The Secret Life of Roberta Greaves

by Ann Birch

  “I’m happier asleep, really.”

  “Why don’t we have someone to dinner next Friday night? It might cheer you up. How about Carl Talbot and his wife? We haven’t seen them for a while.”

  “Go ahead. Invite whoever.” He gets up. “You’re right. I need some exercise. I think I’ll hike up to my study. I should get working on my article on Trollope for The Victorian Reader. I’ve got one reasonably good arm. I’ll probably miss the deadline, but they may cut me some slack.”

  A few minutes later, Roberta hears the gentle swell of music that heralds the opening of his computer. Finally, he is doing something constructive. She puts in a call to Carl.

  It’s six p.m. and the Talbots are due to arrive in an hour. Ed and Charlie are out on Friday night dates with their girlfriends, and Roberta is stuck in the kitchen, her least favourite spot in the house. James’s cast came off his arm earlier in the day, and she hoped he would offer to do the meringues, but no luck. “Got to get that damned article written,” he said. “Sorry about that, Roberta, but I’ve no alternative.” He’s been in his study for hours. He usually gives her parts of his manuscript to read over, but so far there’s been nothing. She hopes he hasn’t fallen asleep over the keyboard or become involved in one of those games of solitaire.

  She has whipped the cream, licked the beater, and now it’s time to get the meringue shells out of the oven. The oven mitts have gotten lost somewhere –– she’s been so distracted by James’s problems she can’t keep track of anything –– so she takes a tea towel and yanks the oven door open. “Shit!” As she grabs the cookie sheet, the heat sears her fingers and the damn meringues slide off and smash into a hundred pieces on the kitchen floor. She sweeps the mess into a dustpan, looks at the clock. Half an hour to come up with an alternative idea for dessert, get the steaks out, and make gravy.

  First, she has to get the disaster out of the way. She is at the garbage pail outside the back door, tipping the waste into the bin when a voice calls to her over the cedar hedge that separates her from her neighbour, Mrs. Schubert. It’s John, Mrs. Schubert’s middle-aged son, who comes over periodically to help his mother with her garden and lawn. He is the major book critic for The Gazette.

  Just last month, Roberta came out with her pruning shears to cut off a dead branch in the hedge and caught him on the other side of the cedars in a close embrace with his mother’s young cleaner, just out of range of Mrs. Schubert’s back windows. The girl seemed to be trying to pull away, but Schubert had her trapped, like a mouse that’s felt the metal clamp close down upon it. When she saw Roberta, she broke free and ran back into the house.

  Remembering this, Roberta answers Schubert’s greeting and turns away, hoping to avoid further conversation.

  “Roberta, have you got a sec?” He does not wait for an answer, just comes through a gap in the hedge and corners her. “You’re looking a bit flushed, dear, but it’s becoming. Makes you look thirty again. But here I am, running off at the mouth, so I’ll get to the point. I’ve just finished reading The Very Birds Are Mute. You do have a talent. Some of your poems are quite excellent. But there are others––well, I just can’t relate to them. Still –– pretty good for a first book of poetry. I’ll try to give it a good review. Congrats, by the way. But where did you get the title? A teeny bit on the pretentious side, don’t you think?”

  She can feel more heat rising in her cheeks and knows that Schubert is probably enjoying the moment. She can see the way his pale eyes scan her face. “Thanks for your thoughtful, perceptive critique, John. But I’m a teeny bit surprised that an eminent theatre and book critic doesn’t recognize a line from one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets.” She slams the lid down on the pail. “Or maybe you worked too long at that quack journal? Forgot all your Shakespeare?” And without looking back, she stomps into the house, banging the door behind her.

  Five minutes later, she regrets what she has said. Maybe Schubert did recognize the source of the title. Perhaps it is pretentious? And why did she have to bring up his former editor’s job at Your Health? He has always been sensitive about it. “Unabashed self-promotion by health-food outlets,” he told her once.

  She goes out the back door to find him and apologize, but he is already in his car, backing down the driveway, tires screeching.

  3.

  AT LEAST THE STEAKS ARE GOOD. Fortunately, everyone likes them medium rare, so Roberta has not had to fuss. They have settled into second glasses of wine, and she has just told them about the meringue disaster and her contretemps with Schubert.

  “I totally understand,” Carl Talbot says. “I might have said the same thing.” Carl is a tall man, like James, but he has broad shoulders and more heft. He has grey hair and blue eyes, and braces on his teeth. Roberta admires that. It takes courage to have braces when you are Carl’s age. Early fifties, she would guess. She and James met him when they were at Trinity College together. He was their TA in the Dickens-Eliot-Trollope course that James now teaches. James always gives Carl credit for sparking his interest in an academic career. At college reunions, people still talk about Carl. They remember his rewrite of the last chapter of A Farewell to Arms in the style of Dickens: “The funniest thing I’ve read in a long time,” someone always says.

  “I’m with you, too, Roberta,” James says. He turns to Carl. “Schubert is a schmuck. Roberta caught him groping that young cleaner his mother hires. Not a thing the poor girl can do about it, I guess, since she probably needs the money she gets from the old lady. But he’s also a powerful critic, and it wasn’t a good idea to attack his ego, to remind him of his roots in yellow journalism.” James seems a bit livelier tonight. He has washed his hair and put on a clean shirt. Perhaps immersion in his scholarly article has put some enthusiasm back into his life.

  “I know what you’re both thinking but not saying. It’s bad policy for a writer to irritate a book critic. John Schubert’s got a lot of clout in the literary world. He’s moved into the role of God, and he loves it. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I can’t stand him. He looks down from his throne in the empyrean, and he hands down his version of the Commandments. Of course, I won’t make any money from the poetry book anyway, so it doesn’t really matter what pronouncement he issues about it. Perhaps it might be more to the point if we took some action on the sexual harassment he seems guilty of. At the very least, perhaps make Mrs. Schubert aware of what’s going on.”

  Roberta thinks for a moment about what she’s said and sighs. “Small revision to my earlier comment: It is foolish of me not to admit that it would be nice to get a good review. I’ve told the people at the Christian Mission that any royalties from the book go to the educational programs they offer to street kids.”

  “Roberta’s doing volunteer poetry-writing workshops with those kids,” James explains. “It’s a huge departure from her academic world at Trinity, but she seems to find it worthwhile.”

  “The most challenging teaching experience I’ve ever had,” Roberta says. “And last week, I got it so very wrong. I thought it might be a smart idea to introduce them to haikus. Only seventeen syllables and one compelling image to tie those syllables together. What could go wrong?”

  “Let me guess,” Carl says. “They didn’t know what a syllable was?”

  “Right. But what made them really angry — pissed them off was the phrase they used — was the three-line format of seventeen syllables. A ‘fucking control freak’ was what they called me.”

  “So why do you put yourself through that?” Claire asks. She is a wisp of a woman with black hair, pale grey eyes, and a puffy face.

  “I don’t know. It started with some smug, misbegotten notion I had of bringing creativity into their sad, deprived world. The reality is that some of the time it’s more like warfare: me versus them. Though come to think of it, two or three of them actually caught on and started counting out the syllables. It was a small beginning.
”

  “Brava,” Carl says. “Sometimes, small beginnings develop into major triumphs. Perhaps I’m idealistic, but I think you’re doing something really worthwhile.”

  “Back to Schubert and his reviews,” James says. “You don’t want him slamming The Cretan Manuscripts, my love. That’s big stuff. It’s bound to hit the academic world with a bang. Come to think of it, it may be so big that a dismissive review by Schubert wouldn’t do major damage.”

  “Where’s the launch going to be?” Carl asks.

  “Strachan Hall, Trinity, next Thursday. Hope you and Claire can make it.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Claire says in a low voice. “It’s chemo day.” She puts her hand up to her ear and makes a small adjusting movement with her fingers. Now that Roberta looks at her again, she realizes the black hair is a wig. And there is a strange chemical smell, something like the nuts from a ginkgo tree in the fall. Roberta had no idea that Claire was sick again. Last time she saw her –– was it two months ago? –– she seemed to be in remission.

  “And of course, I can’t be there, either. Chemo days are miserable, and I need to lend a hand when Claire gets home.” Carl puts his arm around his wife’s frail shoulders. “But I want to buy a book, Roberta, and I want you to write something nice in it for me.”

  They finish their steaks, and then Roberta faces the problem of her diminished dessert offering. “Don’t worry about the meringues,” James says, as he helps Roberta carry the dinner plates to the kitchen. “Why don’t we just have a bowl of whipped cream? I love it.”

  “Good thought. I’ve some canned apricots we can put on top.”

  The apricots and whipped cream look pretty in the gold-and-red Royal Crown Derby dishes Roberta inherited from her grandmother. “Good china can detract from bad food, or so I fondly hope,” she says, setting the dessert in front of her guests.

  “Just as a bad farrier can cripple a good horse,” James says out of the blue. Well, it’s an effort at least, and Roberta is happy to see him steering the conversation onto a topic that interests him. He goes on: “Some riders are actually giving bare-footing a trial.”

  “They’re not wearing riding boots these days?” Claire asks. “That must be dangerous.”

  “No, no. I mean that some riders are not putting shoes on their horses.”

  There’s a long pause. Then Carl says, “I’m sorry about your horse having to be put down. That must have been a horrible shock.”

  “Bucie was a special friend. You know, he was eight years old when my uncle left him to me in his will. He’d never done eventing before, but he had the heart and the temperament to try anything with me. I’d even say he had the soul if you wouldn’t laugh at me.”

  “No one’s laughing,” Carl says. “We’ve all had animals we loved. I remember my English setter––”

  “He didn’t like dressage any better than I did,” James cuts in. “But he saved my skin once. I was so bored in the dressage ring –– I was thinking about the cross-country — and next thing I knew I couldn’t remember anything about the canter. I completely blanked out. But he put himself right into position, did the whole weight sequence: one hind leg, two hind legs and one foreleg, one hind leg and diagonal foreleg, one hind leg and two forelegs, one foreleg, then all four legs in the air.”

  “Ah,” Carl says. “It’s called the moment of suspension, isn’t it?”

  James smiles, confident that he has got someone who speaks “horse.” If he would just leave it at that, Roberta thinks. But no, he’s onto the different means of euthanasia, and then he segues into the burial pit in which Bucephalus was placed. The animal must be covered with at least a metre of soil. There is more, much more, but Roberta stops listening.

  She is watching her guests closely. Claire has just taken a quick peek at her watch. Carl is wiping his mouth with a napkin. Or is he covering a yawn?

  “Shall we move to more comfortable seats?” she asks.

  In the living room, Carl helps Claire into a comfortable high-backed chair, and then, over coffee and Grand Marnier, Roberta asks Carl about his current life as head of an English Department at a west-end high school.

  “Yesterday, one of the kids I teach told me when I was on cafeteria duty, aka pigpen patrol, that he’d enjoyed Macbeth. I was pleased because we’d had to rush through it to accommodate the new curriculum. ‘Nothing wishy-washy about Shakespeare,’ was what he actually said. I was so surprised. That old-fashioned adjective was perfect. I took it personally, patted myself on the back for the rest of the day.” At this point Carl takes out a spotless linen handkerchief and wipes his eyes. “A teacher’s grief is sometimes insupportable.”

  “Tell Mama and Papa all about it,” Roberta says, looking at James to include him in the banter.

  “I marked two essays. The first one informed me that Macbeth went down to Great Neptune’s Ocean and tried to wash his hands, but the bloodstains wouldn’t come off.”

  “Obviously, you didn’t put across the concept of metaphor. And the second?”

  “That one takes a bit of explanation. Do you by any chance remember the character Pat in Hamlet?”

  “Hmm. Pat? I don’t think so.” Then Roberta gets it. “Wait. Is it Pat as in ‘Now might I do it pat, now he is praying’?”

  “That’s it. One kid –– name’s Joey –– asked me in class when we were doing the prayer scene who this Pat was, and I told him, ‘She’s Hamlet’s sister. Doesn’t appear often in the play. In fact, only when Hamlet needs her advice.’ So, in his essay, he told me that Pat should have told Hamlet to stick the knife into Claudius right then and there!”

  “Serves you right for being a smartass with a poor kid.”

  “Thanks for the sympathy, Mama. I feel so much better.”

  Roberta and Carl laugh. Then, looking around, they realize that James and Claire are not joining in the fun. In fact, they are both asleep. James has started to make gentle snorting noises, and Claire’s mouth has fallen open.

  “She’s dying, you know,” Carl says to Roberta, leaning forward and speaking in a whisper. “I don’t know what I can do to help her through these last weeks.”

  “Dear Carl, you hover over her like a guardian angel.”

  “And I notice a big change in James, too. He’s just not the same lively person he used to be. Is it that disaster with the horse?”

  “Yes. He blames himself for the accident. I’m worried.”

  “Does he need to get a new interest?”

  “Ed and Charlie think so, and I agree.”

  “Remember that trip Claire and I took with your family so long ago? The hike along the Antrim Coast?”

  “How could I forget? I was miserable most of the time, clinging to farmers’ fences on the inside of the path while the rest of you hung over the cliffs. I could have sworn you were all seeing how close you could come to the edge without falling over the rocks into the sea.”

  “I was scared myself when we got to Carrick-a-Rede. Claire and you and I all sat on a bench while––”

  “James and the boys raced across the rope bridge from the mainland to that little fishermen’s island. It’s a horror movie in my mind.”

  “I can still see the bridge swaying all those feet above the chasm––”

  “And those Irish teenagers crawling back to the mainland on all fours, too scared to stand up––”

  “It was insane. And yet, I could see James laughing all the way across. The boys were so small they probably didn’t see the danger. But you were furious.” Carl sets his liqueur glass on the coffee table.

  “I didn’t speak to James for the rest of the afternoon.” She remembers thinking that he would wipe out her whole family in one hare-brained escapade.

  “It’s the type of adventure James enjoys. I’m not suggesting anything crazy, Rob, but maybe if he could find a safe thrill.�
� He laughs. “Is there such a thing as a safe thrill?”

  Claire stirs and opens her dark eyes. “Oh dear, I didn’t mean to be such a klutz, Roberta.” She touches the side of her head and begins to claw at her wig. “I hate this,” she says and yanks it off to reveal tufts of hair sprouting here and there on a shiny bald head.

  Carl gets up and leans over her, touching her shoulder. “You’re tired. It’s time to go home.” Claire begins to shiver. He helps her to rise from the chair, takes off his suit jacket, and drapes it around her.

  The activity wakens James. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Too much food has a soporific effect on me.”

  A couple of minutes later, Carl and Claire are in their car and backing down the driveway.

  “It wasn’t your good dinner that put me to sleep, love,” James says as he and Roberta stand in the doorway to wave goodbye. “Carl’s become a bit of a bore, wouldn’t you agree? I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. Sorry.”

  “You seem so tired and depressed all the time, and I understand that. But don’t blame Carl.”

  “You’re right. Why blame Carl? I need to get charged up again, that’s what I need.” He glances at the staircase. “Maybe I’ll just have a go at my article before bedtime.” From the top of the stairs, he calls down. “Give me a cheque for ten thou, will you? I’ve got to cover the tree takedown, the new roof, and the taxes.”

  “Sure.” Long ago, they decided not to keep a joint account. They each have a separate chequing account, and they have an informal way of paying bills. It’s her turn this month. Last month, James paid for the eavestroughs and the new kitchen cabinets. Their big old house needs lots of upgrades, all of them expensive.

  Roberta calls up to James. “By the way, will you phone the cabinet people and tell them to get their records straight? They left a message on the answering machine today saying we hadn’t paid them.”

  She stacks the dishes, puts the food away, writes the cheque, and climbs upstairs to bed. Through the half-open door of the study, she gets a glimpse of the blue light from James’s computer. She sees him hunched over the computer, intent on his work. She doesn’t disturb him. At last, he’s focusing on something worthwhile. Now, perhaps, she can stop worrying about him day in and day out.