by Anne Simpson
So it was like leaving a part of yourself behind – when you went away.
I guess so.
You’ll have to go back there.
No, not for a long time. She drew the scarf more tightly around her shoulders. Have you ever left part of yourself behind?
I’ve never really thought about it.
A couple passed them. The woman’s back was humped over with osteoporosis, and she walked slowly with the help of a cane. The man kept pace with her, nodding at something she was saying.
Are you staying here for a while? asked Jasmine.
A few weeks, maybe more – it’s up to my mother. We’re visiting my uncle.
What’s she like? Your mother.
Oh, she’s strong. Strong-willed.
It’s good to be like that.
My mother could get through anything. I couldn’t, but she could.
The river was real and unreal at the same time, he thought. The water was flecked with silver as it flowed to the brink, tumbling into the gorge below. Jasmine had propped her elbows on the railing, and he could feel the fine hairs of her arm against his skin.
La Cascada, she said. That’s what it is in Spanish.
You speak Spanish? Damian asked.
No, someone told me that. I just know one or two things. I know the word cariño. It means dear.
Cariño.
Except that you’d have to say cariña, she said. I mean, if you were saying it to me.
He leaned over. They were so close he could feel her breath. He could see the green of her eyes. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t, even though she expected him to. Even though he wanted to. She didn’t kiss him, either, but she stayed where she was, close to him, watching with those eyes of hers, green or hazel, or a colour between green and hazel. She didn’t move away.
INGRID HAD TRIED TO SLEEP. Then she dozed off and had a nightmare and woke, gasping. She looked at the clock on the bedside table, which informed her, in sharp red numerals, that it was twelve-thirty. Getting up, she took an old New Yorker magazine from the table and went down the hall to the bathroom, thinking that this was what she’d be like when she was old. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d sit on the toilet long after she needed to, flipping through a New Yorker to look at the cartoons. A June issue. Eleven years old. Lisa had been alive eleven years ago in June. Enough. She rolled up the magazine and put it under her arm, flushed the toilet, and went downstairs.
It had been a nightmare about Greg.
She opened the screened door quietly and stepped outside, padding in bare feet around the porch, but, of course, Damian had not yet come home, had not parked the car in the driveway. She returned to the front of the house and sat down heavily in a chair. It was a curse not to be able to sleep. Out of the indigo shadows came the headlights of one car, another, flashing on the lawn as they drove along River Road.
When Greg told her he was going to leave, they’d been in the kitchen in the house in Halifax. They were doing dishes; or he was doing dishes and she had the red-and-white-checkered tea towel in her hand, ready to do the drying. He’d go to Vancouver; his friend Lance had asked him to work at his new plastic surgery clinic. Vancouver was the other side of the continent – the other side of the planet, she heard herself saying. Then she must have asked what would happen to the kids, because he told her he’d support the kids; he’d support Ingrid. But she’d never worried about money, and it wasn’t something she worried about now. There were larger, more terrible things in the world, like the way the kitchen walls had fallen away. A gale-force wind was blowing through.
They’d be civilized about it, he told her.
Civilized, she thought.
She asked him whether there was anyone else.
No, there was no one.
If there’d been someone else it would have been easier, in a way, she imagined.
He put things in the drying rack, making a precise tower of bowls, saucepans, and pot lids. She worked more slowly than he did; she dried things methodically and put them away. This was a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma, she thought. As the game went, Prisoner A and Prisoner B had the option of remaining silent after arrest and receiving a six-month jail term. But there were options. Prisoner A could escape punishment by betraying Prisoner B, who would then serve a ten-year jail sentence. Or it could be reversed: Prisoner B could betray Prisoner A and go free. But if they both betrayed each other, neither would be off the hook. They would each serve a five-year term.
Silence, betrayal.
Greg would escape the marriage. She’d be the one left behind, while he went scot-free.
She was calm, but she was also furious. Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she sink down to the floor, banging at the tiles with the flat of her palms? No, she stood staring at the checkers in the tea towel, after putting the salad bowl in the cupboard. Red, white. Red, white. It was a pattern.
If he hadn’t suggested this, she knew she would have done it herself. He’d just beaten her to it.
It was time, he said, and they both knew it. They’d spent their marriage being angry with each other.
She turned off the radio, midway through a terse warning of snow squalls during the night. He was right. She could start a new life and so could he. It made sense to her, she answered, given that she was the one at home, while he worked constantly. But she hadn’t absorbed the fact that he really meant to go to the opposite end of the country.
It’s no one’s fault, he said.
But they were both at fault, she thought. Prisoner A, Prisoner B.
La vita nuova, she said.
What?
La vita nuova. The new life.
That’s Dante, he said.
But she hadn’t been thinking of Dante. She thought of Dante years later, because Greg had mentioned it that night in the kitchen, and it was only then that she read about Dante and Beatrice. When she’d read all the poems Dante had written about Beatrice, she got angrier than she’d ever been. What did Dante know? He didn’t know Beatrice, that was for damn sure.
She thwacked the rolled magazine on her arm, killing a mosquito. What she hadn’t counted on was Damian, and how upset he’d been. Running out into the snow after his father. Damian, who loved people so intensely it was dangerous. She unrolled the magazine and looked at the cover. She could make out a picture of people on a beach lined up as neatly as bowling pins, and a couple of sharks getting ready to knock them over with a beach ball. That very night, Damian had said he was going out with someone, and then he’d gone and had a shower. When he came downstairs he was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, and his good looks startled her.
You look nice, she told him. The keys are right there on the table. Maybe you could put some gas in the car.
Sure. Thanks a lot.
Catch you later, said Roger, who was sitting at the table.
She watched Damian through the window. He still hadn’t taken the kayak off the roof of the car. He swung open the door. He looked happy – that’s what it was. Handsome as a bridegroom.
Behold, she murmured. He cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
Damian drove away.
Thinking of this, she got up, went inside, and turned on the light in the kitchen. Ah, she thought with a pang – 1:42 a.m. He wasn’t home yet. He’d come home, she thought. Of course he would. He’d come home before too long. He was responsible in his own way.
She remembered Damian getting in the car with Lisa, just before they drove to the cottage for the weekend. Ingrid bent down to speak to him, telling him to drive safely, which she always did. And Lisa had leaned over so she could see her mother.
Bye, Mum, she said. Hazel eyes, wide smile. Dark blonde hair caught back in a ponytail.
I love you both, said Ingrid.
She’d thumped lightly on the roof before they backed out of the driveway. But if she had gone to the cottage with them. If she hadn’t had a Saturday lunch date with Kristie, who’d just been d
iagnosed with multiple sclerosis. If she’d been there, she might have been able to stop Lisa from driving Damian’s ATV onto the beach. And if she hadn’t stopped her, she would have chased her. She might have been able to save her.
It was no one’s fault.
It was no one’s fault, but if only –
She went to the cupboard where Roger kept his hard liquor. She opened it, took out the gin, and put it on the table. She sat down and stared at the blue liquor – Bombay Sapphire – the blue of swimming pools under an August sky. What had Roger told her? This gin was the world’s best, flavoured with almond, angelica, cassia, coriander, cubeb – how did she remember all these things?
It was no one’s fault that Damian was with a girl right now.
She put the beautiful bottle of gin, with its ornately framed picture of Queen Victoria, back in the liquor cabinet.
For God’s sake, she said, latching the cabinet.
She was not going to do anything so stupid. She was not going to be jealous of her own son’s happiness. No. Instead, she opened the fridge and took out the milk. She’d have hot milk with marshmallows on top, that’s what she’d do.
But Greg came back into it as she stirred the milk on the stove.
He stood beside her, explaining why the casket should be open during the visitation. Ingrid didn’t want an open casket, but Greg did. They’d been in the kitchen of the house in Halifax, talking about an open versus a closed casket. They could have been discussing the details of Lisa’s wedding, but they weren’t.
Are you doing all right? asked Greg. Talking about this stuff?
She was stirring the milk, but she saw him, plain as day.
I’m all right. No, I’m not.
His face was older, but the same, except for more wrinkles around his eyes. He had a little less hair, especially where it had receded around his temples. It was flecked with white, as if a little snow had fallen on it and he hadn’t shaken it off. The only thing that was different was that he had a new habit of putting his fingers up to his temples when he was trying to concentrate.
How familiar, yet how strange it all was, that he should be back in the house they’d bought as a young couple. They went into the living room and sat on the couch to gather themselves, to make funeral arrangements. The couch, she couldn’t help thinking, had been one over which they’d deliberated. Should it contain a pullout bed, or shouldn’t it? They’d settled on a subdued but practical oyster-coloured cotton duck fabric, with olive-green piping around the cushions. Twenty years later, they sat on it without caring about the coffee stain on the arm, the frayed hem of its oyster-coloured skirt. The couch was floating around in the ocean and they were adrift on it.
She looked down at her hands, dazedly, fingering her thumbs as if she were just learning she had hands.
Oh, Greg.
He put his arm around her, the way a brother might have done.
I know, he said.
But then he was up from the couch and out of the living room. He’d gone back to the kitchen to get the forms from the funeral home. She heard him moving around, lifting keys, putting something down on the counter. Silence. Then she heard the sound of a pig being slaughtered. No, not a pig. She ran to her ex-husband, sobbing by the back door.
Stop. Greg, stop. She held him as he sobbed crazily.
She was so young, he cried, his face contorted. God. I didn’t see her enough – a couple of times a year wasn’t enough. I thought there was all the time in the world, you know? And now she’s gone, just like that. He snapped his fingers.
You’ll get me started again.
I know. He moved away from her, clumsily, and wiped his face on his arm the way a child would do. Here – what was I doing? I was getting the forms.
He wiped his face again.
Why don’t I make tea? he said. Would you like tea? The kettle’s warm – it won’t take long.
All right. I guess so.
She washed out the teapot and got out the box of tea with a picture of a tiger lying on the side. He made the tea, his hands shaking. It didn’t really matter if she had tea or yak milk. She’d have been happy with a glass of cold water, but he wanted to make tea.
We’ll have an open casket, she said. If that’s what you want.
She put a cluster of small marshmallows on top of the frothy milk in her mug – green, pink, yellow – though she would have preferred a large white one. She sat at the kitchen table, dunking the marshmallows with her index finger, but they were cheerfully unsinkable. Green – who was Damian with? Pink – where on earth could he be? Yellow – had he been in a car crash, perhaps?
Greg was sitting across from her. She knew he was thinking of Damian.
You want to know how he’s been, said Ingrid. How he’s weathering it.
Greg waited.
You know how he used to draw all the time? You couldn’t get him to stop. But now – nothing. He used to be passionate about it. Once he wanted to draw my hands: not both hands at the same time, which would have been easier. No, he wanted the left hand on one sheet of paper, the right hand on the other. Very flattering. The hands of a giantess.
Anyway, she said. The last thing he drew – that I know of – the last thing was Lisa, sitting on a deck chair at the cottage. It must have been the day they arrived there.
She drank her warm milk.
It’s 3:40 and he’s not home yet. Why do I worry, you ask? He’s a man now, after all. I should go back to bed and forget about it.
She got up and took the mug to the sink. She put some water in the saucepan in which she’d heated the milk.
There are things I can’t solve for Damian, she said. And I can’t release him – I can’t release him from guilt.
But by the time she’d turned around, Greg had disappeared.
Ingrid wandered from the kitchen into the living room, as if pacing would help her. She turned on the light. The room was elegant – rigidly elegant – without a breath of air moving in it. Under the pressing burden of heat, the furniture appeared heavier and darker. Ingrid sat down in her father’s desk chair and fingered the frames of the photographs piled up there. Once they’d hung in the upstairs hall.
Here was the one of her mother and father, newly married, posing for the photographer. Her father’s head was inclined toward her mother’s as if she’d been telling him something and he’d been listening intently. An attractive couple, people said. Her father, tall and slim as a beanpole, was, nevertheless, handsome in his suit, and her mother, who was nearly the same height, seemed petite beside him. Her dress had a train that had been artfully arranged on the grass. Her mother’s arm tucked into her father’s. And behind them, part of the facade of an Anglican church was showing, and in the background, far off, the branches of a great elm that must have been cut down since then.
She put the photo to one side, careful not to scratch the walnut of the desk. And here was the hinged photo of Roger and Ingrid together. Roger had been a boy of about seven or eight, yet they’d already made him into a young man: he wore a crisply ironed white shirt, a jacket, and a tie. His hair, youthfully blond, was neatly parted and combed, and his wide smile reminded her of Damian. He was on the left of the hinged photograph and Ingrid was on the right. She was younger, chubbier, and full of glee. She had a white satin ribbon in her wispy hair. She’d been named for Ingrid Bergman, whom her mother adored, but it didn’t seem to be the right name for such an exuberantly happy creature. Could she really have been this child?
A photo of Roger standing beside his bicycle, looking roguish, and another of him in grey flannels and a blazer with a crest, taken the first year he’d been sent to Ridley College. He’d been well brought up, Ingrid thought, just as she had been. Silver spoons in their mouths. There’d been no need for him to do stunts for a living, as her father had said to him, in an aggrieved tone, without raising his voice. He could have gone on to Harvard or Cornell. If he’d applied himself.
Roger with Lesley, the lovely Les
ley with her arched brows. How their mother had wanted him to marry Lesley! She could hear her mother saying how bright Lesley was, and what a fine tax lawyer she would be. But Roger had waited too long and Lesley had married someone named Richard from Montreal. Anyway, Roger had dropped out of graduate school by that time. He’d been on scholarships, studying physics at the University of Toronto, something Ingrid would never have dreamt of doing.
There was no trace of Marnie among the photographs. Of course not. These were her parents’ photographs. Marnie was bold and strong as a thoroughbred horse, and she would have made Lesley look wan. Ingrid had admired this about Marnie. She was the kind of person who’d worn black for her wedding, while Roger had worn a green jacket and joke bow tie that blinked on and off.
She paused. Another photo in an oval frame: Ingrid and Greg on their wedding day.
Greg had come back to the house with Ingrid after the funeral. She’d been planning on driving him to the hotel, but they talked quietly in the living room, and then, exhausted, they’d fallen asleep on the couch. In the middle of the night she turned sleepily, her body nestled close to his. He shifted, half waking, and put his arm around her. She pulled him closer. He was awake now, and his mouth found hers; they kissed each other hungrily, his hand sliding along her thigh, until she broke away from him. Her foot caught in one of the cushions as she got off the couch and stumbled, yelping as she fell.
Don’t come near me. She was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up.
I’m not –
You shouldn’t be here now. You don’t have a right to be here. She got up, leaning against the armrest of the couch so she could rub her foot.
