Shar did not. She braved the chilly pool in the community centre across the park from her house. Good, she thought, plunging into the freezing water, this will clear your head. She attended her classes at the Institute, read her books, saw her two Toronto clients—she told them both that she was retiring soon—and, to make some space between Eliza and herself, booked a trip to Ottawa on the weekend. Benoît had flown in from Paris a few days before. And he had been diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure. She needed to see him.
—
Flying from Toronto Island, she watched the city recede as the coastline of Lake Ontario grew wilder, then wild. That, she thought, was love. As insistent as a forest. Despite their vulnerability, plants were extraordinarily resilient. The moment there was a little earth and some water, love took root.
She sipped her weak tea and stared glumly out the window, displeased with the metaphor. She loved trees! But with clients, she had learned how to yank out the little love seedlings. Eliza was not a client, but the same principle applied. Shar had learned how to retract her emotions, rein in her natural tendency for openness and connection. If she and a client were getting too close, she always stopped eating and drinking with that person. No more lovely dinners or extravagant lunches, no more excellent wine or coffee. With her regular male clients, she had learned how to bring the conversation back to the body. She could say, “This is it, this is sex. Intelligent, good sex.” With her differently abled clients, the relationship was more delicate. She often needed to show them a care that was indistinguishable from love. It was a kind of love. What did untouched, love-starved people need? They needed to be touched and fed with love. But she never, ever used that word. It was too loaded, and easily misunderstood. Love was a word that wrought irreparable damage. She was always explicit that she could not be a lover in the romantic sense, that she was a sexual body worker.
Even so. People fell. She fell. At least, she stumbled. The hardest thing about her privileged brand of sex work was not the fear of violence but the danger of love. It was not supposed to happen, but it did. She had experienced that terrible lurch into clients’ lives only twice before; both, weirdly enough, had been men. One had lived in Vancouver; the other was from Ottawa. She had had to stop seeing them.
It was different with Eliza, true. But. It was not that different. The territory of their affair included affection, camaraderie, delicious sex. Love was on the other side of the border and she felt herself sliding over. But the only way they could venture in that direction was with more openness. Andrew would have to know. A brief affair was one thing, but it was no longer brief and no longer an affair.
Hence her little trip. It would help her gain perspective. And she could find out how Benoît was really doing.
Benoît! He was the meaning of his name: a blessing. After so many years, yes, they loved one another, but they had uttered words of love only a few times, always on the eve of long transatlantic trips, as though to ward off plane crashes or other untimely deaths. Je t’aime affirmed that the abiding company they kept was more than affection, and so much more than the money they rarely mentioned anymore. Benoît’s Internet security company worked with large corporations and governments all over the Americas and Europe; Africa was his new focus. For years, Shar had been on his payroll as a translator of French and Farsi.
Benoît had played many roles in her life, but each one was marked by similar freedom and privacy. They sometimes joked that he was the husband she did not want; hence the marriage was perfect. He was something like Francesca, a constant presence in her life who was usually far away from her. She would know and love those two for as long as she lived. That sounded dramatic, but it wasn’t. It was friendship.
Benoît’s high blood pressure worried her. He still worked like he had in his thirties and forties, long days, not enough exercise, too much airplane travel. For his sake and for her own, too, she wanted him to live for a long, healthy time. He had two grandchildren already; more would come soon enough. She looked out the window and smiled. Ottawa was underneath her already, spreading out in its deceptively tidy Canadian way. She smiled at the woods and trees, the white and grey snake of the frozen canal. She hadn’t told her mom about this quick trip, so her arrival would be a surprise. Her parents loved it when she dropped in unexpectedly. Maybe the three of them would go for their last skate of the season on the canal. Soon enough, the ice would begin to break up.
—
More than two weeks passed. Shar and Eliza sent texts professing busy-ness; they left messages, relieved that the other didn’t pick up the phone. It was not an ending, but a hiatus.
Mrs. Minta agreed, finally, to the fourth design for her daughter’s wedding flowers. Someone at school pushed Jake down the stairwell.
Eliza went to the school to fetch him. He had a purple-black eye and a bad headache. On the way home, he threw up. Andrew stayed home with Marcus while Eliza took Jake to the ER. Seven hours later, near midnight, a doctor who looked more like an eighteen-year-old surfer (blue eyes, tousled blonde hair, a slightly stoned grin) shone a light in Jake’s eyes and pronounced, “This kid is totally fine, Momsie.”
She resisted a strong urge to smack him upside the head. She replied in an even tone, “My name is on that chart.” Assholesie.
He flicked a bright glance at Eliza and grinned into Jake’s battered face. “I’m going to give you a little medicine to drink for that headache, then your momsie is going to take you home.”
—
One unusually warm morning in early March, Shar reappeared in the change room at Annie’s in all her long-limbed glory. That was how she liked to carry herself: in glory. It suited her. She did not care that such a style was too much for the community centre. Often enough, it was too much for Toronto, too, but that was Toronto’s problem. The city had to get over its dull Presbyterian hangover from the last century and Shar was happy to help.
Still, knowing how polite and well-behaved most Torontonians were, she was amazed that Eliza had jumped her in the change room of a community pool. It was ridiculous. If it had not happened to her personally, she would not believe it. The ladies of St. Anne’s swimming pool were as flat and straight as planks. Well, except for the friendly fat lady. She wasn’t straight; she was unabashedly, sexily round.
It was Thursday, past eight thirty. After undressing as slowly as possible, Shar stood naked by the bench, pretending to untangle the straps of her bathing suit. Maybe Eliza wasn’t going to swim today. Shar stepped into her black bathing suit, wriggled it up, slid the straps over her shoulders. Quel dommage. If Eliza wasn’t coming, at least she would still get her morning swim in pleasantly warm water. She was just leaving the showers when the change room door opened and a familiar voice called out, “Shar! You’re here!”
Shar’s heart turned her body like a magnet. She had not realized just how much she had wanted to see Eliza until she saw her, standing there in her white winter coat and green woollen hat; her eyes were green, green, green. Shar skipped back over the wet floor and kissed Eliza’s cool lips. She whispered, “I’ve been standing here for ten minutes, waiting for you. Come swim with me.”
—
An hour later, the women walked out of Annie’s, amidst a crowd of three-year-olds who were going out for a walk in the sun. They steered around the toddlers and past the playground, walking along the edge of a larger park of trees and open space. Across the street was a row of brick houses. Three cats were out on the sidewalks, two sitting like sentinels while the third, a handsome grey tabby, rolled around on the cement, its white paws in the air.
“All of a sudden,” Shar observed, pulling off her cap, “spring arrived.”
“Don’t hold your breath. It’ll get cold again. March is very deceptive in Toronto.” Right now, the city was half-melted and half-frozen, rich with the scent of mud and wet leaves. It was also at its resolute ugliest, an archaeological site of newly revealed winter garbage.
They reached a bench under the maples. S
quirrels were flying trapeze in the trees above them. The dog-walkers and their dogs were out, too. One of them stood on the far side of the field, tirelessly throwing a ball for his ecstatic golden retriever. Eliza squinted. Only when she was sure she didn’t know the man did she sit down on the park bench beside Shar. “So, you don’t think it’s love?” she said.
“No, I don’t. It’s amazing sex and excellent timing.”
“Really? It’s just sex?”
“I didn’t say ‘just’ sex. I would never say ‘just’ sex. Sex is one of the big engines of life. Technically speaking, it is the engine. People might pretend it’s unimportant, but I’m in a field that proves otherwise.” She turned her beautiful face to Eliza and patted her knee like an older sister. “Of course I love you. As a friend. I care about you. But it’s not love-love. You know, the big love. You love Andrew. You’re in for the long haul. That’s different. Don’t go fucking this up by thinking you’re in love with me.”
Eliza looked hurt. They didn’t say anything for a while. They watched the dog run after the ball. Its legs and belly had turned dark mud-grey. Eliza said, “It’s a battlefield.”
“Love and sex?”
“No—well, yes—but that’s not what I meant. This park is a battlefield. Between the dog-walkers and the non-dog-owners, who are mad because the dogs are here all the time, tearing up the sod and turning the place into a mud pit.”
“A first-world problem.”
“That’s the usual kind, around here. Like my own. This one. You. Me being a liar.” She sighed. “I can’t contain it anymore. My feelings, the divisions in my life.”
“Be brave then.”
“So you think we should just—break up?”
“Uh, no. That’s not what I meant. I think you should tell him about me.”
Eliza shook her head. “We’ve already talked about this. He would be so furious that it might be the end of my marriage. And no matter how hypocritical this sounds, I don’t want to dismantle my marriage. I do love Andrew.”
“It doesn’t sound hypocritical.”
“It’s totally hypocritical. It’s disgusting. I disgust myself. If I want to become a lesbian, I should leave my husband and go explore lesbianville.”
Shar sang out, in a British melodrama voice, “What? You want to become a lesbian?”
Eliza hissed, “Shh!” She sat up straight to scan the park and the streets bordering it. “Fuck! I can’t take you anywhere.” To one degree or another—school or studio or playdates or chats at the park—she knew most of the people who lived around here. The irony was that because she was having an affair with another woman, they could appear in public. “No, I don’t want to become a lesbian. I want to keep you on the side forever and continue to enjoy all the privileges of my heterosexual life and marriage. See what I mean? Sickening hypocrisy.”
“Welcome to the human race. You’re not the first person to want both, you know. It’s called being human. And queer. To be attracted to both, or many. Possibly at the same time. And I’m not just talking about sex. It’s not wrong to want different things. It’s human nature.”
Eliza’s unhappy expression did not change.
“Sometimes if the third lover is a woman, the man in a heterosexual couple is not so threatened.”
“We are not Francesca and Ettore.”
“You certainly aren’t. They’re like a portable opera, those two. By the time I came along, her husband knew about her relationships with women. But when they were younger, they fought about it a lot. Once he tied her up during a sex game and refused to untie her for hours. But that backfired; she liked it. They had a lot of violent sex and a lot of arguments, early on. But they got through it. Somehow they came to an agreement that it wasn’t necessary to abide by the accepted rules of marriage.”
“And?”
“I’ve already told you! They’re still married. They’re happy. Francesca’s in her late fifties now. We had a great visit last summer. I’ll always love her.”
Eliza shook her head in disbelief. “You actually had sex together, the three of you? Really?”
“Francesca and I had a much closer relationship, but yes, Ettore was involved, too. I was nineteen. He was in his forties. He was thrilled that his wife and I were having an affair.”
Eliza blinked at her, not scandalized but confirmed: her lover lived in a different universe. “You’ve had an interesting life.”
“I still have an interesting life.”
“I meant so far.”
“I mean right now.”
“That kind of thing has never been part of my landscape. Or Andrew’s. Not in any real way.” Telling a racy story was one thing; living it was something else entirely. Eliza couldn’t imagine having Shar and Andrew in the same room, let alone in the same room naked. Which room? The organizational aspect alone would be daunting. Even now, it took weeks of planning to hire a babysitter to go out to dinner and a movie for four hours. “Andrew is quite conservative.”
“And so are you, right?”
“I am. In certain things.”
“You don’t strike me as a conservative person.” Shar’s voice was playful.
Eliza’s was not. “I like having sex with one person at a time.” She stood up. “And even that feels disastrous to me lately. Come on, let’s go.” She pulled Shar up; they continued walking across the park. “Don’t you have a class at eleven?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Yes. Be gone, wench!”
Under her breath, Shar said, “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
“You’re relentless,” Eliza said.
“Yes, I am. That’s how you like me.”
They parted at their usual corner. “Goodbye, wild thing,” Eliza said, and watched Shar stride away. She was young; that was part of the attraction. But was thirty-four really that young? Part of the feeling of Shar’s youth came from the fact that she didn’t have children. She didn’t want to have them, either. When Eliza asked her about it one night, she’d replied, “Totally uninterested. My younger sister has two kids. I’m the jet-setting auntie.”
Eliza was attracted to her freedom, too. But what was freedom, in the free world? Shar had responsibilities, like everyone else. She went to school, which involved copious amounts of reading and attending lectures, like any other student. Once she opened her own practice, she would have the work of running a small business. She was attached to Ottawa, where her parents and sister lived, and to her ex Giselle, and to the mysterious Benoît. Eliza preferred him to be mysterious; she never wanted to know too much about him. She knew he was a sometime lover, though Shar had corrected that term. “I think of us as intimate friends,” she had explained. Whatever that meant. Shar baffled her. Her openness and transparency were real, yet simultaneously she was one of the most self-contained, private people Eliza had ever met.
It was as though she lived by another clock, figuratively and literally. She was the only woman Eliza knew who did not feel she was tired, exhausted and overworked. She worked out at a gym, went running or swimming at least four times a week, a luxury Eliza could not imagine. Most bizarre of all, Shar regularly had breakfast in bed. By herself. To Eliza, this was more perverse than a strap-on dildo (the delights of which she continued to resist). Shar did not seem to be entangled in life, which struck Eliza as suspicious. How could you not be entangled, when life was all about entanglements?
Before she turned onto Bathurst, Shar glanced over her shoulder and winked, swinging her hips wider as she walked, à la Sophia Loren. A ruff of wool sweater stuck out from beneath her short leather jacket that stopped above her round butt—she was proud of her ass, and it showed. Just as Eliza thought of how much she wanted to bite one of those creamy cheeks, leave a mark on her, Shar disappeared around the corner.
27
The Land of Ray
ON THE WALK OVER TO JANET’S PLACE, ELIZA WORE A light spring coat. It was almost the end of April. In the twilight,
she could see the heads of daffodils opened up, with tulips on the way. Spring was arriving this year slowly, in wave after extravagant wave, the plants and trees adding layers of foliage and flowers as humans shed layers of clothes. Soon lilac and cherry blossom would perfume her whole block.
She wanted to stand in the half darkness and inhale the burgeoning green, but she hurried on. Since the word “girlfriend” had taken on a new meaning, Eliza found it difficult to fit in her regular girlfriends. She felt guilty about them, too. She had postponed, made excuses or cut short her visits with them repeatedly over the last three months. If only she could tell them how much harder she was working now to fit them all in. Except for mornings at the pool, Janet and Eliza hadn’t seen each other for a month. Eliza knew her friend felt neglected. She also knew that Janet had something to tell her; Eliza had been summoned.
The ritual of opening the bottle came first. Janet frowned down at the excellent Ripasso between her knees. She gave the corkscrew two more turns; it wasn’t working properly. “Oh, crap! It’s shredding the cork. Just a second, I’ll get the good one.” She left the wine on the coffee table and scurried off to the kitchen, talking all the way, though once she went around the corner, Eliza couldn’t make out her words.
She glanced around the living room, determined not to grab her bag and check her messages. But her phone was brand new, the latest iPhone. That was her excuse: she had to fiddle with it. Various accounts and calendars were not synchronized to the new system. Stop, she commanded herself. Leave your damn phone alone! She eyed her leather tote again, but resisted, and looked at her surroundings instead.
Silver vases on the glass table, silver-threaded pillows on the white sofa. A white sofa! In a house where two little boys lived, you couldn’t have anything white except toilet paper. She loved the enormous photograph over the fireplace, a snowscape of a vast field. Her eyes lifted, as usual, to the three small figures walking across the snow. They were as inky black as the woods that bound the far edges of the image. It’s a picture of time, Eliza thought, of time passing. She eyed her bag again. She did not want to be an obsessed person. She did not want to have her face stuck to that little screen every spare moment.
The Change Room Page 20
