by Joan Barfoot
These are curious gaps. Now I have nothing to lose. Now I can dare anything, if I want, and merely observe the results. I am no longer susceptible to results.
At lunch there is a woman sitting across the table from me like a mirror image. Her skin is also pale, and I want to know, is there the same feel to it, the same kind of putty sense, as there is to mine? We have been eating in our own solitudes.
I can dare anything right now. My hand goes out to her face, because I am curious about it. I stroke her cheek. It is hot and smooth. She jerks, pulls back. She is more than startled; frightened and fierce as well. When she pulls back it is more than her face, it is her whole body, she stands and her chair tips back behind her onto the floor. She leans forward and swings her arm across the table and crashes her palm across my face. People are running towards us.
It doesn’t hurt. It stings a little, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with me. I have felt her skin, and it is warmer than mine; not the same, not the way it looked.
I reached out and I touched her. What might I do next, if it doesn’t matter?
I may become a wild woman.
If I did what I felt like doing, what would I do?
They’re all strangers here. Where are the people I know, Stella and my parents? The people who might remind me I am not a wild woman. It’s too easy, among strangers, to be anybody. I could make me up.
No, I seem to have already done that. Among strangers, I might be the opposite: what I want.
But is that wild, or something else?
I am here an infant of almost forty-four, and may turn into anything. That is not comforting, but a blank.
If I had babies, could they come to see me here? Could I be somebody for them?
I would like to be somebody for someone. It’s hard, alone, to be anybody at all. Or easy to be too much, capable of anything.
If I have done what I have done, I am capable of anything.
If I had babies, what would they think of me now? They are so entirely mute inside me; so thoroughly muffled that I could not hear them if they did call out.
What could they tell me? That they forgive me? That they love me anyway?
Now, now I could mourn my missing babies. I would like to feel small arms around me and hear little voices murmuring. I can feel now the tears that were stored away for them; but I still can’t weep for Harry.
17
If I could track back through my days, could I find the spot I missed? It must be somewhere in that house. Under a bed, or in the corner of a closet?
My days were a service, a mass: precise steps and motions, all in order, to the end of either worship or comfort, whichever. Or both.
He never asked me to do it. We never set it out in words. But he must have assumed I was the sort of person who would do all these things, care for him as perfectly as I could, give him all the comfort I was able to. If he hadn’t understood that, I think he would not have married me. He wanted, I think, a demonstration of tears and a demonstration of devotion. Although he never said.
A man does not want to waken in the morning to some shrill alarm. I’ve read it can alter brain waves too abruptly, and in any case it is an unpleasant beginning to the day. Nor does he want to see a haggard, dazed, and tired woman first thing in the morning. Maybe a lot of people can’t be bothered worrying about these things. They put themselves first. But not alert Edna, on her toes at all times, double vision seeing always two instead of one.
For years and years my body was trained to wake before the alarm went off, so that I could push the button and prevent the buzzer that would otherwise startle him from sleep. I edged carefully from the bed, so he wouldn’t be disturbed. I washed my face and hands, combed my hair, put on my make-up, all in the bathroom.
When I went to wake him, touching him lightly on the shoulder, bending to kiss him, just a little pressure on the forehead was enough, his eyes opened and his first view of the day was me, smiling, cheerful, and ready for the day.
(I wonder how she woke him on those rare nights? They must have been rare; at some point he usually came home, even if after midnight. Was she brisk and careless? Did they get up together, when her face was still printed with the wrinkles of the sheets, her hair strewn about, dishevelled? Did they use the bathroom together, speaking over toilet sounds? I can’t bear sharing a bathroom. Even in marriage, especially in marriage, one shouldn’t be seen in such private awkward functions.
(Did she make him a proper breakfast, or just throw something together? They must have always been in a hurry, with both of them getting ready for work.
(Would her carelessness have appealed to him? Would he like to be ignored occasionally in the morning? Would he be distressed to find crumbs in the bed, the coffee poorly brewed? I doubt she’d be able to pay much attention, rushing to leave herself.)
The pure intimacy of mornings, alone with the freshness and pursuit of a new day, the prospects of clean clothes and fresh skin and the smells of breakfast, those were things that got me eagerly out of bed.
(What was her apartment like? Elegant? Shabby? Simply thrown together? Did he know which drawer the spoons were in, and where she kept her towels?)
While I made coffee, the smell filling the kitchen, drifting up the stairs—he said he loved that smell—and prepared the breakfast and brought in the morning paper, he was upstairs showering, shaving, I could hear the running water, buzz of razor, sometimes he even sang. Loudly, so that I could hear, even from a distance he could make me laugh, silly songs, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” from the shower. Banging of drawers, quick steps around the bedroom, I could follow his progress from below, see his stripped slim body adding the layers of clothes, sitting on the bed to pull on socks.
When I heard the clipped steps that meant his shoes were on, I slid the eggs and grease-drained bacon onto his plate, and buttered the toast. There was orange juice already on the table. I poured coffee for myself when he sat down. He shook out his serviette, ate his breakfast, and glanced through the paper. He read some of the stories out to me, the funny or dangerous ones, or the simply amazing. “How can people be like that?” we said, over some story of a parent charged with beating a child. Or “Christ, the transit drivers are going out on strike, the traffic jams will be incredible.” Sometimes he read to himself, but if he laughed or grunted and I said, “What? What is it?” he’d read it aloud.
It was a nice beginning to the day. I look back and it was just—nice.
I would see the clock, that white daisy with the yellow centre, yellow hands, moving the minutes to when he would leave. There was so much to be done. He smiled and kissed me and said, “Bye, see you later,” and I said, “Have a good day,” and stood at the door to wave. I had a small superstition: that if I failed to wave and watch him leave, it would be an unlucky day for both of us.
Methodically, then, my own time got under way. Clearing the breakfast dishes, washing and drying them, wiping the table, the place mats, the counter, the sinks, putting away jams and bread. Sweeping the floor, moving chairs and table out of the way to do so; but that was only surface dirt, small things that might float. To get beneath, a sponge mopping every day, once a month stripped and freshly waxed, so that the kitchen floor was never anything but clean and gleaming.
These things are visible. It was also necessary to search out what might be hidden: make sure there were no crumbs lurking beneath or inside the toaster, and that its silver surface was wiped clear of smudges and distortions. Little bits and pieces of this and that may fall between the counter and the stove: one must not miss the slim alleyways of the house.
Could the hidden spot have been behind the stove, perhaps? Or somewhere behind the fridge? There are so many nooks and crannies where it might be, if I can just put my finger on it.
It only takes a little time for some piece of dirt to tunnel its way to the roots of a carpet. So I vacuumed part of the house each day, so that all of it was done twice a week at least. I know most people do
not do that, but don’t their carpets rot?
I brushed any dust from table lamps, and then held them up while I polished the wood beneath; used a damp cloth to wipe the glass surface of the coffee table, where there might be Harry’s fingerprints, or marks from his heels if he’d put his feet up the night before. Another damp cloth for the white windowsills and the white wood between the panes of glass. And once a week, the panes of glass themselves.
It’s amazing how quickly things get dirty even when you try so hard to keep them clean. How filthy they must get when no one pays attention.
The table in the dining room all polished, down on my hands and knees to get at the intricate woodwork underneath, the base and legs. And all around the china hutch. Once a month, all the good dishes came out of the hutch to be washed and dried and put away again, on freshly polished shelves. And again, even in so short a time, dust collected.
It didn’t matter that no one else might know or notice that a mysterious and tiny grey wedge of lint and dust might collect in the corner of a shelf in the china cupboard, or that a shred of fuzz—from the sleeve of one of Harry’s sweaters? who knew?—might have found its way beneath a couch. I would know. I knew it would distract me. It was easier to deal with it than to have it lurking in my mind.
What on earth was in my mind? All those hours, hands doing their jobs, what was I thinking? Certainly I thought I had plenty on my mind; it must have been the quality that was insufficient. I considered what I’d be doing next, or what I had just done. What food we were running low on, or what I might bake later. How much I would enjoy my bath, and looking forward to a cigarette, a coffee. Some story from the morning paper. A missing child: was it safe? And how were the parents feeling, what were they doing at this very moment, while I went so smugly about my small routines? Would I trade feeling not much for feeling pain? Or what country was bombing which and why, what people were suffering and dying while I was far away and safe? Really safe, in my bomb shelter of a home. Rambling speculations that never came to a conclusion. Curious wanderings, not thoughts. Never sitting down and looking, thoughts only things meandering through the brain while hands did the important jobs.
I also thought about what time it was, how much time was left for this or that, how much time till Harry came home.
I tried not to think of anything before Harry, those days before he came along and picked me up and handed me a life and all these jobs that amounted to a day. If I stopped to think of how it might have been if Harry had not come running up behind me, I shivered. I was grateful to have this work to do.
None of it amounted to thinking. I saved all that for the end.
It always took a long time to vacuum the stairs. That takes so much lifting and shifting of the heavy, awkward machine. But finally upstairs a whole new world, a different set of obstacles to be cleaned away.
More vacuuming, of course, and more polishing of wood. More and larger mirrors too: and there is pleasure in looking at a mirror and seeing undistorted reflection, a pure picture of the room, like a perfect watercolour of a pond.
The bed would be rumpled from Harry throwing back the covers. I stripped off the blankets and the sheets each day, seeing the marks of our bodies vanish. Sheet by sheet and pillowcase by pillowcase, I changed and made up the bed, and we were erased: until the night. In the cold months, the beautiful handmade family quilt was drawn up over it all.
The room that required the most painstaking care, though, was the bathroom. The toilet, for instance, that’s something that must be done each day, scrubbed with a disinfectant so that not a single bacteria survives to leap up into our bodies. Who knows, when you can’t even see these things, where they might be aiming or what damage they could do?
Wiping also all the outside of the toilet, and then the sink and bathtub; sometimes a Harry hair from one part of his body or another lying in the bottom, a reminder.
Clean towels and washcloths put out; supplies of soap and toilet paper checked daily.
A trip then through the whole house, gathering up items to be washed: Harry’s discarded shirt and underwear from the day before, the used towels, washcloths, the night’s sheets and my own clothes, a dress or blouse or slacks, and underwear; and downstairs the tea towels used for the dinner, lunch, and breakfast dishes. Everything went to the basement to be sorted, and while the washer was going, I ironed what was washed the day before. A continuous cycle of clean-soiled, soiled-clean. It never ended, but there was a delicious moment each day when I knew everything in the house was clean.
Another trip through the house for garbage. The wicker basket in the bathroom emptied every day and lined freshly with a paper bag. The same thing in the bedroom. And then the heftier amounts from the kitchen, the peelings and tins and coffee grounds: all carried out to the big plastic bags in the garage. Each week Harry would carry those bags out to the street and in the early hours of the next morning they would vanish, and there would be another of those moments when there was nothing dirty in the house.
This was several hours of work, no shirking. And there was a rhythm to it, something stately, like a minuet, a meditation. When it all was done, I allowed myself a cigarette, a coffee, and a salad. My days were dotted with small rewards; and then Harry, the large reward.
What did he do in his office every day that earned him fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand dollars a year? What was it that gave his job such value?
You couldn’t gauge my work that way. It wasn’t a matter of dollars that could be spent and touched, but of things that might flash by so quickly they could be missed if one weren’t watchful: a smile, a touch, a cup of coffee, and a moment to try a quiz in a magazine. A house and a name: Mrs. Harry Cormick.
It wasn’t joy I found in housework, but then, there would not be joy in many jobs. Even Harry, in love with his work, felt excitement, not joy. What I felt was—satisfaction, perhaps; duty fulfilled and a debt paid; goodness.
Those magazines with their quizzes and their stories, they underwent small alterations over the years. I began to see small cracks. Once, they spoke of how to keep a husband interested, and gave hints for dealing with household problems. Ways to do things right. More recently they have begun to speak of ways to juggle job and home. They have quick recipes and easy ways of doing housework, instead of thorough ways. I thought, things are being swept aside here. And where would it end? I foresaw chaos, a breaking down.
It seems strange, unfair, that having foreseen that, I should have become the target of chaos and catastrophe. I was so careful. I should have been the last, not the first.
I clipped recipes and glued them onto cards. I went through them, designing dinner, balancing textures and colours and favourites, ingredients and what we had on hand.
It was all organized, and I was comforted to know each step so well. By mid-afternoon a few things would be chopped and simmering, or at least ready to be dealt with. Ingredients would be lined up. I would know where I was going. A couple of times a week, I also baked: cookies, cupcakes, muffins, small things for us to nibble at in the evenings. None of this business of quick dashes of water to dry packaged mixes, either. There’s no gift, no sign of caring in that, and I’m sure it must show in the taste.
There was a variety store three blocks away, and if we were low on bread or milk I walked over to get them. The other houses looked more or less like ours. It was a good neighbourhood, quiet and clean. The people were like Harry and me: middle class; professional men and wives, some of whom had jobs. Nothing loud or drastic ever happened, and we were all friendly enough. In the summers, people talked over back fences and shared leftover garden seeds. Sometimes we had barbecues together. In winter, out shovelling, there was a shared comradeship of heavy labour in the cold winds, and one came indoors a bit excited and brisk. When it stormed in the day, I shovelled the drive before Harry came home. Sometimes a neighbour with a snowblower, home early from work, would do it for me. In summer, a woman seeing me heading for the store or going ou
t to pick tomatoes and lettuce for dinner might ask me over for a coffee. We would sit at a picnic table in the back yard and chat. The conversations were not intimate. It was partly, I think, because Harry and I did not have children. The others did. It was a big thing to talk about, and a big thing not to have. It made a space. Also I would not talk about Harry, refused to be drawn into shared confessions, admissions of imperfect lives. Where was the loyalty of those women? Then too, people were transferred, in and out, someone always seemed to be moving. One day to the next, people, like the trash, might vanish.
In late afternoon, the whole house polished and warm with kitchen smells, I went upstairs to get myself ready. Every other day I washed my hair. Every day I had a bath. That was a good time. I took a magazine with me, and my cigarettes, and kept the water piping by turning the hot tap on occasionally with my left foot. I could feel my hard-working muscles unwinding, and my pores opening, cleansing, a drifting possible. But I kept a small clock there, too, on the back of the toilet, in case I drifted too far.
I dried myself, cleaned the tub again, fixed my hair, and dressed. By then it was merely a matter of waiting for the crunching sound of the car in the driveway, the rumble of the garage door opening, the car door slamming, and the garage being closed again, and I was at the door and opening it, a last check of my hair and my make-up in the hallway mirror, and there he was.
Like waving good-bye in the morning: it seemed important to meet him at the door at night. The two acts enclosed my own day.
Really, it’s only in the past few years that the routine has altered greatly. Oh, there were some changes along the way. I started adding exercises before my bath in the late afternoon, in my efforts to keep trim. It seems this becomes more difficult with age, however much hard work one may do.
But it’s only in the past couple of years that the phone calls have become fairly frequent, Harry saying he’d be late. That the job was taking up his time. That clients from out of town had to be entertained and he’d be staying downtown overnight. His company kept a hotel suite for its executives to be used on such occasions. He was promoted to greater and greater responsibilities, he became an important man in that company. He said the work was therefore trickier and more time-consuming, and required sacrifices of us both. “I don’t like wasting my evenings working or taking some dumb asshole out for drinks,” he said. “It’s just this damned job.”
