by Shani Mootoo
She came out of the kitchen to find him looking at a small black and white of a man. “That’s Ali.”
She needn’t have said; he had known immediately it was her husband, a tall, wiry man. Sitting next to him on a beach was Kay, as tall as he. She took the picture off the wall, blew a film of dust off it. She wiped the glass with the edge of her hand, the area of the man’s face with a finger. “This here was two days before he left. At the time it was taken, I had no idea he was going to be leaving. He knew, but I didn’t suspect it.”
Harry wondered if she had taken Ali out on a lake in an attempt to Canadianize him. He asked if she missed him. She didn’t answer that question but said instead, “I am able to look after myself. I get lonely. But my girlfriends, we keep each other company. And you know, I have that old van. Now, the van, that is my companion. But I admit I do miss having a man around.”
He wondered if it was possible for one to look after these kinds of women as well as they would look after themselves.
She continued, “I manage. You know how you get used to things. Ali left when the children were very young. I haven’t seen him since; they haven’t, either.”
They sat at the table and ate the sandwiches she had made. Kay wanted to uncork one of her Barolos, but what had compelled him before now unnerved him, and he thought better of sitting around and drinking wine with her. At the front door he observed that someone had been trying to build a trellis and had abandoned the project.
“It’s a job for a gardener, don’t you think? That’s the sort of thing I do.”
Two days later, he stopped at the liquor store to tell her he had enjoyed the day, particularly learning to paddle, and that he had arranged with his workers to build the trellis for her. She told him abruptly that after he had gone, she missed him. All he could say was “Yes, it was a good day. Really nice on the lake, wasn’t it?”
Two months passed without contact. Then, just before Christmas, to his surprise, she telephoned him and asked him to have Christmas lunch at her house with her and her daughters, an invitation he declined.
Now, two days before the end of the year, Harry pries himself away from his home, and in a rain that is still coming down, although lightly now, he heads into the town of Squamish. Besides shopping for groceries, he must stop at the liquor store.
THE STAWAMUS CHIEF
Harry ambles down an aisle to the British Columbia racks, distractedly glancing over the selection. He looks back at Kay. The line at her cashier’s station is long. She has that unguarded look of concentration. He will join her queue, say a quick hello.
Not until he is next in line after the man whose purchases she is ringing up does she see him. Her solemn face brightens. She sets one hand akimbo. “Well! So what’s this? You came to buy wine? Not to see me?”
Harry is relieved and at the same time made shy by her too-public attention. She operates the till again, self-consciously smoothing back her short shiny hair that needs no such fixing. She accepts money from and gives change to her customer, but her eyes are fixed on Harry. Kay places both palms flat on the counter and leans forward. “So why haven’t I heard from you, St. George? What are you buying? I haven’t tried this one. Are you in a hurry? I’m taking my break any minute now. Just wait. Let’s go next door for a coffee.”
She allows him no time to respond; she picks up her station’s intercom phone. Her voice booms powerfully out of two corners of the ceiling. “Cashier to number four, please. Cashier to number four.”
She doesn’t dwell on his absence, offering only that on Christmas Day he was missed. She does say that her daughters were disappointed that they were not to meet the man from the islands whom she had taken canoeing and who had built the fancy trellis over her front gate.
Through the glass pane of the coffee shop, he watches the Stawamus Chief. The top half of that dark granite monolith had for weeks been hooded by a mass of heavy gray clouds. Revealed again, still streaked black along its cracks and crevices, but lightening and blueing where the magnificently sudden sun kissed it, it is an imposing wall. Since this past fall, he has come to think of this side of the big rock as Kay’s country.
All at once there seems to be an abrupt increase in the number of cars jamming the entrance to the mall’s parking lot. Throngs of pedestrians emerge, as if they had been awaiting the sun’s cue. The coffee shop is crammed with customers, and the two cappuccino machines gurgle and spurt at full unceasing throttle. Harry wonders if he and Kay, so different from each other, look to the other customers and passersby like a couple, like lovers. She wears a collar pin of mistletoe that reads HAPPY NEW YEAR, and large shiny silver rings on three fingers of her right hand. If only he had heard from Rose this past holiday week, he thinks, he could relax and enjoy this moment with Kay.
She is saying something.
“Harry St. George, are you listening? I asked, do you have plans for New Year’s Eve?
“Harry! Let’s have dinner New Year’s Eve together,” she insists. “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. Just dinner. Nothing fancy. I’ll cook.”
THE WEIGHT OF TOO MUCH–TOO MUCH
Guanagaspar.
Christmas came and went. The tree had been put up; there were Santa and reindeer ornaments and glass candle holders with deep red candles that were never lit. There were bunches of the white Christmas bush, cut from the yard and arranged in large copper vases, and gold-colored foil-covered pots of poinsettia. There was turkey and ham on the table Christmas Day, and Madam’s son, Jeevan, his wife, and their children stayed for most of the day. But come Boxing Day, Madam had Piyari take down the tree and pack up the ornaments; the boxes were placed out of sight in front of the cupboard in the storeroom for the yard boy to put away the following day. Never had Piyari seen a Christmas disappear so swiftly.
And the house once more was as clean as if Madam were planning to show it to an inspector or a prospective buyer. She sat at the kitchen table, and by way of indicating to Piyari to sit down, too, she rapped the table with her knuckles. It had been some days before Christmas since Madam last spoke to Piyari of her summer on the west coast of Canada. But once she began, it was as if, to her mind, not a moment had slipped by.
“So, as I was saying, five days pass, and finally the Eggman ring. He tell me he wanted to show me, that same day self, a fishery where you could stand up and watch salmon try to climb up a wall in a river. And a canyon. He say to ask Cassie to come, too. I say all right, but if I speak the truth, I had wanted to be alone with him. But I didn’t have to worry; before I could utter a word, she tell me, of her own accord, that she had plans for us: she and her friends were going to the beach for a day picnic. She treat me, for so, like dry bread she buttering, telling me that her friends always asking about me, and how they insist I go with them. And then, when I remain quiet, she add that they going kayaking. That mean they go out in the sea, each one in their own skimpy boat, and they paddle down the coast for an hour or so. Boldface so, she say I could take some magazines and read while I watch their things on the beach. I know her hour or so. She and her father may not get along, but no two people have ever been more alike. An hour or so, I knew very well, might turn out to be three hours or so, and I didn’t want to be left minding other people’s things as if I am their servant, you know what I mean? I tell her Harry invite us to go to a tourist site they call the Capilano Canyon. She didn’t show any surprise, and it is a good thing that she didn’t start up with any stupid teasing. She said that if I weren’t going with her, she just might stay out with her friends for the evening, and that perhaps I could have dinner with Harry. So, you see how everything conspire to make this new step in my life possible? This is how I know I am not doing anything wrong.
“I had to wonder what exactly it was that she was intending, you know. It seemed like she was almost encouraging something between him and me.
“Anyway, up at the canyon, Harry never assume that I would be worried about walking on the suspension bridge. Now, supp
ose—just suppose—that when the children was young, Boss had brought us up here and taken us to a place like this. You supposing? Well, tell me if you can’t imagine him saying, ‘Let the children walk on it if they want. You stay here with me.’ And you know, I would have stayed. And today I am aware of what I would have missed. The suspension ladder was as wide as three people standing shoulder to shoulder. Children was racing back and forth over it, making it bounce up and down, up and down. I went on it, but I hold on tight-tight with both hands, and I walk slow for so. Harry asked if I was all right, but he never make me feel like I wasn’t capable or as if I was doing anything special. It had a group of women from India walking across the bridge. Maybe they were from Pakistan. Or maybe they were from Sri Lanka. I can’t tell these things. They were much older than I. One of them might even have been my mother’s age, if she were still alive today. Well, these ladies were wearing saris, not concerned one little bit about tripping on that swinging bridge, and not one of them was holding the railing. I take one hand off the railing, straighten myself, and walked along more briskly. Piyari, I tell you, I had never experienced anything like that before. In the middle of the swinging bridge, swinging from side to side, you know, I stop to look down. Below, far, far, far below, on the bottom of the canyon, it had a river and the water in that river was green, inky green, and it was flowing fast, fast, fast, over big boulders that was white like the cow’s first milk. It had people down on the bottom; they look like ants, they were that far down, and they were hopping brave and stupid for so, from boulder to boulder. Harry ask if I liked what I was seeing, and I could only say, ‘Is beautiful, is beautiful,’ and I realize then that I didn’t know how to describe what I was seeing or how I was feeling.”
Madam suddenly stopped talking. She remained far away in thought, as if unaware of Piyari. Madam regularly had her hair set and combed, her nails shaped and painted. One would have thought that, it being the festive season and all, Madam would have had herself done up. But it had been over a month now since she had gone to the beauty salon. She distractedly picked remaining bits of color off her nails, amassing a collection of red enamel flakes on the kitchen table.
Assuming that today’s reminiscing had come to an end, and mindful that dinner had yet to be prepared, Piyari stood up.
Madam rapped the table again with her knuckles, causing the nail-polish flakes to dance about.
“Where are you going? I’m not finished. I want you to hear me out, Piyari. I am not just running my mouth idle-idle, you know. I have to tell somebody, and you are the only person I can trust, not so?” Madam did not wait for an answer but added immediately, “So sit back down.”
Piyari sat down instantly, feeling unusually trustworthy and at the same time fearful.
“So, that night we—Mr. Harry and I—didn’t eat dinner together. He say he had to get back to his house early. I didn’t want to ask him why. I get the impression he didn’t want anything—you know what I mean—I mean that he didn’t want any kind of freshness with me; he only want to show me the place, and to help out taking me here and there to buy this and that, so I was inclined to wonder if it had a woman in his life who was waiting somewhere for him. When I reach back at Cassie’s house, I feel real lonely and I feel sad for so. That same evening I ring Guanagaspar. You remember? I ask you to speak with Boss. You tell me he was out, but you didn’t know where he went. So I wait a good hour before I ring again. It would have been about midnight by then in Marion. And he answer the telephone. I could hear he was drinking. He didn’t ask how I was, but he ask where his blue jacket was, that he had wanted to wear it and couldn’t find it. Piyari, I tell you, girl, that was the first time in my life—in all my life, first time—I feel a hatred so strong. I didn’t get vex, you know. I just feel this thing—like I was a deep-water well, and like nasty thick black-water was rising up in me. But I remain calm on the outside. I tell him the jacket at the dry cleaner’s. I tell him where to find the receipt for it. I could hear him. He start fuming, breathing heavily, asking me why I didn’t pick up the jacket before I went up to Canada. Well, the black water that had been boiling and rising up inside of me drop back down fast-fast in the well, and I start to get frightened. You know how Boss can be when his temper set loose. I start to tremble, and my body get weak. The phone could have fall out my hand. Out of the blue, I realize he was far enough away that he could huff and puff all he want but he couldn’t lay a hand on me. My mind went on Harry—Mr. Harry. I was thinking about him putting the blanket-thing around my shoulder, and I start to smile. Boss didn’t know how foolish he was sounding; he was telling me to ring the dry cleaner’s—yes, telling me to ring them up from Canada—and tell them to deliver the jacket to his office.
“Well, shortening up the story, it turn out that Mr. Harry had no woman waiting anywhere for him. I went a good few times to his house. It has a verandah. It has a verandah running in front of his house, and all around the ledge of the verandah, he place milk cans—milk cans he had painted red. The cans had geraniums, and anthuriums, and the brown-leaf variety of bread-and-cheese in them, just like you see in front of houses in the countryside here. You must have like those in front of your house, not so?
“And I went to his work sites with him. In one place he had build a pond. I see it from the time it was nothing more than a hole in the ground. By the time I leave up there, it had fish in it, water lilies with buds on them, and insects, ones just like our battimamselles, flying and buzzing around. I never before realize what a nice noise insects make. The whole thing look natural-natural, as if it had existed forever. He strong and he has muscles for so, all that gardening work, you see, but he is not a gardener like Manilal, you understand. He is what they call up there a landscape designer. It means he has people working for him. He tells them what he wants, and they do the heavy work. Still, he does a lot himself. Boss would have caught heart attack and died doing even ten minutes of that kind of work—digging up the ground, dragging fertilizer, spreading manure, training hedges, planting big-big trees, pulling and pushing boulders here and there. When I went to the work site with him, while he did his business, I clipped old buds and old flowers from the rose trees—he puts rose trees in every garden he designs—and I weeded some beds. Yes, don’t look at me so—I can weed and plant and water if I want to.
“We would go to the grocery together, and he and I would decide—together—what we want to eat for dinner. Then he might go in his office or go and work in the garden, and I would cook. Or he might stay right in the kitchen and cut up the onions for me, or mash garlic or peel potatoes and carrots. The first time I cook in his kitchen, he come and stand up behind me while I was stirring a pot of beef stew. I could feel his body close to mine. I turn around, and I put my hand on his chest to push him back—gentle, not aggressive—only so I could go to the refrigerator. He stay right there and stir my pot for me.”
Piyari’s face began to burn. Madam was giving too much information again, putting her in a dangerous position. She contemplated busying her mind elsewhere. But out of concern for Madam’s welfare and fearful of the trouble she seemed to be courting, Piyari decided to pay close attention to all she was being told.
“The first night we eat together, he set the table. We eat together at his house many other times, and he always set the table. And he cleared it afterward, and he washed the dishes while I dried, and never once he made a comment about any of this. It was like it was natural for him. But you know he was an only child, and it was only him and his mother. So I suppose he used to help her, natural so. Well, standing up there, next to each other in the kitchen, he talk about any and everything, about the days when we were children. He could remember—better than me—how I was always trying to teach him to dance. He remember us playing teatime on my mother’s front stairs. He remember how upset his mother would get when he and I start making noise. More than once, standing up there in the kitchen, he wanted to know if life had turned out the way I expzected it would. He
ask if I was happy. When I tell him yes, he wasn’t satisfied, he ask again in a different way, as if he knew better, or as if he wanted me to say something I wasn’t saying. He wanted to know what different I would do if I had a second chance. He force me to think. He make me speak. And it was in opening my mouth and speaking that I realize I did not live my life the way I would have liked. I ask if his life was turning out as he had hoped. He look straight at me and said, ‘At this moment, I am the happiest I have ever been.’
