Maxine (7 page)

A week into December and the coloured lights are on around the front porch. Maxine saw Dave out with the ladder the week before. Kyle answers the door. He's looking dressed up in one of his white school shirts. She feels the need to stick close, as if she were his date at a wedding where only he knew the other guests. Kyle's making it easy for her, though; he's enjoying his role as official host and tour guide. This, he announces loudly, is the Living Room! Maxine looks around admiringly. A tall Christmas tree by the fireplace is covered in white lights.

Wow, she says. Stupendous. Nice tree.

The Art Gallery! proclaims Kyle, gesturing at the baby pictures on the mantelpiece.

Um, says Maxine, A magnificent…portrait. What a likeness. The round cheeks, the diaper.

Kyle giggles and carries on: The Prehistoric Family Computer! And—he gestures toward the kitchen—an Ancient Relic!

Hey, says Dave, Watch it. He's striding into the room, reaching out to shake Maxine's hand. Dave is tall and blond, broad, square-shouldered, the opposite of his darker-haired son. You know he must have played high-school football out west.

Good to see you, Maxine, what'll you have?

Maxine waits for Barb's hidden agenda to emerge—for the moment when Barb says, So Maxine, there's something I thought we should talk about. But Barb seems not to have a hidden agenda this evening, or at least not a very specific one. They have roast chicken, carrots, baked potatoes, and salad. They drink Australian white. It is a little uncomfortable—sitting at their dinner table, using a napkin, holding up the friendly smile, hearing cutlery clink against dishes and trying to think of interesting questions or pieces of information to serve up—but it's manageable, especially because of Kyle, who keeps up a steady stream of observations about this and that, questions, non-sequiturs, stories about school. He sits between his parents and when he talks, they both turn to give him their full attention. Maxine imagines him propping them up, imagines his being pulled out of the slot and the two of them toppling sideways into the void he left. When Kyle makes a joking insult, Dave reaches over and pretends to swat him on the ear. Kyle ducks out of the way.

Dad, he says, What American state rhymes with
well aware
?

As a host, Dave is courteous without being fussy.

Dave, give Maxine more salad, says Barb.

She said she didn't want any more.

She's being polite.

More salad, Maxine? Dave extends the wooden bowl.

No, thanks—it's really good.

See, she doesn't want any. Dave leans back and folds his arms across his chest. Maxine, he says, she's not going to believe you. You've probably noticed my wife has firm opinions about things. People, for example. She makes up her mind about them within, oh, two minutes. Yourself, now. She came back from the bakery once, soon after we moved in, and told me about you. She chose you. That was that. You've got no say in the matter.

Kyle opens his eyes wide and rolls them upward with a vacant expression. He sticks his arms straight out in front of him and reaches across the table as if to seize Maxine by the neck. Barb smiles.

That's enough. You see, Maxine, what I have to put up with? Outnumbered by boys.

They have coffee and dessert in the living room. Kyle consumes three helpings of lemonmeringue pie.Through the window, directly across the road, Maxine can see the living-room window of her apartment. It's an old three-storey house, brown (not that you can tell in the dark), at the end of a row that starts higher up the street. It's the kind of place that could be nice if you put some money into it but has been renovated just enough to chop it into units and remove most of what character it might once have possessed. She looks at old Mr. Jenkins' door on the ground level, the wooden steps up to her door. The path that leads around the back to the fire escape and the third-floor stairs. This is a slightly weird experience. She half expects to see herself appear at her own front door. What would she look like? Would she look, from the outside, like a normal, competent person going about her daily business? Barb pats the couch beside her and Kyle trots over happily and curls up next to his mother. When she tries to put an arm around him he rolls his eyes and pushes it away: Mom! We have COM-pany?

So, Maxine, Barb says. We'll have to drag you over here more often. In fact, I have a plan.

5

december 2002

k
aren honks once and Maxine waves from the living room.

Goddamn phone company, she says, before Maxine has her seatbelt on. I took the afternoon off on Friday because Chloe was sick. Three trucks outside working on the poles. Next time I looked, no trucks. I checked the Internet. Gone. Theresa couldn't get through to me. And people kept calling for Christine.

Who's Christine? Maxine asks.

Exactly. Asshole! Karen yells at the van cruising through its stop sign, and they talk about other things until she parks at the Fluvarium and they head down the path. In another month or so the trail might be impassable. They could be in ploughed roadways or on the indoor track. So for now the trail around Long Pond, with its windbreak of trees, is something they know to appreciate.

She told me she thought I should come over for Sunday dinner every week, Maxine is saying. It wasn't like an invitation. I thought she was about to whip out a contract and make me sign it. I said sometimes I go to Gail's and sometimes I like to be alone and she just smiled. She had it all figured out and laid out all the arguments about how it would be less work for me and she's making dinner anyway, and etcetera etcetera.

It's kind of nice of her.

No, it's what she wants. It's pressure. It's like she has already decided this is the way it's going to be and she's going to keep barrelling forward until I agree. I felt like I needed a lawyer in there. Why would I commit to going there for dinner every single Sunday? I don't want to go there for dinner at all, ever. Arrgggh! Anyway. Enough about that. So, your phone. It was ringing for Christine.

Oh yeah, says Karen. Well Christine gets plenty of calls. And she lives in one of those fancy condos across the road.

You were getting her calls?

Phone company switched the wires by mistake. Christine has a machine—but it's at her place. So her phone—our phone—her number—just rings and rings and rings. And finally they hang up, and then they try all over again. You feel hunted. You feel like—

I know. I know how you feel.

The air feels cold and crunchy inside Maxine's nose but cold's good for running. It makes her body want to move forward. Why, she asks, didn't you unplug?

Well. I didn't know what was going on. Thought it was wrong numbers. I got a bit huffy with some teenager who called a bunch of times, and then her mother came on and told me there was no need to be saucy and arrogant. Can you imagine? Phoning up some stranger in their living room and telling them not to be saucy, when you've made their phone ring for fifteen minutes? I mean, maybe after Call Number Twelve, maybe you figure out something's not working. And some guy called Steve, too, kept trying. It was Steve or Dave. Bastard. Eleven-thirty at night the phone wakes Chloe up and it takes her an hour and a half to get back to sleep. One-thirty in the morning, phone's ringing. I had a fantasy where the al-Qaeda came and hauled them all off.

I hear you.

A daydream, a little video. All the phoners, kneeling down with hoods over their heads. A guy in a ski mask.

Jesus, Karen.

I know. But they let them all go. In the dream. Disappointing. Anyway—Karen's panting now—it's...fixed. Let's walk a minute. They've finished Long Pond now and crossed the road to the Confederation Building and they walk up the rise to the parking lot on the other side of which lies the second, smaller pond, just a mile around, and then they'll be almost done.

After Kent's Pond they cross back over the road and trot down toward the playground. Now the sun's out, mothers and kids swarm everywhere. A boy Kyle's age wrestles with a younger one, and the smaller boy screams. Karen leans against a tree to stretch out her hamstrings but she's watching the boys, and when the little one screams again, the heads of all the mothers swivel on their necks. For a moment, conversations are suspended as they wait to see if action is required. A woman starts walking toward the boys, and there is a collective slackening in the atmosphere. Here is the mother; she will do the necessary. But after a few steps the woman turns abruptly and makes for the parking lot. She strides past Karen and Maxine with an impassive face, set, as if whatever love and joy she'd once had were all used up, every last bit squeezed out, and all her energy was poured into keeping her limbs moving in sync and her body working well enough to get up in the morning and go to bed at night. The older boy lets go and the two run after her and open the back door and clamber in. Karen unlaces the car key from her running shoe as Maxine turns to watch the car pull away.

Did you think she was about to become an X file? Karen asks.

What?

That woman. Didn't she look as if she was about to keep walking away and never come back, and no one would ever know what happened?

Yes. She looked...depleted.

If they hadn't followed her, maybe she'd have got in the car and driven until there was no more land.

I wonder if it was something awful, the thing that made her feel that way, or if it was just normal. Maybe she didn't sleep last night, and those boys.

On Friday night there are eight women in Karen and Theresa's living room for the Festive Swap. Theresa and Maxine stand in the middle. They've dragged swanky dresses and old fuzzy sweaters out of garbage bags, spangled flip-flops and black jeans, a royal blue shirt with a bleach stain the size of a nickel. Some eggnog has been drunk. They've hauled pieces of clothing out of the bags one at a time and held them up, announced sizes, and flapped out pairs of pants. They've paraded and minced and bumped hips and they end up wearing some of the clothes, a skirt over a pair of jeans, a dress over the skirt, so they look like mummers. Theresa pulls on a lacy purple bra over her shirt and helps Maxine into a cream camisole. She stands behind Maxine and slips it down over her head; she tugs the camisole into place and wraps her arms around Maxine's ribs and slides her palms under Maxine's breasts and down to her waist to show the smoothness of the fabric, and Maxine makes a kissy-face. They're laughing and half-dancing. Someone turns up the music. Someone else is saying No one gets the navy coat, I'm taking that navy coat home so just get over yourselves. They've tossed one piece of clothing after another into a pile on the floor in the middle of the room, a Mount Everest of discarded wearables.

Maxine and Theresa show and shake and flourish fabric until the last bag is empty, Everest a teetering multicoloured knoll. Then all the women set their glasses aside and dive. They snatch up what they've observed and noted—the blazer with the brass buttons, the red linen blouse—they paddle ankle-deep in rock-pools of textile, stripping, trying on as they go, and flinging things back and forth overhead—These would look good on you. Are you keeping the dress pants? —and finally they collapse with their dragon-hoards, flop back in chairs and couches. More eggnog appears and Gail brandishes her glass and says OK everyone, most erotic moment without touching... Karen! Host goes first.

Karen tells the story of how she and Theresamet, in a hot spring in Iceland, Karen on a trade mission and Theresa there on holiday, for no good reason other than a deal on a charter. It's a favourite story and Karen tells it well.

With
out
touching! Gail interrupts.

I didn't touch
her
, just the corner of her towel.

Around the time Karen had touched the corner of Theresa's towel in Iceland a few years back, Maxine had been standing on the rooftop deck of a downtown house. It was getting cooler and everyone else had gone inside and somehow Toma and Maxine had stayed at the top. It was as if they'd paused there by accident.

I hear it's your birthday, he said.

That's right.

He assessed her. That's what it looked like. He was older than Maxine, ten or fifteen years older, with Middle-European confidence, a friend of a friend. She kept running into him at parties. Toma was no taller than Maxine, with Mediterranean colouring and a lack of self-doubt so compelling she could swoon. She felt like a door on a spring-loaded hinge, pulled inexorably toward him.

I should kiss you, but—and here Toma shrugged, raised a hand to his face and ran two fingers along the line of his jaw to show he hadn't shaved. He was bristly, the fingers implied, and perhaps unfit for kissing. It was this gesture, the unhurried movement of fingertips along his darkened jaw line, that made Maxine draw a breath. He watched her openly, defiantly—he was married; he knew she was with Andrew. He was inviting. He was saying: contradict me. A birthday kiss. It would not of course be just a kiss—there had been too many looks exchanged. Once they kissed there would be no stopping. His fingers rubbed slowly from earlobe to chin and in that space Maxine saw the proposition and weighed it—she and Andrew were pretty much through, staggering with clumsy ambivalence toward their private finish line. His wife was not her problem (Maxine had never slept with a married man but nor did she feel responsible for their wives—she'd never made any commitments to anyone's wife). She held the banister and looked straight into his dark eyes for what seemed a long time during which it was clear to them both that the ramifications of this act, should she choose it, would not soon subside, and that the experience might well be worth the consequences. She leaned forward a fraction but hesitated. He shrugged.

A shame, he said, Happy Birthday anyway.

Maxine could feel the bristles of his chin on her own fingertips. Almost. But that would be touching.