The Secret Life of Roberta Greaves

by Ann Birch

  “Well, if I can help you, I’m glad to.”

  “John is having a party at his condo on Friday. He wants me to go and he said, ‘Bring Roberta along. She can drive you, and I’d be so glad if she’d come too.’ He said maybe you’d like to bring a friend with you. So there it is. What do you think?”

  Roberta looks at the old woman. She is probably about the same age as her mother Sylvia but far older in every way. Her small round glasses have slipped down her nose, and as she stands in the vestibule, Roberta can see, beneath the thinning white hair, the hearing aid, one plastic strand of which she has forgotten to tuck into her ear.

  Well, I’m cornered, Roberta says to herself. But at the same time, she remembers what a good neighbour Mrs. Schubert has been over the years. “I haven’t driven for ages, Mrs. Schubert. It always seems easier to take the subway. But I’ll get the car out. I’m sure it will be glad to have some exercise. Or, on second thought, why don’t I ask my pal Carl Talbot to drive us? You could clear that with John. If he said to bring a friend along, I’m sure he’d be okay with Carl.”

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry to have bothered you. Why don’t I just take a taxi? Those subway steps are beyond me now.”

  “No, no. I insist. Let me do something for you, please.” Roberta remembers all the times she’d had a pile of papers to mark or an editor breathing down her neck. And her neighbour would say, “Send me the boys. I’ll keep them happy.” Charlie still has the necklace he and Mrs. Schubert made out of acorns they picked up in High Park. He used to wear it at Hallowe’en when he got dressed up as an Iroquois warrior.

  Mrs. Schubert’s eyes tear up. She wipes them with the edge of her hand-knitted scarf. “No worries then, as Charlie would say?”

  “Absolutely no worries.”

  Roberta holds the vestibule door open for Mrs. Schubert, but her neighbour seems reluctant to leave. Her snow-covered boots are leaving a puddle on the tiles. She says, “Don’t know quite how to phrase this, Roberta…” Then it all comes out in a rush. “I haven’t mentioned to anyone about that day we met in the convenience store.”

  “Ah yes, those magazines.”

  “You see, John asked me if I’d seen you around, and I told a fib and said no. He’s a lovely man, my son, but still he can make a mountain out of a molehill. I think it’s his job. He’s always searching for something he can print or ‘leak’ — I think that’s his word.”

  “I appreciate your discretion, Mrs. Schubert.”

  “Yes, well … I think I understand a little of what you’re going through now without that good-looking husband of yours. You know, when my Edwin died, I missed him so much. I … I … got a copy of Fanny Hill. That was the naughty book then, 1968 it was, and I read it cover to cover over and over. I shouldn’t be saying all this. In fact, it’s probably a case of TMI, as John says. I do go on, he keeps telling me….” And with that, she is out the door, leaving Roberta to say “See you soon” to her back.

  As Roberta goes into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, she laughs out loud, mostly from a sense of relief. So, like Charlie, the old woman actually thinks she is getting some sort of a sexual buzz from those magazines. Well, at least John Schubert will not be able to leak that tidbit out of his stockpile of innuendos.

  Still, he did see her with George Korda. Maybe it is too soon to laugh. The party would give him a perfect opportunity to pry further. Maybe that’s what’s behind this invitation to the condo. Maybe she had better get an excuse ready just in case. She could say that she was having a drink with Marianne, and they met Korda by chance. Marianne has a client who has published with him. “Forgotten her name,” she’ll say if Schubert forages for more info.

  19.

  SO SEVERAL DAYS LATER, Roberta finds herself in the front seat of Carl’s car with Mrs. Schubert in the back, as they head to Schubert’s condo on Bloor Street and Avenue Road. She is glad Carl volunteered to do the driving because really, as she told her neighbour, she prefers the subway to coping with city traffic. Besides, it is pleasant to have Carl along. As he manoeuvres into an underground parking space near the condo, he catches her glance and gives her a nod as if to say, “We’ll get through this.”

  Mrs. Schubert is wearing patent-toe quilted pumps and it soon becomes obvious she is not going to be able to make it up the six steps from the parking area. One on each side of her, Roberta and Carl manage to hoist her up to elevator level.

  “Sorry to be such a burden,” she says. “It’s these silly shoes. John gave them to me. I still have nice ankles, but he doesn’t seem to realize my knees have gone.”

  Roberta takes another look at the shoes. She has seen them in the window of David’s, the high-end shop she sometimes passes on the way to Trinity College. “They’re Manolos, aren’t they?”

  “Possibly. All I know is John told me they cost him plenty. So I’ll call them ‘Payolas.’”

  Schubert meets them at the door of his unit, his perfect teeth arranged in a smarmy smile. A few years back, as Roberta recalls, he had a mouthful of silver fillings.

  “Mater, dear Roberta, and … Carl, isn’t it? I met you at the funeral, didn’t I? So glad you can join us on a happy occasion. You’re just in time for a personally conducted tour of my salon. No Christmas decorations, my dears, so tacky.” He gestures with his cigarette holder towards the open space where a number of people have already gathered.

  Roberta looks around. The walls are stark white. There is a huge oil of horizontal black stripes on a white background that seems to have attracted the notice of three bouffant-haired matrons. They are obviously smitten with it, judging from their oohs and aahs. “It’s called David and Goliath,” Schubert says. “Barnett Newman, of course. Cost a packet I can tell you.”

  “I call it Zebra, Skinned,” Mrs. Schubert says.

  “Oh, Mater, you are such a Philistine!” But his laugh seems genuine, even tender, and he gives her a quick hug. “And what do you think of my mobiles, Roberta?” He waves at a cluster of black-and-grey plastic ovals tied together by shiny wires.

  “Well!” Roberta says heartily. Carl, who is standing just behind her, gives her a nudge.

  “Now, do have a seat, and I’ll ask the girl to get you drinks. Mater, do go and sit on that chair you’re so fond of. I brought it up from the storage room especially for you. I know what you think of my Marcel Breuer suite.”

  Roberta heads over to a sofa of round upholstered pads linked by rods of steel. Unfortunately, when she seats herself, she comes down between the pads. She hisses at Carl, “I bet I’ll have grooves on my butt.” She watches as he lowers himself gingerly onto a piece of leather slung on weirdly angled steel supports that resemble the hind legs of a grasshopper.

  “Not that I care, but the Barnett Newman must have cost more than a packet. How can he afford one on an editor’s salary?” Carl asks.

  “Probably a knock-off. It wouldn’t take all that much talent, and he knows nobody’s going to challenge him on it.”

  A beautiful girl with spiky bangs delivers two martinis. Roberta can see Mrs. Schubert far away in a corner of what is possibly the dining area, a space dominated by a sharp-edged glass table with steel legs. She is sitting on what actually looks like a comfortable Windsor oak chair, and Schubert is settling a plump cushion behind her back.

  “You’re a friend of John’s, are you?” Roberta says to the girl, noting her designer white suit with black lapels, a perfect complement to the Barnett Newman.

  “Hired for the occasion,” the girl says, with a grimace and a shrug. “I’m really an actor, but you can’t make a living in theatre these days. So I do my act here. This is my stage: I’m Galatea to John’s Pygmalion. Excuse me, I have to take some fruit punch to Mater.”

  Roberta is barely into her third sip of martini when she sees a red-headed giantess closing in on her. It is Fran Franklin, who writes the “About Town” column for In
side Toronto. “Mind if I sit here?” she says and plunks her large satin-clad rear down beside Roberta. But she too misjudges the distance between pads and lands on the steel rods. She gives a squawk that causes several heads to turn. “I did the same thing,” Roberta says.

  “Who the hell is this Marcel Breuer anyway?” Carl says, smiling at Fran as Roberta introduces her. “No, please don’t tell me. Let us just try to endure.” He shifts his body to a different position on the leather thong of his chair.

  Carl’s back is to the rest of the room, and Roberta has no time to warn him that Schubert is just behind his chair.

  “Marcel Breuer, you haven’t heard of him?” Schubert stands between Carl on the chair and Roberta and Fran on the sofa and looks down on them. “Hungarian, key figure in the Bauhaus Movement, designed the Whitney Museum and…” He pauses to shake the ash from his Gitanes into the ashtray he holds in one hand before continuing: “…advocated the manufacture of furniture for the masses. But that was in 1932, my dears. A genuine Marcel Breuer these days — and I’m not talking about those cheesy reproductions — costs a king’s ransom.”

  Roberta hates being talked down to and would get up if she could, but she is afraid that she cannot make it with the martini glass in her hand. And there is not a table close to set it upon. Perhaps Marcel Breuer did not believe in useful surfaces?

  “Furniture for the masses, eh?” Carl says. “Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear it. After working all day, they’d never have time to sit down anyway. They’d probably just go straight to bed and pieces like this chair I’m sitting on could stay inviolate.”

  “Not sure what you’re going on about, Carl — I do have that name right, do I? — but never mind. What I really came over to talk about, Roberta dear, is George Korda. How is your friend George?”

  Before Roberta has time to come up with her excuse, Fran Franklin leans forward. “The publisher of Mayhem? Really?” Roberta almost expects her to get out her notebook or switch on a tape recorder.

  “None other,” Schubert says. “There she was, Franny, having a glass of vino with the guy, right in the bar of the Delta Chelsea, all very cosy cosy — tête à tête. Except her agent, that frumpy woman, oh yes, Marianne Blackman, was there as well. Go figure.”

  “Well,” Fran says. “This is news.” She turns to Roberta, puts a large hand on her arm. “Since the agent was involved, I’d figure you have something going that George Korda might be interested in. Something the University Press would hold its nose over. Am I right? Don’t tell me you’re turning into a writer’s version of Marcel Breuer, books for the masses, that sort of thing? I thought your specialty was Greek translation.”

  “Well, it’s been done before,” Schubert says. “Margaret Atwood is what you’d call an intellectual, n’est-ce pas? But dear Peggy’s update on Penelope was a bestseller with the hoi polloi, wasn’t it? I did like her calling Helen of Troy — what was it? — ‘a septic bitch.’ I gave it a boost in The Gazette, and it took off from there.”

  “I don’t know about that, John,” Fran says. “The masses, I suspect, would have no idea who Penelope and Odysseus were, and would care less. It sold well, I know, but hardly with the masses.”

  Well, they’ve got momentarily away from George Korda, so that’s good. But now she sees them turn in her direction again. Uh-oh. Time for her little story about Marianne’s client and the accidental meeting.

  “Rob,” Carl says out of the blue, looking at his watch. “My God, I forgot that I have to be someplace in an hour.” He pokes his thumb into his lower jaw. “Broken crown, and my dentist is giving up part of a Saturday afternoon to its fate. I should leave right now. I’ll drive you home and—”

  “Just one sec, Carl, please. John and Fran asked me about George Korda. I think I told you that Marianne and I talked with him recently?” She turns back to her host and Fran. Keeps her voice casual. “Marianne and I were having drinks at the hotel. She was giving me one of her pitches about doing a popular rewrite of The Cretan Manuscripts. She was persuasive, as she always is, but I have to think about it. It would be a lot of work at the moment. Anyway, while we were talking, Korda came along. Marianne is an agent for one of his writers, so he joined us for a drink.”

  Carl looks at his watch again. “Sorry, Carl,” she says, “I know you have to go right now. If you’ll excuse us, John, I’ll just see if your mother is ready.” Roberta sets her martini glass on the floor and struggles off the Marcel Breuer pad. “Thanks so much. I’ve enjoyed looking at your extraordinary collection. Nice to see you, too, Fran. Sorry to rush off like this.”

  And she and Carl are away to the far corner of the huge room to collect Mrs. Schubert.

  “I’m more than ready to go now,” the old woman says. “Not a person has spoken to me except John in the half-hour we’ve been here. You get to a certain age and you’re invisible.”

  As they gather up their coats from the closet in the hall, Roberta notices the beautiful “Galatea” pushing the Windsor chair behind a black-and-white screen that separates the dining area from what is probably the kitchen. She wonders what the girl’s phrase about being “Galatea to John’s Pygmalion” really involves.

  Carl drops off Mrs. Schubert and then pulls into Roberta’s driveway. He says, “I’d like to stay, but…”

  “I know, I know. Your broken crown. Are you in terrible pain?” She laughs.

  “I’ll be fine once I can get home and rest my butt on a well-padded piece of furniture made by someone who doesn’t want to torture you with a piece of leather that cuts your balls off. Excuse the language.” He laughs too. One of the rubber bands pops off his braces, and he reaches into his mouth and puts it back on the metal hooks. Then he continues, “I must say, I admired the adjective with which you described that place. ‘Extraordinary’ was perfect.”

  “Carl, you were the brilliant one. Just at the right moment you saved me from a cross-examination I was dreading. Bless you.”

  “Well, I fear El Creepo will return to the subject sooner or later. And now that Fran Whatshername has been alerted…. Oh, Rob, I know the questioning will go on.”

  “Yes, it’s probably inevitable. What to do? I’ll have to deal with it as it happens. But you’d better take off now. I just saw Mrs. Schubert pulling up her kitchen blinds. It’s best that she really thinks you’re on your way to the dentist.”

  20.

  SEVERAL GUESTS HAVE ASSEMBLED In Roberta’s living room. She is so glad that Carl has accepted her invitation to Christmas dinner. Now, if only Daddy were here to join in the festivities. But instead of Daddy, there is Neville, her mother’s new beau. He is tall and emaciated and has a white beard that could do with a pruning. With him is his Rottweiler, a large, fat animal, fierce-looking but friendly.

  “Polonius by name,” Neville says. “After Shakespeare’s old windbag. You’ll see what I mean, heh heh.” Yeah, for sure, Roberta says to herself as she pushes up the living-room window in an attempt to air out the dog’s farts.

  Carl has come with his father. The old man has picked up a copy of The New Yorker from the coffee table, leaving Carl to make tentative conversation with Roberta’s mother and Neville.

  “You’re an actor, Roberta tells me.”

  “Was. Mostly retired now. My biggest role latterly was Claudius two summers ago at Stratford. If I’d been thirty years younger, I might have done Hamlet. Know all the lines, could have walked right into the part.” He launches into the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy, and Roberta retreats to the kitchen.

  “Something wrong, Mom?” Charlie says. He is pouring red wine into the gravy to glaze it, or maybe deglaze it, Roberta can never remember which.

  “‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns….’ I’m just not ready for that right now.” She grabs the kitchen counter, takes a deep breath, and tries not to cry.

  “We’ll get th
rough this, Mom, somehow. Consider that Neville doesn’t know he’s being a pain in the ass, and Granny can’t tell him in front of everyone.”

  Ed is taking the prosecco from the fridge. “Let me get this into him,” he says, “and maybe it’ll shut him up. Things go better when everyone is slightly pissed.” He pours the wine into champagne glasses, sets one aside for her, and takes the others on a silver tray into the living room.

  “Told Granny about the novel?” Charlie asks.

  “No, I’m going to wait. No sense spoiling this day any more than it’s already been spoiled. I’ll make a trip to Summerton in the new year and break the news.”

  Roberta and Charlie can hear Neville going on now about the pain in his right shoulder. “I’ve been having hot baths to ease the agony,” he says. “And then someone told me that a cold pack works better. The other night, I couldn’t sleep, so up I got and looked in the freezer for ice cubes, a package of frozen peas, or what have you. Nothing in the freezer but a Cornish hen.”

  “Gotta hear this one,” Charlie says, setting down his wooden spoon and moving closer to the archway into the living room.

  “So I took the Cornish hen into bed with me, and it really worked….”

  “Wonder what that means?” Charlie whispers.

  “And the next day, I ate it.”

  “Poor thing,” they hear Carl say.

  “Oh gross,” Charlie says, snorting into his hand to keep down his laughter. “Really, Mom, that one is sicker, far far sicker, than anything you ever wrote.”

  The doorbell rings. Charlie runs to the stove and turns down the heat. “I’ll get it.”

  Alone in the kitchen for a moment, Roberta hears Carl asking Neville about a recent jazz concert, and Neville’s sonorous response is interrupted by the arrival of her sons’ girlfriends. As she moves into the hallway to greet them, she notices that James’s picture is back on the wall in the family photo gallery. Either Charlie or Ed — probably Ed — must have put it in place this morning. She is happy about that. In the kitchen, she remembered how James had always loved to take charge of the Christmas turkey. It somehow seems appropriate that he is with them on this day.