White Mythology

by WD Clarke

  —But you, too, are looking for love. Any fool can see that.

  —But I’m married.

  —You say the words, but your heart isn’t in them, which makes them merely contractual, not human. Legal terminology, nothing more.

  —Nothing less.

  —Nothing, really, at all.

  —But still.

  —Still what? How long have you been separated?

  When love, with one another so

  Interinanimates two souls,

  That abler soul, which thence doth flow,

  Defects of loneliness controls.

  —I didn’t say I was separated.

  —No, you didn’t.

  —Not long. It’s complicated, I don’t want to talk about it.

  —You really were in love, once, but it was too heavy, too (as you say) complicated, so now you want something … less demanding, emotionally.

  —Have you been talking to Andrea? Conspiring, with her?

  —The word ‘love’, the word itself, has become too heavy, almost as heavy as you feel your heart is. Yet you don’t want to be alone. You want to be surrounded by people.

  —This party is Andrea’s idea. A birthday for Serena, a ‘coming out’ for me.

  —And a typical gesture, something good friends do. Gets you back into the swim of things.

  —Great phrase that.

  —Andrea’s great.

  —She’s swell. No, really, I couldn’t have made it through this without her.

  —Of course not, he says. But then, you’re not through it, are you? Not really I mean.

  —No, she says.

  —I’m bringing you down.

  —You’re analysing me to death.

  —Forgive me. It’s only because, like I said before in different words, I’m a serious person. It keeps me bringing things like this up.

  —Right, she says. Have you ever been in love?

  —You already asked.

  —I did, didn’t I?

  —Let me ask you something: that story you were telling at the table, the one about Japan and the fellow who … urinated in….

  —In moving bodies of water.

  —Yes, something still bothers you about it.

  —Hardly.

  —No, I know, I can see, despite your theory: there’s a ghost in there, inside!

  He taps on the side of her skull with his index finger, three times, quite casually, and yet with a gentle purposefulness that makes her eyes widen, slightly.

  —The elimination habits of men hardly keep me up at night. Remember that Bruce Cockburn song? ‘Grey-suited businessmen, pissing against the wall?’ Well, I’ve seen it a gazillion times, so, whatever! You guys can be as flaky and boorish as you want to be, piss anywhere you like, I couldn’t care less. Really.

  —No, that’s not what I mean.

  —What do you mean?

  —I mean—what was your boyfriend’s name, the one you were with at the time, in Japan?

  —Tim? What about him?

  —Were you in love?

  —No, not really, no.

  Silence. A piercing stare. Creepy.

  —Ok, ok, I dunno. No, yes, hey, whatever, we were young. Love?

  More Silence. What’s with this guy?

  —You think Tim’s my ghost? Hardly! And why do you just keep staring like that, who are you, I don’t even know you!

  —I’d like you to.

  —I’m not saying I’d mind that, but don’t you think you’re a bit … intense, I mean for a party anyway?

  —That’s who I am.

  —You really have the most … ascetic gaze, you know!

  —So they tell me.

  —Who does?

  —Oh, all the girls.

  —Ha-ha. I see.

  —But tell me something, Amē….

  —Semi-seriously?

  —At least, yes.

  —At most! I’m not in the mood for serious.

  —When were you last?

  —What?

  —Serious.

  —About what?

  —Anyone, anything.

  —Somewhere in the ’80s I guess, she says. Why?

  —What happened?

  We then, who are this new soul, know,

  Of what we are composed, and made,

  For, th’ atomies of which we grow,

  Are souls, whom no change can invade.

  —Things happen. You live, you see a lot of things you maybe didn’t want to. About the world, about yourself, each other, I dunno. You get tired. You may commit, for a while, but you don’t invest. You—why am I talking to you?

  —Because you like it when someone takes you seriously.

  —I like it but I don’t like it, she says. Like I said. Want another drink?

  —Sure, if you promise to finish your story.

  —I did finish!

  —I sensed there was more. More in there, he says, tapping lightly at her skull again.

  —Less than you’d think. But yeah, there’s more to it, the story I mean. But it’s kinda sad, I’d rather not, not tonight.

  —If you wish.

  He stares at her again, intent but, she senses, not without compassion. They’re good at this, she thinks, these wealthy ones. Enough time on their hands to learn a trick or two. Good at making you think that they’d like to feel what you feel. But what if you don’t feel: what then, huh?

  —Oh, hell, ok ok, you go grab those chairs by the gas fire and I’ll fetch some more wine, ok desu né?

  5

  The One That Got Away: 1991, Montreal

  5:30 a.m., July 15, 1991

  St. Swithin’s Day, Montreal

  Forecast: Rain

  My dearest Louise,

  Happy Anniversary, my love. I couldn’t sleep, got up early. It’s daybreak, but overcast here, seems more like a winter night than a summer morning. I miss you.

  I know you told me not to call or write, that we agreed that this was a trial separation, and that you needed both space and time. I don’t expect you to write back, I just hope that this letter can go some way towards repairing the damage I may have done to our relationship, to explain to you where I’m coming from.

  You said, as you left, that you could not respect a man who kept his past hidden, a secret. You said that I lied to you, and that the effect was that you could no longer distinguish fact from fiction, as far as our life together was concerned: my past (or my partial accounting of it) bled into our present, tainting it for you, perhaps irreparably.

  You said that that was why you were going home to Boston, for the summer. I respect that. Or, at least, I'm trying to. But please respect my attempt here to 'clear the air'. I love you very much - how many times have I told you that you are my 'America'? If I have lied to you or withheld the truth from you in the past, it was only because I loved you so much. I know that sounds strange, but as Richard Nixon once said, it also has the merit of being true.

  I guess I have always been afraid to lose you, afraid that if you really got to know me, to know all of my faults, that you could never love me, that you would go. When we met, I was seeing a girl that I did not love; you know this much. But the truth is, I think, that I was with her because being with someone helped me get over Ame, whom you read about when you looked through my journal (which was a wrong thing to do, you have to admit).

  Ame was 'the one that got away', you said, and my not telling you about her was just one more huge lie 'sitting atop a mountain of other lies'. Yes, I did love Ame, but she wasn't mine to love. I don't know if she even loved me back: she never said. In any event, there was nothing physical between us, and we were never lovers. I wince as I write that word, 'lovers': you were right about it, and now it makes me feel the same way. (Can't you see how, how on many levels, we are of the same mind, almost as if we had the same mind? Is that why you left? Are you as afraid of our closeness as I am of losing you?)

  I am sending along my attempt to set the matter straight- my mock her
oic origin story, if you will. Please take the time to read it: I believe that all that happened to us is connected, somehow, to certain aspects of my childhood and adolescence, but I also grant that it's possible that I may just be adding more lies to the top of the mountain here, lies that I'm telling myself to convince myself (and you!) of something, of my innocence perhaps.

  Perhaps: that may be, but I honestly think otherwise, just as I honestly think we can work this out.

  Remember when the old lady at the Smoked Meat place on St. Laurent thought we were brother and sister, and then we saw Jonathan Richman in that tiny club hours later and he looked at us, right in the eyes, as he sang us a song about exactly the same thing?

  I do.

  Love,

  Isaac

  6

  Like Soldiers Do: 1985, Montreal

  My Brother has been here since ’83, studying at McGill: dismal, most dismal, Economics. Me, I’m the ingénue, I’ve just arrived, I’m the rookie freshman centre for Concordia, third line, and today I’m having a coffee with my brother’s girlfriend. I meet her on the corner of St. Viatur and Parc, as arranged, but she keeps me waiting for twenty minutes, well past the eleventh hour, in a cold, unforgiving Remembrance Day rain. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, I say when she turns up and semi-apologizes, her dark eyes willfully innocent, her small mouth frozen in a half of a half-smile.

  She is wearing a yellow rubber raincoat, her long black hair hidden beneath the hood, and she’s perched atop one of those Polish foldaway bicycles with the miniature wheels, peddling effortlessly as I jog along St. Viatur beside her in a soaked-through, windbreaker that I once stole from Gerald. The jacket is sky-blue nylon, with a white cotton liner; the arms are way too short and it only hangs down to my belly button, but for some reason I've refused to get myself a new one.

  What remains of my lank blonde hair is plastered to my head. I’m not wearing a hat.

  —Isaac the twelve year-old, refusing to come in from the rain, she says to me maternally, outside the café where she needlessly locks up her beloved but decrepit bike.

  —It hardly ever rained that year, I say simply. She looks at me uncomprehendingly.

  —Huh? she says.

  —Never mind, Amē, I say.

  —Nice coat, she says.

  —Huh? I say.

  The sleeve of my jacket has gold cursive stitching on it. On the front it says ‘Duxbury, Bantam ‘A’ Hockey.’ On the right sleeve: ‘Gerald 17 Right Wing’, just below an American flag. We’re inside now, and I’m shivering uncontrollably. She speaks in a matter-of-fact voice, without enthusiasm, almost as if telling her aunt Rose or her neighbour Mrs. Love what she is ‘up to’ these days. But my reticence keeps her talking, filling the gaps, until:

  —Isaac, I’m going away.

  —I … know, I say, with the hesitation of a reluctantly willing accomplice. My teeth chatter.

  —Japan. New Year’s day. I haven’t told Gerald yet.

  —Oh?

  —I can’t, she admits, after a moment’s pause, while we both contemplate the Formica table, our coffees, the hip mid-afternoon clientele, the ill-paid but attractive Polish staff, the 1960s French Nouvelle Vague cinema posters on the wall, anything.

  —You can’t… ?

  —Face up to this.

  —No.

  —Isaac, tell me a story.

  —What do you mean?

  —To take my mind off things.

  —Off what? I ask, but she doesn’t answer. She is crying now. Blood has rushed to my face.

  I look down, look away. A woman’s voice, but with Billy Bragg’s Essex accent, is coming from the loudspeakers, accompanied only by a heavily distorted but quite melodic electric guitar. I recognize the tune immediately: ‘Like Soldiers Do’, a song that speaks to me about a patrimony—a legacy whispered from one y-chromosome to another, an inheritance that weighs like a nightmare upon the brains of the living—in which we are given strictly enforced marching orders that conscript us into a Gender War that seems to persist from one unquestioning generation to the next….

  She’s a good singer, I’ll give her that. But she’s changed the words:

  He landed in a poppy field

  He’d caught his own reflection in her shield

  Just as love soared past the sun

  And turned it black

  His father was a soldier

  Her son a soldier too

  A nuclear family bonds

  Like soldiers do

  —What kind of story? I ask pointlessly, because I know what kind. And so I tell her. I tell her what I need to tell, and what she needs to hear.

  —You know, she says.

  —Well, I’m gonna have to read it, then, I say, and I reach into my brother’s jacket pocket to pull out what I’d prepared for this day.

  7

  Death and the Honor System: 1976, Duxbury

  It Was my birthday. The Hockey Night in Canada song came on the TV, the most comforting sound in the world. It meant dad was safe in his cave, avidly inert for a few blessed hours.

  Gerald pretended to be oblivious. Gerald was on his side of the masking tape dividing line, playing with his crystal radio. It didn’t look like much, but he kept it hidden under the bed when he wasn’t fiddling with it. He’d grounded it by running a discreet wire through the window, down to a nail that he’d driven into the sod outside. Dad didn’t know about this, yet.

  It was mid-week, American Thanksgiving was just around the corner, my mom was away, and the Montreal Canadiens were on a road trip. Tonight they were in Boston, only 47 miles north on Highway 3, so dad could’ve watched them play on the local channel, but that wouldn’t’ve been the same. He needed Danny Gallivan’s play-by-play, Dick Irvin’s colour, the Molson Ex back-to-the-woods commercials, ‘Me and the Boys and our 50’. Dad drank 50, when he could get it (there was a French-Canadian store in Lowell that imported it with irregularity); I’d kind of grown to like it myself. And although I played the game well, I didn’t really like hockey, and I wouldn’t have a clear sense of what it meant to my dad until I moved north, years later, as a transfer student. But even then, I was certain that I wanted to be a Canadian too (whatever that meant), like Dad.

  Gerald hated hockey. Gerald hated Canada. Gerald hated me. He was 14, I was 12.

  Dad had an illegal C-band satellite dish hooked up, the only one in town. We had a couple of acres, and he made a clearing in the woods for it, on a slope that led down to a disused cranberry bog, and strung an illicit wire to the house, knowing that the rich people who were in charge of things wouldn’t have given their approbation if they had found out. The rich people spoke in what sounded to us like English accents and hated most anything new. Our town didn’t have a McDonalds or Burger King or anything. All new buildings had to look old. All old buildings had to look good. We were the second or third or fourth oldest town in Massachusetts, two towns north of Plymouth Rock. Pilgrims like Miles Standish had once lived here, and everyone who was anyone claimed to be descended from stock such as his.

  —Stock such as his? Isn’t that a bit cliché? Amē says.

  —Hey, this is my story, as bad as it is.

  —Yeah but….

  —So listen:

  Everyone who was anyone’s dad drove Maseratis or Alfa Romeos, and every now and then a drunk blonde kid would kill his-or-herself and a few friends by driving off one of our many little bridges into one of our many tidal pools and streams. We had a big bridge, too, a half-mile-long wooden one which went out to our town’s six-mile-long beach. You couldn’t drive across the bridge and park unless your car had a town sticker on it, so the non-resident riffraff were generally absent. But it was a great beach. We’d go there nearly every day in the summer, eat potato chips and drink soda and lie in the sun.

  The beach was a long peninsula, with two sides, the ocean side, where all the sand was, and the bay side, where all the living things were. Dad stepped on a horseshoe crab’s tail there once; he n
early had to have his foot amputated because of the infection. They stick them straight up out of the sand, the crabs do, Gerald said while we were in the hospital waiting for Dad. It’s to protect themselves, pretty clever, huh?

  One day, Gerald came home from his paper route and went to make a hamburger with our new hamburger making machine, the kind that makes grilled sandwiches too. But I’d beaten him to it, as I was hungry after school and I’d used up the last of the hamburger. Gerald was pissed. You’re a little shithead, Isaac, he’d said to me, a real little peckerhead. I’ll always remember that because it was the first time I’d ever heard him swear. That was around the time when the masking tape dividing line went up. We’d done it before, of course, but always for fun. But it wasn’t just the hamburger that was at issue here, I knew that. There was more to it.

  Dad worked for a defence contractor, Mr Jones, who lived up the street a ways. His house was real big—and so was he, and so was everyone else in his family. He used to be a policeman in Brookline, where Rocky Marciano came from, that’s where the plant was too, but somehow he got into making things for the Air Force. That’s when he moved to Duxbury and built a house with a tennis court and an indoor pool. There were carp in the pond beside our house because he’d needed to do something with the goldfish which graced that pool for his fat kids’ birthday. They were twins, and they rode around on Golf Carts and we used to throw rocks at them, but then they told their dad and he told our dad and our dad put a stop to it.