by Joan Barfoot
Once knowing, there is no going back.
“What can I say, Edna? Forgive me, I had to let you know.”
The wallpaper in the living room was fairly new. Gold-flecked white. Elegant, I thought, for just one wall. I’d done it in a day, and when Harry came home he put an arm around me and said, “Lovely. Just right. I was afraid it would be too pale but you knew best, as usual.” He did not say that resentfully, but with pride in my judgment and taste. In my home I did not make mistakes, and he would have been surprised, no doubt, if the wallpaper had not been right.
So. The wallpaper before me, the carpet beneath my feet clean, the pillows around me on the couch all pure. The gold flecks danced in the wallpaper.
My house was always quiet. Any sounds in the day were only mine, and I liked that. But this was a different stillness, a different sort of waiting.
It seemed to me that I had never moved, could never have; that I had only ever waited. And that there was just this motionless instant, only this; the ends of my life snapped off, leaving this moment of waiting in the centre.
Broken again at one point by the telephone. Answered without taking my eyes from the gold-flecked whiteness of the wall, the point that rooted, the point without which I might topple, slide, lose balance irrevocably. Groped for the receiver.
“Edna?” Harry, of course. His dear, familiar voice, warm along the line. But so distant. Like going deaf, a faint tinkling of burning words. “Listen, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to work late again. This job is driving me crazy, there’s a lot more to it than I thought. Do you mind? I should make it by midnight anyway. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
No, maybe not.
Twelve hours I had between that woman’s call and the moment Harry appeared. I heard his car, his key, his steps, running water in the bathroom, the flushing of the toilet, more footsteps from above, a calling, shouting, quick movement down the stairs; steps to the kitchen, then into the living room where I sat, holding on to my vision’s place in that wall of gold-flecked white. Saw his handsome, well-known, well-loved face before me, coming between me and the wall. And as I had thought, a toppling, dizziness, no balance.
Later I watched the clock on the kitchen wall, white, shaped like a daisy, with a yellow centre and yellow hands, and the yellow hand that showed the seconds went around and around so slowly, slowly, time all finished in twelve hours and then an instant. Two-eighteen in the morning. Two-nineteen, two-twenty Over by then. The twelve hours and the moment, done.
I did not look. I never saw the result.
4
The man who comes sometimes to my room, to whose office I am sometimes led, the doctor, his hands are much like Harry’s. I find myself staring at them, and once he said, “You seem interested in my hands. Is there something about them?”
Yes, there is. But I do not tell him. I guard my thoughts. I am forty-three years old, and I have had, it appears, only twelve hours’ worth of thoughts, so I have to cherish them. I do not have so many that some can be given away.
Nor do I want any of them to slip my mind, which is one reason I take such care to write them down. The man, this doctor, says, “Edna, what do you write? Will you show me the notebook?” No, of course I will not do that. He tried, one day, to make me; reached out to stop my pen, so that a blue slash cut across all my careful neatness, but I put a stop to that: the pen turned in my hand, wrist as quick as a baton-twirler’s, and my hand went up, pen aimed at him like—some other thing—and he fell back, gave in, said, “Don’t be upset, go ahead, it’s all right.”
This notebook, it is a lot like that gold-flecked wallpaper: it helps me keep my balance. It also keeps at a distance all the other things that are going on, that have already gone on. I desire that distance, appreciate the gaps between what all this is, what was, and me. I may have been blind, naïve, but I am not now.
The doctor, he talks on and on and I know he thinks he is going to reach me. This blue notebook is my weapon against that. Past pain and present pain are neatly filed in here, and that is what it’s for. I am coming to the end of the first notebook and soon will ask for a second. How many will there be? How many years can I live?
With the doctor I am a stenographer, noting carefully his words. But without shorthand, in my own neat script, hurrying to keep up and struggling still for tidiness. This is not easy, but it is easier than other things.
He tells me about his wife and his two children, and about his house. I see that he is trying to draw me out. He wants to make me share my life by sharing his. But his words fall into the well of my notebook like stones, and they just lie there, flat.
He asks me questions. “How are you feeling today? Are you comfortable? Is everybody treating you all right? Are you happy with the meals?”
I write down his questions.
He asks so many. Sometimes he tries to make me use the notebook for his purpose, and says, “Write me a story about your house. Or draw me a picture. Tell me what it looked like. Was it big? What colour was it? Show me how the rooms were laid out. Was there a garage? Did it hold one car or two? What colour was the kitchen? Did you make your own curtains? Was the basement finished? Did Harry do work in the basement? Where did you watch television? Did you watch much television? What sort of programs did you like? How many phones did you have? Did you keep your cookbooks on the kitchen counter, or did you have a special shelf for them? How many bedrooms were there? Did you and Harry share one? Did you have twin beds or a big one? Did you and Harry sleep together in the same bed? Did you like to be in bed? What colour were your sheets?”
I tell him nothing. Not even the colour of the sheets. It’s not his business. I like the sound of my pen scratching across the page. Sometimes I hear it so clearly it almost drowns out his voice, with his endless questions.
Still, here they are, all written down.
Yes, our house was quite big; foolishly big for just the two of us, although it was early when we bought it, and we thought there might be more. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an enormous basement for laundry, storage, furnace, Harry’s hobbies, if he had had any—a gaping dark space beneath us. And on the main floor, brightness and big rooms, stairways to the up and down, a gleaming, a shining, and pastels on the walls. Lightness and solidity. A magazine could have come and taken photographs and would have called it typical, but it was more to me: the place, haven, where our lives were led, disregarding Harry’s life outside. Should I not have seen how much of his was beyond that small and narrow space? That for all its size, it in no way contained him? It contained me, and I could not imagine, although he told me so much, that truly he existed when he left the house. He went out in the morning and came back at night, and all that was a mystery, while I prepared for his return.
I might have known, for he talked about his days, of deals and negotiations, labyrinthine relationships of office politics and promotions. He said, “Damn, Edna, I love to win,” and he would be flushed and trembling with his passion. And me, I thought (how stupidly) that that could not really be his passion; that truly it must be in our home. I could not imagine any other passion but my own.
I listened and encouraged, but I did not hear. There are two faults of mine: that protective deafness, that failure of imagination.
I ramble, and that’s dangerous.
Yes, there was a garage attached to our house. Room for a single car. I have not learned to drive. I walked to the convenience store nearby, took taxis downtown when I was to meet Harry for an evening out, and for the rest he drove me, in the evenings or on the weekends, when there were errands to be done. He did not seem to mind. I liked those times when we were together doing the small things that were necessary; so that our household was more firmly ours and he had something to do with it. I could sit beside him in the car and watch him, his profile alert to other drivers, other cars, watching for spaces in the plazas, handling so easily, as he did so many things, the steering wheel, casually one-handed, the oth
er hooked to the chrome ledge above the window, flicking turn signals. My confident, capable husband. Saturday expeditions for food, paint, even merely lightbulbs, an outing, and I could sit beside him in our closed steel car and wonder at his ease, catch my breath at his daring, his risks with the body of the car and our own bodies as he nipped in and out of narrow spaces, cursing but not disliking the chores by any means: relishing the challenge of defeating another driver, racing, beating him to a small goal, the entrance to a mall, a parking spot in front of a store, his weekend challenges. A restless, pacing man; he wanted to be active, doing, and so I did not feel it was a burden that he had to drive me to these places.
Difficult, however, in a store, where he was impatient, did not care for careful choosing, wanting to be done and on to the next thing. While I, humming to the piped music, dazzled by fluorescent lights and people, crowds, could happily drift among the aisles picking, comparing, discarding, watching.
Harry used to say, “Christ, do we really spend all this on food?” Well yes, we spent a great deal on food. It’s neither inexpensive nor simple to buy for meals that don’t just taste good in the ordinary way, but are also beautiful to look at. Broccoli must be a certain green, and firm, and roasts must have a particular amount of fat marbled through. You have to examine closely to make sure there are no grey edges. You have to squeeze lettuce and hold fruits, heft them, close your eyes to feel the texture of their interior, and even smell them. Some cheeses are for sauces, others for snacks, and for each purpose age, consistency, and colour must be considered. This is a skill, judging the quality of food and its beauty, making plans that foresee its end, how its parts will contrast and blend on the plate and lead properly to dessert. No conflicting colours or tastes. Against all this, price was no consideration. We were not poor, there was no necessity to pick and choose that way. And, in any case, on these shopping days Harry would be off down another aisle, feet tapping, amusing himself by examining content lists on cereals and cookies, always ready to be moving on. I worked my way along with care and what speed was possible. Aware of his impatience. If I was so alert to his impatience, why not to other things? In twenty years, in even a single year, I thought I could feel each of his moods and irritations. And yet missed the vital one. How could that have been?
Home again, on a weekend afternoon, unloading the car, doors hanging open while we did so, waiting while he journeyed up the stone walk edged with borders of chrysanthemums and shrubs, into our pale yellow house, our pale yellow kitchen, where I put away the things we bought as Harry carried them in.
In daylight, I think, we were both restless, active. But he from an excess of energy, a twitching in the fingers, eager to be doing; I because accustomed to things having to be done, completed, by the time dark came. Difficult to break the compulsions of the week when the week was finished.
But in darkness both of us more placid, more satisfied, things finished, so that we could settle with wine and dinner, an evening reading, watching television, curled together on the couch, which was best, or settled separately to our own amusements, which was not my choice. I did know things, however: from magazines learned that some privacy must be granted, one must not cling. Hard to follow that advice. I would have liked to curl my arms around his neck and hang from it, but did not dare; instead sat watching him; myself reading, or watching television, but still glancing at him often. How were we together? How did he find me and why did he choose me? Oh, I owed him everything. My life, I owed to Harry.
Did he owe me anything? Whatever, he paid.
How remote those days seem now. How wonderful and cherishable eventlessness is. It is most precious, living without drama, with certainty. I remember and it is so far away, detached and foreign, that it is like watching another person’s life, and I am filled with wonder at all that was once possible. I wish I had known and appreciated. I did appreciate, but not enough and not in the proper ways. I would give much, now, for a day, a week, a month, a year, a life, in which nothing of great importance happens. I would know how to relish its safety properly.
What would I do with Harry, if I could have all that again?
No, I did not sew any of our curtains. When we bought that house, I wanted everything to be just right, and so ordered drapes and curtains, men coming to measure and install, hanging them precisely, the exact shades and nuances for each room, bright cheerful yellow for the kitchen, golden for the living room, heavy material shielding rooms from watchers, sheers beneath for filtering out bright light; upstairs in the bedrooms, more matching—blue in the bedroom of Harry and myself, same as the carpet, the walls, a perfect womb. White-shaded lamps on dark wood bedside tables, dark wood bed, dark wood dresser, and all the rest blue. I can see Harry, propped up on the pillows, gold-rimmed glasses slipping on his nose (this in the later years, eyes a little weakened, bifocals required and his anxiety about that, the concern behind the joke: “Oh Edna, you’re married to an old man now”), reading reports from the office, books. He was not one for novels, although I was. He said, “I haven’t time. There’s too much going on that’s real.” He liked biographies of successful men, and business reports. I preferred the gentler fiction. I thought, “I’m sure there’s as much truth, as much that’s real,” but had nothing to compare it with, no way to say if that was accurate. Maybe he was right and my books were false and fairy tales. They did seem hopeful, showed possibilities of happy endings, and maybe it was wrong of me to believe in them.
I am sad and puzzled by things misinterpreted, misunderstood, unseen, and missed.
Because I was so sure. How could I have been so sure, and so wrong? Was I so very wrong? Is it not possible that most of it was true and only one thing not? But if so, could that one thing ever have existed? I do not understand.
Magazines, and I have read so many, plucked from supermarket shelves in check-out lines, insist on the complexity of men. They counsel patience. I was a patient woman, I believe; but now see that that was largely my own nature and had little to do with Harry.
What good is it to know these things now?
I cannot say. But I keep busy, I write on.
Yes, Harry and I shared a bed, double-sized. The sheets were blue, the beautiful intricate quilted family gift, the only beautiful thing that ever came from my parents’ home, spread over them. I cannot think of that.
I feel here as if I do not really exist. The way it used to be on evenings when Harry could not get home (would not get home) and I was alone and watching, maybe, television. I liked my days alone, so much to do. But in the evenings, in the dark, it was different, lonely. It seemed to me abnormal, freakish, to be alone at night—unwanted. It brought back too many fears.
Television, that was some company. Not so much the programs, but the idea that these were people acting. And what was behind it? A strained comic, the father, maybe, of a crippled child? The husband of a faithless wife? These were the things that interested me.
But if I thought of hidden things on television, why not in my home? The drama less apparent. Not obvious at all that this also was not real, and that there were also hidden things.
Here, in this dry place that is not my home, the unreal is what there is. It makes me feel as if I’m floating off somewhere and might float off forever, without this anchor of my body to the chair, my ankles neatly crossed, the notebook precisely in my lap, the pen moving neatly across the pages, following the lines.
This cannot be what is happening. But it is.
I would give anything to go back. To undo and do again. I am blinded by knowing it is not possible. It should be possible. I would be so much better, knowing what I know. I would be perfect. If I were perfect (I thought I was, but now perceive the cracks), would he not be also? And then all of this unnecessary. Unreal, impossible.
5
I see my face, my body in the mirror. In the morning, I need merely sit up straight in bed to see me staring back.
And other starings, too. This face is forty-three y
ears old, and there are many more faces than just this one. There is a child, a young girl, an adolescent, and all the ages of the married woman. Each has contributed to the face I see now, much the way you see on TV shows, a police composite of a suspect added to with sheets of plastic, each lined with different features. It builds up that way, the face you get.
I have spent hours looking into mirrors; and yet I don’t know if I would recognize myself, if I met me in the hall or on a street. The way I now see Harry, maybe: fragmented, bits here and there. I know that my nose is slightly too large. My mouth, which I’m sure was once a little fuller, is now pulled somewhat tight. Blue eyes; nothing much to be said for or against them; they’re normal-sized and no extraordinary colour and a normal distance from each other. Nothing is grotesque about me, nothing is unusual, and I suppose that’s the effect I’ve tried for with all the time and money and effort I’ve invested. I wanted to stay young and firm, I thought, for Harry; but maybe for myself as well? I cared for him the best ways I knew how, and I kept myself trim and attractive. Or not unattractive. Oh, I read the magazines, I knew what was required.
But did I not have my own fear of aging? Was it just to do with Harry? I peered into mirrors and saw the tense tracings of new lines around the eyes, the mouth, and had despairing visions of a loosening throat and saggings.
I fought with exercises every day, stretching muscles and flattening belly, tightening thighs; tap-tapping at my chin with the back of my hand a hundred times a day, fending off extra flesh. I had coffee for breakfast and a small salad for lunch, and shared the dinner I made for Harry. As if I were a race horse, I groomed and trained myself.
When I washed my face, or massaged it with creams and lotions, I did so with upward motions, never down, a consciousness and then a habit of encouraging skin to reach up, not down.
Nor have I done badly. There are those lines and a few grey hairs sprouting amid the brown. I have never weighed more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, and suspect I may be smaller now. I do not have spreading hips or drooping thighs. “Lovely ass,” Harry used to say, passing by and patting me. I could still wear shorts in the summer.
