by Annabel Lyon
Let me make you some tea.
You don’t really remember the crash, do you, and after? So many luxuries we just take for granted now.
The tin caught the light, flashing like code as she lifted it into the cupboard. She decided against tea. Instead she said, I was thinking. I was thinking I’d go over to your house tomorrow and air it out, do a bit of dusting. It’s good for a house to seem inhabited.
There was a moment, then, when her mother-in-law might have said no. Instead: How thoughtful.
It was Buddy’s idea.
But how thoughtful, her mother-in-law said more warmly.
Upstairs in her little sitting room she found the empty slot on the bookshelf where Candide had been. Her hands were trembling like the boy’s had. But it’s all right, she told herself. You hate Candide.
Her notebook lay open on the chair. She couldn’t remember if she had left it that way. She had of course written:
One must not anger old women; it is they who make the reputations of the young.
On her knees, then, in her kerchief, scrubbing a clean floor. She had the whole afternoon. She was going to dust the cabinets and beat the mats and strip the beds too, if there was time, remake the house into something her mother-in-law might want to come back to.
There was a light drumming on the windowpane.
You’re early, she said, squinting into the backyard. It had recently rained and now the sun was out, striking a painful glare off leaves and windows. It took her strange seconds to find him, standing colourless against the back wall of the house, his feet in the wet muck where the sun never touched. She said, Shouldn’t you be in school?
I cut.
Well, hurry up.
He ambled into the sun. His skin was awful but he had a slow smile she realized she was seeing for the first time. He was nothing now but she saw he might grow into something. Closer, he said, Are you always going to boss me?
Take your shoes off.
She sat him at the table and tried to keep working. Finally she said, Stop staring at me. Go find something to do.
Like what?
Go strip the beds upstairs and bring the laundry down here to me.
Now, alone, she could think more clearly. She recalled the last time she had seen her father-in-law, the previous month, a day that had seemed to pour thick and endless as syrup. She had been shopping in a big department store downtown, purposefully approaching each escalator though she wanted nothing, picking fretfully through racks of cheap blouses on two, hefting skillets on three, sitting in upholstered chairs and squeezing the armrests, though for what quality she didn’t know, on five. Closing her eyes briefly she realized she was waiting to go to bed, the hours stretching out like an immense acreage between her and sleep. When she opened her eyes again she saw her father-in-law. He was one department over, showing hockey sticks to a couple of businessmen probably returning from a long late lunch. She watched them, in the middle distance, like a play: her father-in-law trying to demonstrate the correct grip, the businessmen mocking him for what he was, a servant, their faces shining with good health and innocent liquored malice. When they were gone she crossed the broad aisle separating furniture from sporting goods and greeted him warmly, kissing his cheek. So like her husband, the way his face lit up! They chatted briefly, not too long so she wouldn’t get him in trouble, and then she bought a box of golf balls, for her father she said. For the rest of the afternoon she had thought, He is still up there – as she made her escape, down one escalator after another, out onto the street, golf balls in a trash can, onto the streetcar, walking under the absurd trees – he is still up there, working, while I am free in the world.
Half an hour later he had not come down.
Here you are, she said.
He lay on the stripped mattress of her husband’s parents’ bed, curled away from her, pants around his knees, the belt still in its loops. Bedding lay on the floor like a mound of egg white. He mumbled, Is this your bedroom?
She didn’t answer but leaned on the door jamb, watching. I could help, she thought as he sweetly laboured; but if I were to touch him or show him a breast he might die, and then I’d be back at zero. I’ll wait.
A rarity, an argument. They had to do it in whispers.
I am not neglecting her.
She says –
She says what? That I’m too busy cleaning our house and her house and doing the shopping and the washing and the mending and heaven knows what else to sit with her while she tells me everything I’m doing wrong?
She says you invent excuses to get away from her and I just about believe it. You’re always trying to get off on your own with some book. I would have thought you’d have a little more compassion. Put yourself in her shoes, why don’t you? What if I died?
He looked up at her with an oil-and-vinegar blend of satisfaction and uncertainty. They were getting ready for bed. Her mother-in-law must have taken him aside while she herself was doing the supper dishes, given him this bone to worry, and now that he had slobbered over it for an hour alone he must needs drop it at her feet. Self-pity was a trait he had, a boyish trait like the freckles in his ears, that needed scouring away.
If you died I wouldn’t want somebody’s child wife fidgeting over me every minute. Somebody’s spoiled child wife. (Her mother-in-law had called her this once, behind her back but not out of her hearing, and she was deft with it in argument.)
He made a movement, a chop of the hand dismissing the stuff of the quarrel, as though it was a game he played for her sake that he had now tired of and wished to end. I’m asking you to spend more time with her, Anna. Maybe she’s being a little irrational right now but she’s grieving. Surely you can forgive her that. Baby, please.
Just don’t accuse me, that’s all.
The boy had lain on the bare mattress after, panting and staring murder at her. Finally he had said, You didn’t have to watch.
She could think of nothing to say that was not wildly pornographic and sad.
You bitch, he had said. You cockteaser. He had stumbled past her to the bathroom, gripping his loose pants with one hand and cupping himself with the other. She heard the water run, and then he was out again, done up, pushing past her and crying, calling back, I was nice to you!
Be patient with her, her husband said. You can be sweet when you want to. Take her shopping with you, let her teach you a few things. Honestly, I don’t see why you get so worked up about it.
They got into bed.
Now you’re sore, he said.
I’m not sore. I’m thinking of something wonderful for us to do tomorrow.
As he had padded down the stairs, shouting and crying, she had surprised herself by laughing aloud. Pursuing him, inside the house at least, laughing and calling his name. Oh, I’ve been so bored, she thought. He hadn’t stopped, had fled, but at least they knew where to find each other now.
Her husband said, Tell.
None of your business, you bully, she said. You’re not invited.
The next night her husband brought Peretti home for supper.
What have you two been doing all day? her husband demanded right away.
He can’t tell, she said to her mother-in-law. I’m insulted.
The older woman struck a pose, one hand behind her head, the other on a canted hip, and swivelled slowly like a mannequin, staring big-eyed into space. They laughed.
Anna took me to the beauty parlour, she said. In Kerrisdale. Very old money. We were the youngest clients there, weren’t we?
Did you get the full service? her husband asked. Shave and a hot towel? Short back and sides?
A beauty parlour couldn’t improve Mrs. Pass, because she’s already a perfect beauty, Peretti said. That’s why we didn’t notice. He gave Anna a cold, appraising look and said: You, I think the hair is a little curlier.
They laughed again, Peretti most of all, but she realized then he was keeping an eye on her.
Look, Buddy, her mother-in-law said
, and together they fluttered their varnished fingernails for him. He grabbed his wife’s hands and pulled her giggling onto his lap while her mother-in-law watched and Peretti sipped his drink. It was a performance.
Supper was fish. They spoke of the war, as they had done when her parents came to visit, but this time the conversation had an illicit quality because each of them ventured opinions and her father was not there to correct them. When the meal was over and she was removing plates, Peretti rose to help her. In the kitchen he said, Are you getting along better with your husband’s mother?
So he has a confidante, my husband, she thought, or a confessor. A best girlfriend.
Is that your business? she asked.
Excuse me.
She saw he was amused and hesitated, weighing her words.
The younger Mrs. Pass is also very pretty, he said quietly into that space. With or without the beauty parlour. But she’s not so sure about her husband. Is she?
I don’t know what you mean, she said.
He works hard now, the long hours. He doesn’t have so much time for her any more.
Buddy always worked hard.
She isn’t lonely?
In the dining room, her mother-in-law laughed at something her husband had said. His voice reached her too, low and amused, baritone brown. She could hear Peretti’s breathing, quite close, and the want in it. She turned away.
Your face, he said.
I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
She says she doesn’t know, Peretti said, as though appealing to an invisible audience. Do I believe her?
The door opened and her husband, all the tall warm friendly bulk of him, came in with an empty unwashed platter and handed it to her, grinning at some joke he had left behind him in the other room.
What’s going on? he asked when he saw her looking at him and the other man turned away.
Mr. Peretti was just telling me how hard you’ve been working. Please, he said. Michael.
Michael Peretti began to come to the house, once a week or so, and for a long time they both acted innocent. Soon he was calling her mother-in-law Cora and bringing small gifts for the house, and her husband, misreading the situation entirely, wondered aloud if he wasn’t quite taken with the older woman.
He’s a flirt, she could have said, or, I don’t like him, but she didn’t. She wondered herself if the question was disingenuous or truly stupid. She watched her husband more closely these days – he did seem more distant – and became irritated with him more easily. Michael Peretti, she knew, was watching too, and biding his time. Only her mother-in-law seemed more relaxed lately, pinker in the face, and she regularly found the older woman staring at the window, pretending it wasn’t a mirror.
Regularly, too, she returned to clean and air her mother-in-law’s house, but the butcher’s boy didn’t come back. Once or twice she thought she heard his step by the back door, thought his shadow flicked across her body as she went by a window, thought he was spying on her, maybe, but it was all a trick of the wind and the trees and clouds miles up.
There was a day when she fell ill, a rare day when she was alone in the house, her mother-in-law having gone to sew baby things for the war with some of her hen friends, a day too when their visitor was expected for dinner and she had not the strength even to do the shopping. She lay in her cool bed as the light lengthened (it had hit her after lunch) and wept in frustration at the pain in her head and the uncontrollable shivering, at her helplessness now fully manifest. After a long time she went down to the kitchen and phoned for sausage and potatoes and some other things as they occurred to her. Slowly she found her purse and sorted out some money and sat back at the kitchen table and waited. After what felt like a long time she got up and unlocked the door and then returned to her chair. She dreamed then, a waking dream of great comfort and beauty, that someone had come to take her away, had simply walked into the kitchen and picked her up and carried her out of the house and out of her life entirely. Unlocking the door had been the sign – so simple, yet she had never guessed it.
When she woke she was ashamed, of course, that such a crude symbol had seemed so ravishing.
They found her glittery-eyed and feverish, the three of them returning at once, laughing and talking and sending the air crashing around her. They kissed her and petted her and held their palms to her brow and made her sweet tea and said how good she was and suggested remedies, bed foremost, but she was too weary to move. She could hardly speak.
Drink, drink, Michael Peretti said. His voice was soft and insistent, a thread.
There was a knock at the door. Her husband answered it.
Anna? he said. Baby, did you order this food?
Past him she saw the boy Stephen in a delivery boy’s clothes, with a brown paper bag and a bill. He looked shocked.
The money she had laid out, it seemed, was not enough, so her husband invited the boy into the kitchen to wait while he found some more. He fumbled with his wallet, his rush making him clumsy; he hated embarrassments over money. She tried to apologize but they hushed her.
She didn’t want us to go without our supper, her mother-in-law told Michael Peretti in her public voice. As sick as that and thinking of us.
The boy stood still as a cat, perhaps thinking, cat-like, if he didn’t move they wouldn’t be able to see him. She could see the outline of a cigarette pack in the chest pocket of his uniform.
I’m sorry, she said, louder. I wouldn’t do it again.
He met her eye then, and she saw she had him.
There you are, soldier, her husband said, handing him some bills and change.
The boy looked him over once, then stood as tall as he could, squaring his shoulders. Thank you, he said.
The agency was on Davie Street, downtown, on the third floor of a four-storey brick building on the hill’s crest with a spanking view of the ocean – there at the end of the last intersection, white and shining weakly. When she had come the first time her husband had taken pleasure in ushering her into the elevator cage, but this time it was stalled halfway to the first floor. A repairman had swung the cage back and prised the doors open and stood staring at the mess he had on his hands. The floor of the familiar red and gilt compartment was at eye level, poised above the black shaft, in which she recognized another cheap metaphor. She wondered how delicate the situation was.
When she had recovered from her illness and came down to breakfast a few mornings before, her husband and mother-in-law had greeted her as a team, the former with such frank shame and worry and eagerness for her to immediately sit down that she realized the latter had been filling his ear with silliness again. As she came to understand the nature of their fears, or rather hopes, she could only marvel at the breadth and variety of her mother-in-law’s grotesquerie. That, of all things, now! And of course it was possible. No wonder she’s fretful, the older woman would have said. And so hungry all the time. Haven’t you noticed?
Imagine, she thought now, staring at the elevator shaft.
Stairs, please, Miss, the repairman said.
The secretary smiled the same slightly withheld smile, even wore the same poplin suit she had rather coveted the last time, with the nipped waist and neatly squared-off shoulders. Tall as a man she was, when she stood behind her desk to lead Anna back down the hall to the office that was beginning to feel as illicit and familiar as a favourite cheap room.
Now then, the agent said. What can I do for you today, Mrs. –
Pass, she supplied, smiling.
Mrs. Pass.
Yes, she said. Yes. I’ve come to pick up our policy.
Of course. We could have mailed it to you, though. Saved you the trouble.
Well, it’s no trouble. Also I was wondering, she said. If you couldn’t explain to me some of the terms.
Well, sure.
He bent over a drawer, rifling through some files.
Is that your son?
He glanced over his shoulder to flash her
a sweet sudden smile, then reached across the desk, turning the framed photograph with his fingertips to face her. This is a couple of years old, he said. John’s fourteen now.
What a nice boy.
He’s a terror. This said equably, to amuse. You’ve none yourself?
Not yet.
Pass. Here we are.
He took her through it slowly. Gradually she became attuned to the office sounds around them – the mannish secretary’s quick biting step, the outer door opening and closing, a deep-voiced man laughing and bullying someone on the telephone in the next office – and the building began to seem warmer, a place you could come to work in every day and not feel lost. But there really was no decent way to ask the questions she had in mind, and she saw it would be foolish in any case because he would certainly remember later.
How is your son a terror? she asked instead, at the door, buttoning up her purse.
Oh, you know. He held a hand out, conducting her exit. He’s at that age. Everything embarrasses him, his old parents most of all. He thinks he’s very misunderstood.
He sounds like a dear.
He caught the layer beneath the layer of words. She saw it in the sudden unhappy look he gave her as he said, Sometimes he’s a very sweet boy, just like when he was little. Sometimes he’s a complete stranger. There are moments when I truly believe he hates us. Can you remember being that way, when you were his age?
Can’t you?
Fourteen, the agent said, shaking his head. At fourteen I spent a lot of time outdoors.
He smiled broadly then and she saw he had withdrawn his attention from her, had gone back inside himself like a turtle, though he continued to joke and chat as he showed her out.
In the days that followed she went through her memories like a woman going through a pouch of coins, trying to reckon what exactly she had:
Sitting with him, side by side on her parents’ couch. Shame made her despise him. When he placed a hand flat on the cushion between them, reaching but not touching, she wanted him dead.
