The Change Room

by Karen Connelly

  She scrutinized the wall closest to her, trying to find a grubby fingerprint. She glanced over the arm of her chair; no bubble-gum wrappers, no dust bunnies in the chasm. She remembered how she loved coming over to Janet’s place in the evening.

  She heard a metallic clatter in the kitchen. Unable to stop herself, she grabbed her bag and pulled out the phone. No new message. She reread the little poem by a famous Persian poet Shar had sent to her that morning.

  Your eyes are two full glasses of wine.

  Your eyebrows are worth all the land of Ray.

  You keep telling me tomorrow, tomorrow.

  I don’t know why this tomorrow never comes.

  She tapped away with flamenco fingers.

  Tomorrow WILL come. Next

  week. Monday afternoon? I’ll eat

  Janet came back into the room. Eliza’s heart boomeranged into her throat. She speedily finished

  lunch at your place. How

  about 1? Then a coffee.

  And DESSERT.

  just as Janet stepped closer and said, “You’re not supposed to be doing business at nine o’clock on a Friday night!”

  When Janet bent toward her, waving the fancy silver and black corkscrew, Eliza pressed Send and leaned back into the chair, as though her friend would know instinctively what she was up to. Charlie, Janet’s ex, had kept different affairs going with two phones, two computers, much fuckery. Eliza tossed her phone in her bag and exclaimed, “Ugh! The wedding clients are the worst! And the phone’s new, so I’m still figuring out all the bells and whistles.”

  Janet said, “Speaking of which, I wonder if I can remember how to use this contraption.” She fitted the large sheath over the neck of the wine bottle. “It looks like a gynecological instrument, but I promise you it’s not. Charlie loved this thing. So I hid it until he left the province. Ha!” She successfully eased the cork out of the bottle and poured the wine. “We’re not going to let it breathe. I need to have this glass of wine right now.” They clinked glasses and gratefully sipped, smiling at each other. They talked about work, the sweet weather, the angry mess of the Middle East. After the first glass was half-empty, Eliza asked, “How are Sophie and Daniel doing?”

  “My son is being so…nice! It’s confusing, I’m used to the anti-social video-game addict in the basement. Yesterday Daniel came upstairs and gave me a hug. And chatted. It’s like he’s become human again.”

  “And Sophie?”

  “Adolescence. That’s how she is. She’s not getting into trouble. But something’s going on. I—I don’t know what. She’s going through something and she doesn’t want to talk to me about it. She’s so moody. And angry. Usually angry at me.” Janet sighed, and reached for the silver bowl of olives.

  “Is she still going out a lot on the weekends? Those sleepovers?”

  “I talked to the parents like you suggested. And she really does go there. It’s not like she’s partying with a bunch of guys. She stays at Binta’s place—that’s the girl’s name. Or if they go out, they get in at a reasonable hour. I had a talk with the mother, nothing too deep, but it was nice. Her parents are very proud of her. She’s on the honour roll. And she’s slept over here a couple times, too, so I know her better. She seems extremely…responsible.”

  “That’s what I thought, when I met her.”

  Janet looked momentarily confused, so Eliza continued, “Remember? When Sophie babysat for us that time.”

  “Yes. Right. Well, I’ve realized that Binta isn’t the problem. Something else is going on with Sophie.”

  “What does Charlie say about it?” As soon as his name was out of her mouth, Eliza regretted it.

  “Who the fuck cares what Charlie says?”

  Eliza disguised her wince by craning her head away to scratch her neck.

  “Something happened out there, in Victoria, last summer. After being around him and his New Age girlfriend, Sophie came back changed. It started there.” Janet picked up the bottle of wine and poured Eliza another couple of inches. The bottle hovered over her own glass as she hissed, “Fuck, I’m still so pissed off at him, the liar. I just hate liars.”

  Eliza took this in the gut but managed not to double over. The nausea came on so quickly that for a few seconds she felt a strong urge to vomit. Physical distraction, even the simple motion of lifting a crystal wineglass, was the only way forward. She took a small sip; the tannins in the wine turned to chalk on her tongue.

  Luckily, Janet did not linger on her hatred of adulterous liars. She returned to her thoughts about Sophie, her school work, her attachment to an art teacher at school, a good-looking young man. “Could that be it? A crush? Do you think…? Would any teacher these days be stupid enough to get involved with a student? Besides, everyone thinks he’s, you know, playing for the wrong team.”

  Eliza shook her head, grinned. “Janet, the expression is the other team. You mean he’s gay, right?”

  Janet sat back from her friend, distancing herself from the implied criticism. She picked up a pillow and shoved it behind her back. “Right. Gay. Maybe. I don’t know for sure. So I didn’t want to use that word.”

  That word. Eliza felt the sting in a surprisingly personal way.

  Janet was still talking. “I mean, it might just be hormones, right? She’s become so…beautiful in the last few months.”

  Both women thought of how Sophie had become beautiful; she had become frankly sexual. Most teenage girls were beautiful in a way that the girls themselves could rarely appreciate, but Sophie was buzzing with her own heat. She’s having sex, Eliza realized. Probably lots of it. And she’s only fifteen.

  Then something else occurred to her: Sophie was in love. For the first time. Mind- and heart- and body-expanding love. Of course. Eliza had been too distracted to notice. But didn’t Janet know it? Maybe she did. Maybe that was the problem.

  “I think it’s possible that boys have been after her and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.” Her friend clearly wanted to know and to not know about her daughter’s sex life. Janet was forty-seven, had left a long, always rocky marriage; she was approaching the end of fertility. She hadn’t even thought about meeting other men yet; she was still recovering. And it had been ages—almost three years—since she’d had sex. Last summer when the kids were away in Victoria with their father, she confided to Eliza that despite how angry and hurt she was, she still missed Charlie that way. “He was such a good lover.” Remembering that evening, when Janet’s losses had been so clear, Eliza leaned toward her with more tenderness. “Have you asked her what’s up?”

  Janet stared at her. “Of course I’ve…I’ve asked her why she’s so aggressive with me. With Daniel…”

  “Have you asked her how she’s feeling?”

  In Janet’s non-response to this question, Eliza felt as though she had stepped off a curb but the road was farther down than she thought. The silence was a jarring answer, throwing various joints out of alignment. Janet wasn’t telling Eliza everything. Or couldn’t tell her. When does knowledge become language, anyway? It’s possible to know something and be unable to say it. She herself was becoming an expert in that field.

  Janet finally said, “I haven’t really asked her. I’m afraid that she’ll say she hates me. That the divorce is all my fault. Which it is. I ended the marriage. She says she’s glad I ended it. She knew about Charlie’s infidelities before I could face them. But…it breaks a girl’s heart, I think, to lose the father she loves.”

  Given Eliza’s own history, this romantic declaration made her grit her teeth. “Janet, Charlie’s not dead. He just lives in Victoria…”

  Janet growled, “He’s as good as dead! People go to Victoria to get old…”

  “And to take up kayaking. Don’t forget the kayaking.” She and Janet both liked kayaking.

  Janet rolled her eyes. “Goddamn hippies.”

  “Don’t be mean to the hippies. They gave us tie-dye.”

  “All the more reason to be mean to them!
” They both laughed.

  “Seriously,” Eliza said. “The relationship is different now between Sophie and her dad, but…she hasn’t lost him. Didn’t you tell me they Skype every weekend? I’ve run into her a few times in the neighbourhood. She always looks happy.”

  Janet asked bluntly, “Where do you think she’s going, when you see her?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes she’s just on her way to school.” Or off to see her boyfriend, Eliza thought. “Invite her out for dinner or something. Talk with her. Not to her. Andrew and I are always haranguing our kids. Do this, do that. Hurry up, stop here, go there, be careful. We’re so bossy. Especially me. My mom wasn’t like that. Where did it come from?”

  “Remember how, when we were kids, we used to go out on a Saturday and disappear for three or four hours? When I was nine I used to take my little brother and sister to a park half a mile away. No cellphones. We trusted that the world would not implode without an adult around, and it never did. Little kids are always with their parents now. No wonder they flee when they become teenagers! And turn off their cellphones. Man, I would love to put a tracking device behind Sophie’s ear. In her ear. Implant it under her skin!”

  The friends came together again over the subject of fretting, needlessly, about their children. Promising to be less like Big Brother, they toasted, then sealed their resolution with another inch of Ripasso.

  —

  On the brisk, wine-heated walk home, Eliza took stock of her corroding morals. Three months ago, unwilling to deal with the guilt, she wouldn’t have lied to Janet about Sophie skipping school. Over the last couple of months, she’d seen her several times in the morning, skipping away from her school. But compared to the other deceptions she had embarked upon, that one was easy to rationalize. Even Janet didn’t think it was necessary to keep constant tabs on her kids.

  Eliza stopped to check her phone. “Shit.” No confirmation yet about their Monday date. She wanted to bite something. Shar, for example. The wine had made her horny. Or was it spring? Lust was making a fool out of her, as it had nameless others in pop songs and Hollywood movies. If sexual desperation was such an old joke, why did it seem so new?

  At least the word adultery still made her feel guilty. Worse: adulteress. She shivered in the cool spring air. It was a word from childhood, from those years of Bible studies her mother had forced on them. In a grave voice, Genevieve had explained, “It’s a bad thing that only adults can do; that’s why it’s called adult-ery.”

  “Then what’s fornication, Mom?”

  In response to this question, her mother had slapped her across the face, shocking Eliza. She ran away and sobbed in her bedroom, confused and betrayed. Only years later did she understand that her mother was in a sexual relationship with Elder Garry; Genevieve had mistakenly thought that her daughter was making fun of her. But Eliza hadn’t had a clue. She only wanted to understand the book of Leviticus, that thrilling compendium of sexual crimes and their corresponding punishments. For both adulterers and fornicators, the penalty was death by stoning.

  They still did that to people, didn’t they? To women, anyway. In certain far-away countries. Didn’t they? As she walked up the porch steps, her phone vibrated against her thigh. Shar.

  They were on for Monday.

  28

  To-Do List

  Sync work computer and new iPhone—esp lists of things to do

  Sync Outlook calendar with new iPhone calendar (WHY DIDN’T THIS WORK?)

  Also: write stuff in kitchen calendar onto iPhone

  Clean blinds

  Call Mom (yesterday)

  School council meeting on Thursday—bring list of suggestions (write f-ing list!)

  Send in money for Marcus trip to aquarium ($23.75)

  Order chequebooks

  Frame last year’s school photos

  Print out skating and Christmas photos? ever?

  Buy photo album

  Get Crest white strips

  Consider Botox

  Botox is poison shit that can kill you, do not do it!

  Monday 11:00 AM: Jacob dentist appt.

  Lunch?

  Lunch.

  ** WTF am I forgetting????

  On Monday morning, she sat in the waiting room at the dentist’s, racking her brain, scanning her text messages for clues. The alpha and omega of things-to-do lists was in her calendar on her work computer. She hadn’t managed to synchronize the two of them yet, though she had spent an hour trying, secretly, in the office, hiding from Andrew, who would have been able to do it for her in three to five minutes. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of making fun of her technological failings. Anyway, she had tried and failed without getting angry and throwing something: wasn’t that a kind of success? Usually she could remember everything without a device or a calendar; she just needed a couple of minutes of peace and quiet. There was supposed to be a herb you could take to improve your memory, but she couldn’t remember what it was called.

  Kiki knew she was working at home this morning, then picking up Jake to take him to the dentist’s. Maybe it had to do with the Ayeda proposal? Or that frozen food conference? (They were going to make displays not only of flowers, but of vegetables.) She went through her email and her phone messages. Nothing. Maybe she’d already done whatever it was, and forgotten all about it.

  A hygienist appeared at the perimeter of the waiting room wearing tight-fitting purple scrubs. “Mrs. Keenan, would you mind coming into the exam room for a moment?” Eliza turned off her phone and dropped it into her bag. As they walked down the short corridor together, the ponytailed, exceptionally smooth-skinned young woman (did she do Botox already?) explained, “Jake was so good for the first filling, but as soon as Dr. Bobson said that he needed another needle for another filling, he started to cry. Did you hear him out here?”

  “Uh, no…I was…I didn’t hear anything.” She’d been too busy with her phone.

  She sat down beside Jake, who was sitting forward, awkwardly, not letting his back touch the chair. He white-knuckled the armrests. “Mommy, I…” The tears poured out. Eliza wondered why they had brought her in here; a child would act up more with the mother in the room, wouldn’t he?

  The dentist glanced in once or twice as he rushed back and forth between exam rooms, raking in the cash. He met her eyes with his usual judgmental expression. Of course! That’s why he wanted her here: to punish her. She’d forgotten how obnoxious the man was. He’d once lectured her for ten minutes on the perils of Halloween candy and how his own five children had never had any cavities, not a single one. On the day when Marcus’s X-rays had revealed that he had three.

  She took Jake’s hand and cooed in low tones, commiserating, then praising his bravery at withstanding the first filling. “If you could just be brave for another five minutes, sweetheart, we’d be all done here.”

  “Buh I dow wan to be bwave anymo,” Jake replied, reasonable despite his frozen tongue. It took another two or three minutes for him to realize that he could neither discuss nor cry his way out of the next filling. Doomed, he finally lay back in the chair, tears sliding into his ears.

  Dr. Bobson came back in, energetic, snappy, glancing repeatedly at her with his bright blue eyes. He said, “I knew you could do it, Jacob. No need to be a big crybaby when it comes to a little filling. We’ll get it done as quick as we can. And then you’ll start brushing your teeth more regularly, right? Right, Mom? There is no need to have a new cavity or two every time you come here.” He gave her a tight smile and pulled the white mask over his lower face. When he angled his face down, she aimed her thought at the top of his head like one of his own drills: You jerk, this is the last time we’re coming here. You’ve just lost ten years of fees for cleanings and fillings.

  Forty-five minutes later, she drove too quickly down Bathurst Street, aching with guilt. How many times had she stood behind Jake in the bathroom, cajoling and instructing him to brush? And flossing between his teeth herself? They brus
hed and brushed! She put a timer in the bathroom. And still her children got cavities.

  In the end, Jake had remained stoic for the second filling. After, he hadn’t wanted to go back to school (“My mowt id till froden!”) but she had driven him there and stood beside the open passenger door until he slid glumly off his seat. “In an hour or so, your mouth will feel normal again,” she said as she took him to the office and signed him in. Up the stairs he went, scowling, toward his classroom. He didn’t even turn around to wave goodbye.

  —

  The woman who answered the door looked like a model. The cut of dress was almost conservative—long lace sleeves, dark blue pencil skirt—but the inlaid lace collar extended to the top edge of her breasts. She must have been wearing a low-cut bra, so the cups wouldn’t show above the bodice, which was made of the same dark blue material. Grey lace cuffs finished the sleeves. And below those cuffs, Shar’s nicely manicured nails were painted a pearly blue-grey.

  “Wow! You didn’t have to dress up for me!” But Eliza knew that she hadn’t. She only dressed like this for Benoît. Shar’s regular uniform for life was worn-out jeans and a man’s shirt.

  “I just got in myself,” Shar said, smiling (pale pink lipstick). “Morning meeting.” Her eyeshadow matched the powder-grey lace in the dress.

  “What, with Cosmo magazine? Photo shoot? Everything you’re wearing matches!”

  Eliza followed her into the living room, looking at her from behind with a mixture of querulous jealousy and craven lust. Shar was wearing a pair of grey stilettos with decorative silver zippers down the back of each heel. She tiptoed on them to keep from making too much noise on the wood floor, then spun around on her toe once she was on the carpet in the living room. Eliza walked straight into her arms, and laughed. “This is no fair! I have to look up at you even when you’re not wearing heels.”