The Continuity Girl

by Leah McLaren

  And then Elle took off her sunglasses. She’d been living in the netherworld of sleep deprivation since having Zoe five years ago, but this was different.

  “Andrew’s moving out,” she said.

  “No.”

  Meredith hoped this sounded like disbelief rather than what it was: a protest.

  “He’s rented an apartment near his office,” she snorted, and pushed her sunglasses back on her face. “No more sleeping on the office couch.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Took the kids to visit his parents in Florida.”

  “What was the issue?”

  “How can you even ask me that?”

  “I just mean, was there...something else?”

  Elle shrugged, and Meredith noticed her upper arms had grown thin. As if to emphasize this, Elle lit a cigarette.

  “I guess there’s always something else going on in situations like this. The question is whether or not that something else is the symptom of the problem or the cause.”

  “But, Elle babe, listen, are you sure?”

  “Sure about what?”

  “That he was, you know, that there was someone else.” The words felt thick in Meredith’s mouth.

  Elle fiddled with her sunglasses but did not take them off.

  “Not him, Mere. Me.”

  Meredith often ducked out of wedding receptions, and this one was no exception.

  Three hours into the party she found herself leaning against a pillar in a vacant banquet hall of the hotel, watching waiters set up folding chairs for an event the following morning. Her body throbbed pleasantly with the effects of dancing. She sipped a soda with lime.

  She had to admit it had been the very best kind of wedding. The kind where the bride and groom were young, beautiful and flushed with good intentions. Now all they had to do was go forth and produce more people like themselves—handsome, well-loved children of privilege, who would in turn create more immaculately happy people just like their parents and so on for generations until the whole world was awash in thousands of clean-living, prosperous, symmetrically featured couples and their laughing blond children throwing Frisbees in parks and shopping for old-fashioned ice-cream makers at Williams-Sonoma. Meredith, who never wasted time fantasizing about her own wedding (after she turned thirty the thought of gauzy veils and seashell table centerpieces embarrassed her), was suddenly overtaken by sadness that she would never be a bride like the bride she had seen tonight—twenty-eight and beaming in the presence of her sane and married parents.

  Meredith watched the opera singer who’d performed two arias earlier in the evening folding up her music stand. A fastidious--looking switch of a woman, she wore her hair coiled on top of her head with ribbons like a demigoddess. Just before she left the room she gave Meredith a nod good night. Something about the exchange reminded Meredith of that fundamental rule of humanity: that no matter how impenetrable and well-appointed people might seem on the surface, beneath the waxed brows and bleached teeth they were just like you. A total mess.

  “A perfect wedding,” said a man’s voice.

  She turned to see him—Dr. Joe, standing with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers, smiling as if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to keep bumping into her gynecologist in different countries. For some inexplicable reason, she was not surprised.

  “You know it’s rude to read people’s minds.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “Yes. It’s like any other superpower. There are rules. Manners.” She looked at his cuff links. They were silver. A very silvery silver.

  “Like what?”

  “Like...for example, Superman. He had X-ray vision but he never would have let Lois know that he knew, you know, what she looked like...underneath...” Oh God, what was she trying to say? This was ridiculous. What was he doing here anyway?

  Joe stepped forward and slipped his hand under her elbow. “Why are you avoiding me?” he said.

  “Avoiding you? Last time I checked it was a good idea for single girls to stay away from married men.”

  “My wife died over two years ago.”

  Meredith was momentarily abashed. “What’s with the ring, then?”

  Joe looked at his hand as if he had just noticed the narrow white-gold band he wore on his third finger. “She died of cancer two and a half years ago, and my daughter gets upset if I take it off. She wears her mother’s engagement ring. It’s sort of symbolic, I guess. Half the time I just forget it’s there.”

  Meredith paused, coughed, examined the rounded toes of her sensible black pumps. “Your daughter. How old is she?”

  “Livvy is eighteen. She goes to university in the fall.”

  He reached into his breast pocket, pulled a photo from his wallet and handed it to Meredith. It was a school portrait of a dark-haired girl with a secret smile. Her hair was brushed forward in front of her shoulders, like a curtain. The girl from the drugstore.

  “We adopted her when she was six months old,” Joe explained. “She’s not smiling there because she still had her braces on. They make them in rainbow colours now. It’s supposed to be fun, but it just makes kids even more self-conscious. I keep meaning to get a more recent photo.”

  His face relaxed into a smile. He bent down and removed a piece of confetti from her forehead. He smelled deliciously clean, like cotton bedsheets and lemon balm.

  “Don’t you want to know how I found you here?” he said.

  Her face turned hot and prickly. Found? Did he really say found? Found implied he had looked, which implied that he liked her. Not just liked her but like-liked her.

  “How?”

  “I had to fly here to treat a patient. A mutual acquaintance,” he said with the look of someone trying to say something without actually saying it. “And when your mother told me you were going to be in Florence at a wedding at the Savoy, I decided to drop by.”

  “You talked to my mother?”

  “I thought that’s where you were living. I got her number through the production office on the film set.”

  “They just gave it out to you?”

  “Not exactly. I had to pretend to be your brother.”

  “Oh. Weird.”

  “Sorry. It just seemed at the time to be the least, uh, lascivious-sounding of all the possible excuses I could give. And I was getting a bit worried after you didn’t return any of my messages.”

  “You left me messages? When?”

  “Dozens!” He coughed. “Well, several anyway. Certainly a few. A few sounds better, doesn’t it? Let’s say I left you a few messages. After that...altercation on the movie set, and you losing your job...” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Meredith, I felt terrible. I really did.”

  “So did I.”

  “I bet you did.”

  “Uh-huh. So bad I didn’t leave the flat or check my messages for more than a week.”

  “That explains it. I’m so sorry.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you apologize a lot for a man?”

  He laughed. “Really, Meredith, I just can’t stand the thought of making you suffer.”

  “I wasn’t suffering too badly. I just needed to be alone. Sometimes I just sort of need to be on my own. It’s an only-child thing.”

  “Like now?”

  “No,” she said, reaching out and touching his sleeve. “Not now. I’m glad you came.”

  “I’m glad, too. It’s a bit out of character for me. I don’t usually...” he said, searching.

  “Chase girls around Europe?”

  “Not usually, no.”

  “Would you like to be my date for the rest of the wedding?” she asked.

  “I’d be delighted.” He leaned over and kissed her on both cheeks.

  Mish broke the spell by rushing into the room with Barnaby and Shane in tow. “There you are,” Mish sparkled, flinging her arms around Meredith and hugging her so that the lavender sequins on her floor-length siren gown imprinted the
mselves on Meredith’s cheek.

  From the tilt and sway of her friend’s lankiness, Meredith could tell she’d made a trip or two to the punch bowl that evening. Meredith started to squirm, but Mish was not letting her go. In the background, Barnaby and Shane quietly examined their manicures, having both visited the hotel spa earlier that day. Meredith took the high ground.

  “Hello, boys,” she said.

  Shane quivered. Meredith gave him a small smile, and he threw his arms around her. He kissed her sloppily and whispered in her ear, “Oh, honey, you’re not mad at me, are you? I couldn’t bear it if you were. I know it’s a bit strange and everything, but you know how pathetic and weak I am.”

  Meredith pulled out of Shane’s embrace but kept hold of his hand. Without letting go she reached over for Barnaby’s, which seemed to startle him.

  “I think you’re an adorable couple,” she said, eliciting a sheepish smile from Barnaby.

  Joe extracted himself to get everyone more drinks. As soon as he left, Mish was upon her.

  “Okay, spill,” she hissed, pulling Meredith behind a potted palm.

  “What?” Meredith sipped her soda water and smoothed her dress.

  “Whaddya think—I want to know about what you had for breakfast this morning? Christ. Who is he?”

  “Who?”

  Mish pulled back and glared at Meredith to see if she was being had.

  “Heaven—that’s who. The one you were talking to a second ago.”

  Meredith tried to look casual. “Whatever. He’s that gynecologist. The one we saw in the drugstore that day. And from Kathleen’s trailer in London. Remember?”

  Mish nodded furiously. “The one married to the model.”

  “Right. Except she’s not a model, she’s his teenage daughter, and his wife is dead.” Meredith said this darkly, as if offering evidence against Joe’s character.

  “So?” Mish teetered back on her heels. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Meredith shrugged—she would not get her hopes up again—then faced her friend. “It’s just that things are all screwed up for me right now. I can’t even think about it. Between the baby thing and Ozzie...it’s just kind of fucked. I’ll explain it all later. What’s the deal with you and the groom’s little brother?”

  Mish shrugged and let her head wobble in the air, her smile goofy. “He’s in love with me,” she said. “And I’m torturing him for all of womankind. It’s a retribution thing.”

  Meredith laughed. Mish pressed her arm and looked serious.

  “You really don’t mind about Barnaby and Shane?”

  “Not at all. I swear.”

  “Thank God.” She grabbed Meredith’s hand. “Enough blabbing. Let’s dance.”

  After the reception Meredith and Joe went for a walk, first along the Arno and then over the Ponte Vecchio past the closed-up jewelry stands. They wandered through the Latin Quarter, along cobbled alleys and through darkened piazzas and all the way to the city outskirts, where they found a medieval church at the end of a crooked road. The night was warm and they sat down to rest. From the top of the church steps they could see an olive grove in the hills that cupped the city. The leaves shimmered in the half-light, and Meredith said she thought she could smell the olives. (She would one day look back on the evening and realize that this was impossible, as olives on the branch haven’t yet been cured and for this reason give off no scent. Joe hadn’t said a word, although he must have noticed her mistake.)

  He asked about her mother and her job and her father and every major decision she had made in her life so far. She told him every important thing she could think of, and many unimportant things too, just so he wouldn’t think the texture of her life comprised only big things. He asked her, with genuine curiosity, what was the biggest risk she had ever taken? (Leaving her job in Toronto and going to London.) What was the most triumphant moment in her life? (Winning the long-distance race at the district finals in ninth grade.) Who was her favorite teacher? (Mrs. Stevens, a fifth-grade teacher who let her adapt Roald Dahl stories into plays instead of practicing her multiplication tables.) What was her favorite pet? (She had never had a pet.) And where had she never been that she most wanted to travel? (India—though she was afraid of getting sick.) After a while she began to feel as though she were being interviewed, and sensing this, he told her a bit about himself.

  He recounted the time he sailed a boat from Bermuda to Halifax, and about the first car he’d ever owned (a brown Grand Marquis with mustard velour interior) and about a yellow Labrador retriever called Boner he’d had when he was seven who was attacked one summer by a porcupine. He recalled how his father, a small-town pharmacist, had laid the dog out on the kitchen table and extracted the quills from his muzzle one by one with pliers. Joe was given the job of restraining the dog, but Boner was so trusting he didn’t even struggle—just flinched when a quill came out and then sighed and laid his head back down as if he knew exactly what was going on.

  He did not tell her about his dead wife, but Meredith felt he would if she asked him to. And she thought that someday she might.

  They talked this way for almost two hours. Sitting on the church steps, the air cooling around them but the stone still holding enough of the heat of the day to warm their bums. Heads facing shyly forward as if adding eye contact to the intimacy of the conversation might overwhelm them. Occasionally they heard a Vespa backfiring in the streets below, but other than that the city was quiet.

  Out of nowhere, Meredith asked him a question. “Who,” she wondered, “do you think are more romantic by nature—men or women?”

  Joe tilted his head one way and then the other. He was obviously the sort of person who rolled questions around in his brain before he answered them.

  “Men,” he said finally.

  “Really?” Meredith was surprised. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because I think men are more prone to idealistic fantasies about how things could be, whereas women tend to be more pragmatic. They look at how things actually are, and go from there.”

  “But if that’s true, why are women always the ones who seem to be complaining about a lack of romance? You know, not enough candles and bubble baths and walks along the beach?”

  “Or moonlit strolls through Italian cities?”

  Meredith smiled. “You know what I mean.”

  “I think,” Joe began, measuring his words, “that women complain when men disappear. Not physically, but psychically. And they do. We do. We just vanish. Many men—most men—have the ability to escape into this fantasy world, the same one romance comes from.”

  “Where is it?” Meredith asked. “What’s it like?”

  Joe laughed but took her question seriously. “Well, it’s no place in particular, because it’s everywhere. And it’s filled with all sorts of ridiculous things. Baseball statistics and porn and monster trucks and submarine sandwiches as long as your leg, and important things too—symphonies and screenplays and the whole history of civilization. Some men just visit occasionally, but others live there full time. Don Quixote, for instance. Or Tom Cruise. Permanent residents. Anyway, the point is, women don’t really want candles and bubble baths—they want men to be present. They want to get on with the business of living in the world. Lasting contentment and home, rather than temporary bliss and escape.”

  He looked at Meredith. “I know it’s a gross generalization,” he said.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “About men or gross generalizations?”

  “Both.”

  Then Joe’s cell phone rang. It was his daughter. She could tell by the way he stood up and lowered his head as soon as he picked up the call.

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  From where she sat Meredith could hear a wail of complaint through the receiver. Father and daughter wrangled for several minutes as Meredith scratched her initials into the steps with a stone and pretended not to listen.

  “Livvy, I can’t do anything abo
ut that. I’m halfway across the world.... On Sunday... Yes, I promise.” Joe made some soothing noises into the phone before finally hanging up.

  He looked up, and Meredith thought he seemed very tired.

  “She’s having a problem with her course registration. I’d better go back to the hotel and make some calls,” he said. “Sorry to bother you with all this. It must be pretty boring on your end.”

  “Not really,” said Meredith. “You should go. I’ll get a taxi.”

  “No, no, I’ll walk you,” he said, jamming the phone into his jacket pocket. “But before we go...listen.”

  He was stooped over a few steps down from her so that they were now eye to eye. Meredith hugged her knees and looked at him, waiting.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “I know things between us have been kind of strange up until now. It’s understandable, especially given the circumstances of our first meeting.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “But I was wondering if I could try to make it up to you. Since we’re over here and everything, and I have a couple of days to kill, I thought maybe...” His voice drifted off. He looked at her. Looked away. Took one step down and a second step up. “Maybe we could hang out.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Meredith asked.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged and smiled. “Rent a Vespa. Hang around the piazza. Smoke. Learn to swear in Italian.”

  Later that night she lay in the cast-iron bath in her tiny room at the Hotel Excelsior. She slid down the tub and bent her knees so her head could dip back and under the surface of the water. She blew a noisy stream of bubbles through her nose and brought her head up for air, then submerged herself again and blew some more. She lingered long after soaping and rinsing her skin, allowing the pleasantly tepid bathwater to cool her blood. Something was different, as if somewhere along her walk through the streets of Florence with Joe she had passed through a membrane that allowed her to enjoy things she normally wouldn’t. Earthy things, like taking off her shoes and walking barefoot along the smooth, hot cobblestones. Or taking a late-night bath in the sulfur-stained tub at the Hotel Excelsior. (Why was it, anyway, that all cheap European hotels were called either Bristol or Excelsior?)