World of Glass (6 page)

“Rain, rain, rain,” she says. The doorbell rings. I open the door.

“Hi,” Joan gives me a warm kiss on the cheek. She has a packsack over her shoulders. Her hair has grown. She holds a baby in her arm and has a stroller at her side. My mother stands behind me.

“Hi Joan,” she says. “Come on in.”

“This is Tara,” Joan says. After we enter the vestibule, I slide my hand down the baby's back.

“She's beautiful!” I say. Tara's curls are red. Her lips thick. She sleeps deeply.

“I love babies,” Joan says. We settle onto the brown and beige checkered sofa. Joan gently puts Tara in the stroller. “Maybe you could stay this way, so we'd all be happy,” she whispers to her.

“Would you like a coffee?” my mother asks.

“Sure.” My mother walks into the kitchen. I see deep lines in Joan's forehead. She looks tired. She is tense.

“I can only stay one night, got to see some people downtown.” She checks messages on her cell phone. “I'll call them back tomorrow.”

Tara opens her eyes, she cries. Joan puts the bottle to her lips. Tara sucks.

“How are you feeling?” she says.

“The drugs, they're heavy,” I say.

“Can you read?”

“A little. I tried to get through an Alice Munro story the other day but my mind kept drifting after the third paragraph.”

“What do you do with your time?”

“Not much.” She looks at my hands and says,

“You're shaking!”

“It's the drugs.” I look at Joan's clothes. She wears a low-cut tank top. Red. Tight jeans and a wide belt. Loops in her ears. Blue, made of plastic. My mother brings the coffee into the living room and puts a bowl of sugar, milk, three spoons and white cups down onto the coffee table.

“Nice of you to visit,” my mother says, then sits in the armchair facing us, picks up her wool and thick needles and begins to knit.

“What are you making?” Joan asks.

“A sweater for my beautiful daughter.”

I can tell that Joan is bored. She takes her cell phone from her packsack, begins to dial.

“Just need to make one call.” She taps her foot on the carpet. “Busy,” she says and presses the “End” button. She dials another number. “Hi,” she says into the receiver. “We were supposed to meet tomorrow at noon. Could it be sooner? Alright, ten-thirty's fine, I'll be there.” My mother turns the TV on to
Newswatch
as she talks. Our eyes drift to the screen. I try to think of something to say, but nothing comes to mind. Joan gets off the phone, picks up a
Vogue
magazine that sits on the table. Flips through it. Puts it down. The news ends, and Joan turns to me and says, “Drugs are important but you also need talk therapy.” I tell her that very few psychiatrists do that. She holds my hand while we watch more TV until nine o'clock. We all change into our pyjamas. Joan changes Tara's diapers on the kitchen table. I am stunned at how quiet this baby is. I take out a pillow and blanket from the hall closet for myself. I give Joan and Tara my bed. My mother wears her cotton dressing gown, sits up in bed and listens to talk shows on the radio. I open the living room window for fresh air and slip under the blankets beside me. The cushions on the sofa are soft. I sink into them, close my eyes, and listen to the burble of voices.

I hear Joan rustling in her packsack. I look at the clock radio. It is 8:45 a.m.

“Do you want toast or cereal?” I ask.

“No, thanks. I'm going to be late for my meeting.”

“How about a coffee before you go?”

“Can't. I'll stop into a Second Cup downtown. Do you have a taxi number?” I give her a Co-op Taxi number I find on a magnet on the refrigerator. She calls.

“You do what you need to do,” she says to me. “I promise to call you before I head back to T.O.” Joan looks at her agenda. She reads something written down there, then puts it back into her purse. The taxi driver honks his horn in front of the building. I give Joan a warm hug. She slides her packsack over her shoulder, holds Tara in her other arm, and disappears down the stairs.

My hair rests on my shoulders. “You should get a haircut,” my mother says. “It looks sloppy.” I stroll down the road to a place called Salon de coiffure Marie. I walk in. There is a middle-aged lady getting her hair permed. She is reading
Echo Vedette.

“Une coupe, deux pouces carré,” I say and Marie ushers me to a chair, tightens a bib around my neck, sprays water from a plastic bottle onto my hair and snips. This takes ten minutes. Then she blow-dries my hair, curls it around with a brush. I pay $12, a bargain. The wind messes up my hair. By the time I get home, it is knotted and flat.

The phone rings. My mother answers. “John!” I hear her say. “How's your daughter?” Pause. “So sorry to hear that.” I stop listening and go into the bathroom closet and take out a large beach towel with a yellow sun on it. I am wearing khaki shorts and a red sleeveless blouse. It is hot. No clouds in the sky. I walk out onto a large patch of grass next to the side of the brick apartment building. I stretch out on the towel, and stay there motionless for what seems like
hours. I feel my face, shoulders and knees burn, but I stay there anyway and think about Justin. We saw live theatre and films. We went to at least one play a week, and lots of dance too, since I worked for the Diva Dance Theatre one summer and got free tickets. Justin worked for the Harbour Lights Reading Series. We met Susan Sontag, Ted Hughes, Carol Shields. I'd blush, my cheeks red as apples, when I shook their hands. “Don't be so insecure!” Justin would say. We had a room in our apartment filled wall to wall with books and two desks. Justin tried to write a mystery novel. I wrote drafts of stories. I think back. When we first met, I lied about my age. He was younger than me by three years. Men most always prefer to be older than the woman. I remember pleasant evenings together when we'd discuss books that we were reading and sometimes disagreed on our feelings about them. I read mostly women writers: Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir. “Don't you think women write differently than men?” I'd say. “They're intuitive, their choice of words, gentler. For the most part, I usually can tell after the first paragraph from a book, whether the author is male or female.” My stomach begins to feel wheezy as I see vivid images in my head of him flirting with pretty girls. He was blond, handsome, charming and they flirted back. He'd bring laughter to their faces with clever jokes. One time, I deliberately stepped on his toes with my clunky shoes. Another time, I slapped his cheek. He screeched, his face reddened but he held back from hitting me back. Then one day, he went to Vancouver for two weeks, met a beautiful young brunette and fell in love, or so he said.

“You never have any money,” he'd complain. Our apartment on King Street West was on the second floor. I left behind my dresser, an antique couch, two lamps and bookshelves. I couldn't afford a truck to bring my belongings with me. I
had planned to make a fresh start. I would buy a new sofa with throw pillows, original paintings from small galleries and a new computer. Yes, definitely a computer.

I wonder now, how is Justin getting along with his new girlfriend? Does she smoke? He found my cigarette habit intolerable, so I switched to smoking Old Port cigars for a while, thinking that the smell would be sweeter.

I think about the letters she sent him from Vancouver. There must have been over twenty of them. Some came with photographs of her sitting on rocks by the ocean. She was moving to Toronto to be with Justin. Get an apartment, move and find a job. I stay motionless on the lawn with my towel under me. My hair is damp and sweat drips down my neck.

The room is crowded. I have been waiting forty minutes to see Dr. Ali. There is a woman with a young boy, no more than ten, facing me. The boy tells his mother to “va chier,” the mother smacks him on the head. The boy howls and kicks his feet. Dr. Ali walks in. “Chloé.” I nod and follow him into his office. There are no pictures on his walls. White blinds on the window. They are shut.

“How go medication?”

“5 milligrams is better.”

“You burn face.” I nod.

“No sun with medication. I keep it at 5 milligrams and 900 milligrams of Lithium.” He scribbles on a prescription form, hands it to me and says,

“No sun.”

Seasons pass. It goes on like this for four years.

CHAPTER IV

I
SIT BY THE
front window at a small table at Toi, Moi et Café. I wear my black jeans and flowered print blouse. I hear a young woman. She is dressed in black silk pants. Her lips are painted scarlet. She whispers quickly on her cell phone. A white cup with foamed milk and chocolate sprinkled on top sits on her table.

“J'ai un cours au H.E.C. ce soir,” I hear her say. I look up. The café is long, narrow and half-empty. I see a wooden patio through windows. A disheveled middle-aged man wearing corduroy pants, hair long and tangled, reading
Le Devoir
. I take
An Angel at My Table
by Janet Frame out of my bag. A book that Justin sent me a month ago. On the title page he wrote: “Chloé, while she was in the hospital, the doctors were going to give her a lobotomy. She won a small literary prize, so they decided not to give her the operation. That was in the 1940s. Thank God you're living in 2004.”

I take out a Rothmans from my pack. I can't find my lighter. I look up and see a man with wire-rimmed glasses and behind them, very large brown eyes. An owl, I think. He is typing on his laptop. I walk up to him and say, “I'm sorry to disturb you.” The man glances up at me.

“Yes.”

“Do you have a light?”

“Sorry. I don't smoke, but you can find matches at the counter.”

“Of course.” I get up and stroll to the cash register. There is a yellow bowl brimming with matchbooks. The café's logo on them. I take one, then stop behind the man with the laptop. I see that his shoulders are hunched forward, his shirt collar is folded inward, the tail of his shirt hangs over his black jeans. I look up at his head. He is balding.

“Are you a writer?” I say.

“Yes, I write poetry.” He stops typing. There is a book called
Crow
by Ted Hughes and
Roget's Thesaurus
on the table.

“Do you mind if I ask you to read to me what you're writing?”

“Sure, have a seat.” I sit facing him. I notice his double chin.

“It's pretty dark stuff,” he says.

“If it gets published, the world will know about you.”

“Don Marquis said, ‘publishing a book of poems is like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.' It's not quite finished yet, but here goes.”

SHAFT

I am dead

he said.

Such a solemn air, he thought –

So weighted with despair –

His body hurtled down a shaft

At the movements of his lips.

And so he whispered

Once again

“I am dead.”      And laughed.

Silence. The espresso machine hums, Oscar Peterson's piano flourishes the background.

“I know how you feel,” I say and stretch my hand over his and squeeze, then quickly release it. “I'm Chloé.”

“I'm Mark.” The waiter comes by. I order a cappuccino and he refills Mark's cup. “Merci,” Mark says with an English accent.

“I'm only in the city for a few hours. Needed to get out of the suburbs,” I say. “Do you live around here?”

“Yes. On Hutchison. I just came from a swim at the Y.” He points at his gym bag.

“How many lengths did you do?”

“About fifty.” I find this remarkable. I cannot imagine swimming so many laps.

“Where do you live exactly?” he asks.

“Terrebonne. That's an hour away, but I prefer the city.”

“Then why are you living there?”

“Well,” I say. I pause. My shoulders slowly hunch over, my head tilts toward the table. I wonder whether he is trustworthy. I stay mute.

“Is everything all right?” I cough as if something is stuck in my throat.

“Well.” Pause. “I suffered a breakdown. I live with my mother.”

“Oh,” Mark says and stares out the window. “…hard. Traumatic, one might say.”

“Yes. Very, very traumatic.” Silence. “I started to swim at a pool in Terrebonne. I go twice a week.”

“The Y has a steam bath and the water is always warm.”

“Does it cost anything?”

“It's free for Montréal residents. If you'd like to come with me, you can use my address.”

“Here's my phone number,” I write my first name and number on a white paper napkin and hand it to him. Mark gives me his.

For a moment, I wonder whether he is looking for sex but he does not gaze at my small breasts or bare neck.

“I have something to confess to you,” he says. “I have no arch in my left foot. I wear orthopedic shoes. I can't walk very far, but I will accompany you to the bus stop.” Mark closes his laptop and gently places it into his black vinyl bag.

“I'll pay for your coffee,” he says, and walks up to the cash register. The waiter gives him back change and we slowly stroll out the door and onto the gray pavement. I look up at the sky and I see no clouds. Mark takes me to the corner of avenue du Parc and Laurier. The bus approaches. I kiss him on the cheek and say, “See you next week.”

My mother drinks coffee and smokes Dunhills.

“I made you another sweater.” She shows it to me. It is made of soft emerald green wool. Pure wool.

“It's beautiful,” I say. I touch the sweater gently and add, “I can't wait to wear it.” I plop myself down on the sofa next to her. My mother goes back to knitting.

“I think I made a friend,” I say.

“You did?”

“His name is Mark. He's a poet.”