An Honest Woman

by JoAnn McCaig

  He grudgingly goes along with this the first night, though he finds the temptation of a brief nocturnal visit almost irresistible. He makes an opportunity, the next day, to talk to each of her sons. With the youngest, his pitch is very straightforward: “Look, mate, I’m dead keen on your mom, you know that, right? Now she seems to think you’d be bent out of shape if I were to share a bed with her, but I don’t think she’s right about that, do you?”

  The boy replies, “Aw, no big deal. Dad’s girlfriends stay over all the time.”

  With the elder, Leland knows, the matter must be broached rather more cautiously. The two of them have been sent round the side of the house for firewood, and as the boy stacks logs into his outstretched arms, he says, “Man to man, Ben. You know what it’s like to want to be with a woman, right? Well, I feel that way about your mother. She figures you’ll object if we sleep in the same room, but I think she doesn’t give you guys nearly enough credit. What do you think?”

  The boy says nothing, keeps piling the logs ’til they’re nearly to his chin — Christ, oh Christ he wants to kill me, oh

  Christ my back — but then Ben stops, grabs the top four or five logs off Leland’s quivering arms and coldly smiles, “Actually, Leland, I’m not cool with that. Mom’s with Gray,” and heads back toward the house.

  On their second full day, Jay gets up early, drives the kids to the ski hill, and then returns to the cabin, where Leland waits before the fire, which he has learned to construct, feed, and maintain. And it’s then, over cups of tea, that he tells her of the quiet mutual agreement of separation he has obtained from Christa. (He does not mention the cost of this agreement, which was enormous, and she doesn’t ask.) It’s then also that he speaks of Meg. His mistress. An abbreviated tale of their four raucous years, ending with the breakup a few months ago. It disturbs him a bit that Jay hears him out so calmly, appears so unsurprised. He says nothing about her man, though. He has decided to give her time.

  Toward the end of that long, drowsy day, he surprises himself by saying, “My guess is that we’re stuck into this now. We pretty well have to go on from here, I think.” Until that moment, he hasn’t been exactly sure what he came here to accomplish. But now in this beautiful strange peaceful place, the way forward seems clear.

  Next day there’s a hockey game on the freshly scraped ice of the lake, a cleared section about thirty metres square. Jay and her kids generously allow him to eschew skates and put him in goal with his feet encased in bloody big clodding snowboots. Then the rest of them fire tennis balls at him with hockey sticks, Ben taking a few particularly hard shots at his crotch. But even he eases up after a while, and Leland just stands watching Jay and her boys circling and swooping on their skates like sailboats, like shorebirds, chanting, “Get it through the five-hole, get it through the five-hole!” At one pause in play, he and Jay watch the dog take off after a herd of elk, laughing themselves silly at her foolish doggy heart, as if she has the ghost of a chance to outrun, not to mention bring down, a single one.

  He holds Jay in the dark before bed, then goes out on the deck. The nights are so cold and clear and black and utterly, utterly silent that he knows himself to be fully alone in the world. The sky so purely dark that it makes no difference whether he opens his eyes or not. Behind his closed eyelids, a little girl moves in dappled sunlight, counting off to ten, chubby hands covering her eyes. Katie finds him here, a lonely figure surrounded by dark mountains, under a black sky.

  On their return to Calgary, he’s introduced to Jay’s mother in her rest home. Mara, a sweet, still pretty woman of seventy-five, stroke victim, welcomes him warmly — “I like your accent” — with a flirtatious gleam in her bright blue eyes. “Where’s Gray?”

  As always with women and their mothers, it occurs to him that this old woman is what Jay will become.

  “Gray’s not here,” Jay says. “This is my friend from England. Leland.”

  Mara brightens. “I’ve been to England. We always ate in the pubs. The food was much cheaper, and really very good.”

  Leland says, “Pub food has always been a favourite of mine.”

  “In Wales,” Mara goes on, “we stopped to ask directions, and this little old man stood there and talked and pointed, and well we nodded and smiled and said thank you very much but you know, it’s a funny thing, he was speaking English but not one of us understood a single word.”

  “Yes.” Leland smiles. “The Welsh accent can be very thick.”

  Mara smiles back. He is passing the test. “I’m glad Jay has a friend from England. I always ordered the ploughman’s lunch. Where’s Gray?”

  In the car on the way back to Jay’s place, the radio plays one 80s tune after another on the classic rock station. He proves that he knows every word to every tune including Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” by singing as loud as he can.

  “Oh do shut up,” is Jay’s response.

  “I can’t help it,” he says. “I was single through the mid 80s, out clubbing a lot. The songs just stuck.”

  “Well, while you were out clubbing, I was stuck at home changing diapers. The only adult voices I heard all day were Peter Gzowski and Erika Ritter.”

  “Who are they?”

  Now, Leland is going home. To all that is familiar, the good and the bad of it. Not single, not married, somewhat betrothed, perhaps. Work to do. Bereaved father. Someone who must write, despite everything, because it’s all he really knows how to do. And on his flight back to London as he tries to decide which moment goes deepest — sitting quietly with Jay before the fire, or the hilarity of the hockey match, or the deep silence of the mountain night — she shows up again. Katie. And as always, she’s speaking the last words she said to him: “You selfish prick! First you cheat on my mother, and now you cheat on the woman you left us for! What is wrong with you?” Thrusting at him that small newspaper clipping from a tabloid: And what literary lion was observed recently slinking out of the hotel room of a visiting Canadian writer quite early one morning?

  He remembers mornings. Katie was a lark, like him, a morning star. Early riser. My girl. There she is, oh about four years old, toddling into the kitchen, table set for the two of us, and she loved corn flakes, hungry, every morning, hungry, and she pours her cereal into her bunny bowl, and her little hand comes up, and pats the cereal down flat in the bowl, in the morning light her little hand, patting the cereal flat before pouring on the milk, and takes her first bite — yes, and then this little groan of pleasure, of satisfaction.

  Part Four

  A Dinner Party, London, Early May

  18.

  On a street corner in Knightsbridge, a mild evening in spring, a tall man and a smallish woman contend. Step, drag, stall.

  “You’re making us late — ”

  “Just give me another minute, that’s all — ”

  “Jay!” A sharp tug. “You’re with me, remember?” And he drags her the last half block, up gleaming stairs of scrubbed white stone with polished wrought-iron hand rail to a door painted a hectic red, which is abruptly opened by an overexcited Irishwoman in her sixties.

  “At last! Leland. And ah — here’s the wee lass. I’m Lucille, dear. Come in, we’ve all — Howard! They’ve arrived, everyone! They’re here at last.”

  And Jay is tugged into a blur of shockingly expensive good taste, famous erudition, and loud, loud voices, a Babel of them that makes her think of barking dogs. Foxhounds. Terror and shyness render her utterly stupid, completely mute beyond “hello” and “pleased to meet you.” She is careful to say, “Meet you,” and not “Meetcha,” but beyond that —

  Leland does his share, though, and a good chunk of hers. She has now been generally introduced as “the bride-to-be” and then to individuals as, “My Canadian wench, guess I’ve no choice but to make an honest woman of her.” She clings to his arm, but in time, as he must, he moves away and she’s trapped in a gaggle of toothy inquisitive women, varied by the occasional silky gay man in exquisite
clothes — one wears a blue pinstripe shirt so fine she has to grab her own hand to keep it from stroking the fabric. She wonders, what ever happened to that famous British reserve that Austen and Drabble assert, and she has always accepted as cultural fact?

  “You must tell us how you met, was it over that little book of yours?” asks one.

  “Oh my, yes,” says another, “Richdale was such fun.”

  Five years of my blood and bones adds up to fun? you snotty bitch! “Thank you.”

  “I must say I don’t think I’ve ever seen Leland so — and I have known this man well for thirty-odd years — well, he’s absolutely . . . radiant.”

  Perhaps he’s pregnant. Shy smile, equally radiant, she hopes.

  “Yes, you must reveal your secret — ”

  Frequent blow jobs. “Well. I like him, he likes me, I guess.”

  “Of course you’ll live in London, I couldn’t imagine Leland — well all that snow for one thing, and oh, theatre, galleries, what possibly would he do?”

  Like when that literary star from Toronto took a job at the University of Calgary and the Globe practically wrote the guy a eulogy, so bloody insulting. “Actually, there’s a very vibrant arts community in my hometown, excellent theatre, great music.”

  “Where exactly is . . . Alberta, is that the name?”

  In Texas, just across the river from Alaska. “One province east of Vancouver.”

  Jay can hear Leland across the room, performing: “And she says, ‘No shit, Sherlock’! But the best was — I’ll never forget it, I fell in love with her that moment — I’d said something singularly witless and manlike, and she stepped in front of me, said, ‘Look, let me explain something to you.’ She taps the side of my head and says, ‘This for thinkin’,’ and then she pokes me, uh, below the belt and says, ‘and this is for fuckin’. You got that?’”

  His listeners reward him with delighted laughter. He’s got her accent just right: dropped ‘g’s, and “fer” instead of “for.” A woman has materialized beside her — perfume and cigarettes and gin. “You’re not what I expected at all.”

  She’s a wiry little woman, late forties perhaps, masterfully and expensively preserved. A sparkling dress that probably cost more than Jay makes in six months. The woman’s hair has a metallic sheen. Her lipstick is an arch, sadistic maroon.

  Jays sips her drink. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m — ”

  “Oh, I know who you are.”

  “And your name is?”

  “Don’t let him get kinky on you, take my advice. He goes too far. In some ways, I think him a deeply disturbed individual.”

  “Hmm. I’ve been wondering exactly what it is we have in common.”

  The woman makes sudden but fleeting eye contact, then looks away. She mutters, “You should be proud of yourself. You’ve succeeded where half the women in London have failed.”

  “Yourself included?”

  “I could tell you stories.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. Excuse me.” Bathroom, bathroom, Jesus Christ, fresh air, goddammit where the hell is —

  “You’re looking a bit peaky, dear.” Their hostess, Lucille. Recognizably human. “Come here, come along. This way.”

  It’s a lovely little room, a study. Dark bookshelves, two soft plushy chairs arranged before a gas fire turned low. Lucille gives her a gentle shove into one of the chairs, and sinks into the other. “There. Take a moment. I don’t know what he could be thinking, trotting you out like this, like a prize spaniel. Men can be so dense.”

  “Thanks. I was feeling, um, a little overwhelmed.”

  “I don’t blame you. Well, I’ve pulled you out of the fray for a short while at least. Shall I go and find Leland? Tell him you’re here?”

  “No. No, thanks. I’d like to just — ”

  “Of course. Jay, you’re just right for him. I feel it, I really do. I’ve known this man for many years. He’s difficult, he’s complicated. You understand, though, how shall I say this? Trust him, but trust yourself more.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Keep something back, always. Just a little piece, but something. You’d be wise.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m needed in the kitchen. I’ll send someone down when we’re ready. I’ve got you a very good safe place at the table.”

  “Lucille, you’ve been very kind.”

  Unlike plump Lucille and her tweedy husband, the table is sleek, stylish, minimalist. The food is artfully presented, the edible indistinguishable from the garnish. Silence is her best defence, she decides. So she sits and listens to and smiles at a spirited debate on a recent TLS commentary on narrativity, episodic or diachronic. Thence to the question raised recently in the Spectator about whether Dickens was our greatest letter writer, or Johnson. Lucille has placed Leland next to Jay, of course, and her own harmless husband on the other side; the sleek nasty woman has disappeared altogether (perhaps she was only invited for cocktails?) But across and a couple of places down, there he is. The curmudgeon with father issues. He settles for sneering looks ’til the main course arrives, then —

  “So, Jay, tell me — it is Jay, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “As in just a letter, a cipher rather than a name.”

  “No. As in J-A-Y. As in blue jay. The bird. No relation to the baseball team though.”

  “How interesting. So tell me, Jay, it’s been nagging at me, at so many of us over here for some time, where the fuck, exactly, is Skookumchuck? And, how in god’s name did you ever persuade an urbane fellow such as Mackenzie to ever accompany you to such a place, much less propose marriage there?”

  “Second question is none of your business, but Skookumchuck,” Jay begins, aware of the general conversation dying away all down the table, one mouth at a time, “is a very beautiful peaceful place that, for my money, anyone fool enough to refuse the chance to spend time there is . . . well, not worth bothering with. As to the first question, it’s at the Western edge of the Rockies. The Rocky Mountains. On Highway 95, or rather five miles down a logging road off 95, about twenty clicks south of Canal Flats. If you climb Saddleback, you can see all the way to Banff.”

  “All the way to Banff? From Saddle — ”

  “Back.”

  Leland is aware now, please god don’t let him, but he chimes in, damn him — “Canal Flats being about forty clicks south of Dry Gulch. And of course we always stop at the Husky at Deadman’s Flats for coffee when we head out there.”

  The curmudgeon’s eyes sparkle. “South of Caaannaayl Flaaats, you say? How interesting.”

  Jay expels every millimeter of air from her lungs, then fills them deeply again. “Pardon me, but you’re pronouncing it wrong. That’s a Deep South cracker accent you’re using. You know, the string ’em up, drag ’em behind the pickup for fun on a Saturday night variety. The long ‘A’ is just dead wrong.”

  “Clearly I require some instruction.”

  “Think of the map of North America. Deep south just above that little dick that’s Florida. Then draw a line diagonally northwest ’til you hit some bumps — ”

  “So how does one say Canal Flats then?”

  “Western Canadians use a very short dry ‘a’. Yours is too toff, too plummy, too ‘playing fields of Eton.’ Say it like that at the truck stop and I guarantee, at best, that the waitress will spit in your tea.”

  “A daunting thought. Perhaps, however — ”

  “So go ahead, try it. Short clipped ‘a’. Canal Flats.”

  Hateful look, silence.

  “Or try this, what do you call your mother’s sister?”

  “Windy old bitch.”

  “Perhaps, but how do name her?”

  “She’s my awnt, of course.”

  “Right. Say ‘ant’ now, like the insect. That’s what you’re after.”

  The man’s mouth twitches; Lucille trills, “What can I pass, now? Who needs more salad?”

  “Just tr
ying to be helpful,” Jay says to him. “I’d feel awful if you got the crap beaten out of you at the Wasa Pub at Leland’s stag.”

  Conversation at Lucille’s table is at a standstill. Howard tries a faint laugh, the woman across from Jay sneezes loudly, But Jay owes her hosts . . . something, so she attempts a mitigation: “I’ll never forget the time my friend Bernadette went to the Skookumchuck general store; she’s French, Paris-born. And when she asked for a ‘bus ticket’ the clerk somehow heard ‘birthday cake’ and a huge argument ensued, with this clerk insisting no, we don’t sell birthday cake here and my friend, with that high dudgeon the French have perfected, points to the sign on the wall advertising Greyhound and says, ‘So what, may I ask, is ZAT?’”

  Polite chuckles, then rescue, as Leland gamely wades in, “And of course there was the time I stood at the meat counter at the local supermarket, insisting that all I needed was a pack of mince, and the blood-spattered gent took me by the arm and stood me up in front of the candy rack, shoved a packet of Scotch mints into my hand!”

  Jay stuffs something that might be food into her mouth and keeps her eyes down. She counts to sixty, then makes herself count to sixty again, ’til the table noise has risen close to its previous level, and she can mutter, “Excuse me,” and push back her chair.

  She keeps herself together until she gets the bathroom door closed behind her. Then she falls apart, shaking, feeling like she’s about to wet her pants, every internal organ wanting to liquefy. Braces her arms on the vanity, head down, afraid to meet her own gaze, and it must be several minutes though it feels like mere seconds when she hears Leland outside the door. She ignores the first soft raps, ignores his pleading voice. But he is insistent: “Jay. You must let me in.”

  She opens the door and he wraps his arms around her. “You were magnificent.”

  “I’m scared shitless.”