“I can imagine. I was a social worker in Toronto years ago. It was different then, not so many homeless. But I can imagine what he’s dealing with.”
They were standing in the parking lot. Effie was conscious of appraising stares from passing men. What is it they look for when they stare? What is it they need? She had a pretty good idea of what men want, and the sudden bitterness was like a chill. She thought of Sextus, and how she had mistakenly believed that his needs had finally aligned with hers; that his nervous heat had been replaced by warmth, the superficial urges set aside for something deeper. She’d sensed solicitation: What did she want? What did she need? At first she was suspicious. It was nothing more, she thought, than a more mature seduction, but self-interested nonetheless.
Now she studied Stella’s face, trying to estimate her age. Forty-five, she thought. Could that have made the difference? Did the biological divide lie somewhere in that narrow corridor, mid-forties to mid-fifties? Was that where primal magnetism started to wane?
“Well, I suppose I should get going.”
“Yes,” said Stella. “I won’t keep you. Danny asks about Duncan all the time. If I’m hearing anything.”
“It was sad, seeing Danny,” Effie said.
“Even just a phone call from Duncan would make a big difference.”
“To Danny?”
Stella laughed. “Of course. Or … to me. I could be the messenger.”
The directness was startling.
“I suppose you’ll be around for a while longer,” Stella said, as she turned away.
“A bit longer,” Effie said.
“You know where I am in Creignish. Up on the mountain road. Don’t be a stranger.”
She rose early and took long walks, savouring the damp dawn air. She studied the rising sun for clues about the coming day. “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” the old saying went. And it was perversely true. The most dramatically beautiful mornings were announcements of a grim day to follow. Returning from one early walk, she was startled by the soft thud of footsteps behind her and wheeled in fright. It was John. He was running, and a woman was running beside him. They were dressed identically, in tight spandex pants, T-shirts and baseball caps, as they cantered lightly by. She noted that they were similarly built: strong legs with bulging calves and quadriceps, flat chests and narrow shoulders. A ponytail protruded from the back of the woman’s ball cap.
John shouted breathlessly, “Hey! Come and join us.” But she wasn’t sure if he was teasing her, inviting her to run with them, or if he meant she should join them at the house. She stopped and watched them go. The distance opened, and she saw the last of them as they jogged up the lane to the old Gillis place.
Boiling water for her tea one evening, she heard a car slowing near her gate. She moved the curtain imperceptibly and saw that it was Sextus. The car came almost to a complete stop, then accelerated suddenly and was quickly gone.
She was sitting in the darkness, on the small deck at the front of her house. She noted that July was almost over. Sudden bats swooped past. She hated bats, but tolerated them since discovering their massive appetite for bugs. A car drove by, music thumping. Silence quickly filled the space behind it. It was near midnight.
“Do you think that women eventually stop changing?” she had asked him that night during their phone call.
“Yes,” JC said. “Eventually.”
“When, do you think?”
“Depends on the woman, I guess.”
“I bumped into Stella in town the other day.”
“And how did that go?” he asked.
“It was nothing special. I think she’d love to hear from Duncan, if you happen to be talking to him.”
“If I see him. And how is Stella, anyway?”
“Sad and gorgeous. Don’t go getting interested.”
He just laughed.
Now, alone again, she wanted to have told him, “Maybe what you see isn’t so much change as adaptation. Women adapting to the needs they see around them, or feel within. We are the original first responders.”
She’d try to remember that thought for next time; maybe she should make a note of it. But she didn’t feel like standing up, opening the screen door, fetching pen and paper, investing so much effort to capture what was just another moment of transient self-consciousness. Maybe she should get a drink. But she didn’t have the energy to do that, either.
Sitting in the darkness in the place where her conscious life began, she realized that he was right: women do change. And she thought of all the people she had been. The solitary girl, so burdened by her isolation, her awkward circumstances; then, suddenly, a woman, something she discovered in the strange appraisal of her older friend, her almost brother, Sextus Gillis, the new awareness in his eyes, the new purpose in his smile.
“My God, you’ve changed,” he said. He was smiling, but it was a smile she’d never seen before. She was fifteen, and his sudden strangeness was frightening because of where she’d seen it first.
“You’ve turned into a stranger,” John told her sadly near the end. “What’s come over you?”
“It’s called growth,” she said. “You should try it sometime.”
She sighed, remembering her casual cruelties. And then reflected on the greatest changes of all, the frequency of those internal signals she’d read about, discussed with women friends.
“The changes can be mitigated,” someone offered.
“By what,” she laughed. “Death?”
“It’s called hormone replacement.”
“Hormones? I can’t count the pickles hormones got me into. Hormones, the last things I need.” Everybody laughed at that.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Stella had said, and Effie had been unexpectedly moved by the longing in her voice.
She’d asked JC, “So, what if you thought some old broad you were interested in had finished changing? Would she tempt you then?”
“Well, that depends,” JC said.
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on what kind of an old broad she’s … become.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re insufferably condescending.”
“You’re absolutely right. You’re always right.”
“Now that I think of it, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been insufferably condescending.”
“Kind of proves what I’ve been saying. Men don’t change.” He was laughing.
“So change can be a good thing, in your feeble mind.”
“Of course.”
“At least we agree on that much.”
“Good night, my sweet.”
“Night.”
A dog barked somewhere. Something scurried in the darkness. Another darting bat flipped through a pool of light. She imagined she could see the ugly little face, the pin-toothed mouth, a stream of insects flowing down the tunnel throat, turning into shit bombs to be dropped in people’s attics. She felt a sudden spasm of anxiety. She was weary of changing, fed up with the process of becoming, the spinning wheel of evanescence, the endless fading. Afraid that, from now on, with each new incarnation she would be reduced, until, finally, she reached complete invisibility.
In the darkness she was startled to see the outline of the barn, then realized that she was looking at a grove of trees. But for a moment it was there again and so was he, the ghost man she’d escaped, eventually exorcised by growing up and growing wiser.
“Daddy, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t call me Daddy.”
She shuddered. And at that precise moment she decided. Pack your bags, babe—you’re out of here, heading back to the city, first thing in the frigging morning. You can’t do this alone.
11
She left the Long Stretch shortly after dawn. She felt a giddy kind of joy standing at the gate, staring at the empty, silent house. Next time I stand here, she vowed, he’ll be standing with me. We’ll arrive together, stay together, leave together. We will live like
adults. I’ll make sure of that.
The rising sun, a scarlet slit between the layered banks of cloud, promised favourable weather. She knew the joy was also from the freedom of an undetected flight, and this time she wasn’t weighed down by the guilt she’d felt at previous departures. She told herself that this was not so much a flight as a constructive retreat. She had business in the city. She had a life to furnish.
She’d got up in darkness, made her bed and quickly packed. She’d briefly considered staying one more day, to visit John, perhaps to talk. But why? To talk about what? She’d meant to ask about his mother, who was living in the seniors’ residence in town. But Mrs. Gillis had no memory, probably wouldn’t even know who Effie was. Her mind was gone, someone said. A blessing, in a way. She was the widow of Sandy Gillis. “The things that she put up with when Sandy was around—best forgotten,” someone said.
“Sandy’s been dead for thirty-five years,” she had answered.
“Yeah, but you didn’t know the real Sandy.”
She wanted to reply, “Oh, but I did. I truly did.” And she wondered about memory. Sometimes when the mind “goes,” memory and truth are reconciled. But she checked herself, as she always did. Who could understand how much Mrs. Gillis knew and why? And what did she, Effie Gillis, really know?
“Do you know that or are you just rememberin’?” Conor had asked.
“Is there a difference?”
“Rememberin’s for the poets and the martyrs. It’s only what we know that matters.”
At the causeway she saw the flashing red lights, heard the warning clang and felt the instant surge of aggravation. The bridge was swinging, blocking her escape. She slammed the steering wheel with her fist. “Shit, shit, shit,” she said, then felt silly for swearing. A hulking tugboat inched through the canal before her, dragging a barge, probably full of gravel from the quarry that was devastating old Cape Porcupine. She wished that it would sink, then quickly realized that, should her baleful wish be realized, she’d never get away.
It had been even earlier when she and Sextus made their unimpeded getaway in 1970, the dawn still distant, over the Atlantic Ocean somewhere, slower than the barge, hauling daylight to an unsuspecting world.
The tug crept by, barge lingering behind, a lifetime in ten minutes.
Sextus had phoned her once, a few days after JC left. “How is it going out there?” he asked.
“Just fine,” she said. “I’ve been sticking close to home.”
“Still have your company?”
She considered saying yes, but told the truth. “He’s gone back.”
“Too bad,” he said. “I was kind of hoping we could get together while he was around. Chew the fat about the old days. You don’t think he’ll be back?”
“Not this summer,” she said.
There was a long pause.
“Can I tell you about a dream I had? It was kind of sweet. You were in it.”
She decided not to answer.
“It seemed to be a long time back. We were still kids … but teens, I think. You, for some reason, had to sleep over at our place, in the village. And we were short of beds. So Ma said, ‘You two can share a bed.’ And I was a bit taken aback by that. We were almost grown-ups, in that sense. Anyway, we went to bed, wearing our pyjamas.” He chuckled softly. “So you were way over on one side of the bed, and I was way over on the other side. Eventually I said, ‘Do you think it would be okay if we held hands?’ And you said, ‘I don’t see any harm in that.’ And you reached across and we just lay there, on opposite sides of this big bed, holding hands. That was it. Innocence, eh?”
There was the sound of a passing car.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Good night, Sextus.”
“Look,” he said. “I have something I want you to read sometime … something I’ve meant to show you but never had the nerve.”
“Hmmm.”
“Something I wrote a few years ago. John and I spent a fair bit of time hashing through the family secrets. It was going to be a kind of memoir. But when I finished, I realized I could never publish it. I think you’re the one person who could read it, objectively. You might find it helpful.”
“Helpful?”
“I think you know what I mean. Stuff I learned about your father, and Uncle Sandy. And about us.”
“I have to get some sleep.”
“Good night,” he said. “I’m sorry, bringing that up.”
At a truck stop just past the New Brunswick border, she filled her car with gas. On an impulse she bought two cans of Red Bull.
Near Florenceville, she was startled by an aggressive whoop behind her. When she looked in her rear-view mirror, there was a police car almost on her bumper, headlights and roof lights flashing furiously. She had the presence of mind to signal as she pulled to the shoulder of the road, heart pounding.
She lowered her window. The policeman seemed to hesitate by the rear door until he saw that she was a woman travelling alone. He stepped forward, bent and peered inside.
“In a bit of a hurry, are we?”
“Oh, God,” she said. “How fast was I going?”
“I clocked you at 125,” he said.
“And what’s the limit?”
He looked at her skeptically. “It’s usually a hundred.”
“Oh, man. I’m so sorry. I don’t know where my head was.”
“I’ll need your driver’s licence, registration and proof of insurance.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again as she fished through the assorted debris of purse and glove compartment, looking for the documents.
After she handed them over, the policeman was gone for about five minutes, then returned with a stern expression on his face. “I’m going to let you go with a warning,” he said, giving her back the documents. “But pay attention to the speed limit. When you’re in Quebec, they might be a bit stickier.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said.
He pointed at the cans of Red Bull on the passenger seat. “You planning on driving right through?”
“I was hoping to,” she said.
“Well, don’t put too much faith in that stuff.” And just before he turned away, he added, “Whoever he is, I doubt if he’s worth dying for.”
She was driving westward, driving fast. The sun, behind her when she left, was soon above and then in front of her, inviting her to stop before it disappeared. But she ignored it, the insistent glare before the darkness, the seductive urge to stop, relax and rest. Mind racing forward, then back, reviewing what had been revealed, enumerating small evasions, elaborating the disclosures yet unmade, heart swelling at the prospect of unfettered honesty, intimacy unqualified.
In Drummondville she stopped for gas and coffee and almost called JC from the restaurant. Then she thought, No. But in the car, before she drove away, she rang and got his answering machine, left a brief message, “Expecting to arrive in the wee hours … will call you in the morning.”
She thought afterwards she might have added a casual “love ya.” But she felt a quiet satisfaction that she hadn’t.
“Emotional boundaries are important,” he’d told her. “Wisest advice I ever got from anyone.”
“And who was the wise advisor?” she had asked, not expecting an answer.
“A woman friend,” he said. “I foolishly blurted out some adolescent nonsense one day, and she told me that.”
Effie laughed. “Let me guess,” she said. “You were having a risky affair with somebody. You got sloppy. She reminded you the risk was mostly on her head because she was married.”
“How did you figure that out?” he said, scowling slightly.
“Am I wrong?”
“No.”
She caught his hand. “So now the ending?” she said. “You can’t just leave me hanging.”
“She left him.”
“She left him for you?”
“She left him.”
; There was a long silence.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said at last. “It was a long time ago. I’ve grown up since then. I think.”
“I hope,” she said.
Conor said, “Well, if you can’t bring yourself to marry me, can I make another kind of proposal?”
“Proposal?”
“Consider it a business proposition. I want to put the house in your name. And I want to set up a separate company that’ll own one of the gyms. You’ll be the president of the company, and own all the shares.”
She was laughing. “Me? President of a company? Own the house. Why?”
“It’ll be helpful to me, businesswise. Plus, you need some security in your life. I think it’s about time for that.”
“I’m working on a Ph.D. Won’t that be security enough?”
“Trust me on this,” he said.
It had rained. The Don Valley Parkway had a scrubbed emptiness that seemed to deepen her exhaustion. She felt numb, leaned stiffly into the steering wheel, studying the road.
There was a solitary bicycle weaving along Bloor, a small red light flashing on a backpack. Someone young, she thought, giving him a wide berth, wondering where he could be coming from at that hour. Then she saw that it was a girl, and was briefly anxious. The rain resumed, softly.
Approaching her house on Huron, she could see a small, dim light glowing somewhere inside and felt a faint revival.
He was asleep on the chesterfield, wearing a dark T-shirt and shorts. He was on his back, hands folded on his stomach, one sandaled foot resting on the floor. She stood and watched, keys in hand. Then she walked softly to the kitchen, poured a glass of water. When he placed his arms around her from behind, she was not surprised and leaned her head back into his shoulder.
“I was getting worried,” he said.
They nuzzled briefly. Then, standing there in her kitchen, he slowly undressed her. She shivered. He removed his T-shirt and, after slowly unfastening her bra, slid it off, slipped the T-shirt over her head and arms, then picked her up and carried her upstairs. She woke briefly when he leaned down, pulled back the duvet and placed her gently on the sheets. Then he covered her and sat. She briefly rubbed his back, and then was gone again, into a darkness that was warm and welcoming and soft.
Why Men Lie Page 17
