“Hey, Iris,” Jay says softly. Iris touches her throat with her fingers, then puts down her hand. He’s gazing at her with those beautiful, night-dark eyes of his. She puts her hand lightly on his slim wrist in thanks, and in something close to reverence at his physical beauty. She hears James’s voice: Your skin is so soft, it’s like silk, your lashes are so thick …
Sorrow stabs her because she’s not beautiful any more. It shocks her to realize how important her beauty has been to her, that everything she is was grounded in it, that without it, she’s at a loss, she doesn’t know how to be. But how much of it can she have lost if this beautiful young man is with her? Reassured, at least momentarily, she smiles at Jay, who smiles back with a light in his eyes she knows. When she was young, all the men smiled at her with that light in their eyes.
The sari-clad young woman returns, and while Jay is talking to her, Iris looks around the café. All the diners appear to be younger than she is, they have strange haircuts and are dressed informally, the men and women the same in shirts and jackets and jeans. All of them have that air that country people don’t, a sort of agreed-upon theatricality, a careful arranging of posture, gesture, and facial expressions.
“It was really nice of you to come out on this rescue mission,” she tells him.
“I wanted to see you.”
“I wanted to see you,” she says ruefully, although she’s trying to sound amusing, “I could practically be your mother.” She’s holding her breath, pretending not to be, as she fixes him with her smile. He blinks, looks away, then says, “Well, first, you’d had to have been about fourteen at the time. Secondly, so what?” Before she can answer, the food arrives: nothing Iris can name, or has tasted before, but she keeps silent, not wanting him to know. As naturally as if they took meals together every day, they both begin to eat.
After a while Iris realizes she’s losing count of how many glasses of wine she has had and it worries her a little; she suspects she’s a bit drunk. And yet, how long has it been since she felt relaxed and happy? The months when Barney was gone come back to her: the waiting, not sure if he would ever return — I deserve a little happiness, she thinks. Aren’t widows ever allowed to be happy again?
“Have you decided what to do about your land yet?” Jay asks. She tells him about her arrangement with Vance and Ramona, about Jim Schiff and his offer to buy, about his company’s plans, about her own uncertainty.
“Had any proposals?” he asks. “If I were a bachelor in your neighbourhood, I’d be courting you to get my hands on all that land.” Iris laughs, and shakes her head, even thinks of telling him about her father’s accusation that Barney had done that, when suddenly, she thinks, perhaps he was right. She’s appalled at herself, Never! But her long-held resistance to such a cruel notion is beginning to crumble. So what if he did, she tells herself angrily. He made the farm his own with all those years of hard work and his faithfulness. If he did, she tells herself, I forgive him. Besides, if anybody schemed, it was me. Barney had been dating Alana Sproule, that barrel-racing cowgirl with her long, muscled legs — everybody thought they’d marry — when Iris decided she couldn’t live without him, and smiled at him whenever she saw him, tried to be where he was, until he’d begun to understand she desired him. She still remembers that glitter that suddenly appeared in his eyes when he looked at her and she knew at that moment that she had him, he was hers. And before long he loved her — fully, passionately, completely.
When Jay speaks, it startles her. “I guess it’s a big decision.” Oh, yes, her land.
“I’m on the run from it,” she says, trying to smile. “I’m on the lam. From my farm.”
“No,” he answers her. “It’s only a little holiday, before you dig in.” His eyes on her face are dark and gentle, and she cannot, does not want to look away.
“I’m very attracted to you,” she says quietly, then stops, feeling her face — her whole body — getting hot, maybe it’s only the wine, but sweat is even pooling between her breasts. Around them the other diners laugh and talk brightly, their blended voices retreating to a distant hum.
“I don’t have to tell you how I feel,” he says, not looking at her.
“Yes. Yes, you do.”
“You’re a very pretty woman.” She doesn’t know what to say to that other than an awkward “Thank you” — it isn’t what she’d hoped to hear. She puts her hands up, her fingertips against her temples, then lowers them quickly. “What — Are you — I mean, I don’t understand this. I don’t know what this means,” she says, meaning the two of them together here; she’s trying to look into his face, but he won’t let her.
“There’s nothing to understand,” he says. “We’re attracted to each other. We’re grown-ups. That’s all.” There’s a long silence while she puzzles over this answer. We’re grown-ups. That must mean that they’re entitled to a sexual relationship if they want one. She feels an abrupt excitement mixed with dread, coming too fast for her to understand, leaving her trembling inside. “I like older women,” he goes on in a light tone that makes her heart sink. “Because they’re better at loving — I don’t mean sex, although I suppose they’re better at that too.” He glances at her, then sobers. “I know most men my age see a long-legged nineteen-year-old as the most desirable woman” — Iris thinks of Lannie, although she is thirty now — “but that’s just vanity.” He taps his long fingers on the tablecloth.
Eventually, they finish eating and walk back the short distance to her hotel. All the way back she feels anticipation. Will he leave her at her door? But he doesn’t, he enters the elevator with her, comes into her room, where he takes her in his arms and kisses her, then begins to slide off his jacket, and she knows then that she’s about to make love to someone other than Barney, the first since James, who has been dead all these years. The excitement of being with a man, the two of them assessing each other, wanting each other, succumbing to each other, is as powerful tonight as it was when she was twenty-one.
They undress each other, stopping to kiss and touch, falling together onto the bed, then pulling apart to remove the last articles of clothing. As she slides her panties down off her thighs, past her knees, her ankles, it hits her suddenly that her body isn’t what it used to be, that she’s not the beautiful one any more.
He’s reaching for her, but she can’t respond. What if when he looks at her he finds her ugly? She turns back to him, aware of how strong her own desire is, she needs this. He is naked and she sees how slim he is, his chest, belly, and legs lightly dusted with dark hair that glints softly in the lamplight. He is gazing down at her, a long scrutiny, taking his time — she’s afraid to breathe.
Pure physical sensation sweeps up the length of her body, removing every shred of uncertainty, as he kneels beside her, caressing her, then lies full length against her and above her, and enters. It is the joy of being female; something she has forgotten or lost, returning now in full force, carrying her away.
When Iris wakes, the room is filled with light, but there is no one in the bed beside her. Nor is there anyone else in the room. She calls softly, “Jay?” but no one answers. Maybe he has just gone out to get a paper or some coffee. She takes both pillows, pushes them behind her back and sits up, settling back against them. If he isn’t back in a minute, surely he’ll phone her. It worries her a bit that he’s gone without saying goodbye. This isn’t something she has done before, at least, not like this, in a hotel, or as a widow, and she isn’t sure what the etiquette is for such occasions.
She looks across the room at the door leading into the hall, but the handle doesn’t turn, there is no swift, soft knock on it. Then she notices that a hotel envelope is propped against the lamp on the desk. A word is scrawled across it in large, careless handwriting that, even though she can’t read it from this distance, she knows is Iris. She gets out of bed, goes to the desk, and takes the envelope.
Her body feels different, some fluidity in her joints that wasn’t there yesterday — or
the day before; she can’t remember the last time her body felt so relaxed, almost youthful in its ease of movement. Without looking at the envelope, she sits down on the bed and closes her eyes, lets herself go for a moment deep inside the memory of the night she has just passed, that warmth, that open mouth, that encompassing physical joy she experienced with Jay. Then embarrassment and delight sweep through her. When she opens her eyes the bedside clock tells her it’s ten-thirty in the morning. She hasn’t slept this late since she was a teenager.
She presses both hands to her chest, forgetting she’s holding the letter, and then opens the sealed envelope.
Dear Iris,
Sorry to sneak out without saying goodbye, but I have to get organized for my move and you were sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to wake you. It was a good night, wasn’t it. Good luck finding your niece.
Jay
She lets her head fall back against the pillows, the letter onto her lap. He is gone. Her impulse is to burst into sobs like a schoolgirl, but instead, her eyes burn, a peculiar sensation that makes her blink rapidly. And her chest hurts, with each breath her lungs have begun to ache as if she’s breathing in harsh cold air. She’s struggling to get a grip on his dismissal of her. All she can think of is that she’s fallen for a man who isn’t Barney, that’s she’s slept with him, that he’s walked out on her like some stupid romance novel or a soap opera. For a second, she’s enraged that this misery could still happen to her. It isn’t fair, she’s thinking, at the same time, bitterly amused at the irony, I’m too old for this. I don’t deserve it. He was only a boy, she tells herself, he was nothing to me. But the pain in her chest, the sense she has of absorbing a great blow, won’t let her hold onto this belittling of him. I loved him, she says to herself, but no, it wasn’t that. It was that I thought he would save me.
Then she feels strange, as if an illness is about to descend on her, or some disaster. A series of sensations rush through her body each barely registering before it departs: I’m hungry, I’m nauseous, I’m lonely, I’m exhausted, I’m depressed — but she can hardly tell the physical discomfort from the emotional unease, they express themselves in the same way — as dread. She sits up straight, waiting for it to pass.
Heat surges from a deep centre through her body, spreading outward and especially upward, expanding in size and intensity until it’s pushing with all its burgeoning power against her physical boundaries — I can’t stand it, she thinks, if it doesn’t stop, I’m going to die. Then, at the instant when she feels she can’t endure any more of this fire, it bursts through her skin, slowly transforming itself into a fine layer of perspiration. Then hot moisture — some pure, clear, odourless liquid forced from her cells — pooling in the creases of her neck, between her breasts, in the hollows behind her knees and along her forehead just below her hairline. It leaves her exhausted, as if she has been running for days.
Aware in the dim recesses of her brain of the implication of what is happening to her, now she feels her body’s tremendous excessive heat not so much as illness or failure as a warning; it’s as if a great hand, the hand of a goddess, has touched her with her immortal, incandescent finger, so that she is seared in the holy fire; she’s the bush that burned and was not consumed. She would not speak at such a moment, or move, to escape notice, but a cry involuntarily escapes her as she recognizes the unrecognizable: Iris Christie. Widow. Crone.
Holy fire indeed, she thinks. Menopause is only sweat and stink, sleeplessness and growing old. And yet how jealous men must be of this, even while they’re frightened and disgusted by it. This thing has such immediacy, she can’t turn away from it. Her body is speaking and it gives her no choice but to listen.
At least you’ll never again have to worry about whether blood is staining the back of your dress, never again have to fuss with sanitary pads or tampons or tell Barney you’d rather wait to have sex. All that nuisance and mess is over forever. It occurs to her to wonder how many years she’s menstruated — something like forty years, month after month after month. The years have come and gone before she has had time to notice. I am approaching the end of my life, she thinks, with such bitter sadness. I am alone, facing my death.
Then it hits her at last, the degree of its intensity stuns her: it means you’ll never have a child now. Never. She thinks of the child Lannie would have had. I could have raised her myself, she thinks.
I forced her to have an abortion. She was weak and I knew it; she couldn’t even think rationally, and I said, “You must have an abortion,” with that common sense I learned from my mother and that I thought was my greatest strength — I knew I was right. I! I didn’t even think about it. Lannie wasn’t mentally healthy enough to raise a child. She might have tried to kill herself again.
But maybe having a child would have saved Lannie. How do I know? Not having a child didn’t save me. Save me from what? From life, she answers herself, but this only confuses her more, or upsets her, she doesn’t know what to think. And looking back, she can’t see that she could have done anything else. But what’s the point of thinking about that now? For no matter how she twists and turns, she is alone in her silent hotel room, far from home and friends and family and Barney is dead, and James too, and now even Jay has gone.
She gets slowly up off the bed, and walks across the room. This is her, Iris, carrying on.
Then she sees her skirt and blouse she’d worn the night before lying smoothly over a chair. Jay must have placed them there before he left. And there are her shoes placed neatly together under the chair, and her underwear lying in a silky heap on the skirt. She goes to them and gathers them in both hands, her creamy half-slip, her lace-trimmed bra, her sheer panties, and holds them against her chest, inhaling last night’s odours, cigarette smoke, perfume, that musky odour she recognizes as her own. She’s thinking, what a fool you are, Iris. As if a man half your age might love you.
It’s minutes before she can force herself to the bathroom. After she has bathed, she dresses in creased slacks, her yellow silk blouse, her cashmere jacket. She studies her face in the mirror; moving closer she makes herself look at the lines and wrinkles of her more than fifty years. Sadder but wiser, she thinks, and stares grimly at her reflection as she pulls the brush roughly through her hair.
She repacks her suitcase, checks out of the hotel and takes a cab to the airport. There are numerous flights to Ottawa, and she manages to get a seat on one leaving in under an hour. She’s begun to suspect that the real reason Jay has left her is the simplest, age-old one: now that he’s conquered her, he doesn’t want her anymore. She phones Ramona and tells her what she has found out about Lannie.
“I might have to go to Africa myself,” she says, to test how it sounds out loud. Ramona draws in a deep breath.
“Iris, don’t do anything silly, eh? Remember us, we’re here, waiting for you to come home.”
“People go to Africa all the time,” Iris says briskly. Ramona puts Vance on the line.
“Remember the land deal?” he asks. “Well, of course you do. Halvorsons and Wiebes have both signed. Not that they’re saying anything, but you know how word leaks out. They’ve been back here twice, too. Just won’t take no for an answer.”
“Do people know yet where the money’s coming from?” Iris asks.
“Some reporter’s been here and he says the provincial government’s trying to find that out before they’ll let the deal go through. Maybe you should come home so’s not to miss all the excitement,” Vance says.
“No,” she says firmly. “I haven’t found her yet. And if I’m not there, they can’t pressure me. Besides, Vance, we’ve got a deal, and I’m not backing down. Are you?” His answer is a snort that makes her laugh.
All the rest of the time, while she’s boarding her plane, flying the short hop to Ottawa and checking into her hotel, she’s thinking about Jay. His leaving her is such misery, she almost wonders if a night of lovemaking was worth it. Backtracking mentally, she tries to find the plac
e where she might have stopped it before it began. No, she couldn’t have stopped it. She wanted it all along, but she wanted to be in control of what happened between them, it didn’t occur to her that he might have more power over it than she would.
She sets her suitcase down by the door of her new hotel room, which looks much like the one she just left, and goes straight to the phone, gets the book from the desk drawer and looks under “Sargent, Robert.” She’s about to dial the number when she realizes this must be his home phone number. She tries again under “Engineering” in the yellow pages, finds “Sargent, Bloom, and Atwater,” and copies the address down on the notepad by the phone. As she did not phone Tim first in Toronto, she doesn’t phone this company either. She’ll only get some secretary who, she’s sure, won’t let her speak to him.
She hails a cab — how cosmopolitan she has become in a few short days — and it takes her quickly to her destination. As she waits in front of the office building for the driver to give her her change, she sees through the cab’s window all the people hurrying up or down the high, wide steps. A couple of men pass by, their ties flapping over their shoulders in the wind, talking on cell phones. Women pull their spring coats tighter around them as they descend, and wave to friends hurrying up the stairs. Iris could weep for the ordinariness of it all.
“Rob Sargent,” she tells the young receptionist who looks up from her computer when Iris enters the office. “Iris Christie to see him.”
“Is he expecting you?” She’s young enough to be Iris’s daughter, younger even than Lannie would be now.
Garden of Eden Page 23
