The Ravine

by Paul Quarrington

  Suspicion clouded her features. “Yesssss?”

  “I’m Jay McQuigge. I called you.”

  It took a moment or two for Mrs. Kitchen to summon forth the memory. “Yessss,” she nodded, then she jerked a thumb at me. “Isss thisss Phil?”

  “That’s him,” Jay agreed.

  “Nice.” (She elongated that “s” sound as well, but I couldn’t figure out how to transcribe that stylographically.)

  A cat was trying to sneak into the house, pressing against the wall and folding its body around the jamb. Mrs. Kitchen hooked a foot under its belly and propelled it off the porch and onto the small square of earth that served as a front lawn. “Damn catssss,” she said. The speech impediment was caused by the fact that she lacked a number of teeth. Her mouth was peppered with gaps, and after making certain sounds her thick tongue would briefly get trapped in one of them. “Okay, boysss,” she said, “come on in.”

  “She lived in this really weird little house,” I said, “full of newspapers. It was like she’d never thrown a newspaper away in her life, and they were stacked up everywhere. The pages had turned yellow, you know, and some were so old that the paper was brown and brittle, and if you grabbed a corner of it, it just kind of snapped off and turned to dust.”

  My audience had various reactions. Well, let me be clear—everyone was ignoring me, but in different manners and, I suppose, for different reasons. Currer and Ellis were ignoring me because they were busy bartering, trading Halloween foodstuffs.

  “Do you like these fizzy pop rocks?” asked Currer.

  “Yeah,” Ellis responded.

  “Okay, then, I’ll give you three packs of pop rocks and seven Halloween kisses if you give me those two chocolate bars.”

  If I hadn’t been concentrating on relating the tale of my visit to Mrs. Kitchen, I might have advised Ellis to run screaming from any deal that involved Halloween kisses. This is a mysterious confection that appears once a year, a tiny block of tasteless gluten wrapped in wax paper adorned with images of batwings and broomsticks. I can’t believe they’re still around. When I was a lad (and maybe still today) Halloween kisses seemed somehow to be tokens of social standing. Popular children might find one or two settled at the bottom of their loot bags. Rankers seemed to find nothing but Halloween kisses.

  Anyway, Ellis wouldn’t do it, being considerably craftier than her older sister. “No Halloween kisses,” she stated. “Three packs of pop rocks for one chocolate bar. This one.”

  “The other one.”

  “This one.”

  The bickering carried on until Ellis finally caved, although I believe in the end she gave up precisely the chocolate bar she wanted to give up.

  So this was why my children were ignoring me. Veronica Lear, on the other hand, was busy straightening up the house. Her attitude, which I intuited from body language and a kind of icy aura that engulfed her, was this: The house is a bit messy, besides, you are an aberration, a resident of the Twilight Zone, a base and worthless creature that somehow has acquired the ability to speak, although it would be impossible for you to have anything of import to say, so I’ll spend this time tidying.

  “She was of the impression,” I went on, “that Norman and I were best friends. Not good friends, but best friends. You know what I mean? That we’d exchanged blood and made the declaration.”

  No reaction from any quarter. Oh, well. It really wasn’t much of a story, anyway. I thought perhaps I could hook the kids on the spookiness of the house, I thought maybe Ronnie might—actually, I don’t know what I thought vis-à-vis Ronnie. The truth of the matter is, I just wanted to be with them. I had never missed a Halloween before, not one out of the previous eleven. If you’re calculating, yes, that means I took Currer trick-or-treating when she was one year old. I wrapped her in some fuzzy material and, on the neighbours’ stoops, held her forward like an offering to the gods. I accepted candy on her behalf, even though she had only one tooth.

  I pressed on with my story, about how Mrs. Kitchen thought I’d been Norman’s best friend, how she’d wondered why we’d never met (should have been a tipoff), the problems she’d had raising little Norman, he of the beautiful hair. (The hair thing came up quite a bit. From time to time Mrs. Kitchen’s face would acquire a soft, out-of-focus aspect. “Norman had,” she’d whisper, “such beautiful hair.”)

  “What sort of problems?” asked Jay. He was still in priest mode, to the extent that he’d declined the offer of a drink. I’d accepted, of course, and was given something in a coffee mug. I’m fairly certain it was cooking sherry.

  “Well, he got into trouble a few times. With other boys.” That was all Mrs. Kitchen had to say on the subject. Trouble with other boys. Jay pressed and subtly cajoled (“We all get into trouble at some point in our lives,”) but Mrs. Kitchen was not forthcoming.

  “Where,” asked Jay finally, “does Norman live?”

  “He’s travelled around quite a bit,” admitted his mother. “Never seemed to stay in one place too long. Mind you, they’d send him various places…”

  “They would?”

  “The superiors.”

  “Where does he live now?” Jay asked.

  “Norman lives in Thunder Bay,” she answered.

  “Would you happen to have an address for him?”

  Mrs. Kitchen went to locate the items she needed: her address book, a pencil and a piece of paper. Despite the quantity of newsprint in the household, this last item proved the hardest to find. She was gone from the kitchen for quite a few moments, a few moments during which Jay and I exchanged no words except for the following.

  He glanced at me and flipped his eyebrows high on his massive forehead. “Road trip,” said he.

  16 | THE CREATIVE PROCESS

  WE—MISS LEAR AND I—HAD BEEN A COUPLE (A BREEZY, CAREFREE couple) for about a year and a half when Veronica discovered she was pregnant. I was all right with this—I saw my life unrolling as a life will. In retrospect, I would have to concede that I was not wildly enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is probably what Ronnie wanted of me. I don’t know how many times previously I had failed to be what Ronnie wanted me to be, but it didn’t really matter, did it? We were simply two people who ate at restaurants, watched movies, made love, smoked cigarettes as we leafed leisurely through the Sunday papers. All that changed when the paper turned blue. After that, all of my little failures were thrown into a pile and became a cairn of bones, bleached by the sun and cleaned by maggots. Man, there’s a metaphor.

  I could fail on a lot of counts, too. I could fail to be attentive, romantic, empathetic, forthcoming—that was a big one, that failure to be forthcoming. You’ve probably sensed something of it yourself, you’ve probably fallen into some deep holes in this narrative and wondered where the hell you were. Phil is not being forthcoming.

  And there were financial repercussions to the pregnancy. Ronnie and I had kept our separate residences during the year and a half, although I spent most of my time at her place. My own place was largely dedicated to my mess; I kept my mess over there, paid visits occasionally to make sure my mess was thriving. Veronica was quite clear on the fact that she wanted nothing to do with my mess. I believe she would have been happier living as some particularly ascetic Buddhist monk, reducing her surroundings to the barest of necessities. A bed, certainly, a table, a chair. When Ronnie became pregnant, we decided to move in together. We rented a place in Toronto’s Riverdale, the upper two floors of an old house that sat across the street from Doggy Park. I reduced my mess as best I could, but Ronnie’s eyes hardened as the van pulled up and began spewing fishing rods, press benches, bicycles, banjo cases (yes, I had duplicates of everything), record albums, books, books, books. And more books. Ronnie picked one out of a box and noted the title.

  “Didn’t you already read this one?”

  “Yeah. It was good.”

  “Oh.” Then silence, for Veronica could speak silence.

  “Why? You don’t think I should throw it out,
do you?”

  “Well, you’ve already read it.”

  Oh, but wait, here come the boxes of papers—yellow second sheets, coffee-stained and ash-flecked.

  “What’s all that, Phil?”

  “That? That’s my, my, work. My plays.”

  “Oh.” Silence.

  “You know, all the various drafts. And all the plays I’ve started and bogged down in.”

  “Why do you keep them?”

  “Because I might finish them one day.”

  “Oh.”

  I haven’t yet, as you know. At the time Ronnie became pregnant I was finishing a play entitled Low Man, which was kind of my take on Death of a Salesman. Loman, you see, although my title referred to the low man on a totem pole. It was quite a bit like David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, which it predates (I point out hastily) by a couple of years. Except that I did not understand that world as well as Mamet, and my dramatic sense is not as strong as his, and my dialogue isn’t as good. The only aspect in which my play may have the edge is that I have a woman in Low Man, the young dogsbody who files papers and fetches coffee. It was a good part, written with Veronica Lear in mind, although by the time the play was actually in production, her stomach was ballooning (as were her breasts, in a manner that still makes my heart ache) and the part went instead to a newcomer, fresh out of the academy, named Paula Beecher. Paula, as you may know, went on to play Harriet in Padre, a sad piece of syn-chronicity that has plagued me for years. Not that there was ever anything inappropriate with our relationship—she’s happily married, Paula is, although never to the same person for more than two years in a row—but as far as Ronnie is concerned, Paula was the career-ender. In Ronnie’s mind, it’s almost as though Paula were waiting in the wings, and the instant Ronnie’s pregnancy became visible, she rushed onstage and shoved my wife into the shadows. I should therefore harbour resentment against Ms. Beecher, which I clearly don’t, or else why would I cast her in Padre?—another bone for the pile.

  Low Man didn’t fare very well. The Toronto reviewers could sense Glengarry Glen Ross in the futuristic ether; they knew there was a good play somewhere in the material, but they were unified in their opinion that I hadn’t written it. I’d had failures before, and I was fairly thick-skinned. (For one thing, the criticism gave me an excuse for flamboyant drunkenness; for another, I think deep down I agreed with it.) But the meagreness of the royalty cheques suddenly became significant. How was I going to support a wife and a child on the backs of a handful of theatregoers? In my memory, I was pondering that question when the telephone rang.

  “Mr. McQuigge? William Beckett.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you’d care to go along to lunch.”

  I went along to lunch, but Beckett didn’t actually eat anything; instead, he watched me eat my club sandwich with a certain revolted fascination. And I’ll mention that in all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never ever witnessed him eat. So, although Beckett demurs and protests, there is evidence that he truly is Beelzebub, Overlord of Darkness.

  “Television,” he told me, “is a river of money into which we must jump.”

  “That sounds good,” I agreed.

  “I’ve been green-lit on Sneaks” he told me, not concerned with the look of bafflement that washed across my face. “A series of some little charm and vast amounts of twaddle. The premise? Simplicity itself. Two cat burglars, a man and a woman, lark about cat burgling. They once were married, have now separated, but need the other’s skill in order to successfully ply their larcenous trade. He is possessed of wondrous fingertips, you see, and can open any safe. She is superbly athletic and can gain entry to any loft or aerie. So they continue to work together, although they bicker and argue constantly. Does this appeal to you?”

  “Um … does what appeal to me?”

  “The notion.”

  “Well, um, do they argue and bicker while they’re cat burgling?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “But isn’t the point of cat burglary to be as quiet as possible?”

  “Mmm. Quite. But we don’t worry about such things inside the box. For one thing, Philip, there is no such creature as a cat burglar. There are great heaving louts who smash out windows, take what they believe they can pawn, make themselves a sandwich and defecate on the carpeting for good measure. So don’t worry about the bickering. For another thing, that’s precisely the point, that’s the premise, that’s the brand, because every week our heroes, through their bickering, awaken the inhabitants. They thus become involved in other lives.”

  “I get it. I guess.”

  “I am in the process of assembling the writing team. And I am offering you the position of story editor.”

  “Sorry, I’m a playwright.”

  I didn’t really say that. I wonder how my life might have unfolded had I said that. I might be sitting in a little cabin right now, my writing place; through the window I can see the big house; Ronnie is tending to her flowers; the children are playing in the garden. But what I said was, “How much would that pay?” and the answer was totally mind-boggling—at least, I allowed my mind to be boggled because 1) I had a pregnant partner and 2) perhaps it was my destiny. “You are entering another dimension of time and space …”

  Ronnie’s reaction to news of my employment was complex and rather more muted than I might have foreseen. She twisted her mouth way off to the side of her face, something she does when perplexed or involved in cogitation. “Sounds kind of like a dumb show,” she adjudged. “Maybe there’s a part for me.” She was not feeling very good about herself right then. Her body was exploding with fat and hormones, after all. I remember that around this time we went shopping for maternity dresses (her regular wardrobe now confined to storage containers) and she tossed the store’s offerings into the air, disdainful of all the pastels. “Don’t you have anything that’s like, you know, black?” she demanded of the salesgirl.

  I shall be brief about my career in the television bidna. (Why start now, I can hear you demanding, as if you had all been sleeping with John Hooper, as I suspect Ronnie has. The only reason I have for thinking my wife may not have been sleeping with Hooper is every bit as sickening as the notion that she has; she has a boyfriend. Ronnie still has plans to take this Mexican vacation with her young Kerwin, the priapic philosophy student. I’ll let you in on a little secret, though; I have a few travel plans of my own. Or rather, in conjunction with my brother.) (Oh, oh, getting back to that, there is a grand literary sense in which you have all been sleeping with Snooty Hooper, commingling with him on some infinite intellectual mattress, because his book Baxter is setting sales records all across this grand nation. The Giller Prize announcement will be made in a few days. If I were smart, I’d find some bespectacled bookie and put a lot of money down on Hooper, but I, even I, yes it’s true, despite all odds and against all rational thinking, even I have my pride.) All right, my television career, my curriculum vitae: the show Sneaks was something of a hit, due mostly to the chemistry between the two leads, Gart Sweeney and Thea King. (Off-camera, of course, the two could not abide each other.) I was Story Editor for one season, Executive Story Editor for the next, Co-Producer for the third, and then William Beckett launched another series, the ambitious but ultimately abysmal Poe. (The premise of Poe is odd for television, and pure William Beckett. The series supposes that, when not scribbling poetry and short stories, Edgar Allan Poe becomes involved, on a weekly basis, in mysteries and intrigues, which he solves using his massive intellect and vast amounts of laudanum. That show was scuppered by a failure to cast the leading role properly; Larry Boyle was pudgy and a little silly-looking, and no amount of dark makeup could lend a sinister aspect to his mien.) Anyway, when Beckett left Sneaks to start Poe, he appointed me his successor as show-runner. This was a stroke of some luck (I guess) because a) there was oodles more money, b) the show was already running pretty smoothly and c) because of the Byzantine intricacies of the Canadian television
funding system, the fourth season of Sneaks was always understood to be its last, so I was placed in a fail-safe position. In point of fact, I didn’t run Sneaks at all well, but I made it through the season and earned my stripes, as it were.

  Meanwhile, another star was in ascendancy. Edward Milligan, as hard as this may be to credit, began his career on the stage in his native Calgary. He was in exactly one play, David Mamet’s American Buffalo, filling the smallish role of Bobby. In the audience one night was the American film director Joel Schumacher, and I have no idea what he was doing in Calgary, let alone in that theatre, but he rushed backstage as soon as the curtain came down and offered Milligan the lead in his next movie. That movie never got financed, but by the time it didn’t get financed Milligan was already in Hollywood. He spent a few years there, getting small parts in some good pictures, larger ones in some stinkers, and although by American standards his career came a cropper, up north here the industry developed a certain pride in him. So a call was put out to his agent—Come back home, Edward Milligan, and you can star in your own television show.

  And another call was placed to yours truly: Develop a show for Edward Milligan.

  The two of us were brought together over lunch. Carla Dowbiggin was there, as well as Bill Veerstuck (the network’s head of development) and some guy named Jimmy. I didn’t know who the hell Jimmy was, and I’m not certain that Carla or Bill did either, and it is possible that he was simply some enterprising scalawag who managed to cadge a free meal.

  Milligan was late, what else, so I spent an hour spinning my wheels and trotting out various half-baked pitches, because, really, when I sat down at the table, I had no ideas for a television series. I did have, back home, a four-year-old and a newly pregnant wife, so I was plenty desperate. “How about a medical show?” I wondered aloud. “Milligan plays a doctor. Um, a young intern. Kind of like Dr. Kildare, but, um … hey, why don’t we redo Dr. Kildare? You know, that could work. It was a very popular show. Or Ben Casey. Or, I know, Milligan could play a young intern in a psychiatric hospital. Yeah, yeah. And every week, he becomes involved with another patient, not involved involved, you know, but, um…”