The Opening Sky (20 page)

“Wow.”

“Well, it’s easy enough, isn’t it, when you have all the comforts of your parents’ home to fall back on.”

“Liz, you have raised an idealist. I drink to you.” Charlotte empties her glass. “Sylvie is not saving for a boob job or defacing her lovely body with tattoos. She’s not starving herself to get into a made-for-
TV
movie about bulimic fashion models.” This last is
a reference to her own daughter, Lucy. “Your Sylvie is devoted to changing the world. And this year she’s had a really bad break.”

“You think?” Liz says, feeling the heat rise. The dog is under the table, trying to lie on her feet. She shoves him off savagely and refills Charlotte’s glass. “You know what I think? I think it’s grandiose for one teenage girl to believe she can do anything about the fate of the entire planet. And it’s kind of sad to watch Sylvie obsess about it. Yes, she’s in a fix at the moment, but in the broader scheme of things, she has every advantage. And she insists on being unhappy on behalf of Africa.”

“What does Aiden say?”

“He thinks she’s ahead of us. He says our entire civilization is in denial, whereas Sylvie’s already at the anger stage. Or acceptance. I forget which.”

“That’s interesting, sweetie.” Charlotte sops up butter and pastis from the pan. “Because, as a guru of the grieving process, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has been totally debunked. Aiden should know that. Apparently the stages are bullshit.” She leans forward to protect her sweater and pops the dripping bread into her mouth.

Liz sits in silence. She watches Charlotte attack another prawn, sucking sweet juice out of the tail. She drops the little husk of shell onto her plate and gropes for a napkin, which Liz hands to her. Their eyes meet. They go back a long way. They were once in love with the same guy, a Turkish exchange student named Doruk Aksoy, and here they are, still best friends. Well, neither of them landed him.

The door opens and Aiden comes up the hall, bringing the cold with him. He kisses Charlotte and she reaches up and hugs him, lingeringly. He’s looking over her head at the spread on the table. Liz gives him a
bugger off
stare. “Love to join you,” he says smoothly, extracting himself from Charlotte, “but I’ve got some calls to make.”

“He’s looking a little strained,” Charlotte says when he’s gone.

“No doubt.”

“Maybe he needs to go up to the lake for a few days. You should go with him. Chill out for a while.”

“Yeah, rig ht.”

“You don’t like the cabin?”

“Not in winter. Anyway, he never wants me there. He wants to do the monastic thing. That cabin is his, not ours.”

“Well, I’m not a big fan of peeing in a freezing outhouse myself. It’s okay for men. They can stand.” Charlotte extends her glass. “So, how’s work going?”

“Work,” Liz says as she pours. “Is it going to be all Liz all night?”

“Yup, it’s Liz’s turn all weekend. But speaking of peeing, I need a loo break first.”

She jumps up and runs into the confessional. Liz takes a swallow of wine and sits back in her chair. What a surprising shape Charlotte’s life has taken. When they met in university, she was so gauche and naive; she looked like Alice in Wonderland with her wavy hair and Mary Jane shoes and her baffled expression. And she stayed that way for a long time. Once when Aiden’s friends threw a party, Liz and Aiden invited Charlotte because her boyfriend was out of town. It was at an infamous party house with no furniture and a disassembled motorcycle on the porch, and Char showed up with a chocolate cake. Word raced through the party that someone had baked a hash cake, and sweet Charlotte, straight as an arrow, had no idea why they fell on it so eagerly.

When she got married, she had the poofy white gown followed by a brocade going-away outfit with hat and corsage. But then she shook off her marriage and moved out west. She got a job as director of a great little jazz festival – all about drinking Scotch with saxophonists in fedoras – and she bought an apartment just up from the beach in White Rock and raised her girls alone. And now
she smokes. How strange that Liz and Aiden are the ones who ended up looking conservative.

The toilet flushes and water runs in the tiny sink. “So tell me,” Charlotte says, sliding back into her chair. “How are things at the circus?”

“I don’t want to talk about work,” Liz says. “Except to say I can’t get no respect and I’m sick of it.”

“I can’t believe that’s true. How could they not respect you? You are the most competent person I know.”

This is the way they talk to each other. When Lucy was going through a shoplifting stage, all Liz ever said was “You’re an amazing mom. You are! Amazing.” But Charlotte is looking at her with genuine concern, so she rallies herself to tell the story of spiteful Karen Kemelmen, how she tried to put a hex on Sylvie’s baby.
If, God forbid, there should be something wrong with the baby. You know what I mean?

Charlotte sets down her glass. “What a witch! She’d never
dare
say something like that to a male boss. It’s outright sexism.”

“No,” Liz says. “It’s not sexism. It’s just … This thing with Sylvie has completely undermined me at work.”

“Oh, honey. Well, maybe. I guess they have to have their little joke. It’s the revenge of the underclass. They’ll get over it.” She pulls out an empty chair and swings her stockinged feet up onto it.

“It’s women, isn’t it,” Liz says. “They see an opening and they’re ruthless.” And then she is into it, well in. “Remember that accident I had with Mary Magdalene’s son? When he was hit by a swing? Well, after that, Mary Magdalene escalated things to shitting on my whole way of parenting. It was just before they moved away. We’re out on the street, and she looks at me in that I’m-too-pure-for-this-world way she has and she says, ‘You know, Liz, if you blow it raising your kids, it doesn’t much matter what else you’re good at.’
She actually said that. I’ve never forgotten it. And now Sylvie has proved her right.”

“Liz!” Charlotte cries, sitting up straight. “It’s her son! Her son is the dad! So how can she possibly judge you? And anyway, that thing she said? It’s not original. She was quoting Jacqueline Kennedy.”

“Really?” Somehow this makes Liz feel better. She opens another bottle of wine and, savouring the reckless joy of confession, tells Charlotte about the night she drifted into George Stonechild’s yard and ended up drinking with him most of the night. She tells how Mary Magdalene walked over to their house the next day to lecture her.

“When was this? Sylvie was born?”

“Yeah, she was born. She was five or six. It was the same summer as the swing incident. Anyway, the doorbell rings and Mary Magdalene is standing on the veranda. She’s obviously been talking to George, and she says, ‘Before you get in any deeper, Liz, I feel I should warn you. He’s a fake, you know. He doesn’t have an ounce of aboriginal blood.’ I couldn’t believe my ears. She is
such
a fruitcake.
Please
, I said.”

“Which was pretty insulting to her.”

“Well, yeah. She’d had
a kid
with the guy. And she didn’t believe me in any case. She just kept gazing at me with concern and pity. And I know she spread it around. For months afterwards women would look at me earnestly and say, ‘So, how are you and Aiden
doing
?’ ”

Charlotte laughs. “God, she’s a piece of work.”

Liz drains her glass and reaches for the bottle. “She
is
. But you know, it’s weird. She can still make me feel inferior. Like, she’s let her hair go grey, and instead of thinking how old she looks, I kind of envy her. For daring to look old. For being more
real
. She affects
everyone that way. Once, years ago, we were all trying to cram into a car to go somewhere and one of the women said, ‘Mary Magdalene can’t ride in the back – her aura’s too big.’ ”

“So is her aura still visible to the naked eye?”

“Not so much.”

“Maybe only the young can see it.”

“That’s it!” Liz cries. “It’s like a taste for cherry cola. Everybody grows out of that eventually.” But she’s not really convinced. Everyone adores Mary Magdalene. It’s the way she turns her warm eyes on you and sees you totally. That’s what Liz always shrank from, that stifling intimacy that could suck you in like quicksand.

“You know, I’m dying for a smoke,” Charlotte murmurs, and gets up to search for her purse.

They end up on the veranda, coats and boots on. And there, leaning against the railing and holding her cigarette high, Charlotte casually gets back to George. It’s clear to Liz why she made the effort to move their little party outside. Along with caring for Liz (she does care), she’s always been a gossip hound.

“Does Aiden know? About that sordid little neighbourhood drama?”

“Of course not.” Liz sticks her hands deep in her pockets. “You think Aiden doesn’t keep secrets from me?”

“You think he’s had affairs?”

“Affairs? Don’t be bourgeois.”

“He does kind of act like a free agent at parties.”

“Oh, I know. The cool way he swans around. Eat side by side but not from the same plate, yadda, yadda.” She thinks of a summer afternoon when two women driving a tiny vintage car rolled into the driveway. They were picking up Aiden for a three-week workshop, and they made a hilarious thing out of cramming his gear into the car. One of them was a long-haired Asian beauty, the
other older and shaped like a penguin. The lively, congenial manner Aiden switched on for both of them – it seemed at the time a way of saying
fuck you
to Liz. She was on the veranda and he said as an afterthought, “Oh, this is Liz,” and she put it to herself that two could play that game. After they had driven away, she called Jenn’s mother and arranged for Sylvie to sleep over at Jenn’s, and then she dressed up and went to a party on the river.

A car creeps up the street, snowflakes swimming in the long shafts of its headlights. It turns the corner. Liz leans over the railing and looks out into the yard, trying to see the snow falling invisibly in the dark. Is anybody worth the gift of your desire? You look around a party and all the men are wonderful – effortlessly funny, and tall, with strong, tanned arms, golden hairs glinting on them – and you feel a bitter pang at the tiny portion of this buffet you will ever be able to partake of. And then the next night you look around at the same crowd and see a collection of bloodless wonders, fretting about mould in their basements. Both of these visions are deeply true.

“I’ll tell you Aiden’s dirty little secret,” she says to Char. “It’s how very,
very
straight he actually is.”

“But that’s not what you meant,” Charlotte says.

She’s not going to let it go. Liz is shivering. It is Aiden’s fault, she thinks. All of it. He taught me how to be. He drove me to it. But not in any way she can explain to Charlotte, especially drunk. She shoves her hands up her sleeves and feels the gooseflesh on her bare arms. “Well, for one thing,” she says, “he still smokes the odd joint and he won’t tell me who his dealer is. I think it might be Sylvie. Can you imagine, him colluding with her like that?” She hears her voice thicken, and out of nowhere she’s crying.

Charlotte steps towards her, turning her head to blow away a long trail of smoke. Then she grinds out her cigarette on a patch of
ice on the railing, throws the stub into the spirea bushes, and puts her arms around Liz, reaching up to stroke her hair. It feels totally false.
Off
, like their conversation.

Liz moves away. “Oh, there’s more to it,” she says to Charlotte. Her voice is portentous. God, she’s drunk!

“What more?”

Liz shakes her head. Now it seems she’s laughing. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” she hears herself say.

A
fter a two-day visit, Charlotte flies back to Vancouver. Aiden sits downstairs long after Liz has gone to bed. The house is so quiet. He remembers this waiting sensation from Liz’s pregnancy – a sense that all the real action is interior. He pours himself three fingers of Glendronach and reads the film reviews and cartoons in the latest
New Yorker
, the radio on low and tuned to a French station. It’s a jazz program; he likes it for the host’s sexy voice, the way her confiding chat washes meaninglessly over him. “Peenk Floyd,” he hears her say at one point.

Around one o’clock he turns on the
TV
. The U.S. public broadcaster is playing a doc about evangelicals holding something called a “Last Days” convention. Well-dressed white Americans sit around tables in a hotel ballroom, talking complacently about apocalyptic indicators like hundred-pound hailstones and carnage in the Middle East. One of the main interview subjects is a fiftyish blonde, a Republican wife type. “People believe the world will last forever, but God has other plans,” she says. “All the floods, the tornadoes, the famines – I’m actually happy when I hear about them on the news. Because these are signs that Jesus is on his way. It’s
exciting
to be the generation God has chosen to live out the End Times. I’m excited. Are you excited?” This is directed at the unseen
interviewer. They cut to a crane shot of the red-carpeted ballroom, and Aiden flicks off the
TV
.

Who is he to sneer? Every Saturday morning when he was a kid, he knocked on doors for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He went with his mother and her friend Helen, wearing a clip-on bowtie, his hair plastered to the side with a comb and water. He was the only one of the kids his mother dragged to the Kingdom Hall and proselytizing door to door. Their beat was Wolseley, as it happened, where Aiden and Liz live now. They walked down from the other side of Portage Avenue, badly dressed emissaries from the wrong side of the tracks, carrying urgent news of the end of the world to happy breakfasting families.

The house creaks in the cold: he’s hearing the iron gears of things slowing down. He gets up and goes to the bookshelf and pulls out his battered copy of
The New Oxford Book of English Verse
. The summer his
MIFT
program started, when he went to Otter Lake as sole owner for the first time, he wanted a solitary retreat. And he vowed not to run the generator. No radio, no music, no books except his
Oxford
. He’d just done a lot of emotional work at the group therapy intensive – it was almost a spiritual experience – and he had the idea that he’d paddle up to the dock and a more fully realized self would be waiting for him there, somebody who could live in silent harmony with nature for two weeks.