by Ron Thompson
“You’d make the perfect academic,” Simon told me. “You remind me of Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor.”
“Sure, I could be the Poopy-Panted Professor,” I said, to show them all I could laugh at myself.
“There’s no need for that at the table, dear,” Mom said.
“But Victor—”
“What are you going to do in Africa?” Victor asked. “While Genny’s researching pygmy sex positions?”
“Basarwa gender roles,” I clarified, buying time. The factwas I did not know what I would do in Africa. I was going because Genny was going—and that would not be a good answer at that table.
“Gender roles, then.”
All eyes were on me. “There’s a lot of economic restructuring going on, a lot of investment coming in. There’ll be plenty of opportunities for contract work, especially with the experience I have from London. When I get there I’ll do the rounds with the World Bank and the other agencies in the region. I figure ifI’m on the ground, there’ll be—”
“Sorry. I’ve got to take this.” Victor was peering at his pager. He went into the hall to make a call from the telephone there. After a moment we heard his voice rise and fall in conversation.
Mom was frowning, either at my career prospects in Africa or the dinner interruption, it was not clear which. “Genny,” she said, filling the sudden silence at the table, “can I get you something else? You’re not eating your chicken.”
“Oh, no, thanks, Edie. I can only eat half of what you’ve given me. But it’s delicious.”
“Steak’s good too,” I told Dad.
He raised his glass in acknowledgement. The wine at Chateau Nous came in a box and was too sweet for me, but I knocked it back anyway.
“More potato, Genny?”
“No thank you, Edie.”
“Sour cream? Bacon bits? A little butter?”
“Ah, no. Thanks, Edie. I’m fine, really.”
“You had too much exercise today. Tired yourself out and spoiled your appetite.”
“No, not at all. I feel very well.”
Mom’s smile looked a little like a grimace. She turned to me. “Do you think you’ll be able to get a job when you get back, dear?”
“Sorry about that,” Victor said, sitting down and indicating his pager. “This thing always goes off at the worst time. Have to take it, though. Business. I’m getting a cell phone next week. You won’t believe how small they are now. The new ones are smaller than a book.”
“A book,” Dad said in disbelief, measuring with his hands.
“Yeah,” Victor said. “They cost a bundle but you’ve got to have one in this business. The one I—”
“Tell them about the one you had at Commonwealth-A,” Genny prodded me.
“Yeah. The bank gave me a really small one I could almost carry in my coat pocket. I hear they’re coming out with digital phones next year that will be half the—”
“Pretty soon,” Victor continued, “you’re going to be able to send and receive written messages on your phone. I could sit right here, take a message and send one and not interrupt supper at all. Just on my phone’s screen. Pretty soon you’ll be able to contact anybody any time. It’s not a phone call, exactly. It’s called a ‘textual message.’”
Dad shook his head at the marvel of it all.
“But is that a good thing?” Genny asked. “If the technology exists, people will be on call all the time. They’ll have their heads down reading their textual messages and not listening to the people they’re with. Not being with them. Not devoting time to their surroundings or their relationships. They’ll be living in an electronic world. Who would you really know in a world like that? It sounds lonely.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed in appraisal of Genny.
“And the technology’s going to get better and better,” I said, warming to Victor’s vision of the future. “Eventually telephones and computers will merge. There’s something called the ‘World Wide Web’ that will connect us all. You’ll be able to send mail from your computer. We did that at Commonwealth-A, inside our office in London. In a couple years—by ’93 at the latest, all the bank’s offices around the world will be connected, and after that, it’s only a matter of time until we’re all connected on something called the ‘internet.’ It’s inevitable now, as computing power and broadband capacity build. After that, we’ll send all our mail electronically and never use a piece of paper. People will be able to get any information they want, and buy anything they want, on something called a ‘website.’ We’ll do our banking right in our homes. Do all our shopping, read the newspaper right on our computer screens. All this will allow entirely new forms of interaction. People will discuss their interests, follow their favourite causes, keep up with their friends or movie stars or politicians, whatever, all on their computer screens. They’ll even date and marry. Then, in another ten years, it’ll all go wireless, and we’ll be able to do all that from a coffee shop on an ‘intelligent phone.’ With just a few keystrokes you’ll be able to contact all your friends and tell them you’re having a tasty cheeseburger at the Dog’n Suds.”
There was a silence when I stopped to catch my breath. They were all looking at me like I was the madman villain in a James Bond movie, the nutbar in a Nehru jacket who rides a monorail through the interior of a hollowed-out mountain.
“Naw,” Victor chuckled. “You’re dreaming Buck Rogers there, bub. Who would care, anyway?”
“We don’t even have a computer,” Mom said.
“That may all take longer than you think,” Simon said rea sonably.
“Paperless mail?” Dad, the former postmaster, did not like the sound of that. “Think of all the people who’d be out of a job.”
At “out of a job,” Mom looked at me. “More corn?” she asked Genny.
“No thank you, Edie.”
“Victor, have another cob. We’re going to have so much left over.”
“Thanks, Mom. Don’t mind if I do. Anyway, I really need that phone. It’s getting that in real estate you’ve got to be available day and night. You never know when a deal will go south and you’ve got to pull it out of the fire.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said, seeing an opportunity to describe what I did so mysteriously across the pond. “We had this big transaction last winter. Genny and I were in Bath for the weekend and they—”
“They called you in the bath?” Victor nudged Simon.
“No, Bath. It’s a—”
“Last week I had a page at two a.m. The buyer wanted to table an offer first thing . . .”
Later, Simon asked Genny what she thought of the prairies. “They’re overwhelming,” she said after a moment. “I never expected the sensation of space. It just goes on and on.”
Victor nudged Simon again. “Kinda like Buster with a story.”
“What’s it like where you’re from?” Simon asked. “What’s the name of the town again?”
“It’s Anti-Gonish,” Mom said, like it was better to be proanything than Anti-Gonish.
“Antigonish,” Genny said with the right intonation. “Well, it’s not far from the ocean, so the weather’s very changeable. The land’s very rugged. Not wide open like here. There’s lots of forest and it’s hilly—”
“We have a saying out here,” Victor said. “‘Hills are nice but they block the view.’”
My mother found that funny. Even funnier, Victor’s next line, about being able to sit on your porch and watch your dog run away for three days.
“Victor’s always been one for a chuckle,” she explained to the table at large, wiping away tears of mirth. She turned to her funniest son. “Go on, Victor, tell us a joke. Do you have one for us?”
Of course he did.
When the dishes had been cleared (“Are you sure you won’t eat more, Genny? No?”), Mom bro
ught a plate covered with a tea towel to the table. “Who wants pie?” she asked and whipped the towel away in front of my face.
“Yowza!” I said. Genny laughed. “What?” I asked.
“You sound so excited.”
“Well, it’s saskatoon pie,” Mom said, her eyes narrowing.
“I’ve been telling Genny about saskatoons the whole trip.”
“Longer, even. Since we met.”
“You’ve never had saskatoon pie?”
“No, but I’ve heard a lot about it.”
“There’s nothing like saskatoons,” Dad said.
“Where do you buy them? Do the stores carry them?” My mother chortled at the thought. “Oh, we don’t buy them, dear.”
“We pick ’em,” I said.
“Ice cream?”
“No thank you, Edie. I just want to taste these famous saskatoon berries.”
Now everyone at the table laughed.
Genny looked at me, a little hurt. “What did I say?” “Well, that sounded funny. It’s saskatoons, not ‘saskatoon berries,’” I explained. “You wouldn’t say raspberry berries, or strawberry berries, or—”
“Come on, everybody,” Dad said. “I’ll bet Genny could have some fun with us down east.”
When we all had pie we waited for Genny to taste hers first. She cut a tiny piece and raised it to her lips, paused and looked around at the table. “Well, here goes,” she said with a smile. As the fork entered her mouth she closed her eyes and in the expectant silence I stole a glance around the table. Dad and Simon looked curious, Mom’s expression was inscrutable; and Victor, I was sure, had been checking out Genny’s chest. He met my eye and grinned. “The moment of truth!” he announced, drum rolling on the table with his fingers. Genny opened her eyes. “Mmm.”
“Yes?” I said.
“Mmm hmm.”
“Take a bigger piece,” Mom said.
Genny cut another piece and went through her tasting pro cess again.
“Mmm. Wonderful,” she said, looking around at our faces.
“Just wonderful?” I asked.
“It’s very good.”
“What’s it like?”
“The pie?”
“The taste.”
She took another taste and closed her eyes to think. “Well? What’s it like?”
She opened her eyes. “Like . . . blueberries?” “BLUEBERRIES?” my mother cried and let out a “What the—” before she caught herself.
* * *
That night Dad stopped me in the upstairs hall. “That’s a real lady you got there,” he said. One of his hands fell lightly on my shoulder and was gone. He walked into the master bedroom at the end of the hall and closed the door.
“I think that went okay,” I whispered to Genny later in bed. “Didn’t it?”
Genny turned her bottomless blue eyes on me. “Why do you all rave about saskatoons?”
I thought about it for a second. “Because they’re ours.” A little while later she closed her book. “Why does Victor call you Buster?”
“He was being polite. One of his names for me is Buttster.” I did not sleep well that night. I had seen the look in my mother’s eyes as I described my plan for Africa. She knew I was blowing smoke.
There was more. That day, I had managed to entertain Genny with stories of Poplar Lake. It had been easy, fun even; but we would be in town for several more days. Genny was persistent, and she was circling, circling, like a vulture, over the carcass of my guilt.
CHAPTER 6
Genny got up again at dawn, and although I had promised to run with her, I watched her dress and told her I would try to sleep some more.
“Oh, by the way,” she said before she went out, leaning over to give me a kiss. “You had two pieces of pie last night. You’re going to get love handles. All this soft living . . .”
“Oi likes a bit of flesh,” I said in the exaggerated Englishaccent we bantered in. My hands went to her sides and pulled her onto me. “Oooh, yes! ’Specially on me women.”
When I came down later, Dad had already left for his morning round of golf, Mom was mixing pancake batter, and Simon and Victor were drinking coffee at the table.
“Vic! I didn’t expect to see you this morning.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I’d come over for some of Mom’s famous saskatoon pancakes. I’ve got an eight o’clock with a client.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Capitalism never sleeps.”
A few minutes later, Genny came in the back door and through the kitchen in her leotard and tights, beaded with sweat.
“Oh! Everybody’s up! Hello.” Everybody said good morning.
“I hope you didn’t tire yourself out again,” Mom said chirpily.
“No, no, Edie, I had a wonderful run. It’s another beautiful day. Everyone gets up so early here. I was talking with that nice Mister Byrtnyky. He’s out washing his car again.” Simon gave an odd laugh, and Genny smiled uncertainly. “The highlight of Mr Byrtnyky’s year,” he explained, “is when the Girl Guides come around with their cookies.”
Genny looked as though she did not understand. “What Simon means,” Mom said, “is that Mr Byrtnyky is the neighbourhood letch.” Genny took a sharp breath. “No,” I said. “Really?” A nod.
Genny was blushing now, her mouth open as if to speak: then it clamped firmly, her expression darkened, and she excused herself to go upstairs. We all watched her go.
A short while later the phone rang, and while my mother spoke to a church lady about some baking, Simon got up to flip our pancakes, and Victor leaned across the table towards me.
“So what’s it like?” he asked, grinning, his voice low and confidential. “Tell me straight and leave nothing out.”
“What?”
He rolled his eyes and tilted his head towards the stairs. “What’s she like in the bed department?”
His grin widened. Victor had always been bigger, cooler, tougher than me, better at sports, quicker with a comeback. He had been my hero, and here we were, grown up, talking man to man, equal.
I grinned back, considering his question, wondering where to begin. I recalled a poem I’d written once, in which Genny was a flower that opened to the morning sun, withered not through the heat of day, but blossomed in the bliss of night.
It was better than that; I’d rhymed “heat of day” with “feet of clay,” a reference to me. In the following verse, I’d marvelled at the art of her realization, the faultless line of her shoulder, her belly both flat and round, the hollow of her navel where I hadsipped champagne, she giggling, tickled by my lips. Sensuous delights, revelations everywhere; and the penetrating azure of her eyes—I spent a lot of time on her eyes.
They say you must be honest when you write, and that’s what got to Genny, my honesty. She was big on honesty. She always choked up at Dan Hill; a few bars of “Sometimes When We Touch” reduced her to blubbering. When I read her my poem she bawled like a baby, and I was mortified, thinking I had offended her, until she assured me that, no, no, it made her very happy. “It’s your honesty,” she sobbed, hugging me close. I hugged her back and wondered about what I had written, for although I had spoken in metaphor, I had never really understood what a metaphor actually was—to be perfectly honest.
I came back to the present, and realized that Victor was still grinning at me. But it was not a grin, really; it was a leer. He was waiting for a reaction, and it had not materialized. And so he reached over and nudged my shoulder. “I bet she likes it on top,” he murmured. “I bet you both do.”
I felt my mouth fall open, and he laughed, and I saw red. He had no right speculating about Genny, or what she liked or didn’t like; or about us. We were none of Victor’s business, and I was about to tell him that—when I caught myself.
He was goading me, and I ha
d almost fallen for it. He was treating me like a kid, the retarded, clueless little brother. I had spent years in that role and wanted none of it now.
Victor’s grin widened. “I’m just saying,” he said, as our mother got off the phone, “she’s got a nice rack.”
* * *
Later, when Genny was back and breakfast was finished, Mom asked, “Who wants to come to church?”
Victor looked at his watch and made to stand. “Oh, gosh, Ma, if I had the time. I gotta get to the office.”
Mom’s eyes moved on to Simon.
“I’ve got some work to finish before I head back to Calgary.”
“What about you, dear?” Mom’s gaze landed on me. “You and Genny?”
Victor dropped his cup in the sink and turned to watch. For a moment I sat like a deer in the headlights, remembering childhood Sunday mornings in a pew, fidgeting, knee bobbing, distracted. “I want to show Genny more of the sights. We have so little time.”
“Oh, yes!” Genny said. “I really enjoyed what we saw yesterday. All the history you have here. The story of the town. It’s quite amazing.”
This left Mom frowning and my brothers exchanging puz zled glances.
“How about right after the dishes?” I said.
“Sure. But today I want to see more of your highlights.”
“Why don’t you drive, dear?” Mom said while Genny was upstairs getting ready. “Take the car. Or let me drive you. I’ll drop you on the way to church.”
“I could use the exercise,” I said, pinching the skin at my sides.
* * *
As we passed the old Sturgis place I studied it closely. Its trim was painted a different colour, the mountain ash in the front was gone, and there was now a tall fence in the back where Clinton and I used to play catch. I led Genny to the corner, thinking about the time I had spent inside that yard, that house. A wave of sadness came over me. Years gone, and I felt it still.
