What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

Gwendolyn says, You sleep in pajamas? I always find a nightgown more convenient. She says it in such a way that it seems a salacious comment, though Cleo can’t believe she meant it that way.

  TRENT’S SISTER BORROWS Sam and Olivia for the afternoon. We miss little kids around here, she says. Cleo’s anxious: What if something happens to them? But she can’t refuse. There’s no way to refuse.

  She thinks she might lie on the double bed and read. That’s what she might do.

  Then Trent comes up. Hey, lady. This is my bedroom, he says, his voice cracking, falsetto. Are you looking for my big brother? Are you Bob’s girlfriend?

  It’s the pubescent boy game. Trent likes this one. She tosses imaginary long hair, pats the bed. Rory’s not here, she says. He’s so busy with his homework. Why don’t you come and entertain me for a little while?

  It’s a dirty game. She’s not sure she likes it, but Trent does, enough for both of them, maybe. It’s not about Trent’s brother Bob, of course. Bob is grizzled, middle-aged, a judge. He seems dry, sexless, to her. It’s about Trent being a little boy, free of responsibility. It’s about Trent being innocent. It’s about making her, Cleo, responsible for everything.

  Tawdry, she thinks. Shameful. Also, the idea of a very young guy doesn’t turn her on. She feels a sort of chill, a kind of cold clear dismay.

  Why does she agree to it then?

  Because it is easy.

  Because it relieves boredom, temporarily. It passes the time. Because what does titillate, what does get her worked up a little, is the accompanying disgust — not toward the fantasy, but toward Trent, for finding pleasure in it. Disgust toward Trent. His childish persona gives her a feeling of separateness from him, of superiority and separateness. That’s what turns her on.

  Disgust at herself, too: yes. But she can suppress that.

  It’s the sense of distinctness from Trent, the moral and aesthetic rejection of Trent, in her mind, that pulses in her brain, opens her libido.

  It’s a nasty little game. She has to play a bored and horny and desirable young woman to Trent’s pubescent boy. It’s a stretch for her: She doesn’t think she ever was that young woman. She knows the kind: the high-breasted, willowy girls in their long hair, their miniature jean shorts, their sunglasses, promenading the sidewalks in summer. Town girls, with their radios, their bikini tops.

  Working the counter of Hermann’s Deli in her powder-blue coverall, her hair bobby-pinned and netted back, no makeup, she had not felt any kinship with those girls, with their confidence, their ease, their ownership of not only the male gaze but the sidewalk. Maybe the whole of the valley.

  She had not thought of herself as related in any way to them. She had not wondered how she could be more like them, had not even asked herself if she could grow her hair long and straight and gleaming. (Mrs. Giesbrecht insisted she keep her thick light-brown hair in a short, housewifely bob, for neatness, for control.) She had not wondered where the girls had bought the gauzy tops, the jeans that hugged their hips and flared at their feet, their sunglasses, their rope sandals. She had not considered that she would ever have exposed her pale, spotty back and shoulders to the sun, or public gaze. She had a farmer’s tan, from helping Mr. Giesbrecht in the garden, sunburned neck and upper arms, cheeks and nose. She didn’t imagine that her own torso or shoulders or thighs had the same lines, the same petal texture or golden sheen as the tourist girls. They had walked fully formed off the pages of Seventeen, which she sometimes leafed through quickly at the store, which she was not permitted, for various reasons, to buy.

  And now she must pretend to be one of them, pretend to get inside one of the pretty heads. She doesn’t have a clue how they think, of course. What it would be like to be one of those girls, so it’s all pretty mechanical, artificial. Made-up lines, like in comic books: snappy, flirty. She doesn’t have to be a real girl.

  She asks, What’s your name, Tiger? She asks, What grade are you in? Do you have a girlfriend? She asks these in a bored, patronizing voice.

  She puts her hand on Trent’s thigh, rubs it as if absentmindedly. She brushes his erection, says, Oh, what’s this?

  Trent, in his little-boy voice, asks, Can I touch your booby?

  She doesn’t like her breasts touched by Trent that much: He seems to think nipples are knobs to twist, and when she was breastfeeding, she would leak milk. Once when Olivia was tiny, Trent had got some breast milk in his mouth, had pulled a face, spat it out.

  She says, Sure, touch my boob. But suddenly, she’s tired: The game seems crass, moronic, again. She takes Trent’s penis in her mouth, gives it a businesslike workover. At first Trent’s body stiffens — she’s not playing the game right — but he can’t resist.

  After he comes, she gets up to brush her teeth; his penis tastes a bit cheesy, sweaty and maybe not recently enough washed.

  When she comes back to the bedroom, he has fallen asleep.

  She walks down to the village. She has finished the books she brought with her, has read the stash at the cottage, or at least those she considers readable. (It surprises her that her in-laws, educated, well-off professionals, read mass-market paperbacks, even if it’s at the beach.) She dawdles in the village shops, looks at bright yellow and cobalt stoneware, at pastel cargo pants with matching jackets and flower-printed T-shirts and crocheted sweaters. She can’t imagine wearing items like them, at home. She tries on a couple of April Cornell dresses — romantic, flowered — but they’re too expensive, and maybe not really what she likes, anymore.

  Candles, suncatchers, silver-plated starfish, flat metal shorebirds stuck into driftwood bases. It catches her eye; it’s pretty, it says buy me. But she doesn’t want any of it. She can’t see what it’s for. Though she does recognize some of the objects that she and Trent have been given as Christmas gifts, by Trent’s family.

  Why the village has always seemed exotic to her: Nothing in the shops is anything anyone actually needs. That’s the difference between this place and the little towns she knew growing up, Butterfly Lake, Guisachan Falls. Even Powell River, or Abbotsford.

  She walks through the village, to the beach. She has not thought to put on her suit, but it’s not a warm day, anyway: the sky marled, the lake an opaque moody slab. She could go for a walk, where the bush comes down to the beach, but she can’t just head down one of the trails without telling someone; she had done that on her first visit, and the family had been hugely upset.

  She’s walking back toward the shops — she’ll look for something she can buy, something she can give someone — when she sees, across the street, her sister-in-law Caroline at an outdoor café table, and with her, Olivia and Sam. Without thinking, she ducks behind a planter of trumpet vine and canna lilies. Through the greenery, she peers at them, the tableau. Olivia’s chatting away to Caroline, who’s leaning in, attentive, smiling. Sam’s looking back and forth; they seem to have made a joke, because Sam is laughing, they’re all laughing. Then Sam knocks his drink container over, and she tenses, waiting for his reaction, but even while his eyes go wide, Caroline rights the glass, says something to him, smiling, and Sam’s face relaxes again. In fact, he’s grinning up at Caroline adoringly.

  She peers through the heart-shaped leaves of the vine, and thinks she will join them in a minute, but then sees that she must not.

  She walks up the street in the other direction, aimless. In the large café window she catches her reflection, sees a medium-sized woman, neither very old nor very young, with nondescript hair, wearing unobjectionable navy shorts and striped T-shirt, plain canvas shoes. Is that what she looks like? She stops for a moment, wanting to see something more, something she recognizes. The double panes of glass blur the lines of her face, so she can’t really make out her own features.

  She turns away, begins to walk back to the cottage.

  There’s her mother-in-law, Gwendolyn, now, moving purposefully toward her, her purse over her forearm.

  Don’t know what to do with yourself! she calls to Cleo,
in passing, an observation rather than a question.

  Falling for You

  CLIFF IS SPENDING SO MUCH TIME at Loretta’s that he’s hardly ever at his own place. He misses his apartment, but Loretta doesn’t like him to be away from her. She doesn’t even like it when he’s at work, but he says: I have to work. She doesn’t like it when he goes over to his apartment to take care of Sophie.

  Sophie’s not happy without him, though. When he’s there one evening feeding her, the manager comes by to say that Sophie cries at the door all day and night. The other tenants are concerned.

  He misses his TV, too: Loretta’s isn’t working.

  He doesn’t know what to do. Loretta doesn’t like it if he sleeps at his place: She gets into a terrible state. He asks her to stay at his place sometimes, but she says it’s a bad neighbourhood. She’s scared of the other tenants. She wouldn’t feel safe. And besides, all of her stuff is at her place.

  He says that maybe it’s not going to work, and she says: You can bring your cat to my place.

  He brings the cat and the TV.

  He knows he should give it some time, not burn his bridges, but the rent is so much and now he has to pay Loretta as well. He thinks he’ll give it till the last day of the month, and if things are going okay, he’ll give his notice. And they are and he does. But then on the second day of the new month, he and Loretta have an argument and she throws a can of soup at him. Then he has the feeling that he has fallen out of an airplane, and sometimes he can’t breathe, but he makes himself go to work. He tells himself that it will work out.

  And mostly it’s okay. It’s nice, mostly. It’s nice to cook and eat with someone else and watch TV together and spoon with someone in bed. It’s nice when they have sex and Loretta says she loves him and asks him about his day. And she knows how to enjoy herself, how to have fun in simple ways. They’re always going for walks in the park or on Granville Island or along one of the ethnic neighbourhoods, just looking at things and getting a pastry or an ice cream cone. It’s nice when she tells him about things she’s done and people she knows. Because she’s older than he is — twelve years older — she has a lot more experience. She’s just smarter about a lot of things.

  And she needs him, he thinks. She has times when she lies curled up on the bed, not talking, her skin looking greyish: when she can’t go to her part-time job, and he sees how alone she is, and how much she needs him. He’s different, she tells him. He is the first one to really understand her, to be sensitive enough to see the person she really is, and unselfish enough to stick by her during the rough times.

  It’s a miracle, she says, that the two of us found each other in this big world. We were two half souls searching for each other.

  He doesn’t know if that is true but it makes him feel like he has a point to his existence, he guesses.

  It’s only that sometimes he would like to feel that he could do what he wanted.

  It’s not like he really ever did anything different, he has to admit: His life before was pretty well going to work, eating, watching TV, like it is now. It’s just that he is bothered by the thought, which lives in him somewhere like a stowaway, a squatter, and comes into his mind sometimes to remind him that he isn’t free. He can’t argue with the thought, when it comes up. He isn’t. And then the thought takes up residence in his mind and gives him so much aggravation that he can hardly stand it. He’ll just be at work pushing the mower or riding his bike home and the thought will materialize: He’s not free. He’s not free.

  Then a tornado of misery, of torment, will swirl through him, through his whole body and his brain, and he’ll be choking for air, wanting to tear his heart and lungs out of his own ribcage.

  He reminds himself that he’s not lacking for anything real. Not anything he could see or touch. Is he? And nobody is free, really.

  It’s always such a relief when the misery passes, when the thought retreats from his head, leaves him alone again.

  What friends? Loretta asks.

  What friends? He has few, he has to admit. A few people who have accumulated, he thinks, like pearls, people who have not been so disturbing that he has had to dislodge them (by avoiding them), people who he likes, or whose oddness, whose irritating habits have at least been bearable. He can probably count his friends on one hand, though. Nicki, who he works with, a landscaper like him. She lives in his neighbourhood and he has been to her apartment. Nicki was the one who gave him Sophie. Nicki’s girlfriend, Meg, a biologist, who has good conversations with Cliff about animal adaptation and cell function and so on. Maybe one or two of the other people he works with. Not Ray. Cleo, and Mandalay, of course, who are family, but could be invited to a party. And now Ben.

  Maybe Mrs. Cookshaw, his boss. His real boss, who owns the landscaping company, who has said to him more than once that Ray is a nasty piece of work, but he’s just a bully. Don’t mind him too much, but if he ever gives you too much trouble, let me know.

  He thinks about all of the people he could invite to the party Loretta wants to have. He does have friends. But then he thinks about them in this room, Loretta’s apartment, which is the top floor of a shared house. Her satin pillows that say SEX KITTEN and LOVE ME. (They embarrass him; he thinks they would be embarrassing to his friends, too.) Her posters with rude sayings: I’ll let you know when I want your opinion.

  Her way of knowing something about everything, which had made her seem really smart at first, but which now he has to wonder about.

  He imagines his friends in this room, not knowing where to look. He imagines them getting ready to leave, and then Loretta not letting them leave. Shutting the door and leaning against it. The dull spade-shape of her mouth when she’s angry. Her voice high and fake-happy saying, You can’t leave — I’ve just put another tray of onion tarts into the oven. Now who will eat them?

  He allows himself to grin weakly, to say, Yeah, what friends?

  I’m the one with friends, she says.

  That you are, he says. He knows if he can get her into a good mood she’ll be fine again: Things will be fine.

  But what about your brother? she asks.

  What? he says, fearful now.

  The night we met, at the UBC pub. That blond boy with the little beard. You said he was your brother.

  Oh, yeah, he says. I don’t see him much.

  Why not? You should invite him.

  I don’t think. . . .

  Her clay-smooth face in his. Invite him! What’s the matter? Are you ashamed of our home?

  She will hit him again, he thinks. She’s hit him a couple of times, not meaning to, she’s said after, but her rings cut his cheek the one time, near his eye. It’s not her fault, she had a terrible childhood, she has mood swings because of it.

  She loves him, she loves him. She can’t live without him. When she’s in a good mood it’s okay.

  He doesn’t want to explain about Ben. He has resisted telling her his stories, though she has extracted some of them. With each he feels a little bit of himself drain out, lose its shape, turn into something else. It’s a relief but he’s losing himself too.

  I don’t know my brother very well, he says. We’re not close. We were raised in different families. It occurs to him to say, You’re upsetting me by talking about this. It’s something she says. But he will not; he will not say that.

  She cuffs him on the ear, a little harder than playfully. Do you have other siblings you’re hiding from me?

  He is not good at lying. He doesn’t lie. He has not told her about Mandalay or Cleo, but that hasn’t been lying: She hasn’t asked directly before.

  He makes himself small. It will pass, if he doesn’t aggravate her further.

  Invite your brother, she says. What’s his name? I’ll call him if you’re too shy. I have a friend I know he’d like! Judy! Wouldn’t she like him?

  He can’t remember if Judy is the one with the big varicose veins or the mustache. Both are women in their forties, he guesses. He’s sure they
are nice women but they are in their forties. Loretta herself is thirty-seven. In her prime, she says.

  When he’s at work his head clears and he thinks: He will break up with her before the party. He’ll move out. But then when he’s back he can’t think through it. He can’t say to her that he wants to move out. It’s like his head is full of swirling muddy water, and he thinks in circles. How can he do this to her? She’ll be so hurt. She’ll be so hurt inside. He can feel her hurt; he can feel the desolation. Another betrayal, another abandonment. She has had a sad life. People have hurt her. He knows her so well; he knows her feelings better than his own. All that he can think of is how hurt she’ll be.

  And imagining the telling: her rage. What will happen then? He can’t imagine what he will do after that. What will happen to him? Where will he go?

  All of his possessions are in Loretta’s house. Even the things that didn’t fit, or she didn’t need: Those are in boxes in the basement. He has nowhere to go.

  And even when he can calm down these thoughts, when he can stop the swirling for a moment, there is something else: a sort of gaping hole or void when he thinks about what he will do then, because he can’t imagine it anymore. He can’t imagine things without her there.

  When he’s home, she fills up everything, and the decisions he has come to while he’s at work float away like there’s nothing to him. Like the person who made them doesn’t exist.

  He will have to break up with her after the party. It’s too soon, before.

  She talks about nothing else. He comes home from work and she’s home already, as she always is, with more stuff. Balloons and shiny letters strung together that say Celebrate! Paper plates and napkins. Packages and packages of cookies and chips, bottles of liquor.

  He has to give her fifty bucks for his share, she says. When he blinks at that she says, And you’ve left me to do all of the work for it, so don’t complain.

  She says, How’s your brother getting here? We can ask Judy to pick him up.

  No, he says, without thinking, he has a car.