The Serpent's Tooth

Holly hadn't known what to expect to find in the wilds of Northern Ontario. Log cabins? Bunch-of-the-boys-were-whooping-it-up saloons? Moose running amuck in the muddy streets? But the conference room looked civilized enough, large teak table and a handsome wall plaque of crossed axes: Norontario College. Founded 1965. Semper Utilus.

While coffee and muffins circulated, one empty chair remained next to an older woman consulting her notes. Oblivious to the energetic conversation, she shuffled papers and adjusted a pair of pearl pince-nez on a velvet cord. "Excuse me," Holly whispered as she set down her briefcase, but the woman shifted aside in silence.

"Let's get this meeting going, ladies and gentlemen," said Henry Mende, a silver haired man with a red bow tie and an ample belly screaming for suspenders. Dickens would have claimed him as a jolly Pickwickian; now he was a neo-classic high cholesterol time bomb. "Despite the perilous economy, we welcome a colleague to the English department, here to take up Liz's yoke since she married her millionaire and is off to Tunbridge Wells. Free at last, as they say." He nodded in avuncular pleasantry at Holly. "Miss Davis comes to us from the University of Toronto. She will be handling remedial freshman composition, unfortunately for her," he said with a chuckle, "but I know you'll give her a hand." Polite applause followed.

The other business went accordingly: schedules, loadings, the inconvenient night class appointment which fell to the newcomer. Then Mende's grizzled brows began to worry each other over shrinking governmental subsidies and dwindling enrolment. "We may have to undergo, um," he gargled, "some human resources reorganization next year, much though we dread to imagine it." He flagged at his sweating dome with a handkerchief while several younger male faculty peered at their coffees as if divining 2% futures in the milk. "Attrition has been the ticket so far. Liz last year and good old Harry before that. And with our new 20/60 plan it is possible to retire early with minimal pension reduction." He paused and glanced pointedly in the older woman's direction, but she was doing a crossword puzzle. The rest of the room sat grim and still. "I guess that'll be all. Good luck for the semester and remember that my door is always open."

With scattered mumbles, most of the participants filed out like chastened kindergartners. Holly snapped her briefcase shut and said quietly, "A great reckoning in a little room."

The older woman's eyes narrowed as her head rotated like a cautious cobra's. "Marlowe, of course."

"My thesis. Not that it'll help with freshman essays. Still, I'm lucky to have a job. My fellow graduates are driving cabs or practising telemarketing skills to sell portion-controlled meats. It took two years and nearly a hundred applications before this position came up at the last minute. I nearly signed on with a religious college in southern Alabama." She stopped abruptly, aware that she was babbling.

"Marsha Leacock," the older woman said, extending a small white hand with reddened knuckles. "Shakespeare. Junior level survey course. More than mining and forestry students will ever need, tree metaphors aside."

Holly accepted it gently. "Maybe we can have a chat sometime."

"Perhaps," Marsha answered, tucking a steel grey tendril back into her bun. "But, my dear, I don't think you'll get away with those sport outfits for class. Running suits, are they called? Pantsuits are acceptable, however."

"Oh, I had a flat driving up and..." Holly stuttered as Marsha walked away, erect and poised, despite what appeared to be a limp.

Their next meeting came on the afternoon of a gale force ice storm, Chesterton's annual inauguration into the gloomy discontent of a six-month winter. Holly had found a library carrel to mark essays when she saw Marsha hugging an armload of books, peering out the window at the sleet. "Looks bad, doesn't it?" Holly said.

Marsha shrugged philosophically and almost smiled. "A Northerner's punishment for the hubris of walking to work and bearing home the heavy weight of knowledge."

"I've finished. Or rather they've finished me. If I see one more comma splice..." She slapped shut her grade book with finality. "Let me give you a lift."

Minutes later she piled Marsha's books into the trunk of her ancient red Prelude and adjusted the heater to max. Holly thought that she had seen most of the excuse for a town. A sad little mini-park square with the requisite confectionary, pharmacy, movie theatre, and for the true optimists, a travel agency. Some respectable spruce and pine trees had been spared from the pulp factory, but the housing was a Lego replication, tiny company models and post-war bungalows, all foursquare to the north wind. No frivolous Scarlett O'Hara staircases, glassy Florida rooms, or California kitchens. Except for a few tough kids, families would be barricaded inside during -30 degree weeks, fortifying themselves with coffee royales, lardish pastry, any fuel to heat the blood or bolster the fat. So she was surprised to discover, at the end of an oak-lined street a few miles from the campus, a two-story gingerbread house, thick forests behind stretching into the distance.

"When was it built?" Holly asked as Marsha opened a gate in the neat picket fence. Except for the biting cold and the incongruous satellite dish in the yard, Anne of Green Gables might have been waving from the dormer window.

"Later than you'd think. Circa 1910. Chesterton has always lagged a decade or two behind. The town developed after the railway came through at the turn of the century. My grandfather was the main provisioner for the mills. I think he would rather have stayed a shopkeeper in Nottingham, but opportunities were too tempting here in the colonies. Kept the old Queen's ways, though."

Past the cedar door with a serpentine brass knocker, a rush of warmth met them. Holly's pulse quickened. "It's like the Victoria and Albert Museum! I spent my junior year in London. Is that real Morris wallpaper?"

Marsha smiled at the naivete but seemed pleased at the observation. "The original was. Sent over by clipper ship and oxcart, Grandfather joked. Those exotic birds entwined with flowers and leaves. Gold embossed dado. Mackmurdo perhaps. Nearly indestructible, those natural fibres. I didn't appreciate the effect until I started reading Rossetti. 'The Blessed Damosel.' But wood fireplaces take their toll, all that smoke discolours the fabric-- so I had it replaced. At considerable cost." She raised a patrician eyebrow. "A bit garish?"

Holly studied the delicate pink teasels. "A perfect match." She gazed across jewelled Tiffany lamps, a peacock stained glass window spilling ruby beams into a dark mahogany hall, and a ceramic tile fireplace decorated with pastel irises and topped by lustrous pink and blue earthenware. Then her eyes fixed on a majestic cabinet.

Marsha's smile broadened. "My prize. Louis Majorelle, oak, coramandel and burr-walnut. See the seagull flying over a cliff on the top panel? Caused quite a stir in England. Radical for the times."

"May I?" Holly ran appreciate fingers over the plant-shaped hinges. Wrought iron? Just then a gilded clock struck five, a young girl leaning over a cluster of lilies framing the face. She remembered her manners with reluctance. "It's nearly dinner time. I'd better be off," she said.

The older woman removed her glasses and polished them, cocking her head at a bark upstairs. "Come again. You're probably the only person in a thousand miles who can see instead of look."

Outside, as the wind etched its way around Holly's bare neck, she was glad to reach the transitory warmth of her car. At the Quick Mart she collected a frozen pizza and a can of green beans, then slowly climbed the dark stairs to her second floor apartment over a shoe store, one of the few rental properties. The cheap hollow door clapped shut behind her. Luckily there was little crime, since everyone seemed to be too busy maintaining their body temperatures.

Setting the food to cook and slipping an Elgar symphony into her creaky tapedeck, she mixed a buttery hot toddy laced with cheap rye, honey, and a self-indulgent cinnamon stick. The shuddery oil furnace in the basement obligingly blasted up a fumy heat, which soon dissipated in the draft. Not much of a life, she thought as the rye drilled home. In Toronto, even on her graduate student's farthings, she could have been window-shopping miles of underground malls, catching the Cannes favourites, dicing between Hunan or Ecuadorean cuisine for dinner. On the icy sill a lone Christmas cactus displayed its cerise blossoms in premature hope. Scarcely a block away, pulp trains were shunting their cargoes into the silent night. She bolted the rest of the toddy, even though it burnt her throat, then shifted the plant onto the coffee table. Bottom of the seniority ladder on a shaky foundation. There had to be a better way.

The next morning in the refectory, Douglas Ross thumped the table in mock astonishment. "You stormed that mausoleum? Marsha hasn't feted anyone in the fifteen years I've been here. What is your secret?" His eyes roamed her trim figure and rich chestnut hair; he began rubbing his wedding ring while his heavy thighs strained at his winter tweeds.

"Perhaps it's just loneliness. What's the story? She seemed like such a character at the faculty meeting." Holly sipped her coffee, black and fresh. If they could make one thing well in the North, it was coffee. Cheap thermal transfusions. Pass the juice to me, Bruce.

Ross seemed reluctant to abandon the chase, but he straightened under her serious stare. "She's our local fixture. Inherited the place from her father, Cece Leacock. Born here with money to kingdom come. The best of everything, strictly old world. Filled the place with antiques like a museum. But instead of taking over the business, she went to the states to school, Boston, I think, even did graduate work, then returned to nurse the old man. About that time they built the college. Convenient for her. Apparently he endowed it heavily."

"Is she quite the recluse then?"

A smirk appeared. "Come across Lady Macbeth in your doctoral studies? A pussycat next to dear Marsha. She'll pass you in the hall fifty times and never say boo. People say arthritis makes her crabby, but that's only an excuse. She's just a sour old woman. Speaks her mind, though. She's sliced old Henry into ribbons more than once over some pedantic academic question. The younger members have a betting pool for her retirement. Why she doesn't sell the damn house and be off to her precious Boston, I don't know. Hates it here in the Gulag, like we all do, but won't give up that full pension." He blinked and scooped up the check the waitress had deposited.

"Oh, no, Douglas. Liberation rules," Holly said, flipping down two loonies.

Make peace with Old Man Winter, her landlord's Finnish wife had advised after the first heavy snow, a good twenty inches. "Get you a pair of skinny skis, we call 'em. Canadian Tire has the best selection. Drive down Station Road to the end and you'll find the trails. Through the woods and up to the bluffs. Some is private property, but they don't mind skiers, just those noisy snowmachines." Then she had presented Holly with a package of suala kala, raw marinated salmon.

With nowhere else to spend her salary, Holly bought into the sport: skiis, poles, boots, bindings and a rainbow of waxes. She read the directions carefully. Waxing could be tricky. Change colours every five degrees, except that once the temperature hit -15 Celsius, all-purpose polar wax did the job. The small thermometer clipped to her suit read -16, so she would have to keep moving.

Twenty minutes later, a light snow falling, she was well into the woods, backpack primed with the fish, crackers, and an apple. The initial gentle slopes inaugurated her well; a week downhilling in Quebec had not been forgotten, though cross country skiis had no sharp edges for braking. She was fine until the first steep slope. Then down she fell, skidding to the bottom, slamming her head on the hard-packed snow. A bitter taste flooded her mouth, a cracked brainpan, she imagined, triggering memories of Elizabethan tragedy. She squeezed her eyes shut to ward off the dizziness, then performed a methodical check by flexing each arm and leg. No pain.

"Had a tumble, did you?" A familiar, slightly amused voice emerged from the falling snow as Holly rubbed the melting flakes from the blur. It was Marsha, but in a strange disguise. A thickly-knitted toque covered most of her head, parka, knee sox and knickers completing the outfit. A jolly Newfoundland dog panted beside her. "Don't lie there, girl. You could get lumbago, even at your tender age." She extended a hand and Holly fell again trying to stand.

"I feel so clumsy on these long things," she confessed.

Marsha pulled her up gently, strong despite her small frame. "You'll learn. Discretion is the better part of valour in this sport." The dog pushed forward to lick Holly's face, its woolly warmth solid and reassuring. The sweat that had warmed her in motion now frosted her cooling skin.

"Heel, Trey. He won't hurt you, just thinks that anyone I speak to is a friend. Unfortunately, he doesn't see very well. I've been giving him steroid drops for years to contain an auto-immune disease common to the breed. Panus, they call it."

"You don't have a Blanche and a Sweetheart around, do you?" Marsha's hooded eyes crinkled. "You do know your Shakespeare. Take back what I say about Canadian universities. Until a few years ago, I had a fine pair of springers, too. Got old, though, and I reasoned that one dog was enough." She looked at her watch and then at the darkening sky. "You might as well come for an early dinner. Venison stew in the hot pot and a fresh loaf in the breadmaker. Temperature's dropping too fast anyway."

Rubbing at her sore hips, Holly was grateful for what sounded more like terms of surrender than an invitation. "I have some suala kala my landlady gave me if you'll let me bring the appetizer." She rummaged through her pack and presented the small bundle.

By the time Holly reached Marsha's, the feeble sun had capitulated and the temperature edged toward -25. The older woman met her at the door, regal in an elegant emerald caftan and jet beads as she held out a crystal glass. "Preferences?"

"Anything strong and straight."

Marsha poured a generous helping of Jack Daniel's while they sat by a pile of blazing birch logs. "Learned to like this in Boston. Our benighted liquor store has finally discovered bourbon." She passed a plate of crackers lightly trimmed with the thin-sliced fish, chopped capers on top. "Here's your local version of smoked salmon. Just as good, I think. But be careful where you get it. Raw fish can be dangerous."

The delicate flesh combined well with the piquancy of the topping. Helping herself to a second cracker, Holly asked her how long she had been skiing. "Since I could walk," Marsha answered. "I made my own trails from the house to the bluffs, cut them with Father when I was young. He nearly made the Olympic Nordic team, thrived up here, inhaled the cold like tonic. As for me..." She prodded the fire silently and watched the flames consume themselves.

Holly sensed some awkwardness and diverted the conversation. "At least skiing's getting me out of my depressing apartment. Now I understand cabin fever. Rambo re-runs at the show. An anaemic cable selection. No books except for Danielle Steel and company. Is there a jar of cultural infusions I can buy?"Marsha refilled their glasses with a generous hand. "Toronto girl. I know what you mean. Still, you'd be surprised how many of our students hope to settle down here after graduation. I went south once. To Boston." Her blue flint eyes softened. "The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum might have to last me the rest of my life. Sitting in that magical palm court with glass ceilings to the sky." An errant branch on a six foot ficus brushed her arm. "Thank God I could find some plants that survive this damnable climate with minimal care and light." She leaned over to scratch Trey's ears. "But as for your infusions...I wonder...do you like classic films?"

"Raised on them! My father was a booker in the 'fillum' business, he called it. From the time I was five, we used to preview four a week in a private screening. Then I'd catch double and triple features at the local shows. In high school, I sneaked downstairs after the late news to watch Gable, Laughton, Hepburn, anything from the Thirties and Forties."

Marsha opened a glassed bookcase filled with tapes and selected one with reverence. "Technology has its merits. Thanks to Ted Turner and the dish, I have nearly every Garbo film, not all of the silents, of course. Tonight was to be Susan Lenox. Have you seen it?"

"Gable sans moustache? One of my favorites."

After dinner, Marsha darkened the room and let the enigmatic goddess command. Tray lolled quietly at their feet as the fire tongues flickered. A shrug of Garbo's shoulders spoke eloquently. When it was over, they had a standing date for Friday night. The collection included the best Shakespearean productions, Midsummer Night's Dream, Welles' Macbeth, and Olivier's Hamlet.

Marsha mentioned neither friend nor living relative, and haven for collectibles though it was, the house bore no witness of portraits or human mementos. And since Holly's parents had retired out west, the two planned to share Christmas dinner, a range-fed goose, chestnut dressing and Cumberland sauce. Holly contributed a trifle, though she forgot that the mincemeat needed to be heated to melt the suet. "Should have gone with carrot pudding," she apologized, assembling a small pile of crunchy tubes on her plate. Marsha doused the dessert with more brandy and set it alight, laughing as she matched her guest spoon for spoon.

After dinner, Delius's "Florida Suite" played sprightly "bubble gum music" as Marsha called it, a summoner of warmer places. While they sipped Chateau d'Yquem from Cece's legendary wine cellar, Holly presented a small package. Marsha unwrapped it and lifted her pince-nez to peer at the title. "Conquest! The missing link in my collection. Where did you ever find it?" Her knobby fingers moved over the plastic cassette as if in search of a healing warmth.

Holly assumed a Bronx accent. "Just a few connections of my father's, doncha know? Curtain up." She put a tentative arm around Marsha. Trey was snoring lightly after marooning the cranberry sauce on his well-licked plate.
When Holly's lease expired that August, she asked Marsha if she knew of any rentals. "I have a proposition. The house has always been too big for one person. You've been such a help with the chores and the wood," she responded quickly. Her face glowed, the traces of pain dissolved in bright anticipation. "Come upstairs. I've been expecting you." Unlike the more ornate motifs below, Holly's new room had a simple craftsman style, an oak dresser with copper fittings, blonde wainscotting decorated in acorns, and a spool bed highlighted with a hand-made red and brown log cabin quilt.

"One of my best pieces from when I could still do intricate work," Marsha said as she smoothed the sheets. Their eyes met in the warm iridescence melting through the stained glass window.

Winter found them skiing from the first snowfall, Marsha insisting that exercise was crucial to ward off her stiffness. The intricate spiderweb of trails through the airy cathedral of the woods was sanctified by the silence of privacy; most townsfolk preferred the groomed trails by the college. One afternoon they had been out for hours when Marsha led her down a particularly tortuous route hidden behind a dense spruce growth. They had to brush aside branches for a few minutes and break trail patiently, following ancient scabbed slices in the birches which Holly found faintly gynaecological. Marsha laughed at the comparison. "Definitely not what Father had in mind when he cut those blazes. Careful," she warned as they glided forward. "This detour is concealed for good reason. The drop is a bad one. Beautiful but dangerous." She directed her pole to a rock thirty feet below which pointed up in a cruel fang. "He called it the Serpent's Tooth."

Later that winter, Holly saw Douglas as she was leaving the library for a quick snack before her night class. He dropped his eyes and pretended to rearrange his books, blowing his nose for good measure. "Sorry to hear the news."

"What news?"

"My God! What a boor I am! An 8% cut in staff across the board. I figure out of fourteen, that's you. But I could be wrong. Hope I am," he added unconvincingly, turning to flash a professorial smile at a couple of cheerful students bearing reports.

Holly felt her energy drain, all the careful plans for the evening class dissolve. Starting again would be impossible in the abysmal job market. Recently she had sent out more applications, and the rejections, as witty old Douglas would say if he knew, had been pouring in. One read, "Barring an attack of plague, there will not be an opening in our English department until the year 2012, God willing." They were always trying to be clever, the glittering literati gloating from their tenure tracks. Chesterton wasn't paradise, but it meant an office, the best house in town, and some small respect from colleagues and students. Recently she had been approached by a few talented sophomores about starting a literary magazine. Perhaps this summer she would have been able to travel; Marsha had spoken of visiting Boston for soft-shelled crab and riding the ferry to Martha's Vineyard to hunt beach peas and taste sea grape jelly.

Marsha never mentioned the rumor and Holly let the disturbing subject lie quietly. That Saturday they took to the woods to have sandwiches around a small fire of dry spruce branches. A tin billy of tea tasted good in the open air. They had crossed their skis in the snow and were relaxing at the Serpent's Tooth lookout when Trey made a sudden lunge after a grouse which flew up from the bushes. He knocked against Marsha, spilling her steaming drink against her sweater. As she tried to stand, her old spring ski boots slipped in the snow and she was gone, a small white puff of a cry in the air behind her. Holly swam down the slope through heavy drifts, sinking to her chest. But she felt no chill as the snow pushed up under her clothes, only a hot rush of panic as she found Marsha.

Her friend was lying slumped beside the rock, her arms at sickening angles like a cast-off marionette. "Don't move me, " she moaned. Her face had aged a hundred years, Margo stepping out from the safety of Shangri-la to the ravages of a mountain blizzard. "I've made provisions. It's yours, you know, but..." A cough sent a crimson thread trickling from the corner of her mouth.

"Don't try to talk." Holly cleaned off the blood with a tissue and bundled her long wool scarf into a pillow. Trey, who had followed happily as if in a game, sniffed Marsha's face and whined softly, his ears flattened. "I'll be back as soon as I can." The hill looked wicked: bad enough sliding down, but almost impossible to climb. "Stay, Trey," she commanded.

Three hours later, it was over. "She never had a chance, Miss Davis," the ambulance attendant said, packing up the travois. Neil had been her student, and he took his job seriously. "A broken back. Just a matter of minutes. I can promise you that she felt no pain." His palliative tone, well-meant but meaningless, recalled Browning's "Porphyria's Lover": "She felt no pain/ I am quite sure she felt no pain." But Holly knew that the shut buds of Marsha's eyes would never open again, never watch a mazurka with Anna Karenina or scan Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower with Ninotchka.

A few weeks later, she was summoned to Marsha's lawyers in Sudbury, 150 miles south. As the Twin Otter shuddered into the morning, cruising over the green and white nation that had been her home, Holly shifted uneasily in the narrow seat. A nagging shoulder problem had developed after she had split several cords of stubborn yellow birch.

The Nickel Capital of the World, its moonscape featured in every doomsday pollution article, Sudbury had become with its environmentally friendly Superstack and "rye on the rocks" regrassing, the beneficiary of several government mega-projects. A huge cancer treatment center stood nearby the architectural snowflake of Science North, the town's major tourist attraction. Work in the nickel industry, get cancer, get treated, send the grandkids to Science North, Holly thought. Something for everyone. The Van Nessen and Perth Building had been faithfully restored, cornices sandblasted and plate glass decoratively etched in a flawless combination of wealth and discretion.
She was ushered into a spacious office, oak bookshelves lining the walls, reconverted brass oil lamps, a mahogany mantlepiece and shiny nickel firedogs. Amory Van Nessen III leaned forward in a leather chair, sifting a large file. "Please sit down, Miss Davis. You've had a long trip." He signalled his secretary, who brought in a silver coffee service.

Showing no surprise that she had been named sole beneficiary, Holly explained her situation. "I may stay for a few years, but my aim is to sell the house and furnishings eventually. The North is too cold for me."

Van Nessen replaced the top on his Mont Blanc pen. "'Eventually' is an apt word, Miss Davis, but obviously you do not know the stipulations of Cece Leacock's will. His daughter's estate consists only of her personal effects, clothes and books, for example, and a modest retirement savings fund. You cannot sell the house."

Holly sat up. "What do you mean? I'm sure that was Marsha's plan. She had just a few years to retirement. She might have gone back to the US, to Boston."

"Yes, exactly. With maximum pension. Why do you think she needed that money? Didn't you ever wonder why she hadn't left years ago? The house belongs to Norontario College as a trust property and all the furnishings are inventoried. The Majorelle cabinet is worth a fortune! Not to mention the Tiffanys. True, the market has slipped recently, but our estimates see the total at close to a million dollars, not counting the house. Art nouveau turned out to be a wise choice. As for the residency, all costs, of course, are borne by the trust, taxes, utilities, repairs, even food," he added with disdain, "but Miss Leacock could not have sold a single paper clip. Under the..." He cleared his throat and gazed out the window, "unusual circumstances, the College has agreed out of generosity that you will be allowed to live there in perpetuity as a caretaker. But not sell, dear me, no."

"What happens if I leave?" Holly felt a chill in her hands, an icy memory of that last afternoon.

"The College will establish the house as a museum. That was Cece's plan. He had a fierce pride in the North, wanted to plant some beauty and culture there as an investment. The girl was his only disappointment. She wanted to leave, you see." Amory closed the file with a sigh. 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is,' he said to me once, 'to have a thankless child.'"

Hours later, Holly scarcely felt the plane lift off. At home, she sat hunched over Marsha's favorite desk, an L-shape of curved and twisted African and olive ashwood, almost alive with a curious Japanese sensibility. Pulling out a drawer, she found her friend's medication, the trusty anti-inflammatory Orudis. It had done the job on Marsha's osteo, as she had called it. Flinching from her sore shoulder, Holly shook out a pill and swallowed it dry. She touched a silver-framed picture of the three of them beside the Christmas tree. It had not been easy to set the timer and jump back into a pose. How they had laughed.

Holly gave Trey his eye drops and beamed the dish into the American Movie Classics channel. Now that positions on the ladder had bumped up, perhaps, just perhaps, someone else would eventually get hired. "Eventually" again. A new face in town, maybe someone who liked old wine and older films. Her hands warmed the Courvoisier in its delicate balloon glass, and she inhaled its amber promise. Too much to hope that the cellar costs came with the house. Amory would know. Soon they would be on a first name basis.

Marie Dressler faced Garbo across a shabby barroom table in Anna Christie. The old woman threaded her hand through a hole at the wrist of her sweater in drunken bewilderment while the cool Swede observed her with insight belying her twenty six years. "Know what?" Marie asked in a whiskey tenor. "You're me forty years from now." With a clear and perfect chime, the lily clock struck five faithfully. As it always had, and as it always would.