“And what did she say?”
“She asked me if I felt better now that I’d talked about it. And I said yes. And then she said something that I have never forgotten. She said, ‘You’re going to feel good about all this for a while and then later, when I’m gone and you’re alone again and the excitement of talking about it has worn off, you’re going to go back to feeling the way you did before. And that’s normal. Just remember that that’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with you.’ Then she told me about going out on a date with a Hollywood movie star when she was just nineteen.”
“Who was it?”
“I think it was Errol Flynn. She claimed to not know this from personal experience, but someone had told her his dink was so big he had to strap it to his leg. It made me laugh. A funny story to hear from your mother. But I don’t know. You could never be sure with her. She told me she wrote a short story for the New Yorker once, too. But I never saw it. Maybe she did. But I doubt it.”
“The New Yorker? That’s a pretty tall order.”
“It certainly is.”
“And was she right?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About how you were going to feel later.”
“She was. After she left, I kept looking at the clock. An hour later, I was still fine, happy even. Two hours later, same thing. But then later, after dinner, I was watching television with my grandfather, and I could feel things starting to darken again. It was as if some kind of poison was slowly creeping into my body, like some awful leak, and the whole good feeling I’d had with my mother just slipped away. I couldn’t concentrate on the TV show, it was like the screen was a sort of anchor that allowed my thoughts to go in some very gloomy directions. I was afraid it would show on my face or that my grandfather would hear it in my responses. He liked to talk during television shows, but that night it was driving me crazy, as though I had something important to figure out and he was interrupting me from it with his chatter.
“So I went to bed. But here’s something odd. Sometime near morning, it was just getting light, I found myself on the floor. I was soaked in sweat, I was menstruating, I thought I was dying. Dying of a broken heart. But then I thought about Terry Blanchard, about that night he came tumbling into my bed, and I didn’t feel anything. And then, like sticking your hand in a basin of hot water to test it, I thought about him again. Nothing. I mean, absolutely nothing. Gone. I thought, I’m free of him! This is how you do it, this is how you recover from love. And little by little, I started to notice things in the world—a snowbank, a name written on the washroom wall—without all of it leading back to him.
“It must have been the next summer—I was seventeen—when a beat-up white car pulled into the driveway and a man with small ears and an acne-scarred complexion shambled up to the house. He was lost, he said. Was there an asbestos factory near here? He was late for a pickup. Could he use the phone? It was Bruce Sanders. Eight months later, I married him.”
“Eight months?”
“The details don’t matter. Not now, not at this stage. But he was a great lover. A mind reader. You’re surprised?”
“Why, yes. Yes, I am.” A childhood memory of Bruce slouching through our living room at a Christmas party turned over in my memory like a playing card.
“So was I,” she said, her eyebrows poised on a deadpan face. In that moment, in that light, she looked Asian. “Anyway,” Sally said, “I’m through with that stuff. I have been for a while. It all seems just so messy.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer and looked into my glass. A car honked three times eighteen floors down. I heard a jet passing over. “I didn’t know we were so close to the airport,” I said.
Picking up on my discomfort, and probably sorry she’d thrown that in, Sally went on. “Bruce Sanders was certainly nothing to look at, on the surface anyway. He wore a kind of military brush cut that stuck up like a raccoon’s pelt. But he had a wiry little body with deep tan lines from working outside. He was very strong, deceptively so. There was a lot of dangerous leverage in those arms. I saw him lay his forearm across the throat of some local lacrosse hero one night and lift him up the wall, right off the ground.
“There was something about Bruce I admired, some old-fashioned, tight-lipped masculinity. They are a rare thing these days, real men. Too many sissies eager to get on the right side of women.” Pause. “What women like about men is that they’re not women. And they don’t think like women.”
“We’re simple creatures,” I said, and we both laughed. We were having a preposterous time. I caught myself thinking, Should we be doing this? Or should we be doing something else? We are talking about what we’re talking about because that’s what she wants to talk about. But is this really going to happen? Now that we’re here? Is she waiting for me to say stop, or am I waiting for her? Is this going to happen because we’re both waiting for the other to say something? And if I were to say something, what would it be? What would I mean? If I were in her place, what would I want?
“Sally . . .” I began, but her hand fluttered me to silence. I had not considered this part, at least not the way it now presented itself.
She went on: “That said, Bruce was not very socially able. Sulked in public gatherings. I think he felt out of his intellectual league if the conversation ever steered toward movies or even the Beatles. For some reason, he found them especially infuriating.”
“The Beatles?”
“He said the only reason they get to be the Beatles is that other people don’t get to be. Whatever the hell that means. Anyway, it annoyed him when I talked too much at parties. When I got excited. Excited because I was so hungry for talk that I’d drink too much sometimes and get very, very talkative. He’d sulk for days afterwards. That was my punishment.
“Anyway, I married him. I looked out my bedroom window one afternoon and saw all those flat fields and thought, Why not? We had a wedding in a small country church with a graveyard you could see from the pews. Afterwards, we went to a party in town. You know why? Because someone told me they’d seen Terry Blanchard outside the hardware store and that maybe he’d be there. Isn’t that pathetic? God, what was I thinking? Going to a party on my wedding night because this other guy might be there! And here I’d thought I was over him.”
“Was he there?”
“No, thank God. I couldn’t relax until I was sure. I kept peeking at the door every time someone came in. I suppose that’s how you know you’re with the wrong person—when you keep looking to see who’s coming in the door. It wasn’t a bad party, if you were drunk enough. Which I was.”
“And did things get better?”
“Your body always tells you where you belong—and where you don’t. Sometimes when I was having Sunday dinner with Bruce’s parents, who were perfectly decent people, by the way, salt-of-the-earth types, I’d feel this sensation in my body, a sensation that said simply, You don’t belong here, these are not your people.”
“Did you ever find your people?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Who?”
“You. Among other people.”
After a pause, I said, “Tell me you had a good life, Sally.”
“I was lucky in a lot of ways. I just used up my luck early. But yes, I had a good life.”
“With happy moments?”
“Many,” she said easily. “Everyone does.”
“Tell me one.”
“Leaving my husband. I enjoyed that.”
“Was it precipitous or gradual?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Your decision to leave. It took a long time.”
“Years. Are you sure you’re interested in this?”
“Very.”
“There’s something numbing about disappointment. You have to act on it quickly or time begins to gallop,” she said.
“Yo
u’d like Chekhov,” I said.
“Can you put a cube of ice in this? But no more vodka. I’ll be up peeing all night.”
“How are your legs?”
“The same. But only at night.”
I came back in from the kitchen.
“Will you turn the light out in there?” she said.
I went back and did it.
“Where was I?” She had slipped off to other thoughts. “Oh yes. By now I had two kids, Chloe and Kyle. We had a narrow little house in Toronto. Nice place. I did the interior myself. It was my birthday, I was thirty-three. Yes, yes, I know what you’re going to say: the age that Christ was crucified. I didn’t see things quite so grandly. Although it turned out to be a big year indeed. The kids were old enough to look after themselves, and that night Bruce took me to an Italian restaurant, a new place I’d read about in a magazine.
“Our table wasn’t ready, so they sat us in the bar. We had a martini and looked out over the restaurant, all the people eating in this lovely copper light, and suddenly, I could barely believe my eyes, there, facing me, sitting not ten feet away, was Terry Blanchard. I’d heard he was in the Middle East working for an oil company. But no, there he was. He was sitting with a thick-bodied woman, the sort of woman whose nylons you can hear cracking when she walks across the room. Confident. Talking. Terry listening. And I thought, He cannot love her.”
“How’d he look?”
“Wonderful. Those men age so well. He was snappily done up, a tie, white shirt. And I had the ridiculous, ever-so-quick thought that somehow he had known he was going to see me and had gotten, you know, dolled up for it. Does your generation use that word, ‘dolled up’?”
“Not really. But I know what you mean.”
“Anyway, I know it’s nonsense, but that’s what I thought. Meanwhile, I could hear Bruce chewing on his olive and breathing through his nose.”
“Did you say anything?”
“No. I just kept taking these little mouse-peeks at him. And I think he was doing the same to me, but we never did it at the same time.”
“Why didn’t you go over?”
“Too shy.”
“Too shy?”
“No, that’s not true. The fact is, I didn’t feel especially pretty. I felt like I’d put on weight, that there was something clumsy about how I looked, and that he’d be disappointed. But I wanted him to come over. I could feel the skin on my face go very tight, like I was sitting in a high wind. It was awful. But sort of wild, too.”
“And?”
“It was astonishing how much I remembered about him—his shirt, his underarms, even the wood dust in his eyebrows. I was surprised that it was all so vivid, so immediate. So yesterday. He had remained frozen in my heart exactly as I had felt about him the last time I saw him.”
“Did it make you sad?”
“It didn’t. It made me feel sort of light-headed and exhilarated. I can’t imagine why. But I wanted to tell someone. I wished I was with someone other than Bruce so I could whisper, ‘You see that man over there . . . ’ And then tell them the story.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then he was gone. The table was empty. Napkins on the tablecloth, water glasses half empty, the waiter clearing away stuff. To this day, I don’t know how I missed him leaving.”
“And did you see him again?”
“I went back to the restaurant a few times. Alone. I sat at the copper bar. But I never saw him. Still, I’ve always been curious, always wanted to ask him, ‘What were you thinking when you saw me, what were you remembering?’”
“Oh dear.”
“Well, yes and no. Because of what happened later. Just a few weeks later. I’m not sure it would have happened if I hadn’t spotted Terry Blanchard in a restaurant on the night of my thirty-third birthday.” After a moment’s reflection, she continued: “We’d been invited to a cocktail party in Forest Hill. I can’t remember who invited us. But it was a splashy affair. Not really our crowd. I was excited about going. I’ve always liked getting out and about.”
Out and about. Very Sally, that phrase.
She went on: “There were quite a few men there, and I was getting a good deal of attention, which often happened. I’m not bragging. I was a good-looking woman.”
“You still are.”
She paused with a hint of relish to collect her thoughts. “I was having a chat in the corner with a man I had met that evening. Marek Grunbaum was his name. Handsome in an Eastern European, sort of state-police way. The kind of face that knocks at your door at three in the morning and your wife never sees you again. But he wasn’t like that at all. Tough, yes—he owned a factory that made car parts. It was clear from the ring on my finger that I was married, but it was also apparent that that didn’t concern him very much.
“He had a beautiful pink handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket, and such elegant manners, the capacity to suggest that everyone in the room was worthy of attention but that you somehow were more worthy. A party trick, maybe, but hard to resist, nevertheless. Who isn’t stirred by absolute attention?
“I noticed him discreetly glance around the room. What was he looking for? Did he have a jealous wife? Then I realized what it was.”
“What was it?”
“He wanted to see what my husband looked like. But he was confused, because, looking over the crowd, there was no one who appeared to look like the kind of person I would be married to. You could see his eyes move over the English husband of the hostess, then over a local politician, then a retired hockey player who was very much à la vogue in that circle. They like to adopt people, those Forest Hill folk, athletes, ex-convicts, priests, writers—creatures of a different cloth. It lasts a while and then the circle closes again. Anyway, Marek didn’t stop, not for a second, on Bruce, who was wearing a green shirt and leaning with one arm on the fireplace mantel, his jacket open, his little pot belly exposed. Leaning and giving me the look. Eyes half shut like a reptile. I could feel myself getting nervous. I was thinking, Oh-oh, he’s mad at me. He’s going to sulk in the car, he’s going to get out of bed in the morning and sit on the couch in his pyjama bottoms, smoking a cigarette and clearing his throat. No, nope, nothing’s wrong. And I’d flounce around, chirping like a bird, trying to cajole him out of his foul mood. God, is there anything that creates self-disgust faster than apologizing when you haven’t done anything wrong? The person you end up hating is yourself.
“So I waved him over. I thought it would make everything transparent, innocent. I introduced them. ‘Marek, this is my husband.’ Marek asked him a few questions. Just good manners. Did he work in the neighbourhood, how long had he lived in Toronto, how old were our children? But the ball never came back over the net. Bruce stood there, drink in hand, yes, no, looking into the contents of the glass as if he were waiting for the ice to melt.
“It worked. He’d done it before. He knew how to do it, this bubble of toxicity. It drove Marek away. Within seconds, everything was gone. Marek took everything with him when he walked away. There was just me left behind—me and this red-faced man with his sports jacket riding up at the back.
“I peeked over his shoulder, hoping Marek might be looking this way or waiting to come back. But no—he had landed in a clutter of middle-aged women, tennis players, rich, polished, tactile. He was theirs now.”
“And then?”
“We went home a little while later, Bruce and I. But something miraculous happened in the car. It was as if a virus had come of age. I didn’t formulate the sentence, I didn’t think of its ramifications. But it found its way out of my mouth all on its own. I said, ‘I don’t love you anymore.’
“We drove the rest of the way in silence. I went into the house and straight to the kitchen. When he came in after me, I pulled a steak knife out of the drawer. I didn’t say anything, I just turned around and stood there w
ith a steak knife in my hand. And that was the end of it.”
A small bell pinged and the elevator doors clanged shut at the end of the corridor.
“Tell me if I’m talking too much,” she said.
“Go on. Please.”
“I moved my children into a yellow apartment and got a job in an art gallery. A boutique in Yorkville next door to a French bistro. To have somewhere to go every day, people to say hello to—those wonderful, sparkly, frivolous conversations about nothing at all—to have my own paycheque. It was the happiest I’d been in years, maybe my whole adult life. And no one to make me nervous.”
“And Marek?”
“Ah, Marek,” she said, settling back into her chair. “I don’t believe in God, but if I did, I’d say that the arrival of Marek Grunbaum with his pink handkerchief that night was God saying to me, ‘I’ve overlooked you. Here’s a make-up present.’ He had a wife and three children who adored him. He made a few awkward sounds about leaving his wife, but we both knew he wasn’t going to, that I was the latest in a short but piquant list of lovers. That was fine. Just knowing that every Tuesday night I was going to go to that bistro, sit at the same table, our table, have two ice-cold martinis and a bottle of wine, and then go home and get laid—just having that to look forward to made the whole week divine. I hope that doesn’t sound coarse.”
“No. Not at all.”
“There were two gay men living downstairs. Sean and his boyfriend, Peter. They worried about me: was I lonely? was I unhappy seeing a married man? did I have enough money? Isn’t that a scream? The only time in my life I didn’t need to be worried about. It was as if a grey screen between me and the world had been lifted and I could see everything so vividly.
“One day, I’d just finished reupholstering a chesterfield—Sean had passed it along—and I found myself with a couple of bolts of cloth left over. Just for fun, while I was watching television, I took a pair of long scissors and cut out the shape of a sailboat, a blue sailboat, and pasted it onto a square of leftover yellow cloth. I put a mast on it and a sun and a big swordfish jumping in the air. Then I hung it over the fireplace.
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