On the Rim

by Florida Ann Town

  “If that’s all it means to you, go sit in some other park! You embarrass me.”

  So she did, walking to a local park with her folding chair and her book. Often there were Little League games in that park, and everyone assumed she was someone’s mother. She smiled to herself when strangers tried to strike up a conversation by making observances about the game and she quickly learned how to deflect their comments and return to her reading.

  It was a short-lived idyll, however. Paying a babysitter had been acceptable when she was watching Al play, but paying a babysitter so she could spend time in the park reading a book wasn’t justifiable. And so she remained at home, first with Geoffrey, then the twins, Joanne and Jennifer, and finally Robby, the baby.

  A crowded three-bedroom fixer-upper was all they could afford in the early years of their marriage, but when Al’s mother died, the sale of her house gave them a good down payment on a tract house in a newly opened area. Ellen loved the house, but missed the convenience of the older parts of the city. There were no corner stores, no handy bookstores or coffee shops, just rows and rows of new houses, new lawns, and no fences. And women, behind the picture windows, coping with young children. It was a bonanza for the few teenagers in the subdivision, who were in hot demand as babysitters, but Ellen no longer needed their services.

  Along with racquetball and softball, Al found time to join the local ratepayers association and was nominated for office.

  “It’s only once a month,” he assured her.

  Technically speaking, it was, but the subcommittees met frequently to prepare for those monthly meetings, and Al was on several subcommittees.

  “What’s so interesting about a ratepayers association?” she asked one evening as he got ready for yet another meeting.

  “We have to do a great deal of planning,” he informed her, in that “I know-you-can’t-possibly-understand” tone of voice that he used so often in those days.

  When Geoffrey was old enough to join Little League and Pee Wee hockey, Al tore himself away from the ratepayers to help coach Geoff’s teams. When the girls were old enough for soccer, Ellen assumed he’d do the same, but he didn’t. When it was Robby’s turn for softball and hockey, he found time to coach again.

  Ellen seethed, but felt helpless. She couldn’t coach. She didn’t have much contact with the other mothers and didn’t feel she had much in common with them anyways; she wasn’t part of the kaffeeklatsches. There was only so much dusting she could do, and once the children were all in school, the days lagged.

  “Al, what would you think if I got a job?” she suggested over breakfast one morning.

  “You’ve already got one,” he said, refolding the newspaper and gesturing with his empty mug for a refill.

  “I’m serious,” she replied, quickly bringing the coffee pot to the table.

  “So am I.”

  He broke the silence a moment later to add: “Besides, you can’t do anything.”

  Several weeks later she tried again.

  “Guess what, Al?”

  A mumble from behind the paper indicated he wasn’t into guessing games.

  “I’ve joined the Noteworthies.”

  The paper drifted downward. “What in god’s name are the Noteworthies?”

  “It’s a choir. We meet on Tuesday evenings.”

  The paper collapsed on the table. “I wish you’d said something first.”

  He sighed. The paper rose again.

  The choir was fun. They performed at care homes, offering Thanksgiving singalongs, Christmas programs, golden oldies, and gospel songs. They were a good choir with a repertoire of popular favourites. Ellen was proud to belong.

  “We’re singing a Valentine’s Day program next week. Would you like to come?” she asked Al one night.

  “No thanks. I can’t sing.”

  “Other husbands come. And there’s always tea and cookies after.”

  “Spending time with old people who drool and dribble into their bibs isn’t my idea of a night out,” he told her, his face frozen in distaste.

  As the children got older, their demands increased and Ellen’s Noteworthies were gradually phased out by service as a Brownie mom, Home and School support, Scout mom, Minor Hockey mom, and baker of endless cookies for various fundraisers. Sometimes the church held a bake sale and then she baked extra fancy cookies.

  “Who are these for?” Al complained one night, helping himself to a krumkake. “How come you never bake anything for me?”

  “Of course I do.” She had laughed. “The cookie jar is always full.”

  “Those are for the kids. You never make anything special for me.”

  The next day she made a sherry-laced trifle for him.

  “There,” she murmured, piling whipped cream in luscious mounds, grating curls of dark chocolate on top. She gave the kids dishes of ice cream and presented Al with the trifle. He poked at it with his spoon.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s trifle.”

  More pokes.

  “Why can’t I have ice cream?”

  Wordlessly, she removed the dessert and replaced it with a bowl of ice cream.

  Over the years, she evolved a mantra: “When the children are older, Al and I will have more time together.” But it never happened. The kids went through guitar and accordion lessons, gymnastics, ballet, and karate. They played hockey and ringette, softball and soccer. They turned out for track and field and swimming lessons. Eventually they were old enough to get themselves where they had to be, whether by bike, bus, or carpool. Ellen joined a fitness class at the community centre; her interests hadn’t widened, but her waistline had.

  Summer vacations were unremarkable. Al was usually involved in a tournament, so family vacations were wherever the tournament took place. Three years in a row he used ten days of vacation time for international tournaments. These were solo events. The family stayed home while he went twice to England and once to Fiji.

  “Here we are in Suva,” he announced, after arriving home with a handful of pictures and some small carved turtles.

  Except for the palm trees in the background, it looked like just another ball game.

  “I didn’t know there were women’s teams, too,” Ellen commented, looking at one of the pictures.

  “There aren’t,” Al replied.

  “Then who are all these women?”

  “Oh, some of the guys bring their wives along — the ones who don’t have families.”

  Later she learned they did have families, but the first wives and the kids had been left behind in favour of younger playmates who had their priorities straight and devoted themselves to their own personal “superstars.”

  But that was then and this is now, Ellen tells herself. No point in going over things she can’t change — but some memories are hard to erase. After years of living with an absentee husband, Ellen is now officially “on her own.” When the end came, it was more of a fizzle than a bang.

  Al packed his bags one Saturday morning and announced he was leaving; his lawyer would contact her.

  If it happened in a movie, there would be weeping, shouting, screaming, or even violence, maybe a pot thrown through a window or a lamp crashed against a wall. To her surprise, she did none of these things. In fact, she did nothing at all.

  “Don’t you even want to know why?” he had asked.

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “That’s exactly why — because you don’t care. I’m tired of being nothing but a meal ticket. You don’t care about me or anything I do.”

  “And someone else does?” she asked, with sudden insight.

  “Someone does.”

  The room vibrated as the walls crowded in on her. Her brain buzzed, her throat tightened, and her gut cramped like it did when she was a kid and heard the whiplash of words her parents threw at each other; hard words, hurting words. She couldn’t breathe.

  She gulped a few times before she could utter a sound. Then she spoke
, as evenly as she could.

  “If that’s the case, it really doesn’t matter what I think, does it?”

  “That’s it?”

  Her teeth grabbed the inside of her lip. She concentrated on her breathing.

  “Thirty-two years and that’s all you can say?”

  She sat taller. “Thirty-three … and I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  Al glared at her. Whatever he expected, that wasn’t it. “If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you.”

  Ellen’s control evaporated. It was a line from one of the worst movies she’d ever seen, too corny to be believed. She repeated, half whispering, “If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you.” Wonderful words. Every phrase book should include them.

  Laughter bubbled up from somewhere, laughter that wouldn’t be suppressed. It started with a quiver in her cheek, then a wriggle in the diaphragm. Finally, a snort at the back of the throat unleashed it and it escaped, ricocheting around the room.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny.” Al sulked.

  “If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you,” she gasped.

  Finally, she got herself under control and looked at him, as a stranger might look at someone they’ve met for the first time.

  He stood, flanked by his suitcases — poor, mute brackets surrounding his life.

  “It’s all right, Al. Really it is. Go. Have a good life.”

  His look would have shrivelled her, if she had cared.

  “You are a cold-hearted bitch.”

  “You’re probably right. Now, please, just leave.”

  “Not even a goodbye after thirty-three years?”

  Ellen shrugged. “You’re the one who’s leaving. I’m not sure what you want. And at this point, I’m not even sure I care.

  “Goodbye, Al. Does that make you happy?”

  He swooped on his suitcases, opened the door, and stepped out. It was the kind of dramatic gesture he loved to make, but it needed a bigger audience.

  Ellen knew reality would set in later, but she couldn’t help laughing once again as she repeated to his retreating back, “If you don’t know, then I can’t tell you.”

  As she closed the door, her laughter rolled out, squeezed from the core of her being. This time she didn’t even try to subdue it. After a bit, the laughter turned to tears, but she wasn’t sure who or what she was crying for.

  — 2 —

  TWO DAYS AFTER AL’S dramatic exit, he had returned to claim possession of the house on the grounds that it was in his name. She’d thought of it as “their” house, but in fact he was the sole owner.

  “You don’t know how to do the maintenance or make repairs, or look after the lawns and all,” he had told her. Nor could she afford the upkeep. He offered a monthly sum, enough, he said, to keep her in an apartment and to live on.

  “It will be a lot easier for you,” he told her.

  Unquestioningly, she accepted, found an apartment and moved. She told herself it would be an adventure, but it wasn’t. It was frightening. This was the first time she’d lived on her own with no one to rely on. No one to talk to. No one to turn to.

  Her first night in the apartment had marked the beginning of a nightmare week of weeping and self-pity that gradually gave way to an envelope of deadness, muting her senses, leaching away her energy, and trapping her in a sea of lethargy.

  Her boxes sat in accusing piles, forcing her to walk around them. She had neither the will nor the energy to unpack. She went to bed early, woke up late, and somehow passed the numb hours between with no memory of them.

  Ellen drifted through the first few weeks and said nothing to the kids. But she finally realized she’d have to face up to it. She stalled, dithering over the choice of paper. Fancy note paper didn’t seem right. Plain paper seemed too ordinary. Finally she compromised, roughing out the letter on the ruled pages of an old scribbler.

  Ellen watched the words scrawl crookedly across the page. She felt detached from the pen, from the page, from the letter. It was a ghostly feeling, as though someone else’s hand was writing. She forced herself to focus on the line, re-reading it blankly.

  I’m afraid your father and I can’t work out our differences …

  Jabbing viciously, she scribbled the pen through her words. Stubbornly, they clung to life, refusing to be eradicated, forcing her to acknowledge their truth. She wished it wasn’t so. She was still bewildered. She didn’t know her marriage was in trouble until it was over.

  Over. Over. Over. The words echoed in her head with the finality of a drum roll. Her chest felt paralyzed. She wondered if this was the first sign of a heart attack. Maybe that would change things.

  But she knew it wouldn’t. She wished there was some way to go back in time to a place where things hadn’t yet begun to unravel.

  She rolled the pen between her fingers, as though it might contain a secret compartment with happier messages. It didn’t.

  She started again.

  I’m sorry to send you bad news.

  “Why do I have to do this?” she muttered, rubbing her neck to deflect the probing fingers of a headache that niggled against the base of her skull, a ghostly hand picking at an unhealed scab. She shrugged off the notion that half of this problem belonged to Al and maybe he should be contacting the kids. It was easier to do it herself than to argue about it.

  She had tried phoning them, but was crying before she had finished dialling their numbers. Wearily, she crumpled the page and watched as it dropped from her hand to the floor. Forget literary grace. Forget gentle phrases. There wasn’t a pleasant way to deliver this news. She wrote bald, identical letters to each of the kids, slid them into the stamped envelopes, and trudged to the entry hall to drop them in the mailbox before she could change her mind.

  Three days later, as though on schedule, they phoned, the calls coming within a few hours of each other. Geoffrey suggested counselling. Robby wanted them to stay with him while they “walked in the woods” and sorted out their universe. Joanne and Jennifer each suggested their parents take a cruise together.

  “You need a second honeymoon,” Joanne opined.

  “Reawaken the magic,” Jennifer offered.

  Repeating the fiasco that passed for their first honeymoon would guarantee the split was final, but that wasn’t something the girls need to know. Ellen thanked them for their suggestions and assured them no one had to come and help her.

  Joanne, the most persistent of the children, phoned again and asked if she’d like to come and visit with her granddaughters for a while. Ellen knew it would be impossible to maintain a façade, to pretend that she was fine. Joanne has sharp eyes.

  “Thanks, dear, but I’ve got a lot to do here. I haven’t even unpacked yet.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come and help you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine, thank you.”

  Much as she hated talking on the phone, Ellen spent extra time with Joanne, to assure her that divorce isn’t contagious — or inherited. She avoided talking about what went wrong. She wasn’t even sure herself at that point, and Al’s “if-you-don’t know-then-I-can’t-tell you” comment didn’t bear repeating. She didn’t mention the new “someone” in Al’s life either. Unlike her let-it-all-hang-out children, Ellen had difficulty airing personal problems.

  She talked briefly with Lissy and Jana, who danced before her mind’s eye: elfin children who owned her heart — her only grandchildren.

  “Guess what?” Ellen began brightly. “Grandma lives in a new house now. Maybe one day you can come and visit me.”

  “Does Grandpa live in a new house, too?” Lissy asked. Lissy, with the quick mind and bright eyes, the child who noticed things, picked up instantly on the fact that Ellen has said that only Grandma lived in the new house.

  “No, he doesn’t,” she said, wishing for once that Lissy wasn’t quite so intelligent. “Grandpa still lives in his old house — but we both still love you and you’re our very, very favourite gran
dchildren.”

  Even as she said the words, she thought how modern it was. Single-parent homes and “theirs, mine and ours” households abound. Ellen wondered if Star Trek’s Seven of Nine, with her roots in a collective, wasn’t a truer depiction of the future than Norman Rockwell’s All-American family. No warm gaggle of cousins gathered at her grandmother’s house, and it looked as though they wouldn’t gather at Ellen’s either. When her chicks left the nest they established their own lives, and Ellen was proud of them, happy for their independence, pleased with the people they had become. But there was an aching corner in her heart that still yearned for them and the grandchildren she so seldom saw.

  During the months after leaving Al, Ellen had become aware of a piece of information which she decided not to share with her children. As “friends” had been quick to report, their father’s girlfriend had moved in with him — moved in within days of Ellen’s departure, in fact. The sheets didn’t even get cool.

  “She’s not as young as she seems,” one friend told her, her malicious enjoyment singing through the phone. “She dresses like my teenagers,” another said. It was amazing how quickly they picked up information about the newcomer: Her name was Verna. She was foxy, blonde, lean, and a real fashion maven. She came from a place called Driggs, somewhere in Idaho. Ellen had never heard of it, but her friends seemed to know all about it. Verna worked as a cocktail waitress and had never been married. She smoked. She loved to dance. She quit her job when she moved in with Al.

  Ellen wondered at the time if Verna wanted a family. Like a few of his buddies, might Al end up playing Daddy to someone half a century younger than himself? She wondered how her children would react. Children have highly conservative notions about parents’ sexuality. A kiss, a polite hug, or some discrete hand-holding is tolerated, but anything beyond that is unseemly. Even the kiss has to meet certain dry standards. With few exceptions, such as Robert Redford or Warren Beatty, older people aren’t supposed to tongue tango, especially not parents.