He told her what few people knew about him: when he was a boy, he had fallen in love with one of his teachers. That’s what he called it. Love. Shar was surprised to discover that he’d only been eleven when the sexual play began. He was thirteen when he and Marlene, his former Grade 6 teacher, started to have intercourse. When he was fifteen, in high school, his mother found out and went to the school board and the police. Rather than incriminate Marlene, Martin accused his mother of concocting crazy sex stories. The cost of protecting his “beloved” was not only his relationship with her—she moved away and ceased all communication—but also his relationship with his mother. He also disconnected as much as possible from his father. He left for university as soon as he could, then moved farther and farther out into the world. “I’m a world-famous linguist, speaker of many languages, but I can’t talk to my mother for more than two minutes without feeling…Goddamn it! Everything comes up again. It’s like some part of me is still a teenager. And absolutely furious. And now this has started to happen. My body—my dick!—is failing me.”
“I’m not so sure your body is failing you. It seems to be talking to you in a way that has your full attention.”
“But what the hell is it saying?”
“You can figure that out. A good therapist could help. That’s what I’ll do eventually, by the way. You know how my website says I’m a student? I’m doing a graduate degree in psychology.”
“Oh, no! Psychologists are all nutcases.”
Shar nodded. “Thank you! I love it when people say that.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to break the mould and save this whole insane science of the soul. Hurrah for me!” She winked at him. “I’m one of the sanest people I know. Come on, Martin. We’re in the twenty-first century. You’ve just had a session of talk therapy.” He wrinkled his nose. She smiled. “After talking, don’t you feel lighter?”
He tilted his head back and forth, taking stock. “I suppose so. Maybe. Why is that?”
“Because there is no pain as heavy as secret pain. The body gets tired of carrying it alone.”
“How can such a young woman be so wise.” It wasn’t a question.
“I hear the sarcasm in your voice, but it doesn’t bother me.”
“Why not?”
“Duh! Because I’m wise, of course. You’re the one who has to deal with your sarcasm, not me.”
They laughed, and finished their scotches. He said he was ready to go, and stood up. “That was one expensive therapy session,” he said sheepishly.
“Look on the bright side. Good therapy is cheaper than a high-class call girl. This was an unlikely beginning. I hope you find someone to talk to. A professional. Who’s not wearing a garter belt.”
Saying goodbye, they didn’t touch each other; they didn’t even shake hands. Yet she knew from the expression on his face that he felt close to her. He felt shaken and grateful and—she was certain of it—lighter than he had in years.
—
Here, in Eliza and Andrew’s living room, his silence worried her. But with each passing moment, his face and his body softened; he, too, was remembering their evening together. She hoped that he was healthy enough not to feel angry about the vulnerability he had shown then. He met her eye, then glanced anxiously toward the wide corridor that led to the kitchen. It was safe, she thought. He was safe. He wasn’t going to out her and expose himself in the process.
From her chair, Shar couldn’t see or hear if anyone was coming. Another upsurge in Andrew and Eliza’s voices was followed by the sound of running water. She quietly asked, “Have you seen anyone since then? Someone qualified?”
The expression of distaste on Martin’s face was answer enough. “You know, that was quite a while ago. I was really stressed out with work and—” He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat, as though readying himself for a big statement. Instead, he whispered, “Can you do me a big favour, so that we can get through this evening with a minimum of discomfort?”
Shar inclined her head in what she thought of as the courtesan’s nod. “Confidentiality is a necessary thing. I don’t know you. That goes without saying.”
A moment later, they heard Andrew’s heavy tread in the hallway, then his voice, buoyant with good humour. “It also goes without saying that my absence as host has been inexcusable!” Into the room he came with two long strides, and stopped, a tall, slightly flushed man, light eyes flashing. He was wearing jeans and an old button-down shirt of faded turquoise, the sleeves rolled up. (So much depends upon a man’s forearms, Shar thought.) Andrew brandished another bottle of wine. “But please forgive me. Eliza needed me to sear the meat. Rack of lamb. She’s just putting it in the oven now.”
Shar had to laugh then, for the sheer relief of it. “That sounds both delicious and dangerous,” she said, releasing her wolf-grin. “I love lamb.”
Andrew swung his whole body in her direction and came forward with his right hand out. “Shar,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She almost burst out laughing again, from nervous tension and because the words seemed flirtatious—was he being flirtatious? She rose gracefully. They shook hands, smiling at each other as though they had just cut a deal, and his hot grip made her think they had. Doucement, she thought. Easy, girl. She had not expected Andrew to be so attractive. Eliza had told her that he was. But in Shar’s experience, women usually exaggerated their husbands’ qualities, while men tended to underrate their wives’. Certainly, he was handsome. But regular good looks were nothing when a man beamed into a room like a lighthouse.
As Shar sat again, Andrew said, “Let me open this bottle. Have you been standing in for me, Martin, entertaining our newest guest?” Martin’s chuckle could have been a cough, but their host didn’t seem to notice. He sat down beside his brother and set to peeling the metallic seal off the bottle. “I’ll have you know that my wife has been very wine snobbish for this meal. She sent me out today with a very specific list, all Nuits-Saint-Georges this and Burrowing Owl that. If I don’t decant this properly, I’ll be fired.” He glanced back toward the kitchen. “Don’t remind Eliza that I didn’t rinse out this decanter. She told me to, but hopefully she’s forgotten that by now.” He poured the wine into the circular glass vessel, then caught Shar’s eye. “Would you prefer something else? I could mix you a drink if you’d like.”
“Oh, no, thank you, the wine is fine. I mean, excellent.” She flourished her hand in the air above her head like a flamenco dancer. “Superlative. Brilliant!”
The men grinned at her. Shar was surprised by how similar the brothers looked and how profoundly unlike they were. Andrew was quick on his feet, despite his height, and he carried himself with ease. A naturally graceful man, at home in his flesh. A perfect fit inside one’s own skin was a quality as rare in men as it was in women. Martin was not heavier than his brother, but he seemed to be.
Andrew smiled. “Eliza told me that when you first came in, you thought that my brother was me. Ha! Impossible! Though flattering. I’m the dull math professor and Martin here is the world-travelling linguistic genius. Just so you have us straight.” He raised his glass. “To brothers dropping in unexpectedly.” And turned to Shar. “And to”—a heartbeat here—“swimming partners.”
They drank the toast. Holding the large globe of glass made Shar aware of her sweating palms. She took a deep breath and settled more comfortably into her chair. She used the wine to calm herself down, fanning it open with her tongue, not swallowing it right away but letting it pool, plummy and rich, in the bottom of her mouth. She sat back in the chair. “This is delicious,” she said.
Martin said, “Swimming partners?”
Shar said, “Eliza and I met a few months ago at the local pool. We’ve become good friends.”
Andrew added, “We’re all so busy that this is the first time we’ve been able to organize our schedules for a proper dinner.” Andrew and Shar held each other’s gaze. Then they simultaneously turned to Martin,
not wanting to leave him out, or reveal anything. It was all right, she thought; Martin is more worried about his own secrets than he is interested in trying to figure out anyone else’s.
It was not work, no. But she was an expert at charming men; with some mild exertion, she could enchant them. “Andrew, this wine is excellent,” she said, lightly swishing it around in her mouth. As she swallowed, she looked at one brother, then rapidly took a second small sip and looked at the other. “What is it, what are we drinking?” What she meant was, Talk to me. Tell me. I will listen to whatever you say.
39
Flowers Instead
AT THE STOVE IN A WHITE APRON, ELIZA CALLED OUT, “My past and present professions come together in this dish!” With a spatula, she lifted the stuffed yellow zucchini blossoms one by one, “Let them eat flowers! Ha!” and slid them into the oil-snapping skillet. Andrew was adding water tumblers and a carafe of water to the table. Shar asked, “Can I help?”
“Why don’t you pour the last of this bottle?”
Then they took their refilled glasses to the island and watched the chef poke and turn the blossoms, now an even brighter yellow from the oil. Martin said, “I was just eating those in Greece.”
“Lucky you. I made hundreds of these at Aphrodite’s that summer. I think I remember the Greek. Kolo…kitho…loulouda!” Eliza said. “Yes,” she nodded to Martin, “Greeks love these. Flowers stuffed with feta and dill.”
Shar said, “The Italians eat them, too. But isn’t it early for zucchini blossoms?”
“By three weeks. These are from an organic greenhouse in Pickering.”
Andrew, passing by with cloth napkins in hand, said with mock formality, “Eliza maintains many contacts from her former profession.”
“Even the lamb is from my old supplier.”
He added, “The same guys who did the kid goat for our wedding.”
“A goat was at your wedding!” Shar grinned.
Eliza clarified. “Yes, a goat attended the ceremony, and for his pains, we ate him. Very tender. Crispy skin. Goat is less fatty than lamb. But rack of lamb is special.”
Shar drank more. Ah, wine in her mouth, the smell of food, and this beautiful woman, all in the same room. The poet was right; it was heaven. And her husband the lighthouse, shining. Even her nervousness about Martin had calmed; he was friendly enough, though not too involved. He’d moved away from the stove and was standing near the island, beside a small dark-green forest of wine bottles. He tried to read the labels, but had to take his glasses out of his breast pocket. She remembered, from that night in Ottawa, at the restaurant, he had been man-of-the-world, wanting her to know that he was cosmopolitan, lived in Geneva, in New York. She was used to the way men liked to display their power in public; he had done that mostly with his brain, she recalled now. He glanced up, caught her looking, smiled.
She smiled back, aware of the extra glitter and juice of her youth. In September she would be thirty-five: a strong number. In her twenties, she would have enjoyed having sex with every person in the room, together. They were drinking wine, after all. That was Greek, too, Dionysus, the god of the vine, getting together with his ecstatic friends. The occasional orgy was a wonderful thing, as long as the sex was safe and each participant was in a good, well-lubed mood. These days, though, she had no desire to participate in such shenanigans, though the thought still made her giddy. It was something she had often discussed with her clients, especially the ones who had experienced a lot of dysfunction or pain, either physical or mental: sex as play for adults; delightful, zany, surprising. Sex as pure, unadulterated joy. It saddened her to know that so many people in the world, men and women, had so little of it.
Eliza lifted her eyes away from her sizzling flowers and grinned over her shoulder at Shar, who stuck out her tongue and shimmied it back and forth the way she did when Eliza was close to coming. They both felt a shared tentacle of delight shoot down and flick up snap! right there. Eliza, embarrassed, canted her head back down to her zucchini flowers. Shar started giggling. If only she could jump over the island and tear off the chef’s apron, and the little mauve dress.
Alas. She would eat flowers instead. She put her hand under her hair and rubbed the back of her neck, then stretched her arms above her head. From their opposite sides of the room, the brothers were staring at her. “It smells goo-oood, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Makes me so hungry!” She had to quell an impudent howl of laughter. Yes, quell, quell. She did not jump over the island to grab Eliza; she merely grasped the edge of the granite countertop. Cool hewn stone would cool her down. (A vision came to her: the granite swept clean, an altar, with the chef lying naked and moaning on top of it.)
Eliza said, “It’s getting hot in here,” and turned on the fan.
Shar asked, “Who wants a glass of water?” She went to the dining table and began to pour. She mustn’t be too obvious; Martin should not know about her and Eliza. Just as Eliza and Andrew must not know about him. She inhaled: hot olive oil, the freshness of dill, meat in the oven. No problem. She was good at keeping secrets. People liked to give them to her. She had not misplaced a single one.
“Andrew, darling, please put on some music!” Eliza cried above the whir of the fan, and began fishing the next round of flowers out of the oil. She slid each tooth-picked blossom onto paper towel. Shar watched Eliza’s hands, deftly moving, the rare ring she wore sometimes on her tough but long fingers, its small single diamond glinting under the stove light. Her wedding ring.
Eliza turned the already-hot water to boil again. “For the greens,” she said, bending to open the oven door and check the lamb. “Two minutes more. Then we’ll let it rest. But we can start to eat before that, if we’re hungry.” She turned to the men, Martin among the bottles, Andrew at the CDs. “Are we hungry?”
Andrew grinned. “Famished.”
Eliza pulled the tray of roasted tomatoes out of the oven and set it next to the olives. “Here we go. Some mezedes. To start.”
Martin said, “Should I open another bottle of wine?”
Shar licked her lips. “Is that wise?”
Martin met her eye. “You tell us. Is it?”
Shar’s eyes glittered. “In vino, veritas.”
“But the truth is not the same as wisdom.”
Andrew interrupted. “Open the damn bottle, Martin. Nobody’s driving anywhere.”
Eliza announced, “Done! The last of the zucchini flowers. We can add these to the olives and tomatoes.” The cork popped out of another bottle of wine. Martin came forward and began refilling glasses.
Shar raised her hands and announced, “Ah, I feel a quatrain coming on…The great Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Wait! Eliza, can you turn that thing off? Omar hates competing with kitchen fans.”
Eliza flicked the switch. No one realized how loud the whir had been until the relief of silence filled the room. Shar looked from face to face, blinking, took a deep breath, and began to recite the rhyming lines in Farsi. It was unexpectedly mesmerizing to hear another woman enter the room through Shar’s mouth. Then she repeated the lines in English:
They say there’s a heaven with beautiful women in it
Rivers of wine flowing through, sunlit
What if I find myself a woman and wine right here
It’s the same heaven, however you reach it.
Eliza and Martin clapped. Andrew said, “Ah, poets! That’s exactly why I need to tend to the music.”
“Oh!” Shar spun a half turn. “I brought my iPod. Would you like to use it? I have a bunch of different playlists.”
“Sure,” he said. “That would be great.” Shar dug in her bag, then went to stand next to the lighthouse, who leaned over the stereo. After a moment, he said, “I think that plugs in right here. Sorry, it’s too dark at this end of the room. We need a lamp over the stereo.”
“No problem.” Andrew stepped away as she kept fiddling. No need to stand so close. She was close enough. She was in his goddamn house! Who was she?
And had she ever met Martin? He was almost sure that he’d heard her say, I don’t know you. That goes without saying.
She was taller, heftier, than he had expected. He thought she would be slight, a needy woman, starved somehow. But the word that came most readily to his mind was the opposite. Was it an insult or a compliment to call her queenly? The black hair slipped like liquid, falling forward as she bent over the stereo. She was not Hollywood beautiful; she had enormous, dark eyes and an almost Roman nose, yet the lower part of her face was delicately narrow. Very full lips above a small chin. Altogether, physically, she was…what was the right word? He did not know what he felt, this close to her bare, muscular shoulder. This body, he thought, looking down at her narrow waist, knew Eliza’s body intimately. Anger shot through his head like a bullet, and was gone, leaving in its wake the right word to describe her: stunning.
He blinked as she pulled the cord out of his fingers. Too slowly. Time itself had slowed in inverse proportion to the speed with which night had fallen. It was not the disaster he feared.
Night was home, too, shining through the windows. “Oh, merde! This doesn’t work either!” Shar said, shaking her head. She put her hand—blue polish on her nails—on his forearm. He started at the touch; her head swivelled toward him slightly. The electricity went through him again. He mumbled, “Ridiculous.”
“I know! It usually works without a problem.”
The Change Room Page 29
