Double Talk

by Patrick Warner

  Still, parody aside, Violet knows that the facts — as borne out by the statistics — speak clearly: equipped with a newly minted MBA she can expect fast entry into the job force and a six-digit salary within the first five years. After that, she knows, the sky is the limit. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dad, she thinks.

  “So, you graduate this week. Well then, congratulations are in order,” her father says through a mouth full of duck, before reaching to refill his wine glass. “When and where is convocation? And is that where those on the Dean’s list will be presented with a set of gold-plated testicles?” He thumps the table, delighted by his own cleverness. Brian works hard to suppress a snigger.

  Too tired to think of a snappy response, she decides to punish them with a lecture on the virtues of her chosen occupation. Being humourless about one’s profession is, she reasons, one of the hallmarks of professionalism, is it not? She tells him that without good management the world as they know it would soon cease to function. She points out that business is the matrix that allowed hot-shots like him to be handsomely paid for work that in bygone days would have been considered barely a notch above clerking.

  Such friendly bantering is typical of their Sunday lunches. They sit until they can eat no more, or until Lucy decides that she wants to go out into the garden. By that time, Violet’s dad is usually so pickled that her mom encourages him to take a nap. Violet is anxious on this particular day, however, that neither of her parents get up from the table until she has a chance to tell them about her new plans.

  “Actually, Dad, I had a phone interview yesterday for a job back in St. John’s and it went pretty well. I’ll know in a couple of days if they are going to fly me down for an in-person interview.”

  “What’s the position?” he asks.

  “Operations manager for a new offshore start-up. Supply side. I’d be coming in at a high level. And the timing’s great. The industry is set to explode.” Violet knows her dad has stocks in Exxon and has been following developments related to the Newfoundland offshore ever since she first moved there.

  “But you can’t be serious,” her mother says, her fork pecking savagely at her tabouli salad. “I thought you never wanted to go back to Newfoundland again.”

  “Mom, I know I might have said that once or twice, but this is a great opportunity, plus we still have lots of friends there. Heck, all our friends are there. And the housing is so cheap. If I get this job, we will be able to buy a house almost immediately. And you know we’ve been talking about a little brother or a little sister for Lucy.”

  “Oh, I know, dear. It’s just that you will be so far away. How will we see our grandchildren?”

  “You can come and visit us,” Brian says. “You can afford to travel. And besides, you had a great time when you came down for the wedding.”

  “But, Brian,” her mother says, “it’s not so much the cost as it’s the time. Harold still puts in a lot of hours on an average week.”

  “Well, he’ll just have to forfeit a few rounds — of golf — at the Uplands,” Violet says, winking at him.

  Her father grunts.

  “Or, if he can’t or doesn’t want to come, you can come on your own.”

  “I see you’ve already thought all this through.”

  “Dot, darling, be realistic. Violet hasn’t even been offered an interview yet, let alone the job.”

  “But aren’t there jobs closer to home?”

  “There are,” Violet says, “but the competition is much tougher.”

  “If it’s a case of money …”

  “Mom, it is a case of money.” Violet sees Brian frown into his cabbage rolls. She knows he is hypersensitive about being perceived as fiscal deadweight. She knows that the least slight to him as provider will set him dreaming up wild money-making schemes — his latest being a website development business — in which he thinks small investments of time and energy will earn him a four-figure monthly salary.

  Violet’s Diary Axiom #765: In dreamers the time spent talking about entrepreneurial endeavours exists in inverse proportion to actual earnings. Is dreamer just a synonym for loser? Am I starting to sound like my dad?

  “Look, you’ve been more than generous in the past. This is about me starting my career, taking control of my life.”

  “That’s my Violet,” her father says, reaching for his glass and accidentally knocking it over. Violet knows he has always admired her “pluck,” as he calls it. She watches the red wine spread along the white cotton tablecloth. Lucy’s eyes get dark and lock onto her mother’s, and her fat little hands press against her open mouth.

  “Oh dear,” Violet’s mother says.

  “I’ll get it,” Brian says, dashing to the kitchen, returning with a clump of paper towels and a bottle of soda water even before the stain has finished its voyage.

  “What a gentleman,” his mother-in-law says, throwing a hard glance in her husband’s direction.

  The food, which at first settles Violet’s stomach, suddenly begins to have the opposite effect. She knows the twinges she is feeling will soon develop into cramps. She watches her mother take short sips of wine and gaze into the middle distance, a sure sign that she is plotting an argument. Violet doesn’t have the strength to argue back. What energy she does have she has to keep for the long night ahead. She is absolutely determined to meet her final deadline — her final two papers are already late. She decides to cut her mother off before she begins.

  “There’s another reason why we want to get back to St. John’s.”

  Both her mother and father look warily at her. She glances at Brian who is reaching for yet another helping of quiche.

  “Tell them,” she says.

  “It’s my Uncle Wallace. He’s sick.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Violet’s mother asks.

  Brian tells her Wallace has pneumonia.

  “Pneumonia’s not all that serious an illness anymore,” says Violet’s father. “A course of antibiotics ought to knock it out. I can’t see the urgency.”

  “Brian! It’s more than just pneumonia.”

  Brian raises one finger and begins to make exaggerated chewing and swallowing motions. “Wallace — you remember Wallace, don’t you?” Both of Violet’s parents nod. “Well, Wallace has been HIV positive for a number of years and now it looks as if the disease may have moved on to the next stage.”

  “Oh,” says Violet’s mother.

  “I see,” says her father.

  Their Sunday lunch is unofficially over. They each fall into their respective silences. Violet imagines her mother is counting back the years to the first and only time she met Wallace, reviewing the tape to find any instance of physical contact with him.

  “Do you remember dancing that mock tango with Wallace on my wedding day?” Violet asks.

  Her mother nods, gives her daughter a plastic smile.

  Violet imagines her dad reviewing the symptoms of the disease, reading each stage of its development as coolly as he would the fine print on a death warrant. She knows her father likes to be dispassionate, but underneath his professional demeanour she knows his prejudices are deep-seated and perennial. She knows that he doesn’t much care for homosexuals, especially those who — as he would say — flaunt it. She realizes that both parents are of their generation.

  “Who’s for dessert? Apple pie or chocolate cake?”

  “Apple-chocolate-pie-cake!” screams Lucy, bringing a welcome laugh to the table.

  “Nothing for me, Mom,” Violet says.

  “You okay, honey? You’re looking a little washed out.”

  “Just tired. And I’ve a bit of a tummy. It’s the heat,” she says, excusing herself from the table.

  “Mama, don’t go.”

  “I’ll be back in two shakes, Lucy.”

  Violet chooses the guest bedroom’s en-suite bathroom — the least used and most private of the house’s five bathrooms — where, in a thunderous five seconds, she besmirches the bowl. I
nstant relief gives way to cramps and heavy sweating. Two glasses of wine and she is drunk. She promised herself she wouldn’t, but then realized that by not drinking she would only raise suspicion — the last thing she wants. She is pregnant. Another good reason to move back to Newfoundland. She has known for almost two weeks but still can’t bring herself to tell Brian. The longer she delays, the more she questions her motives for not telling him. She argues with herself that it is reasonable to take time to get used to the idea, to figure out just how they will manage. It will take some luck, beginning with Keppie being able to deliver on his promise: “My friend Dave’s a real can-do kind of guy. You two will really hit it off.” She knows her phone interview with Dave went well, but there is still the in-person interview. Then there’s all the work of starting a new job while concealing her pregnancy, not to mention having a new baby. It’s more than she can handle alone. She promises herself she will tell Brian, soon.

  As Violet sits waiting for her bowels to move again — the wheels of the bowels go round and round — she watches a bluebottle bang against the frosted glass window. What is the sound of one finger tapping? she wonders. She begins to hum the theme song from Jeopardy.

  “For five hundred points: What is the gentle tap of one finger?”

  “What is a blue-assed fly hitting the windowpane, Alex.”

  Every few minutes the fly gets desperate and tries to burrow through the beading between glass and sash. It makes a sound like a whipper-snipper in long grass. “Zzzzzzh,” she says. She feels feverish.

  “For one thousand points: What is metaphorical about the situation the bluebottle finds itself in vis-à-vis the windowpane?”

  Violet thinks of her eighth-grade English teacher, Mr. Hopper. His parents must have been really stupid, she thinks, imagine giving him Claude as his Christian name.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass, Alex.”

  Which she does, with great rumbling, for the second time.

  Baby Power

  Keppie did not stand out from the crowd. He was just any one of a number of guys with blow-dried short-on-top and long-at-the-back hair — the now infamous mullet — who could be seen between ten-to and the hour, each hour, wandering the halls of the university, Kodiak boot tongues lolling, laces flapping and ticking against the polished floors. I had spent my first four months in Newfoundland studying that herd, trying to crack the code that would get me admitted to it, but without luck. They stared at me, half amazed and half amused by my look: ox-blood pointy-toed oxfords, electric blue drainpipe cords, woollen crois around my waist, pinstriped shirt with grandfather collar, suit waistcoat with tobacco pouch sticking out where the watch fob should have been, black suit jacket with enormous padded shoulders, spiked haircut, and, my pièce de résistance, a large gold-hoop earring in my left ear. Occasionally their stares were slightly malevolent. Some would come right out and ask me: “You gay or wha, buddy?”

  It was all very funny, at least until I began to wonder if the same line of thinking might explain why the girls hardly looked at me at all. I had been considered a catch in Bridgetown and its catchment area. The problem — I guessed — was that I fit neither of the two main local stereotypes: I wasn’t a redneck and I wasn’t a hippie. I was something in between. It soon became clear to me that what was colouring within the lines on one side of the Atlantic was outside the lines on the other. Though I had no intention of changing — at least that’s what I told myself — I began to visit clothes shops in the Avalon Mall to see what they had on offer. It didn’t occur to me that my not getting the eye from the local girls had everything to do with the way I looked at them.

  Style was everything to me. I didn’t care what was on the inside if the outside wasn’t eye-catching. In those first few months, I sized up Newfoundland girls the way some English profs look at a piece of writing, to find out only how and where it fails to live up to their flea-on-a-feather and the-feather-on-a bird and the-bird-on-a-nest and the-nest-on-a-twig and the-twig-on-a-branch and the-branch-on-a-tree and the-tree-in-the-hole and the-hole-in-a-bog and the-bog-down-in-the-valley-o aesthetic.

  All the girls seemed to have perms! The few who had straight hair wore it medium long or long with a fringe — bangs as they called them. It was so weird the way they curled their bangs up and back over their foreheads, gelling them in place like frozen tidal waves. Many of them also wore oversized glasses: frames so large you could see through the lenses when you were walking behind the person wearing them. Under this, high-necked shirts with ruffles and puff sleeves, jackets with sleeves one colour and the body a different colour, their backs embossed with the name of some high school or curling club. My God, they had hair-styling clubs. And to finish off the whole look, blue jeans with white stitching, sneakers and bobby socks with a cute little bobble on each heel.

  To me, they all looked like extras for some American sit-com. But what did I know? I arrived in Newfoundland thinking both George and The Beachcombers were American TV shows. When I found out they were Canadian, I thought maybe I could impress with my Frau Gerber impression: “Down, Jheorge! Batt Dock!” But I soon reconsidered; really, why should I try? These were not my kind of girls, though the trend among some of them towards wearing jeans tight enough to reveal the outline of the labia majora — the as yet to be named phenomenon of the cameltoe — was mesmerizing. But no, I was looking for someone cool, someone who would take me for a walk on the wild side. Until I found her, I was willing to brood and be miserable.

  I met Keppie Gushue at two o’clock in the afternoon on the second day of classes at the beginning of my second semester at university. I had just walked from one end of the desolate yellow brick campus to the other. My head felt hollow. I blamed the wind, the textured Newfoundland wind — part shard, part grit, part blade. Breath of the frigid North Atlantic, it galed day and night, creating a symphonic ruckus around the wooden shacks of the old town, around the vinyl-sided mansions and sprawling ranch-style suburbs, around the Soviet-style blocks of flats and the government buildings. It never stopped blowing. It was tearing at the windows of the Science Building that afternoon as I sat in the back row of the classroom, dripping slush on my desk and waiting for the echo in my head to subside. I felt deranged, beside myself, as though I had smoked five or six joints the night before. I had only smoked two. My eyes felt funny. I kept blinking and thinking about Diana Ross and Liberace and Miss Piggy. It wasn’t until a cold tear trickled down my cheek that I diagnosed the problem: my eyelashes had frozen. Sweet suffering Jesus, I thought. I’m going to die in this place. Like Franklin or Scott.

  “You should take the tunnels, man.” I turned and looked at the guy sitting across from me in the adjacent aisle. Keppie Gushue. “All the buildings are connected by tunnels,” he said.

  And it was true. In the years to come, I would get to know every mile of those tunnels, their walls lined with thousands of teal-blue lockers, their ceilings painted the colour of a ripe Clementine, their padded water pipes and conduits spray-painted a rich cream; I would wander that labyrinth, leading to classrooms, professors’ offices, residences, the student centre and the campus bar, until it mapped to my brain the way a maze — dispensing sugar water and electrical shocks at various points — maps to the neural circuitry of a lab rat.

  “My name’s Ron, but everyone calls me Keppie,” he said, jerking his head backwards and rolling his eyes as if he was trying to call my attention to something just behind him.

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly getting it — by Keppie he meant “Cappie.” He was wearing what I would soon learn was his signature piece, a red baseball cap with a Harvey & Company logo embroidered above the peak.

  Before I had time to tell him my name, however, a dark-haired, short-legged and pissed-off looking man barged in through the classroom door, pushing ahead of him a television set on a tall stand. He was wearing jeans and a brown corduroy jacket with elbow patches. His white shirt was open almost to the navel, showing off a hot pink chest grizzled with
greying hair. He plugged in the TV and turned it on. Furred sound blasted from a side panel speaker: “The Yanomama people are one of the best known forest tribes in South America. Their home is the Amazon rain forest.” The picture came on. In the lush vegetation I could see several half-naked, pot-bellied children, and several women with cantaloupe breasts. “They’re all feminists,” whispered Keppie, “look at the hair.” They all sported the same Cromwellian haircut that I would soon come to associate with women’s studies professors and their adoring graduate students.

  Sprawled in my desk, I listened until the film narrator’s flat intonation produced in me a fine mould of boredom. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Keppie sketch on the back of his spiral-bound notebook what looked to be Wonder Woman riding a codfish. I thought about Elaine, my last girlfriend in Bridgetown. Not that I missed her, really. I thought about how we used to meet at the Friday night disco each week. I felt again the pulse of Donna Summer, The Pretenders, Patrick Hernandez and Blondie, electrifying the dance floor where I twitched and shivered like a tambourine while Elaine hopscotched from one foot to the other. The same ritual each week — dance a few sets and then do your best to get your partner to go outside or upstairs to the balcony. The balcony was preferred because it was warmer, and so — in theory at least — there would be fewer zips and buttons to battle, fewer layers of clothes to burrow through.

  Two thousand miles and five months later, in a classroom in Newfoundland, I could still feel her hair tickling my face and the kitten-like feel of her mohair cardigan as we carried on with the grinding and kissing we had begun on the dance floor. Sometimes she would let me put my hand inside her shirt. Weird was the contrast between her coarse lacy bra cup and the softness of her virgin breast; like a nun’s moony face glimpsed through a metal grille. She was oddly passive, which was part of her appeal, and yet that same passivity always left me feeling disappointed. A typical Bridgetown girl, she never initiated contact. She went along with me, her responses always mechanical. It did not seem in her nature to imagine necking as anything more than a series of set plays unfolding according to a strict timetable. I wanted to be surprised — as I had been by Baldegunde, a German girl I had met at a Milltown dance the previous summer. When I kissed her, she had repeatedly sucked on my tongue, slowly drawing it into her mouth and then releasing it. I was immediately overcome by feelings of helplessness, so much so that by the time Lionel Ritchie hit the bridge in “Three Times a Lady” I ejaculated into my underpants.