What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

  After a while Trent comes upstairs and undresses and falls into the bed and lies there, a dead weight, eyes closed, letting her know with his heavy silence that he wants to have sex with her, but she pretends she does not notice this, and she keeps reading, until she can tell from his breathing that he is asleep, and then finally puts her book down and turns off the light.

  Aloft

  PARVANEH SAYS: Checking for the mail again, Mandalay! You will not hurry your fate that way. She says this in a light way, teasing, so that Mandalay isn’t supposed to take offence. And she doesn’t. She says, playing along, putting on a girlish voice, I want to see it! I want to see it!

  You are hopping like a flea, Parvaneh says. You shouldn’t get your hopes up. It might not come today.

  Yes, Mandalay says. But I want to see it. They said it would be out today, and I want to see it.

  You don’t want anyone else, all of those passengers, knowing what it says before you do yourself.

  Exactly.

  It’s amazing, how well Parvaneh gets her. How well they understand each other. They’re really attuned. It’s lucky; it’s so good to work with someone who is always on the same wavelength. It’s really rare, and lucky. And it’s why they’ve been able to collaborate so well and achieve so much. It’s so lucky.

  You know, Parvaneh says, when it comes, we will be unhappy with the photographs: You will complain that they haven’t caught your best side, and I will complain that they have given me a double chin, and we will find so many mistakes in the writing, and will be shaking our heads. But all the while she says this, she is smiling.

  Mandalay says, I love you, Parvaneh!

  You should go home, Parvaneh says. We’re past the lunch rush, even.

  It’s true. She should leave now; she’s been at the café, as usual, since five in the morning, and she won’t have much time before she has to come back in to close, but the mail has not come yet.

  Go, go get your nails done and look at the new spring coats, Parvaneh says. If it comes I will put it in your box. Nobody else will see it.

  It’s a fantasy that Parvaneh elaborates on, that Mandalay has nothing to do but have manicures and go shopping when she’s not at the café. Parvaneh, of course, has a household and kids, and splits her shifts so that after the morning baking she goes home, gets her kids up, gets the older one off to school. Then she leaves the younger with her mother-in-law, comes back for the late morning and lunch rush, cleans, goes back home to collect her children. And then does the bookkeeping after they go to bed. Mandalay always says, I don’t know how you do it, and it’s true: She can never quite imagine it, the chores and demands that must fill Parvaneh’s day.

  But she doesn’t have a life of leisure herself. She bikes, she does yoga. She also has to do things like clean her apartment and do laundry and pay bills. And she’ll be back in the late afternoon to do inventory and ordering and close. Then she has to go to bed horribly early, by nine, so that she can be back at five.

  She works hard too. They both do. But it’s just fun. As the cliché goes, she can’t wait to come to work every day. And it’s lucky, again lucky, how she and Parvaneh have made their schedules dovetail so well. They have one server come in for the early morning traffic, and two for the lunch rush, a couple of extra on the weekends, but it’s amazing how well they manage, how they have coordinated and adapted to each other so well. What an amazing thing they’ve made of the café.

  She’s grateful, so grateful.

  She says goodbye, finally, slips out the front door, turns onto Fourth, walks along in the early spring sunshine past the kitchenware and clothing boutiques, the noodle houses, the Mexican restaurant. Garnishes of daffodils and primroses in the planters along the sidewalk; hits of pistachio green on the trees. She is so lucky to have her job, to be living in Kits. Luck is on her side, right now. She’s almost afraid to think about it too much, but that’s superstitious: She needs to cultivate this, enjoy this good patch. Or maybe it’s bigger than a patch. Maybe it’s a whole field, a meadow, of things going right for once.

  And living within walking distance of the café; that’s another occasion for gratitude. It’s just around the corner, really. A right onto Larch and then a left onto Third, and here’s her home: what she’d always hoped for. Only a studio, but she has her own entrance, and a tiny balcony a foot wide, with a wrought-iron railing outside a big window, and the corner of a view of the water. Inside her apartment, high ceilings, original hardwood floors. Every day, even when it’s raining, the apartment feels lofty, uplifting. The tall window is a beautiful architectural shape, and lets in lots of light.

  It’s true that her bathroom is miniscule and lacks a tub, and her kitchen is barely big enough to make toast, and there is no storage. But she’s been lucky; she’s been able to scrounge crates and planks, and an old dresser with carved decorations that looks almost antique, painted white, and she’s covered her bed and the walls and floors with amazing rugs and scarves and pieces of textiles. Everything’s a bit faded, a bit dusty, a bit ragged, but when the sun is shining, like now, the colours look like a Vanessa Bell painting, and at night, with only the lamps on, the room glows.

  She lets herself in, goes to the sink and runs a glass of water, drinks it down. That’s her rule, before doing anything else. She’s learned to work these healthy rituals into her daily life. Now she unrolls her yoga mat, though her body is full of electricity, and doesn’t really want to do yoga. She knows it’s even more helpful when she’s feeling nervy like this. She needs to ground herself.

  She does three vinyasas, one after the other, concentrating on the stretching and flexing of her joints, the precision, balance, the flow of energy through her body. The stretch upward, skyward; the folds; the plank and the lunges, the downward dogs, cobras and the warriors. The stretch skyward again. The skittish energy in her head becomes more channelled, more connected. She sees a crow leave the branch of a tall tree in a neighbouring yard. The crow lifts; she feels the push of its lift through its feet and wings. The branch reverberates a little; she feels the precise balance of the branch’s swing to the crow’s lift. The crow is clutching a bouquet of sticks in one of its feet, and she feels the stretch and tension of the crow’s toes and claws around the sticks, the subtle alterations it must make with its wings to compensate for the weight of the sticks. The crow flaps past her window and its glance meets hers for a microsecond, in which she sees its curiosity, its observation of her, reflected in its obsidian eye.

  Now present and calm, she drinks another glass of water, and eats an apple. She rarely needs to cook; she can eat the seconds at the shop, the turnovers that lose a corner coming off the pan, the quiches whose edges crumble too catastrophically, the last piece of a batch of spinach pie, or spoonful of chickpea salad, which can’t be put out in the morning. It’s all delicious, though a little high in the fat and carbs.

  Thinking about the shop again, she feels the anticipation coming back, the nervous energy. She needs to get some exercise, to move. She’ll bike over to Granville Island, check out some of the students’ work, choose some more pieces for the shop, pick up some supplies for herself at Opus. That will keep her tethered for the afternoon.

  IN THE EVENING, the magazines still haven’t arrived, but she’s able to keep riding the wave of happiness about it. She’s not allowing herself to be squashed down by Parvaneh’s lack of ability to enjoy the moment. It’s not her problem, Parvaneh’s repression or whatever it is. No: she won’t allow negative thoughts of Parvaneh. They are great together. Her vision and fearlessness; Parvaneh’s attention to detail. That’s what works. She needs Parvaneh, and Parvaneh needs her. She has to appreciate and embrace her difference. That’s all.

  But she really wants someone to celebrate with. It’s too bad that the article is only going to be in an airline magazine. Nobody she knows will see it. (Well, maybe her ex-boyfriend, Andrew, whom she hasn’t seen in ten years. She thinks he’s still touring, but that the band isn’
t doing well enough, anymore, to hire private jets. She imagines him in First Class, though, thumbing through the airline magazine, maybe recognizing her photo, her name, maybe thinking about looking her up.)

  It’s a farfetched fantasy. But she will get some extra copies; she can give some to people she knows.

  She telephones Cleo. It should be a good time, she thinks. Cleo will have finished dinner — they eat early — and won’t be putting the kids to bed yet. She should be able to talk.

  Cleo is excited. Cleo gets it, the excitement of it. She wants to see the magazine right away. She wants a copy right away. Save me one, she says, and I’ll get it next time I’m in the city. Or mail me one.

  Cleo lives only half an hour out — maybe an hour, if the traffic is bad — and has a car, but she hardly comes downtown anymore. It’s as if she is hundreds of miles away. How can she can stand it? There’s nothing but suburbs of identical vinyl-clad houses and malls out there. Cleo says she doesn’t like it, either, but when she asks Cleo why she and Trent don’t get a condo in the city, she says it wouldn’t work, with kids. Mandalay has pointed out that there are lots of young families in Kits — she sees moms with strollers in the café every day. You wouldn’t really have that much less space, she has pointed out. Your main floor isn’t that big. And you don’t really use your basement. And how much time do you spend in your yard? But Cleo doesn’t seem to think it’s possible. She’s stuck, somehow.

  Cleo says, Tell me all about it; tell me what it says. She’s seen the café, met Parvaneh, discussed with Mandalay some of the menu and even the art pieces, and she asks the right questions, remembers details. Cleo gets that it matters more than almost anything else to be creative. Cleo is on her wavelength, when it comes to creative stuff.

  She wants to tell Cleo more, now, about how she can see the café expanding, and how she might be able to parlay her curatorial work in the café — which the article really picked up on — into a job at an art gallery. She’d really like to work at an art gallery. It would be her dream job. (That, or writing for a lifestyles magazine.) She knows she’s at a disadvantage for those kinds of jobs, not having a university degree. But in some areas that could be seen as an advantage too, right? Right? She would have more unique ideas. She wouldn’t be cut from the same cookie cutter as all of the other visual arts students.

  Yes, yes, Cleo says. But suddenly Mandalay can tell she’s not listening. There’s a lag in her replies; they’re not connected anymore to what she’s saying. She can hear her niece Olivia’s voice now in the background, a little bit whiny, and Cleo answers her, hardly turning from the mouthpiece, so it’s like she’s saying in Mandalay’s ear: Just go. You don’t need me to help you. Just go do it.

  Is this a bad time? Mandalay asks. Do you have to go? No, no, Cleo says, but the intrusions get more frequent and louder. Mandalay waits while she’s interrupted again and again, by Cleo’s other conversation. Finally, there’s a wail in the background, and Cleo says, hastily, I have to go now.

  How long has it been since she’s been able to have a phone conversation with Cleo that lasted more than fifteen minutes? Cleo laughs about it; she says that the telephone ringing is a signal for her kids to have crises. They can play quietly for an hour but if she gets on the phone, they instantly need her attention. But surely she has to have some time to herself. Rules or something. And why doesn’t Trent help out more?

  She can just call someone else. She has friends: lots of friends. But of course it’s hard when you start thinking about the last time you talked to someone, or the things that might have to be mended between you before you can tell them about something exciting that’s happened to you. There are people with whom she’s shared houses or apartments, or been in classes with or worked with. She spent quite a bit of time with some of them, before they drifted apart. She might still have phone numbers for some of them, or at least know people who’d know.

  The woman with the dark bob, from her sociology class, a couple of years ago. Diana? They’d gone out for coffee a lot, worked on a project together.

  No: Diana had been friends with Christopher. What about the woman from the yoga class, the one with the dreads, Yasmin? They’d talked a lot; Yasmin had been interested in doing some painting classes together.

  But now a sinking feeling that she’d been the one to drop the relationship, that she’d been supposed to call Yasmin about a favour, something she’d said she could get Yasmin, a ride or the loan of something, or maybe a shared house that had an opening for a roommate. . . . That was it. And she hadn’t done it; she had let it go.

  Honestly, it’s hard to keep up with people. Everyone moves on. Some of the people she knew were really just associated with where she was at the time: her jobs or courses or housing, and she’s moved on so much.

  What about someone from the art college? She has a contact there, one of the instructors, who helps her choose the student art for the wall at the café. She has her work number, anyway.

  No answer; just the machine, asking her in a kind of distracted way to leave a message. She can try again, but it’s not the sort of thing you need to say on an answering machine.

  She could call her mom, Crystal, but Crystal only ever talks about herself, can’t hold onto the thread of what Mandalay’s trying to say for more than a few minutes. Then she just goes vague. Plus with Crystal there’s always this undercurrent of jealousy; she can’t let Mandalay have rich experiences or shine. She always has to compare herself or start talking about how she, Crystal, didn’t have any opportunities.

  There’s not really anyone else. It makes her sad, that people can’t maintain totally open, unselfish connections with each other.

  Maybe that’s been her own fault, a little. She has to admit she’s put most of her social energy, since she was in her late teens, into relationships with men. And she hasn’t stayed friends with any of them, as some women she knows are able to.

  Tomas, an international student from Brazil, colourful, self-confident, larger than life. Ponytail, dashing clothes. Late nights discussing art and politics and philosophy with his cosmopolitan friends (French, Bosnian, Nigerian, other Latin American). Mandalay had met him at the café she worked in then; he came in all of the time, looking like he’d been worked over in a very interesting way, asked for coffee as if he were dying and only she could save him. He’d got her reading, thinking, listening to the conversations. He’d taught her about clothes. Canadian women, he’d said, dress like they’ve just left a Mennonite colony. He’d taught her about Lycra and waists. The waist is not the true erogenous zone, he said, but it is necessary: It creates the bosom and the bum. Without the waist, nothing. He’d taught her to wax and to wear high heels — she won’t thank him for that when she’s fifty — and to wear her clothes tight, like a second skin. He had never expected her to clean up after him, though, or not respected her ideas or wants. He liked talk and sex and music and food. He’d liked people, their minds and bodies. He said people were the same, all over: They had the same feelings, the same dreams. When he had gone back to Brazil, though, he had not asked her to come along. She’d suggested it and he’d said: You’d hate it. It’s not the country for you. Then he’d written her from Brazil, on a postcard: He had got married, to the daughter of old friend of his family, a long-standing engagement.

  But first there had been the musicians. Three of them: Danny, Clive, Andrew. Each a little more successful, each a little more talented, a little more driven, but a little less human or kind or happy. Like falling down a staircase, slowly, those years.

  Danny played guitar, and other things, in a punk band that had played a bar in Butterfly Lake. It was that small and unimportant a band. All of the musicians had other jobs, and did gigs on the weekend. Danny had been stoned much of the time, but not all of the time. In between times he’d written some decent music, and had good philosophical conversations with her. She’d followed him, when he moved to Vancouver to try to get better gigs, and he’d made her
finish school, get her GED. And he’d been honest that he wasn’t going to be exclusive. Though he’d kept letting her clean his apartment and do his laundry and cook him meals. (She had chosen to do those things, of course.)

  Clive had been next: a cellist with the symphony, witty, well-read, sensitive, mannerly. He’d also been in a string quartet that rented practice space in the same converted warehouse that Danny’s band did. He’d come and chat with Mandalay, commiserate with her. You deserve something better, he’d say. She had liked to listen to the quartet practice, and had known just enough about one of the composers they’d been playing — thanks to a set of books she’d read over and over as a child, The Great Composers — that she’d sounded to Clive that she knew what she was talking about, which she didn’t. She just knew how to keep the conversation on the topics she knew a little about, and to smile when she thought he wanted her to agree with him, and raise her eyebrows when she thought he was trying to provoke her. He’d been so self-deprecating in his humour that she had misunderstood the depths of his neediness. She hadn’t been living with him for more than a couple of weeks before she saw him spend half a day giving her the silent treatment because she’d bought the wrong kind of orange juice. Then it was two days curled in fetal position in bed after a negative review. And otherwise, tremendously articulate, gentle, sensitive, self-deprecating. Yes. That had been seductive enough to keep her sympathizing for almost two years.