“Well, I haven’t got any more books to recommend. Or any more husbands to lend.”
“Oh, hell,” Susan stood up. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. If you’re so sure it’s dead, why don’t you take this opportunity to eat your last piece of ice and leave?” Elizabeth just stared as she walked away. It had always been like this, Susan thought again, Elizabeth the watcher. She could make her living betting on people, especially people like Susan who always seemed to be racing.
She barely made it. So much for beer, she thought, consumed by the sweet relief of pissing, letting it all out, feeling empty, relaxed. She wondered how much bile there was in urine. Damn, she had not come to apologize. Hadn’t she worked that out with herself over the past three years?
Elizabeth was sipping a fresh glass of Dubonnet.
“OK,” said Elizabeth, summoning a conviction in which they both needed to believe. “Let’s get a few things straight. Do you know why I was angry with you rather than with Mike when I understood—well, admitted—what was happening? Because I always felt as if I were competing for attention.”
“That’s bullshit,” Susan said and then softened her voice. “Mike loved you; he needed your gentleness.”
“Not competing with you for Mike, but with Mike for you. I always loved you, Susan.”
Susan’s disbelief was dissolved by Elizabeth’s tense smile.
“I admired you, Susan, wanted to be you. It wasn’t because of what Mike saw in you, but what I saw. I wanted you to love me.”
Susan’s cheeks flushed. She wondered if this was what she had wanted to hear from Elizabeth, what she wanted to give in return. But she did not know the territory of such a love. She was frightened and she bristled.
Susan told herself that she was crazy to be webbed by this vindictive wife. One minute, Elizabeth was wrapping her arms around her. The next minute would come the sting of retribution. Did black widow spiders practice on each other before killing the males? She refused to be trapped by any more guilt.
“Don’t you see?” said Elizabeth bravely. “I felt that of all my friends you had something. Mike and I both thought so. He called it ‘passion.’ I knew I would never have it. At root, I’m an analyst. For the first year we all lived together, I coveted your passion. But believe me, it had nothing to do with Mike. When my thesis started to take off, I no longer needed to be you. But I did still need you.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, if you only knew how much I admired your discipline.”
This was clearly the wrong thing to say, Susan realized as she watched Elizabeth’s face lose shape for a moment.
Elizabeth interceded, herself, “And when I found out you were screwing him, not only did I know I had lost you, but Mike, too.”
Susan reached her hand across the table. Her small, cuticlechewed, heavily-ringed fingers held Elizabeth’s competent piano hand for a couple of minutes. They sat wordlessly. Susan started to cry.
“A week?” Elizabeth asked calmly.
“What?” Susan sniffed.
“You’re only going to be here in Toronto a week?”
“Yes, my magazine job starts next month. I wish we had longer.”
“Mike wants to see you.”
“Well, I was hoping,” Susan said hesitantly, “that we might all have supper together one night.”
“He’d like to see you alone.”
“No, I don’t think that’s a hot idea. There’s too much room for misunderstanding. And too little time.”
“But you and I have met alone.”
Was Susan hearing this right? Was Mike’s wife arranging an assignation with his ex-lover? Susan felt the same gut fear she had felt six years before when Mike found them all that cabin together, and later when he encouraged Elizabeth and herself to join a CR group. Sometimes, when her regret turned to bitterness, she wondered whether Mike regarded them with the same fascination as his experimental monkeys.
“But it was different for you and me,” Susan said. “We should have met ages ago.”
“He’ll be really upset,” said Elizabeth. “He says there are some things he needs to work out. Can’t you see him for just one drink?”
“Working things out would take longer than one drink. I don’t want any more misunderstandings.”
Elizabeth regarded Susan, her fondness set on an edge of fear. “It’s OK. We’ve all grown up a lot in the last couple of years.”
“Well, maybe I am being paranoid,” Susan paused, recalling how defensiveness had got the better of her several times this afternoon. Besides, what could happen after three years? “OK, I’ll meet him for a drink on the night we all have supper together.”
Mike invited her to meet him at the lab. He wanted her to see Lyndon, his prize monkey, and to show her how much the facility had expanded. He had been offered a job in a bigger hospital, but he had turned it down to continue working with his favorite monkeys. After she made her way past the elaborate system of buzzers and locked doors, she could see him through the glass wall, inserting a dish of fruit into the cage. Succulent peaches, mangoes, pears and bananas.
Susan had planned to come bouncing in, saying something urbane and clever. However, she was so overwhelmed by the seductive, almost overripe fruit, and by the crazy, shitty monkeys, that all she could say was, “Hello, there.”
“Oh, hello,” Mike said.
He was uncharacteristically flustered, the director lost on his own set.
Susan noticed his hair was greyer. He wore the same shaggy Pendleton shirt. The jeans were tighter. He had gained weight in his thighs. A little disgusted by the flab, she was also relieved to find him fallible.
Following this scrutiny, he finally caught her in his eyes. Those eyes. No, those eyes hadn’t changed. They were the same clouded blue eyes as that night he came up to her study and said, “You know, one of the reasons we argue so much, one of the reasons there is so much energy behind it, is the sexual tension.” She had thought she was spellbound. As it turned out, he wasn’t Svengali, but simply the first man she had slept with after her husband. He had used pop psychology, not hypnosis. He talked to her about “open marriages” and “meaningful relationships.” And, gazing into his romantic eyes, she had chosen to rationalize with him.
“Funny place for a reunion,” she laughed.
He nodded affectionately.
“Let’s take a walk,” she said, anxious for fresh air. “Through the leaves in Queen’s Park. I haven’t seen autumn for years.”
“Sure. Sure. But aren’t you forgetting to say hello to someone? This is Lyndon.” He held out the monkey. “Bet you didn’t recognize him. He’s completely different from when you left.”
“Absolutely. Hi, there, Lyndon. What’s new with you?”
Mike nervously finished the feedings, rummaged around for his overcoat, piled student reports in his briefcase on top of the Newsweek. The Newsweek was some kind of prop. He never used to read Newsweek. And there was no subscription label on this one. It stuck out conspicuously.
“Good piece on Paisley this week,” he said. “Of course I don’t have the background on Ulster you do. God, those pictures of Ireland you did a couple of months back were impressive. We couldn’t believe it was our Susan.”
“Yes, I guess I learned a lot,” she said, hating herself for the false modesty. Not that Mike expected her to say more. Thoroughly absorbed with Lyndon, he eased the monkey into an Adidas carrier bag.
Nauseous, Susan felt nauseous. The monkey shit, Mike’s awkwardness, her naïveté. She would not throw up. How could she have taken Mike so seriously a few years ago? How had this man dictated her feelings—and Elizabeth’s? Urgently, Susan wished it were all over, that she could get on the train going west and read, work on her book, write a letter, go to sleep. For now, she would concentrate on not throwing up.
“What time does Elizabeth want us back for dinner?” She asked as they walked toward Queen’s Park.
“She said not to worry, any time between seven and eig
ht.”
“Oh,” Susan said, uncomfortable with the notion of a wife fixing dinner. She tried to think of it as a friend fixing dinner.
“I knew you would come back,” he was saying. “But why now?”
“Because it’s the fall,” she said, feeling pleased with herself. The fresh air felt good. She knew she would not throw up. “Because autumn is the best time for me. Because I wanted to crunch leaves beneath my feet again.”
He was silent.
“You had something to say?” she asked.
“No, nothing particular.”
“I mean, Elizabeth told me you had something to say to me.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, glancing around at the other walkers, all guaranteed in knit caps and mufflers against the first winter winds. He fixed his stare on the statue of Queen Victoria.
“I feel if you, Elizabeth and I are going to be real friends,” he said, “we’ve got to proceed with total honesty. With all that we feel for each other.”
“One evening doesn’t give us much time,” she said cautiously.
“I feel I have to tell you that I still have, and probably always will have, some very positive feelings for you.”
Susan stopped and turned to him abruptly. “You spent ten years studying psychology and three more years being analyzed and this is the way you express yourself?” She thought she might be even more angry at what he was doing to words than at what he was doing to her.
“I love you, Susan, and I’ve told Elizabeth this.”
“Oh, hell,” said Susan.
Lyndon was making nonsense in the bag. Mike quickly unzipped it and slipped him a doggie biscuit.
“If you can’t face it.…” he said.
Susan didn’t hear the rest. It was starting to snow, just a light flurry, but she felt terribly cold.
“The only thing I want to face right now,” she said, “is a hot-buttered rum. Why don’t we go over to Maloney’s?”
The cocktail lounge was dark and smoky with a heartier brand of tobacco than she was used to in London. Maybe the pungency came from American cigarette paper, which was heavier. The sour smell of lager was missing here, too, replaced with the heavy sweetness of bourbon and faded aftershave. She loved the pubs in London, especially the Freemason’s Arms on Long Acre where her friends used to drink before union meetings. She hated North American cocktail lounges papered with the dull accomplishments of insurance salesmen and bank executives. Still, she had the sense that being comfortable in a place like this was what it meant to be grown-up.
He was talking. “Like I tell Elizabeth, we’ve all grown up a lot in the last few years.” For twenty minutes, he fiddled with his digital watch, talking not so much to her as to an idea. He said he always knew she would come back. He wanted to hear all about Mozambique and her union work and her friends and lovers.
She tried to explain to him what had happened to her and what she had done. But it all came out like mug shots in a photo booth, the flash bulb catching her worrying between the smiles.
Elizabeth and I always knew we could say, “We knew Susan Campbell when.…”
“Speaking of Elizabeth, hadn’t we better get back?”
He looked at his watch, “My god, yes, it’s almost 7:30.”
“I thought you said it didn’t matter.”
“Oh, it doesn’t,” he said. “It doesn’t, but you know this snow is going to make a longer trip than we expected. She’ll understand.”
This reminded Susan of what Elizabeth was meant to understand, the “positive feelings.” Why was she so god damned worried about Elizabeth? Elizabeth had everything—her work, her comfortable conscience, her husband. They could still hold on to each other at night.
Elizabeth didn’t exactly answer the door, but she did open it.
Susan handed her the bottle of Muscadet which she had expensively selected. While Mike took Lyndon in another room, she followed Elizabeth into the kitchen.
“How did your teaching go today?” Susan asked. It was the wrong thing to say, forced. She could see that now. Of course it was bloody forced. The air was palpable between them.
Elizabeth mumbled perfunctorily as she unscrewed the top of a bottle of Brights’ President Burgundy. Susan hated cheap Brights’ wine. It reminded her of those lonely sherry evenings after the divorce. “We might as well go into the living room,” Elizabeth instructed. “I’ve ordered a pizza which Mike can pick up any time now.”
The apartment felt painfully familiar to Susan. The kitchen tiles were still chipped. On the mantel was the garish oil painting done by Elizabeth’s brother before his electric shock therapy. The metal floor lamp was still missing the middle button.
Mike stuck his head in the living room. “Is the pizza ready?”
“More than,” said Elizabeth.
“See you guys in ten minutes,” he said, slamming the door behind him.
Susan wanted to explain that Mike had said it didn’t matter when they arrived tonight. She also wanted to explain to Elizabeth that their affair three years before had been his idea. But she kept her silence now, as she had kept it then. Mike would have to break up his own marriage if that’s what he wanted.
Susan ran her fingers over the nub of the corduroy cushion, remembering the hilarious day when they had filled the huge pillows, plagued by the sticky foam, looking like tar and feather victims.
“What happened to your pillows?” Elizabeth asked politely.
“I lent them to Erna before I left,” Susan puzzled her memory. “She lent them to Harvey when they split up. He forgets who he lent them to!”
“I see Harvey once in a while. He’s still working on his thesis about houses in Virginia Woolf.”
“And when is your thesis going to be published?” Susan said.
“Spring, they say.”
Mike flung open the front door. “It’s still hot. I’ll get some plates and be right in.”
The smell of pepperoni filled the silent room. They each ate ravenously. Elizabeth went to the kitchen and brought back the Muscadet.
“Well, we certainly are quiet,” Mike laughed. “I thought some honesty might clear the air. I had no idea it would leave it completely vacant.”
Slowly, Susan sipped her wine. The delicacy of Muscadet was lost in the cyclamate aftertaste of the Burgundy.
Mike leaned forward, “I know I’m grateful to Susan for coming back. It took courage. Besides,” he turned to Elizabeth, “it’s helped to settle some things between us.”
“Or unsettle them,” said Elizabeth.
“I didn’t call to settle or unsettle anything,” said Susan.
“So why did you call?” asked Elizabeth.
“She called because she loves us, both of us,” Mike explained. “She wants to re-establish the tie.”
“It’s a pretty knotted tie,” Elizabeth said.
Susan looked from one to the other, amazed, then angry. “Look, if you two want to fight, you don’t need me.”
Mike ignored her, reaching over for Elizabeth’s hand. “Think of the risk she was taking. The humiliation. What if we had refused to see her?”
“Oh fuck the risk,” said Elizabeth, knocking her wine on the rug. White wine, which wouldn’t stain. “What kind of risk is it for her to come flying through town, just another stopover on her world adventure.”
“If you want a world adventure,” Mike said, “you can have a world adventure.”
“Don’t put her up as a model to me, mister. I’ll bloody well pick my own models.”
Possessed by sudden clarity, Susan said, “Why don’t you have this argument after I leave. I’m not going to play Aunt Minerva from out of town catching all the flak. This sounds like an old fight, where I got off years ago.”
Elizabeth looked at her, widening her eyes slightly, as if suddenly remembering their reconciliation in the Skylight Room last week.
“It’s true,” Elizabeth said, “that we only have a few hours until Susan’s train leaves.”
By eleven o’clock, she almost regretted having to leave, but she said, “The train goes soon. I really should call a cab.”
“The phone is still in the bedroom,” said Mike.
“At least we can make the call for her,” Elizabeth said with a strange urgency that sounded larger than hospitality.
Bedrooms aren’t that painful, thought Susan, grateful that she wasn’t drunk enough to have said it aloud. She walked briskly into the bedroom and picked up the telephone. Telephone book. Yellow pages, she thought hazily, lazily, and dialed information.
“If the number you want is not in the directory, hang on for a moment and an operator will answer.” Rattle. Rattle. “If the number you want is not in the directory.…” Rattle. Rattle. “If the number.…” Rattle. Rattle.
Lyndon was shaking the bars of a cage while two larger monmonkeys sat back and stared. Three monkeys in a cage. She was still sober enough to count.
A scream.
Her voice. The wine. The monkeys. She would not throw up.
“Oh god, Susan, we should have told you,” Elizabeth rushed into the bedroom. “They frighten everybody. They still scare me every once in a while. But Mike insists that we keep them here. It’s the warmest room.”
Movement Page 14
