“Don’t get out.”
“Why not? Isn’t that your Dad’s car? Maybe they had a flat tire.”
“No, it’s a different car.”
“It isn’t, Jimmy. It’s the same. Ow, you’re hurting my hand.”
He didn’t know what to do. He was holding her with his right hand, tried reaching the keys with the other but his mind was racing. He didn’t want her to get away.
“Listen, Flo. We’ve gotta get out of here, okay? It’s our wedding. We don’t want to get mixed up in anything.”
“But Jimmy, a flat tire?”
He let go of her hand, started the Mustang and jammed it into reverse. The tires spun as the car leaped backwards, shot into the opposite ditch and stalled.
“What’s the matter with you? You’ve had quite a bit to drink yourself. How about letting me drive?”
When the bartender said his father had paid the bill and gone home, he’d had a funny feeling. It was one thing to be watched over by a son-of-a-bitch who never cut anybody slack. But to be told his father had deserted the wedding without a faint goodbye was something else. Then Flo mentioned her mother was missing, and the pieces fit together. The Ed Sullivan dance combo of Bob and Helen had slipped away to take care of nasty business. He rested his head on the steering wheel. The wave of nausea he’d felt at the bar came over him again. He didn’t throw up, but he couldn’t stop the sobs.
“What’s the matter?” Flo said. She reached over and rubbed his hair.
He couldn’t help it, his shoulders shook. The tears were big and ugly.
She had only seen a man cry once before: her father, when he’d run over their favourite dog with the hay mower and had to shoot him. It was embarrassing and scary. With Jimmy it was different. They were married, after all.
“Look, Jimmy, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been on the verge of crying all day. I don’t know. Like, it’s all about us, but it isn’t. There, there.” She was patting his head, dog strokes.
Finally he pulled himself together, leaned back. He dreaded the next few minutes, when they would have to face something neither of them wanted to know, and they would know it for the rest of their lives. He sank his forehead into the steering wheel, closed his eyes. A mosquito buzzed around his ear. He slapped it dead, and swore. There was blood on his neck.
“Now look what you’ve done,” she said. Then she got out.
Without looking up, he heard Marlene’s high-pitched voice and Flo answering back. Flo was not happy. Lorne chimed in over both of them. Jimmy slid across the seat and got out. The girls were locked in a shouting match. Marlene was telling Flo to mind her own goddamn business. Lorne was trying to explain, without success. Jimmy walked over to the Lincoln, where the windows were rolled up and covered with steam. With one finger he wrote the word FUCK on the front windshield. It left no trace, the steam was inside. It was the happiest moment of his day. Maybe of his life.
He went back to where the girls were arguing, and reminded Flo they’d been looking for her rambling father.
Marlene sneered. “We took him home, safe and sound, as we were told to do.”
Jimmy opened the driver’s door of his Mustang. “Flo, get behind the wheel,” he said. For the first time that he could think of, she obeyed. While she revved the motor, he and Lorne rocked the vehicle back and forth until it lurched onto the road. He got behind the wheel and waited until the Lincoln pulled away.
As soon as Lorne dropped Marlene at the farm, he turned around and headed out the lane. Jimmy waited while Flo went inside. She said she wouldn’t be long, no need to turn off the engine. The Walmsley car was in the yard.
* * *
Len was asleep on the couch. Since his toast to the bride, all Flo had been able to think about was what he’d said over the laundry basket, that she should stay and have the baby at home. For most of her wedding day, she’d wanted nothing more than to take his advice, climb back into her bed and fall asleep. Now the idea seemed ridiculous.
Helen had a pot of tea ready, two cups on the kitchen table. She and Marlene were locked in conversation. A few things were being said that would become a common refrain during the rest of Marlene’s days at home.
Flo rushed past and headed up the stairs, purposefully.
Patty Kate was asleep in Marlene’s bed. Her best doll Molly was in the other twin, a sheet tucked firmly around her neck. Flo looked around the room, trying to find something that would make the trip seem worthwhile. She’d left Marlene a small suitcase of things she wouldn’t need any more. Mainly jewellery. Snap-on earrings. Right after the honeymoon, Flo was planning to get her ears pierced. How long would it take Marlene to talk their mother into letting her do it too? She grabbed the suitcase and headed downstairs.
There was no one in the kitchen. No one heard her steal through the living room, out the door.
She got into the Mustang and slid over close to Jimmy. She was about to warn him not to spin the wheels. Too late. They took off up the lane in a blast of engine heat and a loud crunch of gravel.
AMANDA
WHEN I WAS five years old my brother Hart told me a story that cast a long shadow. He was thirteen, played a mean saxophone and excelled in hockey. He had bruises on both knees and blue eyes that matched the ceiling of my room. What he said as we sat on the edge of the bed lodged in my mind like a feverish stranger and stayed there long after he’d countered with a denial.
Time passed, I forgot about it. I imagine he did too until one night last spring an unexpected knock at the door brought the whole thing roaring back.
The occasion was Hart’s fiftieth birthday, a Saturday evening in May. His former wife, Sandrine, threw a surprise party at her home in Montreal. I flew in from New York and brought mother out of the nursing home. A few months earlier, she’d suffered a stroke that had weakened her, clouded her mind. I’d hoped the change of scenery would do her good, but it was obvious from the start that a noisy crowd wasn’t the best place for an old woman confined to a wheelchair who could barely remember her own children. Spring is a busy season at the publishing house where I work as an editor, so my thoughts were elsewhere.
The day of the party was an ordeal demanding patience and diplomacy from all who’d agreed to help. Sandrine had declared the guest list would consist of exactly fifty names — one for every year of Hart’s life — friends, colleagues, acquaintances, an eclectic mix of people who’d either known him along the way or were significant in this vintage year. Sandrine is a philosophy professor at McGill University, which I mention by way of explanation, although perhaps it isn’t one. She and Hart had been divorced for a decade though it was hard to see what had changed. Their rhythm of fiery partings and bruised reconciliations made the state of divorce seem less like an end of love than a mirror image of the marriage. At the time of Hart’s birthday, they were on good terms.
Sandrine’s field is the philosophy of mind. She launched her academic career in her twenties with a brilliant thesis on the theoretical potential for consciousness in inanimate objects. Her international reputation rests with the Institute for Advanced Creative Dynamics, which is situated at McGill and serves as the headquarters for everything she does. The “Magic Fifty” guest list was deemed an aesthetically worthy idea deserving mention in the IACD newsletter. It was not without certain practical problems.
Some guests who were invited solo would not commit to attending without their partners. A handful of people who weren’t on the list found out about the party and were royally annoyed to be left out. Fifty on the nose proved a moving target. Faced with a last-minute cancellation, she was forced to haul in an eighty-year-old Greek bachelor who ran a dry cleaning business and occupied the basement apartment in her building. Zorba Parnopoulos was missing all but four teeth so he rarely smiled broadly. When he did, his cheeks sank in like tiny black caves. It was his face Hart saw first when he walked through the door carrying a six-pack, ready to watch the hockey game, Sandrine’s ruse to get him over. When
the birthday boy flipped on the light, we all jumped out from our hiding places. Mr. Parnopoulos led the shouts. Hart dropped the beer and swore.
Sandrine owns a large Edwardian-era triplex on the Plateau Mont-Royal, a former immigrant neighbourhood east of Mount Royal that has recently become quite fashionable. She occupies the top floor, which is tastefully decorated in pale colours and clean lines that draw attention to the ornate mouldings and original features. In the elegant double living room just inside the front door, she had set out an impressive buffet including a generous supply of drink, served up by two eager undergrads hired for the occasion.
Whatever the philosophical basis of Hart’s fiftieth, I’m sure Sandrine secretly hoped for a moving tribute along the lines of This Is Your Life, where the guest of honour is reduced to tears by the appearance of long-lost loved ones. She spent years trying to melt him down. But the retrospective nature of the invitation list meant there were quite a few people who didn’t know each other. The first hour was agonising. I did my best to chat with wallflowers, introducing them to people with whom they might find something in common. Once a few drinks were poured, the mix of ages and backgrounds proved quite dynamic, though most people seemed far more interested in each other than in the birthday boy. Milling through the crowd, I began to wonder if the only traits Hart’s so-called friends had in common might not be amnesia and a fierce need to score social points in the here and now. Maybe the people you pick up along life’s road don’t always appreciate the lift.
Three men from his Racket Club stood in a corner all night and told private stories. Let out without their wives, his amateur-league hockey mates concentrated on serious drinking and making contact with a woman dressed in red. The prize for most sociable stranger went to Hart’s old saxophone teacher, Mr. Munger, a legend from our childhood who came to the house and gave lessons in the front room. An imposing figure in the sixties, he had stood up much better than my mother, who must have been about his age. Virtually every woman present was prepared to give Leroy “Hotlips” Munger a lot of time, which may explain why Hart took up the instrument as an adolescent.
Despite Sandrine’s hopes, those who stayed in the front rooms left early. The rest of us gravitated to the brightly-lit kitchen at the far end of a long hallway. By eleven it was packed. People jammed against a sink filled with ice, spilled out onto the balcony where they sat on recycling boxes, knocked hanging pots with wild hand gestures and bothered the neighbours with their laughter. Even Hart was having a good time. He’d managed to overcome his shock and proceeded to get cheerfully drunk. When he drinks his blue eyes turn watery, his cheeks redden, and the prickly side of his personality gives way to a doll-like aura that some women find attractive.
Part of Sandrine’s surprise was the presence of his latest girlfriend, Polly, who in the tradition of her predecessors was neither as physically striking nor as accomplished as Sandrine. Polly was (and as far as I know, still is) in men’s fashion. Hart was her current mission. For his birthday, she chose a spiffy new sports jacket, presented at the occasion. It covered up an insouciant slouch and hid the extra pounds he carried on a medium frame, making him appear almost dignified, even as he stood half-cut in the middle of his ex-wife’s kitchen.
Sandrine is lean and fit, slightly taller than fair-haired Hart. She keeps her dark hair cropped short with an amazing precision that matches her mind. In the decisive moment, just as the night was about to leap from a blurry good time to a time that would change our lives for good, she put her hand on Hart’s shoulder and leaned in, as if to speak only to him. I wish I had an actual photograph, though the image remains vivid. It was an annunciation scene, perfectly framed by the blazing egg-yolk walls, aglow with tension. As if we were all standing silent in a dark room, sucking in our breath, getting ready to shout, “Surprise!”
Yet all she said was: “There’s someone at the door to see you.”
I was near enough to catch the taunt in her voice. Polly was standing beside Hart and reached for his hand. When we were paying fierce attention, Sandrine added: “It’s a man. He says he’s your brother.”
Somehow, mother had managed to lodge herself in the congested kitchen. She must have had help tilting the motorised wheelchair over a bulge of hardwood that rose like a speed bump in the hallway. As the only person sitting down, and claiming she was hard of hearing, she forced people to lean over and raise their voices, which may have contributed to the boisterous pitch of conversation at the time of Sandrine’s announcement. Nevertheless, on the words your brother, the room fell quiet. I had my mother’s profile in sight. Since the stroke, we could not be sure whether she understood or even listened to what was being said, but in this moment I knew she’d heard. The muscles in her neck tightened, her lips opened as if she were about to speak. Instead, she closed her eyes and sighed.
Hart gave a short hiccup laugh.
Sandrine chirped: “I didn’t know you had a brother.” Hart glanced at me and in a dry voice replied: “I don’t.”
Apart from traditional holidays and the odd lunch when business brought him to New York, I hadn’t seen a great deal of Hart in the last few years. I know nothing about high finance, and anyway, he rarely talked about his work, insisted it was temporary, that he would soon be getting into film, “the art form of our time.” This I took as a thinly disguised criticism of fiction, which he once quipped was “a crime against nature” — all those trees slaughtered in the cause of perishable prose. He was teasing me, of course, though his dark wit could sting. The night of the party, that side of him seemed far away. He was flattered by the attention, and it showed. In return, I was kindly disposed to my big brother. I remember thinking that maybe science is right: being in the presence of common genes does induce a physiological state of wellbeing. I wished it were New Year’s Eve, so he’d give me a big bear hug at midnight.
At least until Sandrine said: your brother, and the warm feeling disappeared. Her words were a stone fired at my belly. As the back of his head disappeared through the doorway, I remembered: No human being on the planet made me suffer more than Hart.
* * *
The ceiling of my bedroom was covered with a popular wallpaper chosen by my mother just before I was born, sky blue background with huge cumulus clouds. I was sitting on the bed, wearing slippers. My feet didn’t touch the floor. Hart reached over, took my small hand and whispered: “Can you keep a secret?”
People rarely answer that question with a no; at the age of five, I wondered anxiously: will it be hard to keep?
The season must have been summer. He was dressed in shorts. One knee bore a thick, grubby bandage and the other a purple welt. Hockey injuries, as I recall, although why they would have lingered is a mystery, since the teams played on outdoor rinks that must have melted weeks before. My father often took me to games at Murray Hill Park on Saturday afternoons. I loved to sit on his lap and keep my eyes on Hart, who wore a fearsome mask and tended goal. Whenever the puck came his way, he dropped to his knees and I cried: “Ouch!”
While Hart expanded on the importance of keeping his secret, I focused my attention on his wound, waiting to ask if he’d let me touch it. He must have noticed my mind wandering, because he squeezed my hand and said: “Okay, here it is.”
I forced my eyes away from his knees.
“Remember when they brought you home from the hospital? Right after you were born?” “Yes,” I lied.
“Well, up until that time, there was someone else living in this room. He had to leave, to make space for you.” “Who was he?” I asked.
“Bill.”
“Bill who?”
“Bill Granger, our older brother. See, there can only be two children in a house like this ‘cause we’ve only got two kid bedrooms. So when Mum and Dad conceived you, they had to make a choice. I offered to leave, but they were adamant. They said I was too valuable to the team. That’s why it had to be Bill.”
“Where’d Bill go?”
“No ide
a. They wouldn’t say.”
I wanted to ask what he meant by “conceived me.” And what was “adamant”? My brother had an impressive vocabulary. He hardly ever came to the dinner table without a new word. Mother was convinced Hart would some day become a famous writer. Dad, who was a doctor, favoured science. He said he wished he’d taken that path himself instead of devoting his life to the practical cause of treating illness. Hart was Daddy’s great hope.
A precocious child, he taught himself to read at three and excelled at everything he touched. He was sociable and smart and funny, too. But as soon as school tests identified an IQ near genius, our ever-cautious parents panicked. Fearing he’d be spoiled, they stopped drawing attention to his wit or rewarding him in any way for showing off. Looking back on it now, I wonder if their decision to ignore his gifts might not have had something to do with what happened, or at least offered a clue to the mystery of why Hart never followed up on his many talents.
Despite my parents’ reluctance to praise, I sensed the glow when he dropped a new word into the dinner table conversation or quoted some wise remark from his reading. In my five-year-old eyes, my big brother was a god, so tall and handsome, and unfathomably smart.
As he whispered the tragic story of Bill, my head spun but I couldn’t seem to formulate a question. Hart’s physical presence, his grip on my hand, made it difficult to concentrate. He sealed my curiosity with a warning: “Don’t ever, ever bring this up to Mum and Dad. They feel bad enough as it is. If you say anything to Mum, she’ll be utterly devastated. Do you understand?” I said I did.
“Course, they love you a lot,” he said. “So do I. Still, it’s a shame we had to sacrifice Bill.”
I looked around the room, at the dolls and teddy bears, the white table and chair set and rocking horse, and suddenly all my precious things seemed to float, as if they’d just come unstuck from the surface and were about to go back inside me. As the child of progressive parents and the daughter of a doctor, I’d seen pictures of my mother’s womb with me curled up in a ball. I assumed I belonged to her body, and by extension, that all my things belonged to me, and the world worked that way: you come out of someone who loves you and whatever you love comes out of you. Now there was Bill, an older boy who had packed up his things and slipped out of a house of love and gone somewhere. I was mesmerized by the thought of a strange deity inhabiting my room, one who had been banished a few seconds before my arrival. I was sure I could smell the lingering odour of his gym socks.
Mankind & Other Stories of Women Page 7
