All Saints (8 page)

 

His guilt. Her anger. That's what they have now. That's what they carry around. Damned fool things to hang onto. Why don't they just put them down?

Emily will ask herself this question one day while she's sawing a baguette into bite-sized chunks on the breadboard she and Dave bought at the Army and Navy Store in Vancouver thirty years ago.

She buys baguettes and other special breads at a bakery two subway stops south. That morning, just as she was getting off the train, she spotted Dave at the back of the crowd pushing to get into the same car.

Did she just happen to be looking in his direction, she wonders now while she saws the baguette. Or did something—the set of his shoulders—something familiar and known, even expected—pull her eyes his way?

And what about him? Because he was looking back at her. And he said her name. And her own lips formed the word
hello.
No sound, just a shape. Her lips held the final syllable a beat longer than necessary. All he would have seen was her mouth forming an O. Maybe, she thinks, he's still trying to decide whether she said
hello
or
no
. Maybe he's thinking about her right now, while she cuts up a baguette on their old breadboard.

 

“Is she younger than me? Do her tits still stick straight out? Is that it?” She hated what she was saying, hated the sound of her own voice. Shrill. Shrewish. She had become a walking cliché. “Have there been others? Oh God. All the years. How many others have there been?”

“None. Not since we've been married.”

“Before, then. What about before? Liz. You told me Liz was the only one.”

“Look. All I can say is that I'm sorry. I did not plan this. I did not go looking for it. But it has happened. So can we please just do what we have to do? The Chinese porcelain lamps. Can I have one of them?”

Today they were dividing up their things. Yesterday they had met with the lawyers. Tomorrow they were going to the bank to close their joint accounts. Their shared life consisted of get-togethers whose purpose was to score them as a couple neatly down the middle and rip them apart.

“Who else knows? About you and her? Besides me? Do all our friends know?” This is how it must have been for Cass. Needing to ask. Hating to find out. Knowing that nobody will tell you, because nobody wants to admit they knew and didn't tell you.

“We've been discreet. Can I have one of the Chinese lamps, please? Yes or no?”

“It's blow jobs, isn't it? She gives you more blow jobs. Or she does them better. Okay. Okay. I'll do anything. Any way you want. Just tell me. Tell me what you want.”

“Emily. I am going to box the lamp. If you don't want me to have it, just take it out of the box when I'm gone. I'll have all this stuff out of here by tomorrow. Promise.”

“I could put it out on the street. I could. Every one of these boxes. For anybody to take. The second you're out of here. I could do that.”

They both knew she wouldn't.

“What about when things break around here?” All the stupid things she couldn't help saying.
Is it my writing? You don't want a writer wife? Okay. Okay. I'll stop. I will. If I feel a story coming on, I'll pull it out like a weed.
“Who's going to fix things for me when they break?”

“I'll leave you the tools.”

“The tools? The
tools
? You'll leave me the fucking
toools
?”

He came and enfolded her and pushed her face into his chest and she bit him hard through his shirt and he said “Ow!” so comically that they both laughed and he got a hard-on and she unzipped him and knelt and sucked him off. Then she stayed on her hands and knees, wailing, while he boxed the lamp and left. Then she crawled to the couch where he had sat and lay face down. Sniffing. Sniffing.

 

It feels strange to have to ask him to sit down.

“Martini?” She doesn't even know if he still drinks them.

“Sure. Thanks.”

In the kitchen she remembers to run the lemon twist around the rims of the glasses. She hasn't had a martini in years. He made the first one she ever had, and she managed to get it down. She had her second because she wanted to be sophisticated. By her third, she was starting to like them.

She can't put her finger on what's different about him. Besides more lines and less hair. She expected that much. He seems smaller. Narrower through the shoulders. Or maybe it's the same with people as it is with places you haven't seen in years.

She puts the glasses on a tray and carries it clinking back into the living room. He stands up when she enters.

“Mind if I—” He gestures toward the bathroom that used to be his.

“No. Go ahead.” She puts the tray on the coffee table and sits and waits for him, watching condensation gather on the glasses. Smiling at the sound of the bathroom door being locked.

 

He came to the launch of her latest book. She spotted him immediately in the audience and stayed aware of him, just off to her left, all through the reading. She knew exactly where he was at any given moment in the long line-up during the signing afterwards. When it was finally his turn to slide a copy in front of her, she did not look up. Just wrote,
I'm still in the same place
above her signature on the title page.

 

“I've got all your books. They're really good. They're—”

“Thanks.”

They ask the requisite questions. Find out that all four of their parents are dead. That he and his third wife are going to sell the house and go into a condo. That no, she never remarried. “Fooled around some though,” she says over the rim of her glass, and he grins.

They fall silent. He puts his empty glass on the coffee table. Glances at his watch.

She has thought about what she will say to him. Has written it down and practiced it:
Dave, whatever we had is sealed up in a room. Once I was inside that room and couldn't see out. Now I'm outside it and can't see in. I wish there could be a window, or a door ajar. I don't want to go back inside. I just want to be able to look.
It seemed brilliant at the time. But now she knows it would sound written and rehearsed.

The gin is humming in her throat. She stands up. Walks around the coffee table and stands over him. He does not look up. She puts her hands on his shoulders. Thinks,
Come here.

It's different. The top of his head looks like a baby's might. That hollow feeling she used to get under her breastbone doesn't happen.

Remember the runt house?
She wonders if she should say it aloud. If she needs to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magnificat

 

 

 

 

 

Julia takes pride in still
not needing a cane. Her feet might be soaked in sweat and one of her toes starting to blister, but she will not allow herself to limp. Nor will she pluck at her hip where she can feel her underwear riding up under her skirt, or pull her blouse away from where it sticks to her skin. She will not so much as swipe with a finger at the moisture beading her upper lip.

This summer, as always, she has resolved to face the hot, empty weeks head-on, making no concession for them. Yes, her book club has disbanded until September. But that is no excuse not to read. Yes, her theatre and concert series rang down their curtains in the spring and will not raise them again until well into fall. But there is radio and television and the occasional film with which to pass the time.

This Sunday evening, though, the time would not pass. Dinner—a salad and a roll—took a few minutes to prepare and fewer to eat. Washing, drying and putting away her plate, water glass, knife and fork, took almost no time at all. She was left with long hours before bed, during which the sun would hang high in the sky, as if daring her to be the first to retire.

She opened her book. Closed it. Turned on the television. Turned it off again. Ran through her mind the names of friends she might call to suggest an early film. In each case, just as she was reaching for the phone, she remembered them telling her about a visit from their grandchildren that weekend, or a trip to the cottage.

She felt the start of an old melancholy—one that afflicts her most often in the summer. She dreads it more than the humidity touching her everywhere like small sticky hands, more than the odour coming from her discarded clothing at the end of the day despite its having been freshly laundered and herself freshly bathed that morning. It can come over her at any time. She will be making up a grocery list. Writing the word
milk
on a slip of paper. All at once she will be convinced that when she has bought the milk and brought the milk home and poured the last of the milk over her cereal in the morning or into her tea in the evening, there will be nothing. Nothing for her to do. No means of passing the time. She breathes deeply during such moments and tells herself sternly,
It will be all right, Julia! It will be all right.

There was a moment, toward the end of her youth, when she realized that none of the expected things were going to happen to her. She had had a fragile, morning glory prettiness, but it had closed in on itself before anyone noticed. Now, no one was going to look up and suddenly see her. Find her remarkable. Think twice about her. Her mind had recoiled from the long, shapeless span she imagined her life might become.

But that had not happened. She had not allowed it to happen. She taught herself to give shape to time, to let not a moment go by without marking it for some purpose and eking from it some use. It was her only talent. She became a woman who volunteers, who lends support, who is always there. She adopted a slogan—
I did not take unto me a husband.
She liked to think the phrase
take unto me
gave her an ironic edge, and
did not
made her solitary state look like a choice. Almost a religious vocation.

Religion. Church. Yes. That was how she would make the time pass this evening. She pulled on fresh stockings, stepped into her better shoes, and, though she had attended matins that morning, went back to All Saints for evensong.

The priest's face glowed like candle wax in the dim chancel light. He skipped the homily and went straight to the
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace
, as if afraid he might melt under his robes if he didn't speed things up. Still, Julia managed to derive some satisfaction from the service. She is fond of evensong, largely because modern liturgists have yet to tamper with it. In recent years, she has been disturbed by mention of sex and the Internet creeping into church services. She prefers her religion distant and monumental, like the language of
The Book of Common Prayer
.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.

As a young woman, Julia might have listed the things she had either done or neglected to do, thereby compromising her spiritual health. She might have questioned whether the entreaties,
O God make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us
were indeed cries from her heart, the prescribed kneeling a sincere gesture of humility, the getting to her feet at the mention of the Trinity a true show of respect. She may even have entertained some doubts as to the very existence of the Trinity, of a God who hears and answers prayer, of much that she continues to sing and chant and murmur in the church she has attended all her life. She never voiced those doubts and barely remembers them now. What she has come to believe in is the singing and the chanting and the murmuring. Religion itself. Its habits and rituals. Habits and rituals are what give shape and structure to the otherwise characterless day. What she fears, as others might fear God, is the immense shapelessness of time.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Her blister breaks. The sear of pain makes her draw in her breath and miss a step. She puts the wounded foot firmly back down on the pavement. Soon, she reminds herself, she will be home. It is just a matter of taking one step at a time.

 

Cathy looks at her watch. Gabe will wait for her. Sure he will. She's never been late before. She hates taking the stairs. She'll give the elevator another chance.

Looks like it's stuck on seven. Owen's floor. It would be just her luck if Owen was stepping into it right now, and the thing finally started to move with her still standing here.
Cathy!
His eyes going from dull to bright in a blink.
What a surprise! Are you perhaps feeling better?
She can't even remember what she told him, to get out of going to that—what was it? A poetry reading. Headache? Upset stomach? Why did she say yes in the first place?

The number seven is still lit up.

Owen. No matter where she goes, there's an Owen. The one at the party nobody's talking to. The office screw-up. She smiles at them or covers for them exactly once, and then they're hers forever. Why doesn't she just blow them off, the way everybody else does? Why does she get stuck the way she did on the street last week—smiling until her face ached while Owen told her all about the bundle of library books under his arm. Which one he had enjoyed the most. And why. Which one he had enjoyed the least. And why.

The elevator still isn't moving. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe—

No. She's being silly. She always feels afraid after Gabe calls to dictate his latest address. Even while she's fumbling for a pencil because she knows he won't repeat himself, she is hoping deep down that something will keep them from getting together.

They met in a ticket line-up. He was ahead of her. She can't remember now what the tickets were for—a movie, a play. He turned and looked at her as if he had known all along she was there, knew where she had been before that, and before that. Then he said something to her that no one else ever had. Then she was gripping the headboard of a bed, grunting out deep, guttural screams while he slammed into her from behind. He kept one hand crooked under her so he could tickle her where she was wet and aching. He tickled her the whole time, his touch lighter and more delicate than she knew a man's fingers could be. It went on for what felt like hours, and she couldn't stand it and she wanted it never to end.

Time you got what's coming to you.

Did he really say that to her when he turned and looked at her? She had never heard those words. But it was as if she had been waiting to hear them all her life. Whenever she tries to think back on that moment, it's like trying to remember a dream. She can see his mouth moving, can hear words coming toward her distorted and muffled, as if spoken under water.
Time yougot whatscoming toyou.

She goes back to him whenever he summons her. Last time, she faked a family crisis to get off work because he had phoned in the middle of the day. And tonight she lied to Owen.

Fuck the elevator. She'll take the stairs.

On the fourth floor landing, a crouching human shape in the corner makes her jump. It's only a garbage bag, full and slumped over. People do sometimes creep into the building, though. Last winter she found a smelly nest in the laundry room—a ragged sleeping bag made of pink shiny material, with plastic bags and empty yogurt containers around it.

Third floor landing. She's convinced a woman made that nest—maybe because the sleeping bag was pink. It scared her when she saw it. She actually turned and ran back up the stairs with her laundry basket, afraid to look behind her. For days she kept thinking about the nest. Imagining herself in it. What if she lost her job? How long would it take for her to end up on the street? Only when she was all out of clean socks and underwear did she creep back down to the laundry room. She peeked around the door to where the sleeping bag had been. It was gone. The patch of floor it had covered was shiny from disinfectant.

Second floor landing. Once, before she knew better, she asked Gabe if it bothered him to have no permanent home, to never know from one month to the next where he would be sleeping. He was silent for a long time. She was used to men like Owen—the kind who are just dying for her to ask them something—anything—so they can go on and on about themselves. But Gabe said nothing. Was he angry? How would he punish her? Sometimes he pinched her nipples hard and pulled on them like reins when he made her ride him. Or he jammed fingers into her before she was ready and kept them there until she was. This time, all he did was push her flat, knee her legs apart and stop her mouth with his tongue.

Ground floor. Please don't let Owen be in the lobby. If he is, she'll have to come up with some reason for going out when she's supposed to be sick. She could say she needs Kleenex or stomach medicine. But then he'll probably offer to get it for her and bring it to her apartment. Then she'll have to think of some way to persuade him not to, and that will make her really late for Gabe. And Gabe might not—

The lobby is empty. She stands still, wasting time, looking around as if she expects Owen to materialize out of thin air.

Stupid. She hurries out the door, down the steps onto the street.
Half an hour
. That's what Gabe said before hanging up. But he'll wait for her. Sure he will. She's never been late for him before. That should count for something.

 

Julia looks at her watch. Eight-thirty. The sun is still showing no sign of setting. Even on the shaded side of the street it is oppressively warm. The trees are motionless, their branches hanging as if weighted as she steps along beneath them, still refusing to limp. To judge from the stabbing hurt of each step she takes, a blister must have formed and broken on the toe of the other foot now. Well. She will not look at her watch again. Constantly checking the time merely serves to slow it down.

To distract herself, she focuses on a man and woman who have just turned into the street a block away and are now walking toward her. The woman trots along beside the man, taking two steps for each of his strides, tilting her face to his profile, offering up little gifts of words that he shows no sign of having heard. The sight stirs a memory in Julia that it takes her a moment to place. Her mother. The way she used to chatter to her father while he chewed his supper in silence. Julia would watch the two of them and wonder what had drawn them to each other. What kept them together. They never touched in her presence, or used endearments. Nor did she ever hear any sounds from their bedroom in the night. Not that she listened.

Something has happened. The man has stopped walking. He's standing looking down a flight of stone steps that lead to the park. Julia slows her pace, allowing herself to take note of the man's dark curly hair, his bare muscled arms. The woman says something—Julia can tell it is a question, though she cannot make out the words. When the man doesn't answer, the woman asks what sounds like the same question. She seems confused, turning her head back and forth between the path they had been taking and this new direction. She wears a blue tunic over a white, low-cut T-shirt. Her long hair manages to look flyaway, even in this unmoving air.

Now the man has started down the stone steps, leaving the woman alone on the sidewalk. Julia stops walking altogether and stands, watching. The woman calls something after the man's back. He barks a reply without turning, his tone at once dismissive and threatening.

Julia sidesteps into the shade of a tree. It would look perfectly reasonable, she tells herself, to anyone observing her. As if she is simply resting in some shade before continuing her own journey. Not as if she is actually watching the couple. Curious about them.

The man's head is sinking lower with each step he takes. The woman appears to be sinking too. She bends her neck, watching the man. Her shoulders are slumping and she is sagging a little at the knees. Just when Julia thinks she might actually crumple to the sidewalk, she hurries after the man down the stone steps into the park.

 

If you know what's good for you …

Is that what Gabe said? Maybe she didn't hear him right. Maybe—

That's what he said.

Cathy's toes are inches from the edge of the top step. She watches the back of his head getting lower and lower.