What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

  We do?

  Swelling outward, not inward, she says. She is very, very calm. They are all discussing whether Sam should be taken to emergency, very, very calmly.

  Sam’s screams subside, then turn into sporadic hiccupping sobs. He begins to nuzzle; Cleo carries him to a quieter corner of the living room, sits, opens her shirt. Tears flow down her face with the milk let-down. She has seen the end of things, the cataclysm has passed by in front of her eyes. How can she survive this?

  That’s some house, eh, Trent says on the way home. He estimates what it is worth, what the taxes are, the cost of the lawn and garden maintenance, the heat bill. She thinks he’s trying to transform something, to turn his admiration for the house, his desire to have a house like that himself, into something else: something like disdain or scorn.

  I don’t know why, she says, more expensive houses have better-proportioned rooms and windows and nice wide baseboards and trim.

  Because, Trent says, they’re more expensive.

  No, she says. I mean, those things can’t cost that much more. Why not put them in smaller, less expensive houses? Why not think out cheaper houses a little more, make them look a little more appealing?

  They’re cheaper because they’re not as nice, Trent says.

  No. I mean, why are they not as nice? Why do they have to be less attractive? Why can’t they just be, oh, a bit smaller, use less expensive materials? Why do they have to be — stingy — too?

  Well, if you want a fancy house, Trent says, his pleasant tone vanishing again, you’ll have to think about getting a job again soon.

  That is not what she meant, not what she meant at all. But it’s pointless to keep it going.

  After a while, he says, What were you doing off in the corner with Andy Dalgleish?

  Nothing, she says. He brought me my wine, when I was having to comfort Sam.

  Did you ask him to?

  No, he just did, she says. He was just being kind.

  He wanted to see your boobs.

  She had predicted that statement so accurately that she congratulates herself.

  He’s losing his edge, old Andy, Trent says. He’s letting the big stuff go to the other partners, the juniors, now. He’s wearing out, I guess.

  There’s nothing to say to this.

  After a while, she says, I talked to Kate Jensen about work.

  Oh yeah? Trent sounds interested.

  I told her, I was looking for fall the year after next, and maybe for part-time, at first.

  Now why would you do that, Trent says angrily. Why would you do that? Do you want to live in poverty forever? Do you want me to work my ass off supporting you? You always said you’d work. Were you lying? I’m warning you, you’d better get your act together. Maybe you should look for a job at the mall, or something.

  She’s aware that Olivia and Sam are both awake, listening, in the dusk inside the car.

  Please don’t use that tone of voice to me, she says, neutrally. We’ll talk about this later.

  There’s a wailing, then, behind them, of a siren, the flashing of lights. Trent pulls to the side, but the vehicle pulls right up behind him, stays there as Trent swears, pulls right over, stops the SUV. The red and blue lights pulse through the windows.

  Were you speeding, Dad? Olivia asks, in her clear, almost adult voice.

  Just the marriage police out again, Trent says, before he presses the button for the window to open, and Cleo snorts in spite of herself, and suddenly remembers why she had agreed to date him, to sleep with him, to marry him.

  ONE OF THE NEW CLIENTS walks up to Cliff while he’s trimming her lawn edges and says: This big whack of lawn, it’s such a waste of space and water, don’t you think?

  He doesn’t know what to say.

  I thought maybe you guys would have some other ideas.

  At this point he should refer the client to Ray, he knows that, but because of his encounter with the movie producer, and because the day before he was dreaming in the Italian garden, he forgets this basic rule, and he says: Well, you could put in a sunken terrace, about two-thirds of the way down, like here, about so big, with pavers and big pots of herbs and orange and fig trees, and a couple of benches.

  And the client’s face just lights up then: She gets it. And the energy of her getting his idea is like someone’s flipped on some stadium lights in his brain. He says, though he knows he shouldn’t, Do you have a piece of paper? And she goes into the house and comes out with a pad of graph paper and a pencil, and he draws it, counting off squares in his head, imagining a berm here, a tall, light, airy tree — cascara, maybe? — here, calculating the angle of the sun, the heat that would collect in this spot, if it were recessed into the ground, if it were partially shaded.

  When Ray comes up to them, he says, in the softest voice Cliff has ever heard him use: What are you doing, Cliff? And his heart almost stops, and then starts in like a pavement cutter. Because he knows that he’s in that much trouble.

  Only in the truck, afterward, of course.

  You do not do that, Ray screams. You do not ever do that again. You do not dream up stuff for clients. That is not your job, and it never will be. If I see you do that again, you’ll be out of here so fast that it’ll take your nuts two days to figure out which way you went and catch up to you. Capiche?

  He is sorry. He is not sorry.

  Mrs. Cookshaw comes out to the sheds in a taxi. She says, Clifford, the client likes your idea. But you can’t do this. You have to take smaller steps. You can’t jump up just because you feel like it. And you can’t antagonize Ray.

  He says he understands.

  Ray says: We had planned to design a maze for the client, in that space. A labyrinth, in yew. They’re big now, and we can do a lot more planting and then there’s the pruning that will be necessary, and we can make a lot more money out of this place. Your ideas, those, they don’t bring in money. They’re useless. Got it?

  He gets it.

  I wouldn’t say useless, Mrs. Cookshaw says.

  But Ray would. Anyway, he gets it.

  THERE’S A SONG Mandalay keeps hearing on the radio in shops and cafés this spring. It’s very much a pop song, with a quick bouncy tune and catchy, but inane, maybe silly lyrics. She hears people sing it under their breath sometimes. She has to disapprove of the lyrics. They’re cheeky, playful, but they also represent some deplorable sexism. The singer, or the singer’s persona, is articulating a pretty blatant promiscuity, listing the names of his girlfriends as if these women were so many accessories or toys.

  Mandalay hears Duane singing an adulterated version of it almost under his breath as he’s opening his car door for her: A little bit of Mandalay in my life. She has to make herself scowl at him.

  What’s the matter?

  Sexist?

  Ah, it’s just playful.

  If a woman were singing it, she’d be called a slut.

  It’s tongue-in-cheek.

  That doesn’t make it okay.

  It’s making fun of male fantasy. Listen to the lyrics.

  I think you’re wrong.

  I think you’re wrong.

  All of this said smiling at each other from the comfortable leather bucket seats of his car. He hasn’t started the engine yet, or even put on his seatbelt; is just sitting there half turned to her. She would say his smile is goofy, but she’s aware hers is probably a reflection of it.

  The thing about Duane is his personal or social honesty, which isn’t the common, uncouth disagreeableness that most people think of as honesty, which is really just a blunt instrument of aggression, another way to package their projections and insecurities, their jealousies and resentment and lack of generosity.

  Most people, Mandalay thinks, who pride themselves on being brutally honest in the social sense — people who will say they don’t like moussaka, when that’s what you’ve made for dinner, or tell you that your outfit isn’t flattering, or that you hurt their feelings last week when you made that comment
about Georgia O’Keeffe — those people aren’t really that invested in being honest, but rather are trading off the social contract which allows all individuals a little bubble of comfortable delusion for the pleasure of putting someone down. That’s all.

  Real honesty, on the other hand, requires two things: first, a really clear, unflinching knowledge of one’s self, one’s hang-ups, fears, motivations, neuroses, triggers — and second, the ability to genuinely not give a fuck. Which in itself requires a certain amount of self-acceptance.

  That’s what she’s learning about Duane. It takes a certain amount of getting used to.

  She asks him if he wants to walk along the seawall, Sunday morning, and he says No: too many people. She asks if he’d like to have dinner at the Naam. And he says, No: good student food but I like things more nuanced now. Dinner at her house? No. No point, he says, unless you’re a really fine chef, which I assume you’re not, and even then I don’t want to watch you cook. Breakfast, maybe, he says. If I sleep over. Almost a wink. Movie? Maybe, he says. I’m choosy.

  String quartet at the Queen Elizabeth? No: no chamber music in large public venues. Even though we have amplification these days? No: it’s about style and tone, not volume.

  No to a picnic in False Creek: all goose shit and diesel. But yes to ripe strawberries and brioche from la Baguette and l’Echalote, eaten in his car on Grouse Mountain. Yes to the symphony, or some performances of it. No to the opera. Not here, at least. (She thinks of Clive, the classical musician she had dated for a while, and sends a little mental bubble of gratitude toward him, for educating her a little bit about music. Leaving her with some cultural capital, as Christopher, another of her boyfriends, would have called it.)

  You’re a snob, she says. It’s all very well, when you can afford only the best.

  It’s not about money, he says. It’s about quality of experience. Sometimes that costs more.

  Almost always, it costs more.

  Possibly. For me it’s really about time.

  Time?

  There’s only so much of it. Why spend it on things that aren’t really great experiences?

  I guess, she says, that people enjoy different things.

  True, he says. But for me, there’s a difference. Quality.

  Isn’t that subjective, really? Don’t we just assign values to things?

  Well, he says. Think about these strawberries. Good, yes?

  They are really good. Sweet, more intense of flavour than she’s had for a long time.

  Where do you think they came from?

  Someone’s garden?

  Ha, he says. You’re right. And where do most strawberries come from?

  Huge farms. Here or in California. And they’re bred for fast growth and size and keeping time, and picked before they’re ripe.

  Exactly. And what do they taste like?

  Well. Sometimes better than others. Not as good as these.

  Yes. And these strawberries, I got from a man who grows them in his yard, and sells them for about five times as much as supermarket strawberries, and you really have one day, maybe two, after they’re picked to eat them.

  And you can afford them because you bill your time at six hundred dollars an hour.

  Just for starters, he says, grinning. But anyone can buy good strawberries. If you’re going to eat strawberries, eat the best strawberries you can find.

  But that’s — elitist or something.

  Is it? What if everyone just started refusing second-rate strawberries?

  But that’s just what she thinks. Everyone should eat better-quality, locally-grown food. Only there’s something missing, a place she can’t quite put her finger on, where his argument doesn’t hold together completely.

  Mandalay expects a modern, minimalist, self-consciously masculine steel-and-glass tower, but his building is slightly older, not as high. He lives on the twentieth floor. There’s only one above him, the penthouse. There are tall, wrap-around windows, but the walls are painted a sort of café-au-lait, and framed in wide white trim. The floors are darkish wood, and the sofas have a softness to them — they aren’t the rolled-arm, tufted and studded monstrosities of Trent and Cleo’s house, but they aren’t all hard lines and steel tubing, either. The leather is aged-looking, a sort of darker grey-brown, like an ancient motorcycle jacket, maybe. There are some large paintings — abstractions that look like city skylines with water reflections, if you were squinting at the skyline, or seeing it through rain. Or tears. There are pillows and a rug in browns and greens and greys. From the windows she can see half the city, it seems: the lighted globe of the science centre, the Granville and Burrard Street bridges, the ships off English Bay, the sails of Canada Place, the great dark swath that is the park.

  Go ahead, he says, laughing. Look around.

  The kitchen and bathrooms are not ostentatious, but have sturdy, simple-lined cabinets, lots of lighting. There are two bathrooms: an ensuite and another full bathroom. Two bedrooms: The smaller contains a desk, a couple of bookcases, a computer. In the larger bedroom there’s a walk-in closet and a king-sized bed. One wall is papered with a black-and-white graphic of leafless trees, and the bed is covered with a duvet in a soft, mossy green with light in it: not olive, but brighter. At first she thinks it’s mottled, but then sees that there’s a pattern of tiny leaves. The bed linens are very white.

  Are you going to tell me what you’d change about the place? he asks.

  What? No, she says. It’s beautiful.

  She’s picked up the warning in his voice: Other women before you have made this mistake; don’t do it. There are some strange models out there, she thinks, for responding to a man’s apartment. There’s the women’s porn model, where everything is incredibly luxurious and desirable, but too hard-edged and masculine. The woman has to appreciate the money but envision her own things in place. There’s kind of a pathos, a Jay Gatsby angle to this, too: I was so poor, and I’ve raised myself up by my own guts and smarts and sweat, and now look at all of the pretty shirts I have, and the fine closet to store them in. Then there’s the horror version: Bluebeard’s castle, which these days probably just means a dungeon in the basement, or the evidence of complete slobbery that emerges: weeks’ worth of crusty laundry that’s been stuffed into the closet, under the bed. The woman doesn’t notice it until too late, and then she’s expected to deal with it.

  It’s an odd experience, as a woman, to come into a man’s place and admire it but not want it, not expect to move into it, to have to make it her home.

  You don’t want me to put up some prettier art? A painted armoire in the bedroom? Some little carved African tables?

  There’s an edge in his voice that makes it difficult for her not to react defensively. I’m not those women, she wants to protest. Or: Why do you care so much about your precious space? She’s been standing; she sits, now, on the sofa, whose leather seems buttery to the touch. Smiles up at him. Definitely, she says, the little tables. There’s nowhere to put pieces of driftwood or the glass elephant I was going to get you. And some nice plates with cute pictures of cats would soften up your kitchen, don’t you think? And what about a crocheted cover for your spare toilet roll?

  It’s not what he’s been getting at, she knows that. She’s deflecting like crazy.

  He looks at her quizzically. He’s made drinks, brought them over to the couch. Old-fashioned, he says. I only seem to ever have the makings for one kind of drink in the house at one time.

  So this is the drink of the week?

  Of the month, sadly, he says. I don’t entertain much.

  She says, I like your place. It’s clean and has appealing colours and lines and is — definite. It feels like you.

  Then she says: Way too tidy, though.

  A little inclination of his head, then, as if something he has been expecting or hoping has been confirmed. He touches his glass to hers, deliberately, then puts his down, on the low table, and takes hers from her hand, and puts it down also, and
then pulls her to her feet by her hands, slides his hands up to her bare upper arms, holds her just apart from him, meeting her gaze, holding it.

  The Prodigals

  SHE DOESN’T GO to the Giesbrecht’s often. Trent is bored by them, their dilapidated farm, their conversation about livestock and people he doesn’t know. The Giesbrechts adore Trent: They think he is brilliant, well-mannered, hard-working, sophisticated. It is a class thing, she sees, though there aren’t supposed to be classes, in Canada. They defer to Trent. They think Cleo has made a great catch.

  She can only take so much of them. She is working on separating herself, on seeing them just as people whom she used to live with, whom she isn’t like, now. She should stop going to see them, but she has got in the habit: They like to see the kids, the kids love the farm, the few chickens and ducks and goats that are left. It is a place to go where she feels she is wanted. She works on visiting just enough so that they complain too much about her not visiting enough, but not so little that it would seem ridiculous to pretend to have a relationship, and not so much that she will be in the constant state of irritation that visits put her into.

  She usually makes Trent come along, for protection, but this time he refuses.

  It’s a day trip, only an hour’s drive. They are so happy to see her, to see the children. Olivia and Sam awash in hugs, in exclamations over their height, their beauty. There is lunch, which is a little worse every time — Mrs. Giesbrecht is falling down in her cooking, she’s getting old. Or maybe she never was a good cook, and that’s why she needed Cleo. The meat — oven-fried porkchops — is overcooked and dry, the potato salad somehow a little runny, the blueberry pie undercooked, and maybe not sweetened enough. Mrs. Giesbrecht laments the absence of Trent to do justice to her cooking, though in truth Trent doesn’t like her cooking: complains about it in the car on the way home.

  There are baby rabbits, this time. Cages of rabbits. Olivia is enchanted. Cleo catches Mrs. Giesbrecht’s eye, and they communicate silently: Don’t tell her they’re for meat.