Red Plaid Shirt

by Diane Schoemperlen

  “Do you want to dance?

  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

  Marsha and Mary keep pointing out possibilities all over the tavern.

  “Did you see John over there? Nice eyes.”

  “I think he’s still married.”

  “No, they’re split up now.”

  “Nice eyes.”

  Val knows they’re trying to fix her up but she’s not sure yet if she’s broken.

  Annette is talking about her husband, Mike, yelling into Val’s right ear to make herself heard over the music. She’s been married for six months. She calls him “Old Mike” and makes him sound like a dancing bear, comical but potentially dangerous. It’s as though being married to him means she can finally tell other women what a fool he really is.

  “Let me tell you three things,” Annette says.

  “Okay, what?” Val asks.

  “Don’t ever get married.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t even fall in love.”

  “And?”

  “Kill the first person you fall in love with.”

  “Here’s to you!” Val raises her glass to Annette’s and they’re laughing.

  Across the table, Marsha and Mary, who are sisters, both twenty pounds overweight and always on a diet together, are talking about food.

  Marsha says, “I don’t believe in white sugar,” and makes it sound like a fanatic fringe religion instead of a condiment.

  Annette is still talking about Mike. She wants to sell the trailer and move to Vancouver but Old Mike won’t hear of it.

  Now they’re all four talking about birth control, which is something they always talk about when they get together. They’ve all tried everything but nothing’s perfect. Annette, as usual, is leading the conversation. It’s as though she can’t imagine a reason to remain silent, a subject that can’t be companionably excavated for anyone who cares to listen. This is the sphere she functions best in—intimacy and confession. And confessions are meant to be reciprocated—otherwise what possible good can they be?

  The waitress comes and clears the table, empties the ashtray, and tells Annette she can’t put her feet up on the chairs like that.

  Val orders another jug and feels a warm desire to give Annette what she wants—secrets, memories, probably a few tears too. Annette will accept whatever she is given, will nod, smile, encourage, support. She does not debate, question, or criticize. You can say anything to her.

  By this time the odd drink is getting knocked over but the little round table is covered with blue terry cloth, elasticized so it fits tight. The spilt beer just foams up and is instantly absorbed.

  It’s almost last call. Everyone is dancing and clapping and singing along. The humid heat is getting to be like feathers in Val’s throat.

  Simon moved out on a Sunday in May. Val had never liked Sundays anyway, so later this would strike her as appropriate.

  They were having, as they say, “an amicable separation,” even though it had been Val’s idea in the first place. It was still rather unclear to her as to why they were breaking up. Something important between them was gone, maybe it had been gone for a long time, maybe it was never there at all. They both knew this was true, they’d been talking about it for weeks—so much so that Val thought they were hardly even making sense anymore.

  They spent the afternoon drinking a case of beer and gathering up Simon’s things—typewriter, papers, clothes. Considering he’d lived in the apartment for a year and a half, he hadn’t accumulated or contributed much.

  It was not an altogether unpleasant day and they both admitted, laughing, to feeling relieved that it was all over now. They hadn’t been sleeping together for weeks. Val pointed out that they hadn’t been talking much either.

  “We’re getting along better right now than we have for months,” she said. Simon had to agree.

  Val made a simple supper, hamburgers and a tossed salad. She refused to think of this as their last meal together. Simon kept talking the whole time they were eating, clowning, telling jokes and silly stories. His long black hair kept falling in his eyes and his glasses were sliding down his nose. Val would automatically reach over and push them back into place.

  “Wait, wait, I’ve got another one!” He waved the remains of his third hamburger at her. “What’s red and green and goes two hundred miles an hour?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “A frog in a blender!”

  “Sorry I asked.” She was laughing and rolling her eyes, picking bits of avocado out of the last of the salad.

  When the beer was all gone, Simon put on his denim jacket, kissed Val, and said, “I still love you, I guess I’ll always love you. I’d better be going now.” Val said, “I love you too. You’re my best friend.” Simon got into his truck and drove away. He was going to share a house with two other recently single men.

  Val thought of them as “the walking wounded.” Maybe he’d learn something.

  Once Simon was gone, Val made herself a pot of tea, turned on the tv, settled herself in the big armchair and enjoyed herself immensely. Nothing in the room was changed—even the stereo was hers—it was almost as though Simon had never been there at all. Val went to bed right after the news and slept better than she had for weeks.

  The man Val is sleeping with now is Leonard DeVries, a lawyer. She has known him for a while because he deals at the bank. He’s very handsome, all the women she works with say so, with deep blue eyes and short brown hair just beginning to go grey. He has a neat beard, brown streaked with red and grey. He’s growing out all multicoloured. His chin could be any shape, maybe even receding or weak.

  Leonard is always taking Val to places where she’s never been before. They seem to spend all their time in restaurants and movie theatres and also in Leonard’s new Porsche driving to and from these places.

  Leonard’s favourite restaurant is The Pines out on the highway just west of town. It’s expensive and you have to be dressed up to feel comfortable eating there. The menu features every kind of seafood you could possibly imagine. They all know Leonard there and he always gets a table by the window so he can keep an eye on his car while they’re eating. Outside in the parking lot, people keep stopping to admire and touch it.

  It is usually on these evenings spent at The Pines, two or three times a week, that Val and Leonard end up sleeping together. All that food and good service makes them both feel generous and lovable.

  When they do sleep together, they sleep at Val’s place. Leonard says, “This is a real home. I feel so comfortable here, I never want to leave.” In the morning, he likes to putter around, watering the plants and playing with the cat, while Val puts on the coffee and gets ready for work.

  At first Val thought Leonard was intelligent and very interesting. He seemed to know all kinds of things that she’d barely even thought about. He doesn’t read books, only dozens of newspapers and magazines. He keeps up-to-date on everything. He is so calm that sometimes he makes Val nervous.

  But already she thinks he’s boring. He’s always talking about himself without ever telling her anything. What she really wants to know is why he has been divorced twice, where are the wives, why did he never have children, why does he like her anyway, how much money does he really make?

  Leonard is almost ten years older than Val, Simon is five years younger. She tries to make something of this, but can’t.

  After a few weeks of sleeping with Leonard, Val finds it is usually better to think about him than to actually be with him.

  Leonard and Simon know each other, sort of, because they both belong to the tennis club. Val would like to keep them apart. If they spend too much time together, they might become like each other and then she would only be more confused.

  One night over dinner at The Pines, Leonard says, “I ran into Simon downtown today, we had a few drinks together.” Val finds it unsettling to think of them being together, having a good time, without her. She always thought she could cont
rol them. It has never occurred to her that they might do just as well without her.

  The waitress materializes abruptly with their Greek salads and seems to be bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, which are strapped into a complicated arrangement of blue straps and gold buckles. Val studies them — she is bouncing.

  Leonard digs in happily. Val sucks on her imported beer.

  Already they are merging, then, Simon and Leonard, trespassing on each other. Their beards will grow out the same colour, sandpaper on her chin. They will play tennis together on weekends. In later years they will adopt similar gestures, admire the same women, see the same movies, have backyard Sunday barbecues with bloody steak and pink lemonade. She will serve them vodka and tonic, frosted glasses sliding on the wooden tray, and they will smile: “Thanks, Val, you’re a doll.” They will start talking again as soon as her back is turned. They’re sitting in plastic lawn chairs, wearing Bermuda shorts, crossing and uncrossing their hairy legs. They will touch her in all the same places, grow twin erections at the mere sight of her breasts. Boys will be boys.

  The main course arrives discreetly. Leonard is having a steak, Val, prawns in garlic butter. Leonard is smearing sour cream all over his baked potato. One of the things she already hates about him is the way his jaw cracks when he’s chewing.

  “Did you talk about me?” she asks.

  “No, I don’t think we did.”

  This is worse, even worse. Oh, to be so civilized. Maybe they should have.

  One of the good things about sleeping alone is that you can get up again after you’ve already gone to bed and there’s nobody to ruffle the blankets and mumble, “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  Val, in her nightgown and Simon’s old slippers, makes herself a cup of instant hot chocolate and a piece of brown toast. The fridge gurgles flatulently. She doesn’t check to see how late it is. Early or late, there’s no telling time now.

  Val goes into the dark living room without turning the light on and stands by the window. She’s not afraid of the dark anymore now that she understands about how you can die in the daytime too. In the half light, her feet are like puddles on the hardwood floor. She hasn’t bothered to wax the floor lately and there are Rorschach wine stains on one throw rug. Simon has been gone for three months now. Leonard is out of town on business but he’ll be back tomorrow.

  Behind Val’s apartment building, there is a small nameless creek, and by the light of the moon, which will be full soon, Val can see the water shining and moving. This makes her think she can hear it too.

  Some of the things Val wants to think about are too depressing. The only way to approach them is to sneak up on them from behind. She has a sense of having made the one irrevocable mistake that will ruin the rest of her life. She tries to pass this off as some melodramatic trick of the moon, fails, and panics.

  Someone is walking through the backyard of the building. Caught, guilty, Val lets the curtain fall shut. She is suspicious — of the late-night wanderer, of herself. Up to no good.

  She thinks of this as her secret life.

  Simon and Val had only known each other for a month when he moved into her apartment. The house he was living in had been sold and he had to move on the first of January. They didn’t discuss it much (or enough, Val would think later)—it seemed only logical that he should move in with her. They had both lived with other people before.

  They spent New Year’s Eve alone in the apartment and celebrated with lobster and champagne at midnight. Simon ran out onto the balcony and hollered “Happy New Year!” at the street, which was gently filling up with snow.

  They finished the champagne in bed. Simon brushed Val’s hair away from her face and stroked her cheeks, whispering, “You’re lovely, you’re lovely,” over and over again. He did this every night for a long time.

  That May Val took a week’s holiday and they rented a cabin at Hazel Lake. The cabin belonged to a fellow Simon worked with at the lumberyard. He’d taken a part-time job there to support himself for a few months while he worked on his second novel. His first had never been published, which, Simon said now, was just as well. He was having some trouble with the second one though, and hadn’t accomplished much during the past month. “Writer’s void,” he called it. They both hoped this week away would get the ball rolling again.

  The road in was soft and muddy, it had rained off and on all week. Hazel Lake, when they came in sight of it, was grey and flat-looking, metallic. It was early in the season and all the other cabins were still boarded up. There was nobody else around.

  The cabin was lopsided and weather-beaten, shedding flakes of paint. Val and Simon unloaded the truck in the rain — suitcases, fishing rods, typewriter, enough food, wine, and kerosene to last out the week. Inside, one large square room served as both kitchen and living area. There were two smaller rooms, curtained off—the bedroom and a storage room full of dry wood for the fireplace. The whole place smelled like wet wool.

  Val and Simon were both awake for a long time the first night, lying in bed, holding hands, listening to the rain on the tin roof. Val was thinking that they were perfect here together, the way it should always be, could too, if only.

  It rained every day, which was fine. Val was sleeping in late every morning, then fishing a little, walking by the lake, hugging herself against the rain. Frogs croaked around the lake all day long, a sign of more rain. Simon was always up early, writing, the sound of his typewriter coming to Val in her half-sleep, just like the rain on the roof. In the evenings, they played cribbage and backgammon in their bathrobes, drinking white wine out of coffee cups.

  On Saturday night, their last night, they were reading in bed—Simon, the pages he’d written that day, and Val, an article on divorce in an old magazine. She said, “I think you and I are the only two people I know who haven’t been married at least once. I’m glad you have no ex-wives hanging around anywhere.”

  Which wasn’t exactly what she meant to say but was as good a way as any to open the discussion, which was an ongoing one they’d been having for several weeks now—this one was only a sample—and it wasn’t over yet.

  Simon didn’t even hesitate, he jumped right in. “I’ll never get married, I’ll never have kids, I’ve always known that.”

  “But you didn’t know me before.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “But what about me?”

  “I love you. I don’t need to marry you to prove it.”

  “What about what I want? Doesn’t that matter to you?”

  “I’m sorry, I guess I’ll never change.”

  They went on for an hour at least, back and forth, back and forth, until Val couldn’t believe she was saying any of this anyway and she was sobbing and hitting Simon weakly in the chest.

  Simon held her until she stopped crying, then got up and went into the other room. He came back with a towel and a pot of warm water and gently washed her face.

  They began to make love, slowly, carefully. Val moved to get up for her diaphragm.

  Simon said, “You don’t have to.”

  “What if I get pregnant?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  But nothing came of it. Val was mostly relieved. How could they have been so foolish? They weren’t talking about marriage and babies much anymore anyway. Just as well.

  Simon has a new job waiting on tables part-time at the tavern, weekends mostly, filling in for the regular staff. Val already knows this before she goes down on Friday with the girls. Annette was in with her husband the night before and she told Val.

  They sit in Simon’s section because that’s where they always sit—it’s closer to the band.

  Val is so glad to see Simon that at first she talks even more than Annette and dances with everyone who asks her. Simon is an extremely efficient waiter and they’re all giving him big tips which embarrasses everyone, but not in a bad way. Val notices that he’s wearing a new plaid shirt and he’s had his bear
d trimmed.

  While the band is taking a break, Annette tells Val that Mike is pushing her to get pregnant.

  “I’d never have a baby in this God-forsaken town,” Annette declares. Marsha and Mary, who already have families, don’t say anything. Val envies Annette even though she knows she’s unhappy.

  She’s watching Simon all the time but he’s so busy he doesn’t have time to talk to her. It’s been a hard day, Marsha never did balance, and Val is very tired. She knows she should go home early but she’d rather stick around and see what happens.

  When the band has finished playing, complete with two ragged encores, and the bar is closed for the night, Val expects that Simon will come and sit down with her. But he leans up against the bar instead, counting his tips and chatting with the bartender.

  On her way out, Val asks him if he needs a ride home but he says, “No thanks, I’ve got the truck.” Some young girl with dark curly hair and a pretty mauve sweater has been hanging around him all night and she’s still there, waiting.

  Simon is coming over for coffee. It’s already quite late, Val was getting ready for bed when he called but she didn’t even think of telling him not to come. She puts the kettle on and debates with herself about getting dressed again. She puts a record on and stays in her housecoat.

  When Simon arrives, the cat immediately jumps into his lap and goes to sleep, purring. Val tries not to see this as significant.

  They are both uncomfortable, obviously, and Val finds this disappointing. Simon tells her about his novel, which is nearly done now. He’s going back out to the cabin for a week to finish it. It’s almost the end of September, there won’t be anybody else around.

  Val says, “What about your job at the tavern?”

  “Things are pretty slow right now, they won’t need me again for a couple of weeks.”

  Val says, “How come you never talk to me when I’m there with Annette? Why can’t we be friends?” She knows that questions can be dangerous. They make you vulnerable to the answers, which are uncontrollable. She wants to offer Simon some more coffee but she wants him to leave, too. She has to go to work in the morning.