Object of Your Love (9 page)

“That's different,” Blanche answers. “He's a man. Men get restless. There are things they have to work out of their systems.”

“Oh, rot!” I say. “I've spent all my adult life doing the right thing, living here with Mother, supporting her when it was Father's job.” At my words, Mother blinks rapidly and presses her lips together. “Now I'm going to do something for myself.”

Reckless with joy, I go upstairs, still wearing my coat. Floyd comes after me, followed soon by Blanche, who lurks on the landing, thinking I haven't heard her heaving herself moistly up the steps. I sense her bulk on the other side of the door, like that of a large witless animal, her breath whistling through her throat, her small black eyes peering through the crack in the door.

“Jean, stop,” Floyd says, his voice stern, though he is trembling with nerves. I realize for the first time that he is frightened of me but is obliged to press on because of his ministry. “Stop and think,” he says. “Look before you leap. You're walking into the devil's trap.”

“Spare me your sermons, Floyd,” I say, pulling a suitcase from my closet. I toss it on the bed and snap it open.

“Don't cheapen yourself by doing this, Jean.”

“Cheapen!” I say angrily. “What worth have I ever had to anyone around here?”

“Mother loves you” was the best he could do. Ignoring him, I tear my clothes out of the closet. Hangers fly across the room. I pull things out of drawers and fling them violently into the suitcase.

“You won't find happiness with this man,” Floyd says. “It won't last. These things never do. He'll leave you eventually and all you'll be left with is your sin and your shame.”

“He won't leave me,” I tell him defiantly, “but I welcome the sin and the shame anyway, as they seem to be what makes life worth living.”

On the other side of the door, Blanche gulps air.

*   *   *

I let myself into the apartment with the key Dr. Beveridge gave me, put my suitcases down and walk from room to room, grateful and amazed at this plain space, which is now to become my home. Turning on lights, I observe the furniture, which is sparse and threadbare. This does not bother me. On the contrary, it makes me feel purified, worthy of the simple, love-driven life on which I am embarking. I sit down at the living-room window, which overlooks the road, and for some time I stare out at the dark foreign street with its intermittent evening traffic. After a while, I get up and raise the heat on the thermostat. On another tour of the rooms, I test the taps in the bathroom, browse through the kitchen cupboards, turn on the television. Sitting down again, I wait some more. When I consult my watch, I see that it is ten o'clock. I have been here for two hours. Finally the phone rings and I grab for it.

“Jean,” Dr. Beveridge's voice comes over the line. “It's me.”

“I know that,” I say sharply. “Where are you?”

“Jean, I'm not coming over. I can't do it,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I can't come over there.”

“Why not?”

“I swear to God, I came home with every intention of carrying through. But, Jean, I came in and the house smelled wonderful. Alice and the kids had held dinner up for me. A pot roast. Scalloped potatoes.”

“I know how to make pot roast,” I tell him.

“The boys were full of news about their hockey club, plans for the weekend. Everyone was so beautiful and excited. Everyone was so happy. I couldn't spoil it.”

“Tell them tomorrow night, then,” I say, noticing that I've begun to shake. “I've waited three years for this. Another twenty-four hours won't kill me.”

“You don't understand, Jean,” he says, his voice growing firmer. “Basically, we
are
a happy family. I'm not coming over there. I'm calling it off.”

“Maybe you don't understand, either. I've made the break with my family. I'm waiting here for you.”

“Your family will get over it,” he says. “Make up a story. Tell them you were fantasizing. Plead temporary insanity. You'll think of something. Nobody else has to know. Ask your family to keep it quiet.” I think wildly of Blanche, the blabbermouth.

“How about I tell Floyd to shout it from the roof of his church?” I say bitterly. “How about I take an ad out in the daily paper?”

“Calm down, Jean. You wouldn't want to do any of those things. It would only backfire on you. Think of your reputation. Think how your mother would feel.”

“I never heard you concerned about her feelings before this.”

“She's a good woman, Jean. Don't put her through any more pain.”

“What about
my
pain? You have humiliated me.”

“Jean,” he says. “I've been thinking. It would be best if we made a clean break of it. I don't want you to come back to the office. I'm letting you go. I'll have your outstanding wages and your severance pay mailed to you tomorrow. I'll write you a letter of reference. I'll write a dozen of them if you want. I'm not worried about you. You're a good assistant. You're young and sharp. You won't have any trouble finding another job. And Jean,” he paused, his silence rich with warning, “don't make trouble. Let things go. Forget about it all. Accept it and move on. Don't let yourself get bitter.”

In my blouse and skirt, I crawl into bed and sleep all the next day and the next. When I finally get up, snow is falling. It is December, after all. I get undressed, step into the shower and stand there for a good hour, in a hot stream. I put on my housecoat and a pair of thick wool socks and sit at the living-room window for another day, feeling somewhat cleansed from the shower, consuming nothing but ice water, like a nun punishing and purging herself, flushing out bodily poisons.

Outside, big, soft, independent flakes come down. I watch them in all their purity, in all their individuality and separateness, and this seems to give me strength. At first, they melt, these enormous snowflakes, when they touch the ground, and this brings me a sense of effacement, of peace. I feel myself liquefying, dying with them as they fade into the warm gardens, into the grass, still green as summer, fragile vegetation from a gentler season. Gradually, though, they build up, coating lawns, roofs, driveways, like a protective skin, a layer of winter insulation. The apartment is on a wide residential street. From my window, I watch pedestrians tramping over the white, chaste sidewalks, leaving deep footprints in the perfect snow, cars creeping through the white air, crowded buses with wipers, long as a man's arm, beating back and forth. I have the sensation of watching the world from a great, wise height.

Finally, I break my fast, go out and get groceries, carry them back to the apartment. I consume scrambled eggs, Jell-O, stale raisin pie glistening with cornstarch thickener. I have a great deal of time to think.

One afternoon, I compose a letter to Dr. Peter Beveridge.

Who is the object of your love now? Who? It's not me, we know that, don't we? But who? Is it her? Alice? Alice of the deep dimples? Alice of the naive smile? Is it her? I don't think so. No. I think it's you. You don't love anybody but yourself.

Into the soft snow I go, with this message, walk through the deep streets with my hand in my pocket, comforted by the sensation of the letter brushing my fingers, by the heat it seems to throw off, as though it were a human organ beating out its irrepressible life. When I reach the dental office, I find myself shaking so badly that I cannot go in. I cannot go in because I am afraid of seeing Dr. Peter Beveridge, afraid of what I already know: that I had never had any power in our relationship. That he had created me as the object of his desire and it had always been within his jurisdiction to abolish me.

I walk then to Dr. Beveridge's house and stop before it. Its lawn is now blanketed in snow, its stone pathway cleanly shovelled. A Christmas wreath hangs on the front door. All is peaceful here and good. It is four o'clock, nearly nightfall. There are lights burning in the house. I stand in the street and watch figures moving in the kitchen behind the drawn curtains. Now I long not to deliver the letter, but simply to go inside and sit down in the welcoming kitchen with Mrs. Dr. Peter Beveridge, to be warmed just a little by her gentle happiness.

A few days later, on one of my afternoon walks, I find myself not far from my apartment, picking my way down a small slope to the Lion's Pool, which is closed, of course, for the winter. Snow is falling in the pool where as children Floyd and I once swam and dove together into the blue water, shrieking. All the children shouting, their sharp, happy cries ringing against the low yellow brick wall. My nostrils flare with the remembered scent of chlorine and of the mildewed change rooms.

On the bleachers too, snow is falling, where in summer there were always a few parents scattered behind a high wire fence, waiting patiently for their children to tire and go home. Among them Mother once sat, her face bent to her book, in the days long ago when she could read fine print. Now, at seventy-five, she has only peripheral vision. There is a big black hole in the centre of everything she looks at. I have begun to think that this condition has affected her intellectual perceptions. She doesn't see the centre of things. She doesn't see the issues, only the complications surrounding them.

I think about how, all these adult years, I have come in the front door after work to find Mother sitting at the kitchen table with her hands lightly folded on her lap, waiting patiently for me to return, her face full of calmness and hope. Just from her pose, I knew that she thought about me all day long. She never left the house, but moved from room to room, dressing slowly, gazing out the windows, picking up her novel, in which she progressed slowly, sometimes reading the same page over and over again, forgetting she'd seen it before, glancing now and then at the clock, thinking: Jean will be having lunch now. Jean will be cleaning up. Jean will be home in an hour. I remember how her tranquillity, her vigilance, used to sustain me.

One day I call home.

“Winter is here again, Mother,” I say.

“Hello, Jean,” she says. “Yes, I know.”

“Dr. Beveridge never left his wife,” I tell her.

“I wondered,” she says. “I suppose sometimes they don't.”

“I have to find another job, Mother.”

“That's fine, Jean. You'll find one. Don't worry about that.”

“I never meant what I said,” I tell her, “about paying the bills. You know I like living with you.”

“I know you didn't,” she says, and begins to cry. “I'm just so happy to hear your voice,” she says, choking on her tears.

“You knew about Dr. Beveridge and me, didn't you?” I say.

“No. I didn't know,” she says, clearing her throat. I sense her collecting her defences. Her voice is cautious, innocent. “How would I know?”

“You knew, Mother. You knew and you never said anything. I know you knew. I need you to come clean. I can't return home unless you admit it.”

“Yes, I knew,” she says reluctantly. “It upset me but I could see it was helping you. You aren't a happy person, Jean.”

For a moment neither of us speaks. We listen patiently to the silence, are comforted by it. I can feel her physical presence at the other end of the line.

“Mother?” I finally say.

“Yes?”

“Why aren't you angry with Father?”

She says, “He must have had his reasons for leaving, Jean, and some day he'll come home and explain them to me.”

*   *   *

I won't be so rash as to say I miss Floyd and Blanche during the few weeks I live in the apartment. But when I move home I find them easier to accept. I seem to have a finer appreciation for their eccentricities and even catch myself anticipating the sound of their arrival at dinnertime or on the weekends, though I would never admit it to Mother. At Christmas, Floyd says, “Jean, come with us to church, just this once,” and I do. Then it becomes a habit. What else is there to do with Sunday mornings? I learn to pray and I learn to forgive. I forgive Father for not taking us to Florida with him and I forgive Dr. Peter Beveridge for choosing to live on with his good wife Alice and his two precocious squash-headed boys in the tranquil bungalow on the nice curved street.

On Sunday mornings, we return from church in Floyd's car, Mother and I sitting in the back, Blanche in the front, flowing softly across the bench seat.

Blanche tells us piously, “I prayed for Father this morning.”

“I prayed for Jean,” says Floyd.

“I prayed that Floyd will be sent to the African missions, where he'll be eaten by cannibals,” I say.

“Oh, Jean,” says Mother, shocked and amused, “you don't mean that!”

“Of course I do.”

“Are there still cannibals in Africa, do you suppose?” asks Mother, looking contentedly out the window at the winter trees slipping by like a black screen.

“I hope so,” I answer.

MEMORABILIA

I
T WAS LATE
on a December afternoon when Loretto spotted Bev through her living-room window, running down the hill toward Loretto's house. She could just see Bev's head and her meagre shoulders bobbing along above the snowbank before she turned into Loretto's drive, coatless, though it was fifteen below. Loretto went and opened the door.

“Jesus God, Bev!” she said. “One of these days somebody driving along here will take you for a madwoman and carry you off to the loony bin!”

Bev ignored the remark. Easing off her boots, she hissed, “You're not going to believe what I heard in town today!” Her big blue eyes were shining with excitement, her expression smug, triumphant as she went into the kitchen and sat down. Loretto followed her cautiously. She didn't like Bev particularly, but she needed her because it got lonely out here. There were only their two houses on this stretch of highway just outside the town limits. The road sloped uphill from here, and at the top there were large homes with a picturesque view of the town lying in the valley but there was no view to speak of down here where they were, unless you counted the thin birch wood across the highway. The railway line ran close behind their houses.