Poached Egg on Toast

by Frances Itani

  In the dream, she and Simon are visiting the catacombs of Salzburg. They must stand in line in the graveyard at the foot of Mozart’s sister’s tomb. In a murky drizzle, a clump of visitors waits for the guide to emerge from dank hills and secretive chapels carved from the labyrinths of the hill. Graveyard attendants are clearing tangled shrubs and bushes, but the work they are doing makes no difference to the appearance of the place. It is overcrowded with stones, weather-torn and pock-marked; old candles tipped by the wind; melted wax that has clotted; withered and tattered wreaths. Margo leaves Simon to stand in line while she wanders along the row of tombs. In a far corner of the cemetery, death is depicted on nearly every stone as either a skeleton or a partial skeleton. Sometimes it is a hooded and bony creature bearing a long-or short-handled scythe. The Grim Reaper, harvesting. This is death’s job, it seems.

  She tries to recall the car on its roof, herself lying on her back on the road, the hawk. Is she looking death in the eye? Not at all. There is only one thought. “My chest is crushed,” she says to the waving asparagus. My chest is crushed. Thinking nothing but that. The rest is beyond her. Out of her control.

  Margo is lying in the hall, waiting for someone to push her stretcher. Every bone in every part of her body, except hands and feet, has been x-rayed. Now, her lungs must be checked again. A young man stands beside the stretcher. Waiting. Smiling a bland smile. An orderly? A technician? How is she to know? She tells him she does not like the victim position.

  “It’s the one position I’ve never wanted or liked,” she says, looking up at him.

  The young man nods agreeably and points to his tongue. Is he mute? Does he not speak English? Margo is never to know.

  In the dream, she is walking on a beach. It is a familiar and friendly place of sky, waves and sand. She approaches an empty canvas chair, the seat of which is flapping in the wind. The chair has been set at the extreme edge of shore; water laps at its collapsible wooden frame. Each time she tries to sit, the canvas seat blows upward and turns inside out. She pushes the canvas down and tries to climb in from the side, awkwardly, because she now realizes that she is carrying an armful of papers and these represent a play. It is a play that someone has been working on for a long time. She is forced to make a choice. She lets the papers go and sits in the chair, because she has needed two hands to negotiate the flapping canvas. The play—it is a play about her life, she realizes, too late—flies out over the water, the pages scattering and bouncing towards open sea.

  In the accident, there is no cry. Margo turns her head and sees the car as it flies out from behind the asparagus bushes. Before it hits, she has time to think only this: It can’t be avoided. The crunch she hears is thorough and complete. As thorough as two trains hitting head-on, seizing in an abrupt and unnatural halt. There is no vibration of metal. No wave of jagged fender. Only stillness follows. While one part of her believes that both vehicles are at rest, her eyes watch the other car as it turns in the air in spectacular revolution. Over and over, a child’s toy flipped carelessly from the edge of a table. Over and over it rolls and, in slow motion, rocks gracefully on its roof.

  She gropes for her seatbelt. Thinking, My hand moves, my arm moves.

  “No!” she says.

  “No!” say the other voices. “No!”

  As she watches the ascent of smoke from the hood, she begins to claw, kick, batter at the door. It swings out as though there has been no connection between the desperation of her efforts and the door’s sudden release.

  She bends forward, and feels a sharp pain in her spine. She is short of breath. Her fingers touch her neck and come away red and wet. She lies on her back on the edge of the road, again watching the smoke; she raises herself slightly and crawls farther away. She wakes in her room and hears the sea. Hears the voices, hears the man, the dead man whose face is masked by a dull streak of light. His face is small, as if it has been scrunched. He is angry and twisted and terrible. He makes a move towards Margo. But when she stares at him with eyes wide, the back of his head blurs, and he turns and vanishes. Her heart pounds. Drums through her chest wall. She sits up.

  “Simon!” she calls, and looks everywhere in the room. “Simon! Was he here just now? The dead man?”

  There is no one to grab. No one to tell. There is only the answer of silence.

  Touches

  You know you’ve been led to a table in the annex, the closed-in veranda, because you are alone. It’s not so bad, really. You prefer this to the dining room into which you can look back from an inner window beside your table. The outer windows allow a view of the grounds, the river, the uneven hill, a thicket beside three very old trees, the trunks of which you’d never be able to wrap your arms around.

  There are two men in the annex, each at a single table in this narrow veranda; places have been discreetly set so that their backs are presented to you. You can only guess at their faces. This is fine with you. You’ve come here to be alone.

  The dining room is half-filled—it’s off-season—and from time to time you glance up from your meal to look back in through the open window. It’s easy to overhear conversations because most of the occupants of the dining room are elderly, and speak in loud voices. You, who are half their age, assume that hearing is a problem.

  By far the loudest of these is Bert, whose name you’ve been forced to learn. Bert not only has a hearing problem, he has misplaced his reading glasses. He glares across the room directly at you, as it turns out, while his wife reads aloud tonight’s menu. You and everyone else in both annex and dining room must now listen to the naming of each item, followed by Bert shouting it back to his wife.

  “Beef?”

  “NOT BEEF.”

  “Sautéed veal?”

  “I don’t like that. You know I HATE EEL.”

  “Mexican shrimp?”

  “Yes! That’s what I’ll have. PEMMICAN SHRIMP.”

  There is another couple at Bert’s table, fellow travellers, the silent kind, suffering. Probably from Bert’s behaviour. You know a suffering face when you see one. Your entire professional life so far has been spent with sufferers.

  You ban this thought from your head and pull a paperback from your shoulder bag, The Beginning of Spring, by Penelope Fitzgerald. You like this book because it’s about a hearty Russian family and the unsealing of the windows in spring. All the dreary winter, the promise of unsealing the windows is held before an assortment of rowdy characters through a complicated series of entanglements. You hope that at the end of the story, everyone, including you, will experience the thrusting open of heavy panes of glass in stifling rooms, that everyone will feel the rushing in of spring.

  Bert is now roaring at his wife: “I don’t see one thing funny about your joke. Not one thing! “ His face contorts in anger and he glares at his wife and then at you, because he sees you looking. He leaves his table and stomps out of the dining room. You tell yourself he’s an old poot, you’ve met plenty, that you and everyone else will probably have to listen to him all week because you all have better manners than he does.

  You like your second-storey room, though it’s at the side of the lodge, a less-than-choice location. The water is visible only as flashes of blue through the trees. An oak presses against your window; its leaves are green and new and large, but they have a touch of red, too, as if they might deceive and turn into fall maples, instead. It’s early June and you smell river. There is a weedy bank, a dock, an ancient smell you know well. It’s the smell of underwater, of rock unturned, of fish and weed and riverbank, all mingled together.

  You think of Louisa, who is the same age as your Zoe, seven. Louisa, of the tiny-boned face and the beautiful name. You approach slowly, though you have known Louisa for months; you sit next to her in a room at the Children’s Aid. Louisa’s pupils dilate, ready. You watch some part of her scurry inside herself. After a few moments, after listening to your voice, she lifts your hand and holds it between her own small palms as if she is the adult an
d you are the child. She lets your hand drop, nods her head wisely and says, “I don’t think I’ll talk about that.” She gets up from her chair and goes to the window. She seems to be humming, humming behind closed lips. When she turns, her pupils are normal again. You think, Okay, good. A tiny, if imperceptible, gain.

  Later, you go to a place provided by the court where you meet Louisa’s mother, and you have a long session with her. When you return to your office, Becky, who is also a psychologist, brings you a cup of strong tea and walks you three times around the block. You and Becky are honed to rescue each other, to recognize each other’s breaking point. Becky is your closest friend. Sometimes you say to her and she to you, mocking each other, “Identified the problem yet, dearie?” And you both laugh, grimly. So many problems are spilled out over the two of you, day after day.

  You wonder why you’ve come to this lodge alone. Answers rise up easily: no holiday for over a year, caseload too heavy; space, you need space away from Alec and Zoe. You see Alec standing in the doorway at home. “I know you have to go,” he says. “It’s only for a week,” you say. You bend forward to kiss Zoe, who stands beside Alec. She’s wearing her yellow trousers and top and she looks like a buttercup and you feel like hugging her and hugging her and crying out that the world is not safe, be careful, for God’s sake, take care, there’s a whole world out there you know nothing about. But you kiss her and walk away calmly, even though your foot shakes over the pedal as you back the car out of the driveway. You will yourself, force yourself, to drive smoothly away.

  Bert shouts to his wife, but clearly he is aiming his voice at you. “That girl has been alone at her table ever since she got here!” You are a cast in Bert’s eye. You, the thirty-seven-year-old girl, glance up from your book long enough to stare at Bert, eye to eye. The other three at his table murmur soothing remarks to calm his outburst.

  “Why don’t you invite her over,” says Bert’s wife, “if you’re that concerned.”

  Through the annex window, you hear his arguments as he backs down. Sometimes people want to sit alone, not like him, he says. Nosirree, he likes company, though he can be with himself for a little while. He musters his anger and shouts in your direction, “At least I’m not anti-social! “

  The loons call out in the early evening and don’t stop until long after dark. You listen from your second-storey window. You can hear young women in the kitchen below, the reassuring sounds of backroom life that keep the place going. Dishes are scraped, cleaned, put away. Potatoes peeled, vegetables chopped for the next day. A screen door slaps and an older woman’s voice yells, “Where do you think you’re going?” Next, there is the sound of a young man entering, a different sort of sound; the women’s voices change. After that, a water fight. Laughter, more laughter and you find yourself smiling, upstairs in your tiny room. Amidst the laughter, the women eject the man from the kitchen.

  You and Alec laugh like this sometimes. The thought presses in, the way the oak scrunches against the screen at your window.

  Every morning before breakfast, you walk along the river. You draw in the mixed scent of late spring and early summer. In the woods, there are birds: a woodpecker you hear every day but cannot see; baby robins, long-tailed swallows, geese straggling back towards their feeding grounds.

  You hear Becky’s voice. “Identified the problem yet, dearie? Would a fast walk help? A wailing wall? A hair shirt?”

  A rest, you answer, inside your head. Only a rest. That’s all.

  When you return to the lodge, an elderly couple is sitting on one of the benches along the river path. They see you, but they’re so immersed in argument, they don’t care. The man shouts at his wife, who is close beside him, wrapped in her cardigan. “I want you to PROMISE me—on the Bible—that we won’t FIGHT.” The woman wheedles, cajoles, cannot be heard. She seems familiar with this role, does not object to the way he bullies her. He shouts again, discounting your presence, your ears. “Let me finish for Christ sake. PROMISE me we won’t FIGHT!” You’ve not seen this couple before. They probably eat during second sitting in the dining room. You never see them again.

  At lunch, Bert resumes his childlike rule over the table. “What do I like?” he says. “I like onions, green onions. And radishes. I can eat radishes. But I can leave them alone, too.”

  He lists every vegetable he can think of, a long list that represents Bert’s lifetime. It’s as if what Bert’s bowels can or cannot digest, past and present, is not only the loudest but the most interesting list anyone has ever heard. “I’m a fast eater, too,” he says. “I’ve always been one to clean right up.”

  “This is our holiday,” says Bert’s wife, as if the very mention of vegetables does not belong here, at the lodge.

  All of the diners at all of the other tables have run out of conversation at the same time.

  You think of the last holiday at the Children’s Aid, the Valentine party. You and Becky are at the party with other staff members, to help, to observe, to supervise games. You marvel as you watch the girls, watch the eight-year-olds dress and act as if they’re sixteen. Makeup, long flashy earrings, high heels—these are not dress-ups. The girls are spirited as they tap deliberate messages in spiked heels, as they stride across the wooden floor and make too-frequent trips to the washroom. Becky, who knows what you’re thinking, comes up behind you and says, “Who buys these shoes? Do the kids actually wear these to school?” You’re both thinking, yes, they probably do.

  The girls show off; they’re in competition for attention from their case-workers, from you, from Becky, from the boys.

  Louisa is at this party. She sticks to your side most of the time. You’ve told Becky, a long time ago, months ago, “This child is old.”

  An extra is needed for a team game, and Louisa’s name is called. Her head goes down bluntly. Her eyes film. An older girl—older? she might be nine instead of seven—calls out protectively, “Leave Louisa out, her father did gross touches to her. She doesn’t feel like playing yet.” The others, boys and girls alike, nod, knowing what that means. Nothing could have stopped the remark, no one could have pulled it back. It’s the language these ancient abused children live and know. When the party food is served, Louisa joins the others, laughing, reaching past shoulders and heads. Everyone is a little greedy, a little grabby. For a few minutes, over pink frosting and ice cream, you are fooled into believing that they could be a group of normal kids.

  Zoe comes home from her Grade Two class, walks in the back door and sets down her schoolbag. “Today we learned SEX,” she announces. “The teacher read the same book we have at home. The school nurse was there, too. We learned how babies are made.”

  “Did you now?” you say, and grab her close for a hug.

  Zoe pulls back so she can watch your face. “You know that time you and Dad made me,” she says, “when he had to put his penis in you? Well, when he put it inside you, did he burst out laughing?”

  You and Alec clutch each other in laughter over that. Behind your closed bedroom door. Later, several weeks later, Zoe tells you—again she waits until the two of you are alone—”I’m never going to let any man put his thing in me.”

  She looks really miffed at the idea.

  There’s no answer to that, you safely decide.

  Every day, you walk farther and farther from the lodge. You’ve met the dogs on the farms, and when you’re in the woods you’re not afraid of bears. A humming sort of heat has descended; a profusion of dragonflies and bees, of poison ivy, thick along the edge of the dirt road. There are strawberry plants and even honeysuckle, which you’ve not seen for a long time.

  You are as silent as you hope to be.

  You think of Alec. Now that you are away, you can’t keep yourself from tallying up. You know that the two of you can live together for months, asking nothing except that each is there for the other. It’s as if you truly believe that marriage, life, is that simple.

  Then, some urgent need for discord rears itself, gna
ws up the side of you, takes form in the shape of impatience, irritation, anger.

  High tide and low.

  Alec always wants to wait things out. As if time is on his side, as if you both have all the time in the world. You—you admit this to yourself—want to delve to the heart; you want to identify the problem. But just as quickly as it has dissolved, peace reasserts itself. Fingers reach across a desert sheet. A cold toe brushes against a bare leg. You are learning, and so is Alec. In your separate system of beliefs, you are learning to leave alone what must be left alone, that debris will always be present, waterlogged beneath the surface.

  Louisa says she would like to move into your house and live with you. You cannot adopt her, bring her into your circle of safety, though you would if you could. Louisa has a home, whatever it might be. Louisa’s mother watched Louisa’s father when he did gross touches. She was forced to; some part of Louisa doesn’t know this. Now, Louisa’s father is not allowed to be in or near the apartment building where Louisa and her mother live. Louisa tells you that he will be arrested if he puts a toe on the grass in front of the building. You continue to see Louisa twice a week, but that is all you can do.

  You enter the dining room. Bert is waiting. He sees that you are carrying a book, a different one this time. He shouts out as you cross the room to get to the annex, “What does she come here for, to READ?” You stick in Bert’s craw like the bone in the wolf’s throat. No one at his table can explain you. “Why don’t you ask her why she comes here,” says Bert’s wife. But he does not. Instead, he complains loudly and bitterly throughout the meal. You ask yourself if the men of his generation were born angry.

  Becky has a theory that entire generations of men have been brought up to believe it’s their divine right to be listened to. She’s put in her years, she says, of listening to opinionated men. Once a month, you and Becky go out for dinner after work. One night, in a Vietnamese restaurant, behind a paper screen, she tells you about her first husband, Dirk. Dirk comes home drunk one night—two thirty in the morning—and chases her out of their bed, out the back door, past the blackberry bushes and around the outside of the house, trying to have sex with her. “I know my rights!” he shouts as he chases. He is running with a hard-on, Becky says. “I know my rights!” he calls after her. It’s easy to get away from him, because he’s drunk. Eventually Dirk falls down on the grass and goes to sleep right there. It is not long after that, Becky says, that she leaves him.