, doesn’t let the orders get backed up, doesn’t play royal highness with the trainees. Hey, what gives? You’re supposed to be looking happy. You’re going up the ladder, my laddie-boy. What’s the matter?”

“I just can’t,” Larry said, “imagine this place without you.”

 

Larry doesn’t talk much about his job, but he thinks about it a lot, and mostly he thinks he’s lucky. Work for him adds up to a whole lot more than the feel of ferns in his hands or the sight of sprigged baby’s breath gleaming through the glass of the cooler or even the green spongy cave of the store itself with its forest smells rising up to greet him when he comes in in the morning. How many people get to work in that kind of lushness, the air breaking out into fragrance and color all around you. The loose, light humidity of the place is part of being at work, a big part, but all these particularities are shaken loose by the good music of talk. He and Viv talk all day long. They’ve been talking for twelve years, an unceasing, seamless conversation.

There are always a couple of assistants around, but they come and go: Wendy, Kerri, Dawn, Sidney, Brenda, Lou-Anne, two or three Jennifers, a big fat guy called Tommy Enns, an endless procession of them, trainees from Red River College, young and confused, eager, stumbling, shrill or shy, it all depended. A new apprentice on an eight-week work stint tends to turn the place really hairy, at least at first, but Larry and Viv hold it steady and fluid with their voices, his, hers - talking, talking, all day the two of them talking.

While they stand at the bench “backing” bridal bouquets or improvising a winter arrangement to deliver to Victoria Hospital’s Palliative Care Unit or unpacking cedars (they come twenty bunches to a box) Larry and Viv discuss Michael Jackson’s stage style or Margaret Trudeau’s maternal instincts or lack thereof. Their fingers move and so do their mouths. Yammer, yammer. About economics they admit their ignorance, and their right to their ignorance. They talk about the penny shortage in the States, the danger of radon in basements, the inflated salaries of professional football players, and about the pros and cons of whooping cough shots - on this particular topic Viv managed to persuade Larry not to have his three-year-old son, Ryan, inoculated after all. The two of them reminisce about the time a guy walked in and ordered a dozen dead roses to send to his ex-wife, and how Vivian took the order, then calmly phoned the police.

They talk about the cost of air conditioners in the States versus the cost in Canada. About draft dodgers, whether they should be sent home. About pimples, whether to pop them or leave them alone. About mothers, their mood swings, their dumb sweetness. About Ronald Reagan, how good-hearted or stupid the man is. How hot it is outside, how rainy, how the back lane is blocked with snow. A whole decade has slid by, its weathers and transports and passing personalities, and all of it crystalized into the words that fly back and forth between Vivian Bondurant and Larry Weller. A million words, a zillion. Note for note, the biggest noise in Larry’s life is the noise that comes out of Viv Bondurant’s throat.

Her voice is a low, confidential rumble, but full of little runs and pauses. She knows how to build up to a story, and she knows exactly when it’s time to throw the ball into Larry’s court. “So what do you think, Lare?” What she brings him are bulletins from that layer of the world he seems doomed to miss, the anecdotes she gleans from CHOL’s call-in show or
People Magazine
exposes. She passes on, generously, with unstoppable authority, such things as cough remedies from somebody or other’s grandmother, the fact that Italians use mums only for funerals, or what can be said out loud these days and what’s
verboten.
Chinamen are now Chinese people. Indians are natives. And so on and so forth.

Certain topics between them are off limits. For instance, they never, never mention Larry’s wife, Dorrie; Viv, with her strong sense of intuition, probably suspects things aren’t working out too well in that department. On the other hand, she can be surprisingly upfront about herself, making a point, for instance, of keeping Larry up to date on her menstrual cycle. “It’s better you know when I’m having my rag days, kiddo, then you can keep out of my way.” In fact, she’s blessed with a remarkably even temperament, a woman whose running commentary on the world is underpinned by an easy acceptance of whatever comes her way. What she collects in her life is
information
, and it’s information too valuable not to be shared.

Larry’s grateful. He owes Viv a lot, and yet he hardly knows her. She and her husband, Hector, live quietly in a house in St. Vital. Hector’s older than Viv by a good fifteen years and he’s been married before - this slipped out one day when Viv was sorting through a box of holly at the store - and has fathered a couple of kids who grew up to be whiners and grabbers, which is why he doesn’t want to have any more, and that’s okay-José with Viv. Larry has only been to their house once, a Sunday morning a few years ago when he dropped off some screwed-up billing statements.

He’d never in his life seen such an airy house, everything dusted and polished and in perfect repair, and the pale beige drapes hanging with their pleats just so. Viv, wearing jeans and a turtleneck sweater, made coffee which she served to Hector and Larry at a shining kitchen table. She was quieter than she was at the store, sitting back and letting the men get acquainted. Afterward, Hector showed Larry the basement where he repaired clocks.

This was his job, not just a hobby. Against one wall stood a long workbench for Hector’s tools. They were astonishingly beautiful, these tools, brass tipped with dark wooden handles and a look of antiquity about them. A metal lathe gleamed, handsome as a museum piece, clean, polished, ready to go. A square of pegboard held drill bits arranged in the shape of a harp. “Every last thing you see here is European,” Hector said proudly. “German, mostly. You can’t beat the Krauts for machinery.”

“Yeah,” murmured Larry, his eyes on the metal teeth of a miniature saw.

Twenty or thirty clocks stood about the room or hung on the walls, some of them disemboweled, and others tagged and ready to be picked up by their owners. Hector explained to Larry, pointing out their burnished edges, how to tell a French clock from an English clock, how certain clocks have a regulator mechanism that allows for the expansion or contraction of their pendulums, and the reasons for the transition of pocket watches to wrist watches. Larry ran his hand appreciatively over the frame of a plain round wall clock.

“That’s a Seth Thomas you’re looking at,” Hector said. “The real thing.”

“Ah,” said Larry, who had never heard of a Seth Thomas.

The two men stood together for a minute in respectful silence. The air was full of the loud busy sound of ticking, and then suddenly - Hector held up a finger to Larry; here it comes! - there was a brief concert of chimes and bongs; twelve noon. “That’s my hourly concert,” Hector said, and Larry could tell it was something he said often and each time with pleasure. “That’s all the music I need.”

Larry looked around, then, at the low-ceilinged room which was dark in the corners but whitely lit under the cone of a green work light. Here was the domain of a man who had his name and trade listed in the Yellow Pages. The pervasive tang of machine oil lay over his ticking, working kingdom, and there in the middle stood Hector Bondurant himself, with his arms folded across his stomach, tapping his elbows, beaming broadly, a monarch in his chosen sphere.

Larry felt a stab of irrational jealousy. For the briefest of moments he wanted to own this space, this spacious house with its neat drapes and its stern white coffee mugs, and he yearned for the daily descent down linoleum-clad stairs to this warm, snug hideaway and its waiting workbench covered with sorted parts and beautifully aligned tools. He wanted all these things, but most of all he wanted Hector’s work, his clockmaker’s hands and the intricate mechanical promise he coaxes from mere wood and metal.

In the same instant, lapping up against Larry’s instant desire to become a clockmaker, was his longing to work side by side with his father down at Air-Rider Coach Works, transforming metal sheets into mobile palaces. The miracle of it, making something out of nothing. The pleasure at the end of the day to see what you’d constructed with your own hands.

And then there was his wife, Dorrie, who sold cars at Manitoba Motors - he’d never thought much about Dorrie’s job, but now he wanted a portion of that too. Himself in a snappy sports jacket with “Call Me Larry” on his lapel button. The lingo, the come-on, the bargains teasingly offered and withdrawn, the intensity of the minute-by-minute shifts, the decisive moment, and the thrill: the final solemnity, of signing on the dotted line and pocketing a fat commission.

There’s no getting around it: the rhapsody of work hums between Larry’s ears, its variables and strategies, its implements and its tightly focused skills. Sometimes he tries to scare himself with thoughts of worklessness, the long, vacant mornings of the unemployed - how would that feel? - and the mingled boredom and sadness of being broke and without accomplishment, without any way to deal with time. In the end, anything’s better than nothing, even the working stiff’s daily grind. Some work is graceless, he knows that. Work can be dirty, noisy, dangerous, degrading, but it’s still work, and that’s what turns the gears of life. He understands this spare, singular fact better than he will ever be able to understand the unguessable secrets of love and happiness.

Years later, when his life was going badly, he came to see work as the only consolation for persisting in the world.

Before Dorrie got married she was a clerk-receptionist in the parts division of Manitoba Motors. The pay wasn’t great, but she had a reputation for getting along with the customers, always commiserating with them over the size of their repair bills, taking their side. They appreciated that. They nicknamed her Dorable. The head of auto parts, a man named Al Leonard, said she was the most efficient employee he’d ever seen. She had a knack for keeping track of details and for remembering what was where and which parts were out of stock. In those days she wore jeans to work and a thick sweater since it was always drafty, what with the door to the repairs garage opening and closing all day long. Besides, she was stuck behind the counter, so what did it matter if she went casual or dressy?