‘Yes.’
‘You’re not Jewish, are you?’
‘No,’ said Malcolm.
She seemed relieved. ‘At least I didn’t get that wrong.’ At ease now, she was suddenly what she really was, a handsome woman who tried too hard. ‘Never mind,’ she said, opening the door for him. ‘Maybe I’ll get your card from my aunt. My hair’s not right, is it? It’s too big, right?’
‘It’s not doing you justice,’ admitted the Queen of Tact and Elaine laughed.
‘Can I ask you something?’ He pointed to the draped picture above the chair. ‘Is that your uncle’s portrait?’
For a second, she was confused. ‘Where? That? Oh, no. It’s a mirror.’
4
He finished shaving and rinsed the razor under the tap. Dried his face then carefully refolded the towel around the door of the medicine chest. Every mirror in the apartment was draped now with a towel or cloth, like they were in mourning, sitting shivah on the death of their former life.
The sky, too, had a grey cloth tossed over it, he noticed from the bedroom window as he dressed. An inconsolable sky, drab with tragedy. So green, so green, was what they always said about Vancouver, but in the perpetual half-light he seemed to lose his ability to distinguish colour. All winter he had felt as if they’d been living in monochrome.
In the dining room, Denis brought him his coffee with unsteady hands and sat down with his list. ‘I was thinking about matelote d’anguille for tonight. It’s been years.’
‘Denis,’ said Malcolm, valiantly patient, endeavouring not to gag. ‘Matelote d’anguille requires three bottles of Bordeaux.’
‘It does not. Two Bordeaux, one vin ordinaire. And twenty pearl onions,’ Denis wrote. He was having difficulty with the pencil and it moved stiffly in his hand.
‘Denis! It’s too expensive!’
‘Trop cher?’ He looked at Malcolm with pale, mocking eyes and half a smile, then said what he always said when expenses were brought up, ‘Aren’t we worth it?’ Malcolm, fingers pressed to his eyes, sighed.
‘One Spanish onion,’ Denis wrote. ‘Twenty button mushrooms. On the small side. Will you remember or should I write it down?’
‘See you in the poorhouse,’ was Malcolm’s offhanded comment. ‘Of course, you’ll still fancy yourself in the City of Light.’
He didn’t think Denis would catch his meaning, but evidently he did. He let the pencil drop and, after a long stunned moment, turned to Malcolm and asked, ‘Where am I?’ as if only now he had noticed. Abruptly, he rose and stumbled over to the window. ‘Where are my pigeons? Where are my cats?’ The feral courtyard cats that he had used to feed leftovers. Throwing open the window, he shouted down, ‘Where are my cats?’
Malcolm hurried over. ‘Darling, we moved. I told you that.’ Three sharp blasts—Yvette, thank Christ. ‘Who could that be?’ he asked.
‘How the hell should I know!’ Denis roared.
‘It’s Yvette, you idiot! Come. Let’s meet her at the door.’
‘I don’t know any Yvette,’ Denis muttered. ‘I don’t want to know any Yvette.’
Malcolm buzzed her in and began coaxing Denis down the hall.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To let Yvette in.’
‘Who is Yvette?’
A cursory knock, she opened the door herself, surprised to see them standing there. ‘Denis.’ She took a step towards him, ignoring Malcolm as usual and frowning when Denis stepped back.
‘Who is that?’ Malcolm asked, pointing at Yvette, giddy with dread. ‘Who is it, Denis?’
‘I am not a child,’ Denis told him coldly. ‘Do not speak to me in that tone.’ And like a stubborn child he refused to answer who Yvette was, refused even to look at her. He crossed his arms and shrank up small.
‘Now what?’ Malcolm asked in English.
Yvette dropped her purse; it thudded to the floor. She was not about to be refused—denied or forgotten. She opened her arms to Denis and drew him close. ‘I’m Yvette,’ she told him firmly. ‘Yvette. Don’t you forget it.’
He began to sob. ‘Please. Take me home.’
Malcolm had to go and Yvette waved him off. His presence was not required as far as she was concerned.
Even so, he left with reluctance—needlessly, as it turned out. He phoned when he got to Faye’s, but the morning’s tribulations had already been forgotten. ‘Nothing is the matter,’ Denis said brightly, ‘but it’s kind of you to call.’
‘You wouldn’t ever forget me, would you?’ asked Malcolm.
‘T’oublier? Don’t be silly.’
‘Who is there with you?’ Malcolm tested.
‘Qui?’ A long pause. ‘Un instant.’ Denis set down the receiver; it knocked against the table. And while he was waiting for Denis to come back, Faye tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Look.’
Turning to the window, he had to shut his eyes. Already the words “Faye’s of Kerrisdale” were burned in negative on his retina from where the writing on the glass blocked the sun. Denis was not going to remember to come back to the phone, so Malcolm hung up and took Faye’s hand, a clutch of knobby sticks in a skin glove.
‘Where are we going?’ she giggled.
‘Hurry. It won’t last.’
They stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned their white faces to the sun, tilted them to the warmth. Eyes closed, they stood that way for minutes, holding hands. Like the time he had tried on Faye’s rose-coloured glasses and felt more hopeful, so too, the sun’s effect.
It was still shining when he left work. What Denis needed, Malcolm decided, was to get out into the air, so he went home deliberately empty-handed and announced that he was taking Denis to do the shopping. ‘I wish you’d take him out from time to time, too,’ he hinted to Yvette, though he was already familiar with her views on exercise: she wouldn’t walk any farther than the car.
Afraid to step over the threshold, Denis clung to the door frame. He reached one foot very tentatively into the hall, as a cat reaching for a goldfish would loathingly dip its paw in water. Yvette and Malcolm each took an arm and led him to the stairs, but on the landing he stiffened. ‘Down we go, Denis,’ said Yvette, who was allowed to talk to him like a child. Denis wouldn’t budge. He looked like a man being asked to step into oblivion. They had to prise his fingers off the banister. ‘Ahhhhhhhh,’ he moaned as they led him down; in his mind, he was plunging.
‘What is that awful smell?’ he asked when they had finally got him out of the building.
‘Spring,’ Malcolm answered. For months they’d been breathing air heady with garlic and wine reducing, and the reek of Yvette’s combustibles.
They said goodbye to Yvette, Denis kissing both her cheeks. ‘A nice woman,’ he commented after she had driven off. ‘Let’s invite her again.’ Turning, he began his shuffle back towards the apartment, but stopped short when he saw the building. ‘This is not our place!’
‘We’re going shopping. Come.’
‘Shopping?’
‘The walk will do you good.’
If Denis kept his eyes down and his hands in the pockets of his coat so his arms did not hang down so troglodytically, they looked like any other couple out for a walk on the first sunny day in weeks. The cherry trees were beginning to bloom, the clumps of crocuses open. Robins paced the lawns and yanked stubbornly on worms. But if Denis lifted his eyes and squinted around, he grew fretful and claimed that they were lost.
‘No. We’re going shopping,’ Malcolm told him.They passed the seniors’ centre and Malcolm spotted Mrs. Parker bombing through the parking lot on her scooter. She didn’t see him. She didn’t see that far.
‘Nous sommes perdus!’
He patted Denis’ shoulder, then picked a crocus for his lapel. ‘I know exactly where we’re going.’
They neared the cor
ner where they would turn onto the avenue of stores. In front of the bank, Denis nudged Malcolm. ‘Look who’s here!’ he hissed. Inside, a line of people waited for a teller, none of them familiar. But Malcolm was looking in the bank while Denis was staring at his own nemesis reflected in the smoked glass, a mauve crocus perking in the buttonhole of his coat.
‘We’ll give him the slip.’ He took Denis’ elbow and hustled him around the corner. ‘Is he following?’
Denis looked over his shoulder. ‘Non.’
They went first into the bakery where Denis seemed immediately less anxious. Around food, he felt at home. He began chatting to the girl behind the counter, a young thing susceptible to charm, who stood listening, rapt and comprehending not a word. To Malcolm she said, ‘It’s French, right? I took French in school, but only remember a few words.’
‘Say something to him.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Go on. Try.’
‘Je t’aime beaucoup,’ she blurted, then reddened.
Delighted by this impromptu declaration, Denis reached across the counter for her hand. ‘Je vous aime aussi.’ When they left, Denis with a baguette under his arm, everyone smiled after them.
‘Au revoir!’ chimed the girl.
‘Must you always do that?’ Malcolm asked, pretending to be annoyed.
‘Quoi?’
‘Collect admirers everywhere we go. I can’t take you anywhere.’
‘Bah,’ said Denis, smiling. ‘Elle est bête, la pauvre.’
Outside the fish store they found a dog tied to a parking meter, a golden Labrador with its muzzle stretched out long on its yellow paws. When Denis stopped, it lifted its despairing wet brown eyes.
Malcolm stepped inside, for the first time noticing how many reflective surfaces there were in the shop: the chrome edging and the glass on the cases, the black counters, the mirror behind the cash register. In any one of them Denis might see himself, so Malcolm stuck his head out the door where Denis was standing with his free hand on his hip, the other holding the baguette, talking to the dog.
‘And does she often tie you up like this?’
The dog was sitting up now. It jerked its muzzle.
‘Denis? Will you wait right there?’
He didn’t seem to hear. Anyway, Malcolm would be able to keep one eye on him from inside the store. Another customer ahead of him, he had to wait. Then the fish seller turned to Malcolm and, clapping his hands together, said, ‘Have I got a beaut for you today.’
He beckoned Malcolm over to the far case where, on a bed of crushed ice, next to a jumble of smiling clams, the eel lay, slick and black with an ostentatious ruff of gills. ‘A dandy,’ Malcolm agreed.
‘Close to five pounds,’ said the fish seller and he whistled a long downhill note.
‘Nothing smaller?’ asked Malcolm.
The man looked disappointed. ‘I thought you’d go crazy for it.’
‘Wrap it up then.’
He lifted the thing out of the case by the ruff and carried it dangling to the scale. ‘Four and three quarters.’
‘Christ,’ Malcolm said.
Paying, he saw from the corner of his eye the owner of the dog untying it from the parking meter, but by the time he’d got his change and left the store, Denis was nowhere to be seen.
Next door was a lingerie shop, which seemed a logical place for Denis to have stepped into. ‘Did a man come in here?’ Malcolm asked the woman sorting brassieres on hangers.
‘When?’
‘Just a second ago. Smallish with silver hair. A lock hanging in his eyes. Gorgeous, really. Doesn’t ring a bell?’
She started to laugh.
He entered every shop, every café on that side of the street and asked if Denis had been in. It seemed impossible that a man who paused again and again for bearings he would never retrieve could have got very far. Yet he was gone, vanished.
‘He was carrying a loaf of French bread and had a crocus in his lapel.’
‘Sorry.’
‘He would have been speaking French.’ They all shook their heads.
Then he couldn’t be on the avenue. Probably he’d wandered off down a side street, most likely following the dog. As soon as Malcolm realized this, he stopped looking for Denis and began searching for the dog, for the yellow flag of its tail. He retraced his steps back to the fish store, turned down the closest street, walking fast. He would get a dog for Denis. Why hadn’t he got one before?
At the corner, he stopped to ask a man digging in his garden if he’d seen it.
‘A golden Lab?’ He shrugged. ‘Lost? That’s too bad.’
Lost, but really, was there any need for Malcolm to be sweating so profusely, for his heart to be in his throat? They would be used to wanderers in a neighbourhood home to so many elderly. What was the worst thing that could happen to Denis? True, he could be hit by a car, but more than likely he’d charm his way into someone’s kitchen. Probably he was this very moment asking where they kept the lard.
He kept looking for the yellow dog, looking, and after he had walked up and down for an hour he went back home and called Yvette.
No one answered. She would, he remembered, be breastfeeding the judge.
He phoned the police and in thirty minutes they returned his call. ‘We’ve got your man,’ the officer chuckled, ‘but we can’t seem to convince him to get into the car.’
‘I’ll be right there,’ said Malcolm. ‘Are you far?’
They were barely four blocks away, on the train track, sitting on the rail. In his lap, all that was left of the baguette was the heel.
‘What in the world are you doing?’
Denis couldn’t answer. He seemed completely dazed.
‘You’ve gone and eaten all the bread!’ chided Malcolm.
‘Non, non. I was feeding the pigeons.’
He took Denis’ arm, helped him to his feet and thanked the officer who seemed bemused by the scene.
‘Need a lift home?’
‘We’ll walk.’
They made their slow way back, in silence, beside the tracks. Soon they came to a bit of bread, and then another. Then Malcolm saw that Denis had been breaking off pieces to mark a trail. Here, on the ties, a crow, so black it looked dyed, was choking down a piece.
5
Hands on hips, he watched Grace snuffle the perimeter of the sandbox, watched with distaste. She had been with them weeks now, at their table perched on Denis’ lap accepting morsels off his fork, burrowing between them in their bed, curling next to Denis’ neck, her stump in Malcolm’s face. The sound of Mrs. Parker’s motorized scooter came into earshot, nearly drowning out her faint hail.
‘Malcolm!’
On colder days, Mrs. Parker wore her signature tam, but she was bare-headed today, revealing hair she had finally allowed Malcolm to rid of its apricot tint. Mitzi, her chihuahua, rode in the scooter basket. Malcolm lifted down the dog.
‘We must stop meeting like this, Mrs. P.’
She gripped his forearm, fixing on him a flirty look.
Within minutes the elegant Mrs. Rodeck joined them with Hugh, her epileptic pug. Mrs. Rodeck used to wear a rat, but Malcolm had changed all that as well. Then Miss Velve arrived, Miss Velve who looked like some necky waterbird. For decades she had run an antique shop on the boulevard, specializing in not quite complete sets of English china and Coronation mugs. ‘Gone to walk the dog,’ read the card taped on her shop door at this time every day.
The dogs sniffed each other’s backsides—they did it in a ring—and the ladies didn’t seem to find this behaviour smutty in the least. ‘Look,’ said Miss Velve. ‘Look what Malcolm’s done to Grace.’
Mrs. Rodeck clucked. ‘Isn’t that the cutest thing?’
He had put on her a rhinestone collar and combed up and tied with a bow the wiry ha
irs that fell into her eyes, not so much to prettify her as to play up the ridiculous kind of dog she was. When Grace’s eyes didn’t show, you couldn’t see the brown matter that they wept.
‘Adorable,’ said Mrs. Parker and Grace’s ears pricked up. She answered to flattery of any kind. Malcolm could even summon her by calling, ‘Vanity, Vanity,’ in a saccharine voice. Bouncing over to Mrs. Parker, she began her grotesque little jig, rising onto her hind legs, pawing the air. Her stump—the size of a man’s thumb severed at the knuckle, covered with long dun hairs—wiggled.
‘Aren’t you precious? Aren’t you precious?’ cooed Mrs. Parker.
Mrs. Rodeck’s pug thundered over, pop-eyed with jealousy, and knocked Grace aside. The ladies laughed and groaned and the pug looked around, confused. His lips were too large, loosest at the corners, almost fluted, pebbly-textured and moist, like blackened female genitalia. Malcolm looked away, to Grace splayed pornographically as she cleaned herself. He avoided ever looking at Miss Velve’s Lady; she had a dangling growth. The chihuahua wandered in a seemingly inoffensive circle, except that in the few short weeks that Malcolm had been a dog walker, he’d learned to recognize the signs preliminary to defecation. He had a moment like this every day, when he didn’t know where to look.
When the dogs had finished what they were there for, the pug kicking out behind himself with pride, plastic bags were produced from coat pockets and purses and Malcolm, ever the gallant, offered to do Mrs. Parker’s dirty work. It was so difficult for her to stoop. Their rendezvous over, they said goodbye until tomorrow.
Last week Mrs. Soloff had told him, ‘This group you meet when you walk your dog? They think you love dogs, too. They think you feel the same way they do. But you don’t. You are an impostor. Am I right or am I wrong?’
Mrs. Soloff was long ago a Russian, before worse things happened to her; this lent some gravity to her words. Malcolm, feeling both guilty and accused, asked, ‘Do you think I should confess?’
He had been bad-mouthing Grace, casting himself and the dog in comic anecdotes—some outright lies, others mere hyperbole—with Malcolm playing a world-weary Jeeves catering to the childish and self-indulgent whims of Grace. He was no kinder to her canine friends.
A History of Forgetting Page 4
