The Company We Keep

by Frances Itani

  What she wanted now was a reminder of her mother’s beauty. Her mother was attractive in her younger years and remained so as she aged. There were photos in an album, not from her mother’s childhood in the camp in British Columbia but taken during her thirties, forties. Chiyo decided she would find a good photograph and grace it with a frame.

  SPENCE WAS AT THE DOOR and Chiyo greeted him with eyes brimming. She didn’t have to explain. He knew she would share when she was ready. If ever.

  She grabbed a thick wrap to throw over her shoulders, and they drove off in Spence’s car. Heading for Pina. Heading into art. Chiyo wanted to lose herself in a landscape of wonder and desire, of sensuality and surprise. All of that along with the almost haughty dignity of the dancers, a dignity that paralleled the equal representation of abandonment and indignity. And of course, the flat-out absurd.

  Irresolutus

  HAZZLEY

  In the final months of his life, Lew had become far too thin. Changes progressed quickly, transformation taking place before Hazzley’s eyes. The disease began to ravage his body as if intent on leaving permanent marks. All of those marks now stored in Hazzley’s memory, even though Lew had been dead three years.

  There had been little outside activity in her own life during the last six months of his illness. Hazzley continued to go to the gym, but infrequently. She walked the streets of the neighbourhood, bought groceries, saw Cass occasionally, accepted a few articles for editing but also turned some down. She stopped inviting friends to visit and spent much of her time alone in her study. It was as if she were the person consumed by illness. Sal arrived for a short visit, and both parents were happy to see her. Sal was as concerned as Hazzley. Lew could still get around, but he was unable to reverse direction and wanted no interference. When he went out, it was to buy what he needed to drink. Much of the time, he was silent. He made no attempt to return the bottles. That effort seemed beyond him.

  One of the low points during this period came when the Greenley Orchestra made its annual visit to the Belle Theatre in town. Hazzley and Lew had always enjoyed the yearly concert, especially as Wilna Creek didn’t have an orchestra of its own. Hazzley purchased tickets weeks ahead, unsure if Lew would be able to attend. One way or another, she was looking forward to surrendering to music in a darkened theatre. She wanted to be at one with her thoughts. She wanted to forget about illness and about watching over Lew, whether he was beside her or not.

  Every year, a group of women who called themselves Widows Rallying attended the concert, dining out at a local restaurant before arriving at the theatre. Hazzley knew two of the women. A dozen or more widows made up the group, and they met weekly at some restaurant or other, or at a gallery or museum, at openings or exhibitions. They took bus trips together and did charitable work and rotated shifts at the hospital, wheeling carts of books around to wards or helping in other ways as volunteers.

  The night of the concert, Lew was unable to attend and Hazzley had to make her way to the Belle alone. When she took her seat, she immediately realized that she was four rows behind the widows, who took up an entire row of their own. In the ten or fifteen minutes before the curtains opened, there was a good deal of chatter and laughter coming from their row. Hazzley tried to ignore them, tried to ignore the fact that they were having a great time. She knew that if she were honest with herself, she would like to be sitting in that row, surrounded by women who were taking pleasure in being together. A part of her longed to give over to laughter and communal spirit, if only for one evening.

  But she could not. Lew was not dead. She was not a widow and did not belong. She could only look on. She tucked her chin down and pulled her collar up, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed. She was relieved when the lights went down and a concerto began. When the concert was over, she left quickly, knowing that the widows would be on their way out for a drink or a coffee somewhere, possibly at Cassie’s.

  Alone, on her way home, Hazzley could not push away the feeling of wistfulness, the feeling that she had assumed the role of permanent outsider. Outsider or enabler, she thought, grimly. Or both. She could not shake the desire to be out having fun with others who were completely alive.

  After Lew died, she did not join the group because by then she had neither the energy nor the desire. There were too many things to deal with, though she knew well enough that the widows supported one another through their individual ups and downs.

  TWO AND A HALF MONTHS before Lew’s death, Hazzley made the decision to travel to Toronto. She’d been invited to edit two articles on the topic of Swedish settlement in the western provinces after 1870 for back-to-back issues of a national history magazine. The writer, a Swedish academic, would be flying to Canada. The managing editor—a reliable friend to Hazzley—phoned to ask if she would consider coming to Toronto for a couple of nights to meet the man in person. That way, any editing problems could be worked out face to face. There were issues, Hazzley was assured, mainly because English wasn’t the writer’s first language. Considerable money had been invested by the magazine, and the articles were important. With a bit of diplomacy and expertise, the editor continued, Hazzley could effectively clean things up. The Swedish writer was planning to visit other parts of the country and would be going on to Saskatchewan to visit relatives after his stay in Toronto. The editor believed it would be a good idea to take advantage of his presence and get the job done to everyone’s satisfaction.

  Hazzley travelled by train and planned to tack on a few extra days. She decided that she would visit the new Aga Khan Museum, which had been open more than a year. She would also walk to the Gardiner Museum and take her time over the exhibits, whatever the display. She would shop along Bloor Street and treat herself to a new skirt or sweater or coat—anything, didn’t really matter. She would stay a total of six nights. But what she wanted most was to get away by herself. Have long, slow breakfasts at a decent hotel. Read the daily paper for hours. Be sure to slip a novel into her briefcase. She pushed aside her rising guilt. Lew would have to be left alone. Sal promised to phone every evening from Ottawa.

  Lew insisted that he’d be fine. “Go ahead,” he said. “There isn’t a thing I can’t handle on my own.”

  When Hazzley called Cass to tell her she’d be in Toronto, Cass had said, “Good. I’m glad you’re going off to the big city.” And added, mysteriously, “Who knows? You might have an adventure.”

  They’d both laughed.

  “Just wait and see,” said Cass.

  From the Toronto train station, Hazzley hired a taxi and checked into her hotel at Bloor and Avenue Road. The magazine staff had booked the Swede, whose name was Meiner, at the same hotel. Hazzley met Meiner in the lobby the evening of her arrival. He was in his late sixties, perhaps four or five years younger than she—a tall man, heavy-set and fair-skinned, with brownish hair and a neglected greying beard. A bit rumpled, perhaps, but energetic and entirely comfortable with himself. In a large family he would be everyone’s favourite uncle, she decided. Or great-uncle.

  Hazzley was drawn to his personality and glad of his cheerful company. Glad to discuss research and language. Glad to be in any situation that could remind her of the existence of a world outside her increasing isolation at home.

  The two sat for a while in the lobby and exchanged information. They met later in the main restaurant of the hotel, which was on the top floor, overlooking the city. They agreed to work in the business centre on the mezzanine level the next morning after breakfast. After dinner, Meiner would drop off revisions she had not yet seen; he told her he would bring them to her room.

  While at the table, over dessert, he reached across a saucer of profiteroles, picked up her hand, held it in his two large ones and told her he would like to sleep with her. Hazzley was semi-amused and slightly tipsy; she began to laugh. They both laughed, but he assured her he was serious. He escorted her to the door of her room and told her he’d be back with the revisions. Twenty minutes later, he appeared wearing a d
eep-pocketed overcoat over a hotel bathrobe. He had his manuscript in one hand, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the other, and a long-stemmed glass in each of his deep pockets. Meiner lived large.

  Hazzley invited him in, not really believing they would have sex. Irresolute, she was thinking, mainly of herself. Showing or feeling hesitancy; sixteenth century—must be Latin—irresolutus, not loosened.

  She wouldn’t know what to do, anyway—so much time had elapsed since she and Lew had been intimate. Since his heavy drinking began, she reminded herself. Since we stopped going anywhere. Since we stopped travelling, discussing, having fun, having SEX. She banished Lew from her mind.

  She and Meiner did not discuss the editing until the next day, but they did spend the first night in her bed. “Never mind Saskatchewan,” Meiner told her. “Never mind the Qu’Appelle Valley or Manitoba or the million Swedes who immigrated to North America. We’ll deal with those hearty souls after breakfast in the morning. Hearty or hardy? What should I say?”

  “I think you could use either.” Hazzley was laughing.

  “Ah! Either way, then, let us—you and me, no other Swede allowed, even on paper—enjoy ourselves this night.”

  Hazzley slipped into a robe in the bathroom, tried not to examine herself in the mirror, changed her mind, saw that this was a slimming mirror, a flattery mirror, and realized that the body she was looking at was the one she used to own. It’s okay, she said to the mirror. I’m not fooling myself. But it doesn’t hurt to look at what used to be. She removed her watch from her wrist, stowed it in her cosmetic case and wondered what to expect. Hazzley, she told herself, you don’t have to be passive about this.

  Meiner’s body weight sank into the mattress and she rolled toward him. That was the beginning of the pattern that unfolded each night they were in Toronto. Meiner sent word to his prairie relatives and altered his dates, extending his hotel reservation to match hers. Three years later, Hazzley had to ask herself if the encounter had truly happened. Sex with Meiner was the only sex she’d had outside of marriage, and it was also the most satisfying she’d ever had. Or had she forgotten sex with Lew? Either way, Meiner caressed her, loved her—made her laugh. He smelled of a soap she could not identify, not perfumed, not unpleasant. That first night, after making love, they sat in bed, propped by pillows, and finished off every drop of the champagne. They talked and talked and talked. Were they both starved for conversation? Meiner told her he adored her spirit. He told her how certain he was that sex and life experience added up to the best combination. They slept in each other’s arms, one of Meiner’s heavy legs slung over both of hers. When they awoke in the morning, facing each other across hotel pillows, he said, “Herregud! Look where we are!” They laughed and made love all over again.

  At the end of their time together, with no feeling of remorse or regret on Hazzley’s part, they said goodbye. Hazzley did not ask herself: What have I done? There was no inquisitor around to examine her behaviour.

  Would she and Meiner get together again? Maybe, maybe not. Since that time, they had exchanged an occasional friendly email, but they did live on different continents.

  After meeting Meiner, feeling alive again, fully reminded that she was a sensuous human being, she returned to Lew. During the train journey home, over coffee and an unappetizing croissant that was squashed flat in its cellophane packaging, she looked out the window at the dregs of Canadian Shield and considered how life was so much more complicated than one could ever imagine in childhood. Just as well; otherwise, no one would want to grow up. Her childhood had begun during the war. She was a war baby and might not have survived. She remembered—or thought she did—the outrageously loud noises outside her London home, her mother’s steadying voice within the terrifying darkness of an underground shelter. And then she was sent away to the country, to a stranger’s home, but she was lonely there. When she returned to London, she remembered that during daylight hours, her mother set pots of fat outside the front door for collection. For grease? For the machinery of war? What else?

  She looked around the coach and began to wonder what her fellow passengers would think of the nights she had just spent with Meiner. The two young women a few rows ahead, for instance. Checking their phones every few minutes, laughing and chatting too loudly, exchanging confessions and gossip for everyone to hear. They would look at her—at the thin skin of her wrists, at the outer corners of her eyes, at the thickness of her thighs—and they’d think she was over the hill, beyond sex. Truth to tell, she had no idea what young women thought today. She used to be more in touch. At one time, she believed she did know what was going on around her. Now she was uncertain. When had certainty abandoned her? She knew her own age group, yes. But two generations younger, what did they think—or think about? And what about her teenage grandchildren? There would be no room in their minds for considering a grandmother who’d had a six-night affair in her hotel room. They would be as unenlightened about her generation as she was about theirs.

  She glanced at her imperfect outline reflected in the window and saw herself in her favourite wool cardigan, purchased decades ago in Edinburgh at the Scotland Shop. She was comfortable wearing this, a soft grey-blue, more blue than grey. Her face in the window seemed soft, too, her cheeks flushed. She thought of Meiner with true affection, and then she tried to think of nothing at all. She knew she had no answers for anything but history and grammar, the tools she needed for work. She unfastened her briefcase and opened her journal and propped it on the fold-out table. She wrote: I feel wickedly satisfied, powerful and good. I wanted the sex.

  WITHIN A WEEK of returning home from Toronto, she resolved to make an effort to reconnect with friends. If Lew noticed a difference in her behaviour, he remained silent. Hazzley decided to invite four of their long-standing mutual friends, two couples, for lunch. Lew agreed to this, though she’d expected him to balk. Neither of them knew he would be dead within weeks.

  “You’ll have to help me look presentable,” he said. “Iron a shirt, maybe? Take out the wrinkles?” He seemed to have renewed energy. Both felt the promise of festivity in the air.

  Lew had always ironed his own shirts—since those early days of marriage, when he’d lugged home the ironing board—but Hazzley did the ironing that day without complaint. Lew chose a pale-blue shirt from his closet, no tie, something that would be loose and comfortable on his too-thin frame.

  In the morning, he made a conspicuous effort. Rose early. Washed and shaved. Got himself into trousers and the blue shirt. Took some time to manage the buttons, all but the top one, which he left open. Sat on a chair; pulled on his socks, reached for his shoes. And in a wash of memory, suddenly began to talk about Hazzley polishing Sal’s soft leather shoes when Sal was a baby and beginning to take her first steps. “It was Sani-white . . . something like that,” Lew said. “Smelled a bit like chalk. Liquid in a small bottle. You shook it and put it on with a dauber, or should that be dabber? Little ankle-high shoes with laces. After you stroked the white polish over the surface, you set the shoes on the kitchen windowsill, up over the sink, to dry.”

  Hazzley’s memory was stirred by the image. She smiled at Lew and made a mental note to check “dauber/dabber” later, at the end of the day. For now, she had tomatoes to marinate, basil to pick, a quiche in the oven.

  It was only when their guests came through the front door that Hazzley realized how shocking Lew’s appearance must be to others. She turned and saw what they were seeing as they greeted him. She could read the reaction on their faces. And if she could, so could Lew.

  The heartbreak was that all of his effort showed. The ironed shirt. The looseness of it failing to disguise his gaunt frame. The unusual brightness in the eyes. Even his hair looked as if some outside agent had patted it down, forced a part with a wet comb.

  He had scrubbed himself up for company and he looked the part.

  Everyone sat in the family room, and Lew did his best to uphold conversation; he responded politely to qu
eries about his health. Persiflage, Hazzley told herself while tasting balsamic in the kitchen. Light raillery, banter. He was holding court in the armchair that had always been his: the blue upholstered chair in which he read the evening papers and reread the stories of Conan Doyle. It was where he sat to listen to the radio, drink wine and whisky and ice-cold limoncello and any other alcoholic drink he could lay his hands on. That was his corner domain. She thought of champagne; she thought of Meiner in bed, his heavy leg slung over hers. Herregud! She felt a flush of warmth through her body. We did what we did.

  She called everyone to the table.

  Lew poured wine for himself during the meal. At first, Hazzley was shocked, and then not. Why wouldn’t he drink? He drank every day and would not be capable of abstaining because of the presence of friends. She considered this from his point of view. He did the drinking; she had unintentionally assumed the chore of lugging the empty bottles to the basement because he no longer did so. They never spoke about this. Lew knew that he was at risk of suffering withdrawal. Hazzley looked around at their friends and said to herself, Try living with an alcoholic. This is what it’s like. Something else takes hold and we move forward as if there’s no other path on this journey.

  Lew had been in withdrawal before: sweating, hands shaking, jittery, nauseated, anxious. The first episode had been so frightening to witness that she had backed away, gone out to the street, walked for a while, arrived at the gym, got herself onto a treadmill and stared at captions on a soundless TV. During an on-screen message promoting safety, Hazzley watched as a heavy-looking box fell from a shelf. The caption across the bottom read “Clatter, thud.” Yes, Hazzley said to herself. Those are the sounds of being unsafe: clatter, thud. She jacked up the speed of the treadmill so that she could expend more energy. She increased the incline to 2 percent. When she was ready to leave the gym, she returned home and found Lew asleep on the floor of the bedroom, an empty glass close by on the rug. She wondered how he had managed to get up the stairs. She covered him with two blankets, and he woke up in the same spot in the morning, dressed in the clothes of the day before.