Would I Lie
to You?
Would I Lie
to You?
a novel by
Mary Lou Dickinson
INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.
TORONTO, CANADA
Copyright © 2014 Mary Lou Dickinson
Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canada Book Fund.
Would I Lie to You? is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Val Fullard
eBook development: WildElement.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dickinson, Mary Lou, 1937–, author
Would I lie to you? : a novel / by Mary Lou Dickinson.
ISBN 978-1-77133-164-7 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS8607.I346W69 2014 C813’.6 C2014-905025-9
FSC PLACEMENT
Printed and bound in Canada
Inanna Publications and Education Inc.
210 Founders College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765
Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca
For A. R. and a lifetime of friendship
ALSO BY MARY LOU DICKINSON
Ile D’Or
One Day It Happens
Courage is what it takes and takes the more of Because the deeper fear is so eternal.
— Robert Frost
1.
THE SOUND OF VOICES came through the wall beside her, but Sue could not make out what they were saying. She picked up a magazine from a small table, glanced through it and set it down again. The voices grew louder and she could hear people moving around. A woman came out into the waiting room and pulled a tan jacket off a hanger. Sue watched her push her arms into the sleeves as if she were punching holes in them and, sighing, head quickly to the stairs down to the main floor.
Had the woman made her appointment because she imagined it could change her life in some way? Sue wondered. Her own life was now determined by her husband’s illness and that left her in ongoing fear that any breath might be his last. Who would not want to change that? She had seen the psychic’s name in Toronto Life’s recent list of bests that had gone on for pages. Best chefs, paint stores, physiotherapists, yoga teachers, hardware stores, and the best bakeries. Then had come the psychics. Just one was listed. Hans Jonker: “A make you feel good psychic.”
The woman who had just left had not looked as if she felt good. Sue wondered if she should leave before she was called into the inner sanctum. Still, she was curious. It seemed unlikely that she would see a crystal ball or tarot cards. But beyond images of reading palms or tea leaves, she could not picture how a psychic might work.
A man with a tawny beard and long hair peered around the door frame of the office. His eyes perused her speculatively. About her age, mid-fifties, and tall, his rugged hands looked as if he worked in the fields or with tools or engines.
“Hello,” he said. “You here to see me?”
Why am I doing this? Sue wondered. She used to go to art galleries to find solace. Or walk on wooded paths in ravines. Instead, she had told the woman who returned her call that she wanted an appointment as soon as possible. Nothing else could make her feel good. Just as nothing else could take away the fear of losing Jerry. She had left only her first name on the answering machine. Not Sue Reid. Or Mrs. Reid. She was just plain “Sue” for this appointment.
“He’s very busy,” the woman had said.
“I suppose he would be.” Anyone who on the previous Saturday had been listed as the best of anything would have a rush of phone calls on Monday. But what did that mean? That he was popular, maybe. And if not, he soon would be.
“The first available appointment is in two months,” the woman had said.
“That’s far too long.” Sue was irritated.
“I could call if there’s a cancellation.”
“All right.”
Sue had not expected to hear at all. She had thought about his name. Hans Jonker. It might well have been Joker. At least she had known it was a Dutch name. She had visualized him, on skates, with his finger in a dike. She had pictures of people from their voices on answering machines and they inevitably turned out to be older or younger, to have a different colour skin, to be shorter or taller, almost nothing she imagined turned out to be so. Although once in awhile, there was some uncanny resemblance to her fantasies.
“I assume so,” she said now. “But if you’re the psychic, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?”
She waited for his reply without any of her initial enthusiasm. Of course, she hoped he would tell her that Jerry would suddenly regain his health, proving all the doctors wrong. She wanted to have this man put his finger in that dike that was being overwhelmed the more ill Jerry became. The more he was in pain. But she knew no one could say anything that would change that. It would not be true. At the very least, she wanted to know what to expect.
“Well, that would be me,” Hans Jonker smiled. “I ought to know.” He gestured for her to follow him and began to move back into his office with an exuberant swagger.
Sue sat still and watched him, as if frozen to the chair. She should not be here. It was too bizarre.
“Come in,” he said more gently.
As she stood up, Sue felt dizzy. Putting one foot in front of the other deliberately, she followed him slowly into his office. Gesturing to a chair, he sat down in an armchair on the other side of a small table. The room was not at all as she had pictured it, full of paraphernalia for his work. Instead, there was no hint of what happened here. It was more like a studio she might have created for herself. A place where she could paint and ponder.
Sue glanced out the large bay window where she could see the leaves of a tall maple, then at a Chagall painting that hung on the wall behind his desk. It was titled Peasant Life. The scene was of a man in a red cap with a yellow horse’s head beside him and in the background was a red house with two tiny figures dancing in the vibrant sky around a horse-drawn carriage. She knew it from an exhibition of Chagall’s works she had found when travelling one spring in Europe near the Riviera. Why does the idiot have to have yellow chickens on rooftops? she had wondered at the time. Even so, it had been then that she had begun to observe art more keenly and to think of putting brush and paint to a canvas of her own. Her glance moved to another wall where there was a large photograph of a yellow canoe in what looked like Algonquin Park, a canoe similar to the one she and Jerry had taken on numerous trips.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she said finally, sitting down in the easy chair across from him. “I know I don’t want to hear bad news. There’s enough of that already.”
“First of all, let me introduce myself. I’m Hans Jonker. Call me Hans. And you must be Sue.”
“Yes.” She did not intend to give him her last name and he did not seem to want it. She was Sue Walters before she married Jerry. Odd to have cha
nged her name so late in life, especially with her feeling that it was important to retain one’s identity in a marriage. And yet, she supposed at that time, she had actually wanted to lose her earlier one and what went with it. All those things she was never supposed to talk about that she had managed to keep quiet. She watched Jonker press the button to start a tape recorder on the table between them.
“I’ll give the tape to you at the end,” he said. “No one remembers everything, so you can refer to it later if you want. I don’t look for bad news. If there’s something you can do to change things, I’ll tell you. If the brakes on your car are going to fail when you leave, I’ll let you know so you can get them fixed. But I’m not a forecaster of gloom and doom.”
She relaxed her grip on the arms of her chair.
“There’s something about your marriage,” he said. “Your husband isn’t well. You take care of him, but you have to take care of yourself, too.”
Her hands shaking ever so slightly and her throat dry, Sue waited for what he would say next. How she missed Jerry’s good humour these days. In spite of all the medication, he was more frequently in pain and often ignored even his beloved music. Only a few short weeks ago, he would have jumped up, calling out, “C’mon, gal. Let’s show the world how to dance,” and then twirled her around the living room. Soon, she would have been laughing with him as he danced in his slippers and an old dressing gown, or a pair of blue jeans and socks with holes in the heels. Irrepressible. That was Jerry. Or, it used to be.
“You’ll get through it,” Hans said. “You have whatever it will take.”
“And then what? Will I manage that?”
“Yes, it will be a difficult time, but you’ll find the light at the end of it. The painting you’re about to start will help.”
How could he know that colour permeated her life like a current in a stream? She watched him with a new appreciation, but she could tell his thoughts were already elsewhere. The lines around his eyes were sharper, as if he were deep in concentration. His lips were pursed so that for a moment they almost disappeared.
“There’s something quite unusual,” he said. “Quite unusual. I get something about a son you don’t know about. Or someone who is like a son.”
Sue shook her head. “No,” she said, already dismissing his words.
“Yes,” he said. “There is such a person. He’s there and he’ll appear soon.”
“No.”
“Just listen to me, Sue. Don’t fight it. There’s no point in fighting what I tell you. It’s what I’m getting so clearly that there’s no mistaking it. There are some things you won’t believe, but time will prove them to be so.”
“Will my husband die?” she asked.
“I think you know the answer.”
“Well, that’s what I came to find out.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “You came to find out something you didn’t already know.”
“And what is that?” she asked, showing more of the disdain she felt than she intended.
“I’ve just told you.”
“Oh, that.” She rolled her eyes.
“It’s important.” He looked at her so intently she wanted to turn away. “And you put your husband on a pedestal. He’s a decent enough man, but he’s also only human. It isn’t going to help you to take care of things if you don’t accept that he isn’t perfect.”
Oh yeah, well, he yells sometimes, Sue thought. Even picks his nose when no one is looking. But what the hell! So do I. She did not say anything out loud, but she imagined Hans Jonker could tell she was skeptical.
“You’re going to take a trip later,” he went on. “In the next year or two. Across a body of water.”
Sue sighed. Where? She was not planning anything. Not with Jerry as ill as he was. The farthest she had gone for months was into the country for an afternoon, to sit by some lake or river. To eat a sandwich as she listened to the current. To draw a little sketch she might paint later. To mull things over. Would Jerry survive? And as it became apparent that he would not, how would she?
“There’s something about music,” he said. “It plays a big role in your life. Don’t let it stop.”
“It plays a big role in my husband’s life,” she said. “And sometimes he can’t hear it anymore.” She could scarcely bear the thought of that, more apparent with each passing day. It was as if Jerry were disappearing into some inner world where he heard only his own music.
“It’s important to you, too. Don’t give it up.”
If this were supposed to make her feel good, Sue could not see how. She stood up.
“I think you still have some questions,” he said. “It’s fine to ask them.”
“I don’t remember any.” Gripped by an overwhelming desire to get out of there as fast as possible, she handed him the envelope she had prepared for this moment. The woman on the telephone had not told her how to make payment, so she had put cash inside it. Seventy dollars had seemed preposterous. She had imagined a reading of tea leaves or a palm reading for ten or fifteen dollars. But then, she had found his name under the “Bests” list. And it had been the only name there. She’d had no idea of what would transpire here except it had never occurred to her that he would speak with such authority. As if he knew things about her life he could not possibly know. Or that could not possibly be true.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’re going to be all right. That’s what I know about you. It’s hard for you to see that now, but you will be.” He opened the recorder. “Don’t forget this. You might find it useful.”
She took the tape and thrust it into the zippered pouch on the side of her bag. He had not actually told her anything that surprised her except the bit about a son, which was so far-fetched it had shaken any faith she might have had in him. The fact that Hans knew her husband was ill and that she was starting a new painting did not dawn on her as surprising in that moment And, if Jerry had a son, he would have told her long ago.
As she headed toward the door, her eye caught the Chagall painting again, the bright colours and curving lines of his depiction of Jewish village life. Her brush would also make sweeping strokes across a canvas one day. This visit had been meant to make her feel better, she thought, but aside from the sentiment evoked by this painting she was sure she had just wasted seventy dollars.
“Take care,” the psychic said as she hurried out.
*
Sue was careful not to disturb Jerry, who lay dozing beside her, as she rolled to the side of the bed and touched her feet down onto the floor. The room was warmer than either of them would have liked before Jerry became ill. She reached for her light silk robe and tied it loosely around her waist. As she tiptoed down the stairs, she felt uncomfortable that she was hiding things from Jerry. They often had complimented themselves on how open they were, that they did not hide anything. She had known it was not true. There was an early part of her life she had never shared with anyone, but insofar as their lives together were concerned, there had been no desire to have secrets. No sense that what she left unsaid from a time so long ago could jeopardize their marriage. While she still found this acceptable, it struck her that she would not were it to apply to anyone else, a thought that she dismissed almost as soon as it occurred to her.
The newspaper was lying on the porch on the sisal mat in front of the door and she took it into the kitchen where she put on a pot of coffee. While the coffee percolated and the aroma began to drift through the room, she glanced at an article on an attack ad the Tories had released. It seemed they would do anything to win the election, but Sue thought this ad would surely backfire. It surprised her that they would stoop to such tactics.
She looked up when Jerry came into the kitchen in his flannel dressing gown. He had not shaved yet and his whiskers were like short stalks in a field, prickly.
“Coffee smells good,” he said, leaning
on the counter.
“Any minute,” she said. Until recently, she would have mentioned the political events on the landscape, but Jerry had gradually become disinterested. He who could not talk enough about the last American presidency. She watched him straighten up and go to the window to look out at the yard. The leaves on the birch tree were beginning to fall and she knew he longed to be out raking them into piles. Last year, he had rolled in them. A tall man with greying hair and creases in his forehead, his sweater with holes at the elbows and his jeans and shoes covered in mud. Laughing. He was in his late fifties then, and still so much like a boy.
“It reminds me of growing up in Stratford,” he had said. “Kicking the leaves on the way home from school and along the railroad track beside the Avondale Cemetery.”
When Sue met Jerry at a party for a mutual friend who had decided to run for City Council, they were both in their mid-forties. After long days of teaching for her and practising law for Jerry, they had worked evenings in Martin Drew’s campaign office that fall. Later, a crowd would often go for a beer or coffee. A few months later, Jerry had asked her to marry him. To her own surprise, having long ago given up on the idea of marriage, she had hesitated only briefly before saying yes.
Some years earlier, she had lived for a while with a man who had insisted she wanted her own way all the time. It had baffled her, but no matter what she said or did, he found a way of twisting her words beyond her recognition. Then said she was the rigid one. Once, he told her she was always bumping into people and falling down, something so untrue that it had defied reason. She had been suddenly aware then why his wife had left him, leaving a house bare of furniture with only a note pinned to the mirror in the bathroom. Sue had been about to turf him when he left of his own accord. Even though she had been on edge all the time they had been together, she was still surprised at how relieved she had felt after he was gone. She could be herself again and knew she would never pretend or cater to a man’s whims again. When her relationship with Jerry developed gradually over a course of months from friendship to romance, it had soon been clear he had not wanted her to be anyone but herself.
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