The Slip
Page 17
Oh gawd, I’d thought, naively at the time. How do we ever recover from something like that?
Saturday, November 7
Let us speak of weekend rituals. I will marvel, as you no doubt will, at the way children can sleep like Tut in his tomb all week long, ignoring the beseeches of parents pleading against the clock, only to swarm from their chambers on Saturday morning and fill an ungodly hour with frenetic clatter. But I’m up. I’m up and I’m there. I’m there to provide assistance at the toilet, to find a lost Dora, to pour cereal and locate cartoons on TV. I’m there in bathrobe, in eye crust, in fuzzy slippers. I am there with spatula in hand, hunched over sizzling skillet, cooking my wife a hot, proper breakfast. I’m there on the porch, hauling in fat weekend papers (though not as fat as they used to be), which I will divvy up like a whale carcass after a hunt. To Grace go sections like Style and Living and Weekend. To me go sections like Focus and Argument. The kids get the funnies. We each have our perennial favourites: Grace goes straight to Globe Style, which, oddly, contains recipes; I, meanwhile, grouse over an increasingly etiolated Globe Books and then dive-bomb the Star’s op-ed section. And if things are good, if things are humming, my wife and I will speak to each other in the idioglossia of our marriage, a nonsensical lexicon of love and domesticity. If things are good, we will cheer or heckle or debate what we read, aloud to each other, our fingers gone black with newsprint ink.
But on this Saturday, things were not good. Not good at all. Four Metcalfe Street seemed full of gloom. I had brought the papers in but not bothered to divide them up; they sat in a segmented pile on the kitchen table, portending more column inches about my unconscionable gaffe from Monday. As for breakfast, I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than a couple of toasted bagels for Grace and me. The Bloody Joseph I mixed for myself tasted flat. The autumn light through our kitchen window held a faint grimness. Grace came downstairs, a Medusa of bed-head and frayed kimono, sat at the kitchen table, picked briefly at the papers, stared out the window. I sat across from her, slowly smearing my bagel with cream cheese. We said nothing. We said nothing.
Thankfully, Naomi filled the space with her incessant, three-year-old’s nattering. She burst away from the TV cartoons and the cereal I’d set up for her on the coffee table to race over and leap into her mother’s lap. “When I, when I, when I, when I go swimming, okay, swimming, with you, Mummy, where, I mean why, I mean why, why aren’t there dine’sores at the poo-ool?”
Simone came down, eventually, pink iPad and Life of Pi under her arm. I got up and fixed her a bowl of cereal, and she sat with us to read a while in silence. She would look up at me, at Grace, noting, I’m sure, the Cuban Missile Crisis–esque tension between us, the vast, tetchy DMZ of the breakfast table, before returning to her book.
“But I did, Mummy, I did, I did, I did one time, I did see a dine’sore at the poo-ool. One time.”
“Hey, Naomi, what were you watching?” Simone asked.
“VeggieTales,” she sang back.
“Wanna go watch some more?”
“’Kay.”
So Simone led her sister by the hand back to the TV, granting us a blessed moment alone. Grace looked up and took the opportunity to speak.
“I’m going to cancel tomorrow’s brunch, by the way.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” she jangled with incredulity, then glared at me as if I might answer. “Two couples have cancelled already. We’re down to just eight of us. Nobody, Philip, wants to be around you right now. I don’t want to be around you.”
“Did Jane Elton cancel?”
“Philip —”
“No, I’m asking. Did Jane Elton cancel?”
Grace turned, sulking off into space. “No. She and her husband are still coming.”
“Well then.”
“Look, I can’t just —”
“No, that’s my dolly — my dolly!”
“Naomi, I don’t even want your stupid doll.”
“Guys — guys!” Grace called over to the TV. “No fighting!” Then she turned back to me, her face a cauldron of fury. I had never seen my wife this upset before.
“I just want all this to be over,” she muttered.
“Look, don’t cancel the brunch,” I said. “You wanted to get your manuscript in front of Jane, so let’s do it. I mean, that was the whole point of this brunch.” That only seemed to upset her more. “Look,” I went on, “people will probably be too polite to say anything to me about what happened on Monday. I mean, that’s pretty much been the case all week.” I gave her a half-smile. “The slip that dare not speak its name?”
But Grace wasn’t buying it. She looked up at me then, the corners of her mouth twitching in suppressed rage. “We’re not in a good place right now,” she said. “And I’m not sure I can put up a front for our friends.”
“Grace, don’t cancel the brunch. It’s important to you, so let’s just get it over with. Okay?”
She mashed her lips together, as if contemplating another rebuttal, but then decided against it.
“Fine,” she said.
“Fine,” I said back.
She tilted her chin up at me. “So I got the kids booked in to see that exhibit at the museum later this morning,” she said. “Are you coming with us?”
Oh gawd. Something else that had completely gotten away from me. How does this keep happening? I took a pull on my Bloody Joseph. “What time?” I asked.
“Eleven thirty.”
I looked at the clock on the wall.
Grace gaped at me. “Wow. You’re not coming with us.”
“Well, I have work to do,” I told her. “I really need to take a crack at this YouTube script for Raj.”
Grace sighed then, a ventilating gasp of despair, and shook her head at me as if to say, I can’t believe you.
“It’s important, Grace. Okay? It’s important.” This did not convince her, so I offered an olive branch. “Listen, come up and check in with me right before you guys go. If I’ve made good headway, I’ll come. All right?”
But this was not all right. She got up from the table without saying another word to me, and headed toward the kids at the TV. “Simone, did you feed the cat yet? You didn’t, did you? And you really need to do her litter box, okay. We have company coming tomorrow. I’m not going to ask you again.”
And so our household rolled on as I sat there. Sat there with our unread newspapers and uneaten bagels. Our thwarted Saturday sacraments.
Squeeze, dash, shake-shake-shake, pour. I headed upstairs to the solitary bliss of my office, closed its door and settled in at my crowded desk. The tomato-juice-stained notes and manuscript pages of “Christianity and Its Dissidents” sat in a towering lump on the desk’s far right-hand corner. I suppose I had Christian-like forgiveness on the brain as I opened a fresh Word doc and got down to writing my script, my YouTube mea culpa. I would plead for forgiveness, beg for it from those who had lacerated me so savagely, so perplexingly, over what I had said about those ODS executives. I would ask for mercy; but do so, paradoxically, by arguing why we should forgive them for what they did. Yes, their despicable acts would wreak havoc in the Canadian economy for years to come, but they still deserved to be treated well inside the boundaries of our judicial system. I acknowledged outright that what I had said about ODS was wrong, that I knew it was wrong, and that it had just come spurting out from some dark place inside my lizard brain. I then proceeded to prove that I knew it was wrong by going back through history to show how our notions of fairness, justice, and proportionality had developed over centuries, and how each milestone could be applied to the awful acts those corporate executives had committed.
It all went really well. The words just piled up, and I soon disappeared into the loops and spirals of my argument, my swelling verbiage. The script format tripped me up in the beginning,
but I soon got the hang of it, leaving parenthetical instructions for Raj along the way, such as “
Hey Raj: Here’s the script. I’m curious to see how you’ll bring your videographical eye to these ideas. Let me know what you think. — Philip
Then I began to delete the trickle of Facebook notifications that had come in overnight, and was surprised when a response from Raj came back right away.
Hey buddy,
Just on the road here in Barrie. I’ll download your Word doc when I get a chance. In the meantime, I had another idea. I’d really love to introduce that cocktail of yours, the Bloody Joseph, to the boys when you’re all over on Wednesday. If you email me the recipe, I can pick up the ingredients on my way back into Toronto, and we can inhale a few while we’re filming. I noticed you didn’t really care for my windowsill whisky yesterday. ;)
Raj
This struck me as a corking idea, so I quickly hammered out my recipe for the Bloody Joseph and sent it off to him, wondering if Raj might blanch at the various inclusions and modifications I had made to the traditional formula. When I finished, I leaned back in my chair and was filled with a sudden glow of satisfaction. It felt great to get that script off my chest, to apologize unmitigatedly to the world, and to have something to look forward to on Wednesday.
I sat up, and for the first time in more than an hour, my eyes flickered to the little clock in the corner of my computer screen.
I jarred. 11:17. What the hell? Where the fuck did the morning go?
I turned toward my closed office door, to the hush of 4 Metcalfe Street beyond it. Shouldn’t Grace have popped up by now to let me know they were leaving for the museum, and to see if I still wanted to come? I got up and went to the door, opened it and stuck my head out to the landing.
“Grace?” I called down. “Grace, are you there?” The house was a catacomb of silence. “Grace, I finished my script. I can join you guys now.”
No answer. I went down the stairs to the second level and checked our bedroom, calling her name. When I didn’t find her, I moved to the ground floor. “Simone, Naomi, where’s Mum?” Again, no answer. Was the house empty? Had they just … just left without checking in with me? Constance the cat strolled by my ankle. “Constance, where is everybody?”
But I already knew the answer. I went to the living-room window and looked out over the street parking in front of our house. Sure enough: Grace’s little red Yaris was nowhere to be found. I stood there gawping, a rage ascending in my throat like dyspepsia. I shook my head. Un. Fucking. Believable. She knew I still wanted to come. She knew I wanted her to check in with me. How — how could they just leave me behind?
My rage intensified. I couldn’t believe it. What am I even doing here? I thought. What am I to these people, my supposed “family”? How do they even see me? How can I be, as Grace put it, “plugged in” to what’s happening in my own house when I’m not even a presence in this house? When I don’t count. When I’m just — a thing. I am just a thing. I’m a sounding board. I am a paycheque. I am a cock, a dildo with a dental plan. I am just the thing around here that does the things that make all this possible.
A moment later I was back up at my desk, staring at my computer screen and feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. A couple of fresh Facebook notifications appeared then — more rancour from cyberspace, no doubt — but I ignored them. Instead, I stared at the message that had come in last night. The message from Rani.
I reopened it.
You really should give me a call. 07870 663 926.
I got up from my desk. Went downstairs, to the living-room end table where the cordless phone sat in its docking station. I picked it up, brought it with jittery haste back upstairs. Closed my office door. Sat back at my desk, my shoulders tightened, my bowels watery, my stomach thrumming with nervousness.
I dialled.
There was a lengthy, transatlantic pause. But then it rang. And rang. And then she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Rani,” I said, my voice a deep, husky timbre.
“Oh,” she replied, “my God.”
“Hi.”
“Is that you inside my mobile, Philip Sharpe?”
“Yep.”
“You called me. You actually called me.”
“I did.”
“You did.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she replied. “Just fine. How are you?”
“I’m a mess.” My voice cracked like a teenager’s. “What can I say? I am a total fucking mess.”
“Ah, Sharpe.” She chuckled sympathetically. “Here, hang on a sec.” I heard her move out of the chattering BBC newsroom, to another room and close the door behind her. “How bad is it there?”
“You have no idea,” I said.
“Tell me.”
Such an inviting plea. Such a warm, worldly accent in her voice. I hesitated. It felt unseemly to share such intimacies with a woman I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. But then, buttressed by the house empty all around me, I went for it. “It’s just … it’s just unravelling everything. This situation. There are no words. My colleagues at the university … my students … my marriage, gawd. It’s been like … like a punch to the solar plexus of my marriage, Rani.”
“Huh,” she said. “Hmm.”
“Yeah. Exactly. It’s just, it’s just — awful.”
“Ah, Sharpe,” she repeated. “You sound like you need a hug.”
I need a lot more than a hug, I nearly said, but bit my tongue. “It’s just so bad here. I can barely describe it.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like you,” she replied, a sly curlicue on her words. “You’re usually pretty good at, you know, articulating yourself.”
“Yeah.”
“So what are you going to do?”
I released a long, slow sigh. “Well, I’ve just finished scripting a comprehensive apology. A videographer friend of mine is going to film me delivering it — do a whole professional production — and we’re going to put it up on YouTube.”
“That’s good,” she said. “No, that’s really good.”
“Anyway. I don’t know if it’s going to help at all. But I have to do something.”
“No, of course,” she replied. Then she added, “Look, for what it’s worth, I think the response to your gaffe has been wildly out of proportion. I mean, come on. Sex slaves in Iraq, kidnapped girls in Nigeria, but no, no, this — this is what people choose to get upset about.”
I felt some tears trickle into the fur on my cheeks. “You have no idea,” I told her, “how much I’ve wanted someone to say exactly that to me all week.” I took a deep, snotty swallow. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with cheer.
“Anyway. Blah blah blah. Enough about me. What’s new with you?”
“Well, funny you should ask,” she said. “I have some amazing news myself.”
“Oh? What’s going on?”
“Well, I’ve just received a promotion,” she replied. “As of January 4, I’ll be the BBC’s new bureau chief in Mumbai.”
“Oh my God — that’s amazing,” I exclaimed. “Wow. You — you must be just over the moon.”
“I am,” she said.
“Oh, Rani, congratulations. This is so well deserved. You’ve worked incredibly hard for this.”
“Thanks, Sharpe. It’s really exciting. I mean, I’ve been back to India tons of times but I haven’t lived
there since I was a kid. And my parents are back there now, retired. They’re getting on in years, so being closer to them will be great. It’s just an incredible opportunity all around.”
“That’s so wonderful,” I said.
“Thanks.” And then, with a flirty little snicker, she added, “So — any chance you want to ditch your life in Toronto and run away to India with me?”
“Ha, ha,” I laughed. “That’s funny.”
“Ha, ha,” she replied. And then there was — yes, you guessed it — a long awkward pause. “So …?” she added.
“So … what?” I asked.
“So …?” Another pause. “You wanna run away to India with me?”
My bowels went watery again. “You aren’t serious.”
“Actually, I think I kinda am.”
“Rani —”
“No, just listen to me.” And so I did. “I’ve been sitting at my desk all week, Sharpe, watching and re-watching that clip of you on the CBC. I mean, on the one hand you’re at your least attractive in it. You’re fumbling around with that toadstool of a woman, letting her wipe the floor with you. And you look like hell. I mean, I don’t know what you think that comb-over is accomplishing but you really should reconsider it.”
“Rani —”
“Just listen to me. But despite all that, I’m looking at you in that clip and I can still see the man I met twenty-five years ago. I can see that guy, Sharpe. The guy I was so crazy about but afraid to love back then. It’s true. I really loved you, Sharpe. I did. But I …” She sighed like a furnace. “I just loved my career more. What can I say? I sacrificed a lot for it, and still do. I mean, it’s Saturday afternoon and I’m here in this newsroom after already putting in a seventy-hour week. But I have nowhere to go; I have no one to see. I’m forty-eight years old, I’ve never been married, I can’t seem to stay in a relationship longer than six months these days, and I’m … I’m alone, Sharpe. I’ve never been able to follow through on things with guys. Lord knows I couldn’t follow through with you.”