Mating for Life

by Marissa Stapley

  You should not be thinking this way. You should not be thinking about anything other than your marriage and your life at home. But instead, when a man in a flannel shirt at the bar looked at her she held his gaze for what she knew was an inappropriately long time. A moment later, she realized he was staring at her because they knew each other. “Johnny! What are you doing here?” She approached and hugged him, which she realized she had never done before, then led him back to where Liane was standing. Liane had her phone out. She looked up, embarrassed. “I’m drunk-texting Laurence,” she said. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.” Then she saw Johnny. “Johnneeeee. Look, Ilsa. It’s Johnny. From the marina.”

  “I know that, you goof,” Ilsa said. “I brought him over here.”

  “Hey,” Johnny said. “Hi.” He seemed shy and very out of place.

  “So,” Ilsa said. “You never answered: What are you doing here? Of all the gin joints and all the towns in all the world, you had to walk into ours.” Now he appeared confused, like he didn’t get the reference. Or maybe he hadn’t heard her properly. The music was loud. And why did you say that, anyway? Are you flirting with him? If you are, you’re getting rusty.

  “Oh, ah, just visiting someone in the city. What about you two?”

  Liane wobbled a little on her high-heeled boots. “I live here,” Liane said. “And oh, my goodness, I’m drunk, I think. Are you, Ils? How many glasses of wine did we have with dinner? Five? Twenty?” Then her phone lit up in her hand, and she looked down at it and smiled.

  “Hey, maybe you should just go and see Laurence,” Ilsa said.

  “But the girls are there.”

  “So what? They won’t know. You can sneak in and then out again before they wake up. It can be your little secret.” She moved her lips closer to her sister’s ear. “That’s how you keep love new and exciting. Frisson. Go on, do it. Be happy.”

  “Are you sure? No. No, I shouldn’t. We’re having a sisters’ night out.”

  “I’m sure. I won’t stay much longer anyway. Just give me your keys so I can get into your apartment. I’ll finish my drink with Johnny here, and then head back.”

  “And I’ll come back early in the morning and later we’ll go for brunch, just like we planned? Sneaky Dee’s? Huevos rancheros?” She was texting again already.

  When Liane was gone, Ilsa stood beside Johnny. The band was still playing. She wasn’t sure what to say to him, and he wasn’t saying anything to her, so she stayed silent.

  “I’m going to the bar to get a drink,” he finally said, turning away from the music. “I never did get one because . . . because then I saw you. Do you want anything?”

  “I have a full beer.” But she followed him to the bar.

  “How about a shot?” he said.

  She hesitated, then nodded. “But also a bottle of water, please.”

  He leaned across the bar top and ordered drinks for both of them while she watched his profile.

  When he handed her the shot, the softness of his flannel shirt rubbed against her arm. “Ready?” he said.

  “Aren’t we supposed to have . . . accoutrements? Lemon, salt, something?”

  “Look around you, Ilsa. This bar doesn’t appear to have any accoutrements, whatever those are. Just drink up.” He flashed her a white, even smile, and she thought, He’s so attractive. She supposed she’d always known this, having seen him at least once every summer for more than half of her life, but now, out of context, slightly drunk, she noticed in a different way. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have had impure thoughts.

  Just a little kiss, she thought. And I know him. Is this so bad?

  They moved to the back of the bar again to stand and watch the band.

  Several moments passed before he leaned toward her.

  “Do you come here a lot?”

  “Never! I haven’t lived in Toronto in years. I live in New York, in Rye. I’m just visiting Liane for the weekend.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I came to the city. I’m just . . . one of my sons moved here to go to school, and I visited him today.”

  “Your sons. How many do you actually have? I’ve always wondered.”

  Johnny chuckled. “Yeah, I heard about the rumors, that all I ever do is get women pregnant and then send them away but keep the sons. That’s not what really happened. My first wife, the mother of my first two boys, she did leave me pretty much high and dry when they were just little guys.” He was silent for a moment. “But Ben and Jesse’s mom stuck around for longer. It didn’t work out, either, though, but I raised them all up okay. Jesse’s the one who got into school—my youngest.”

  “Which school?”

  “He’s taking some forest management program at U of T. Pretty cool, I guess.” He sipped his beer. “Weird not having him around, though. So, what do you do out there in New York, Ilsa?”

  “I’m . . . an artist,” she said, feeling guilty. Should she have said, I’m a wife? Should she have said, I’m a mother? It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her with Ani and Xavier—and Michael, when he had accompanied her to the cottage once or twice.

  “An artist. Is that glamorous work?”

  She laughed for some reason, and he laughed, too, and then they stopped laughing and just smiled at each other. She said, “It’s not glamorous at all.”

  “It sounds like a cool job. Even if it’s not glamorous.”

  “It’s not even really a job.” And she started to laugh again, and put her hand on his chest to steady herself. When she was steady, she kept her hand where it was, buried it in the softness and simplicity of his shirt. Then she drew her hand away. “Sorry,” she said.

  He took her hand and put it back on his chest, held it there with his own. The band had stopped playing and now there was music on, the song “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. People were starting to dance.

  He continued to hold her hand against his chest. Then he leaned in and kissed her, and she opened her mouth and yielded to him completely, the way she knew how to do so well. A bell clanged and for a moment Ilsa thought she had imagined it, that the bell was clanging in her own head, reminding her that she was married, telling her to stop what she was doing immediately, that she had gone to confession just that day. But it was the bartender, ringing the bell for last call. “Want to get out of here?” Johnny asked her, pulling his mouth away from hers.

  “Where would we go? I can’t . . . I shouldn’t ask you back to my sister’s.”

  “To hang out with my dogs?”

  “What?”

  “They’re in my truck. It’s parked in a lot around the corner. I had to bring them because my other sons were away for the weekend, too, and there was no one else to take care of them. I was planning to drive back up north tonight after dinner with Jess, but . . . I just needed to go out somewhere. I didn’t want to drive all that way just yet. So I decided I’d crash in the car with the dogs, and drive back home first thing in the morning, when I could, after the booze wore off. And before you start thinking I’m cruel to animals by leaving them in the car, my truck is giant and they have food and water and blankets. They love it in there. Their own condo.”

  “I never said you were cruel to animals.” She was laughing again.

  “What’s so funny all the time, Ilsa?”

  “I really don’t know. Just you, I guess. You and your dog condo on wheels.” He smiled, too, and she said, “Okay, sure. I would like to go to your truck and hang out with your dogs.” He was so familiar. It felt good to be with him. And she wanted to kiss him again.

  When they got to the truck, he opened the back. And there indeed were the two dogs, dogs she recognized from the marina, big animals that would often greet her with barks that never seemed unfriendly. He explained their pedigree and she immediately forgot what he’d said. They were overjoyed to see Johnny, jumping up a
nd licking him. “Hi, Marlin, hi, Bugsy,” he crooned. The dogs turned their attentions on her. One of them pressed his nose against her crotch. “Get out of there,” said Johnny, pushing the dog’s head away. “I know she’s pretty, but she’s not yours.” I’m not yours, either, Ilsa thought. “Come on, get back in.” He closed the back of the truck again and led her around to the front, opening the door of the cab for her before he went around to the other side.

  When he was in, he reached down and handed her a fresh bottle of water before turning on the heat and the stereo, something quiet and folky-sounding, with jangling guitars and a low male voice.

  Ilsa drank more than half of the bottle of water. Johnny had pulled out a joint. “Want some?”

  “I guess.”

  After, he put his arm around her, pulling her to him across the wide seat. Then he turned to her and touched her cheeks with both hands, ran his hands through her hair, pulled her bangs up and away from her face. “You’re gorgeous, you know. Really gorgeous. Every summer when I see you coming, I think that. Always have.”

  Just kiss me. But when he did, there was something sour and wrong about the way he tasted, the beer and the pot combining in an unfortunate way. She imagined she probably tasted the same. She began to grow self-conscious. She thought, as she kissed him, Johnny isn’t the answer, and kissing other people isn’t the answer, and parceling small amounts of myself out over the years to share, secretly, isn’t the answer, either. She pulled her head away.

  “I’m married,” she said.

  “Well, I know that,” he said. “I just got the impression you didn’t . . .”

  “Didn’t care?”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “Well, I do care. I have two kids.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean anything by this. I just . . . I was just feeling in need of a little companionship, that’s all.” He seemed suddenly sad. This surprised her a bit. She could tell it wasn’t about her, that there was something else bothering him. She thought of the woman at the marina with the dark hair and mysterious eyes. Where was she?

  The music was still playing. It was Townes Van Zandt, Ilsa realized. Helen used to listen to him, on quiet nights, when she was sad about some lost love or another. In the night forlorn the morning’s born, and the morning shines with the lights of love. You will miss sunrise if you close your eyes. That would break my heart in two.

  “I should go,” Ilsa said. “Back to my sister’s.”

  “You sure you’re going to be okay? It’s late, it’s dark.”

  She reached for the door handle. “I’ll get a cab.” She stopped, leaned toward him, kissed him on the cheek, then got out of the truck.

  “No harm done, right? See you next summer.”

  “None at all. See you.”

  She didn’t hail a cab, though. She walked along Ossington until she got to Queen, and then turned left and kept walking. When she was close to Liane’s and hadn’t seen a person in a block or two, she heard a crashing sound coming from the alley she was passing and felt momentarily startled. She thought of that night in the alley back home with Lincoln and how scared she had been when he left her alone. But this time she wasn’t scared. The streetlamps were bright. She could see. And so she knew the crashing sound was just the raccoons, sifting through the waste with their strange little paws. She stopped and watched them, their bandit masks lifted toward her for just a second before they went back to what they were doing, guiltless, entitled. The ultimate sinners.

  She kept walking.

  • • •

  In the morning, when Liane came home, Ilsa was sitting on the couch. She hadn’t slept. She was still in the skirt and tights she had been wearing the night before. She poured her sister a coffee and she said, “I know I said a lot of stuff last night at dinner. Maybe I was just trying to justify myself, my actions. I don’t want you to think I don’t believe in love, or that it’s not possible for you.”

  “Oh, Ilsa. I’m sorry I left you last night. You seem so sad. You shouldn’t have been alone. And I left you with Johnny—oh, shit, did something happen? Did he try something? He seemed a little . . . smitten.”

  “He wasn’t smitten. And no, nothing happened. Not really. But listen, just listen. I’ve been sitting here all night thinking, and I have to tell you.” She felt a bit punch-drunk, crazy from the lack of sleep. But she still knew she was right, and that she had to tell Liane. “Here’s the thing about love: It can last, but you have to be careful with it. You have to treat it like it’s your most precious possession, you have to never, ever take it, or the person you love, for granted. Ever. Even just doing it once could spell the beginning of the end. Resentment, it’s love’s worst enemy. Don’t forget that, Liane, okay? Don’t forget that, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” Liane said. “But, Ilsa—”

  “And also, don’t be afraid. Helen said something to me once, about the pain of love leaving behind a beautiful memory. Even if something doesn’t work, maybe you don’t have to let it scar you. Maybe it can be something other than a scar, something that makes you stronger.”

  Ilsa knew then that she needed to get home and jump off the ledge she’d been lingering on, even if she wasn’t positive her parachute was going to open and allow her to soar. This was how Helen had intended to raise her, and all three of them: as women who could need and yearn but who could also walk away from a sense of obligation that wasn’t rooted in anything they had ever wanted.

  • • •

  When Ilsa arrived home in the taxi, Michael was working in his office and barely looked up. He asked how her trip was at dinner, but then, when she started to tell him, his BlackBerry chimed and he reached for it and his eyes slid away from hers and she stopped talking.

  The next morning, she went to her studio and she took out all the sketches she had been doing over the past few months, nudes, erotic paintings she had done because she was trying to do what Lincoln had said she should do. They were all sketches she hated. She knew this now. She began to cut them to shreds with scissors.

  Eventually she got to the nudes on cardboard, some she had done recently and some that were older and that Lincoln had handled, the ones he had told her were so good. She hesitated, then got out a paper knife and began to slice them into long, stiff strips.

  In the back of another cupboard she found a box. She lifted the lid. It was filled with letters, mostly in French, from when she had lived in Paris, letters from Eric, saying things to her like, You are my queen, and quoting Paul Verlaine poems (“Votre âme est un paysage choisi”) and other such bullshit. There were also letters from her father, mostly affectionately drunk ramblings because that was the only time he wrote. She put the letters from Michael aside. Perhaps she would show them to Ani someday, to prove that they really had been in love, once.

  She ripped everything else up with her hands.

  But she didn’t throw any of the shreds away. She packed them into garbage bags and dragged them home with her, kept them with her as she began to pack her things. Ani was at school and Xavier was at the park with Sylvie and then Ilsa had arranged for her to take both kids out to dinner and a movie, even though she wondered if Xavier would be able to sit through it. But they had to be out of the house. “You can’t bring them back until you call me first,” she had said to Sylvie.

  She called Michael. “You need to come home from work. I need to talk to you.” She spoke quickly so she wouldn’t lose her nerve and pretend she was calling about something else.

  “Is it an emergency?” he asked.

  “Yes. Come home.”

  14

  Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

  Cardinal pairs mate for life, and they stay together year-round. Mated pairs sometimes sing together before nesting. During courtship they may also participate in a bonding behavior where the male collects food and
brings it to the female, feeding her beak to beak. If the mating is successful, this mate-feeding may continue throughout the period of incubation.

  The day before, when Myra had learned Johnny was coming to visit, she had tried to hide her agitation from Jesse. All the time, she had wanted Jesse to think it was fine, that Johnny had never become angry with her when she said she was going back to the city with Jesse, that their relationship was perfectly normal: friends who were once lovers (of course, she didn’t use the word lovers when she discussed it with Jesse) and now were just people who had once known each other. “We’re still connected through you,” she had once said to him. “We’re still friends.” But it wasn’t true. They weren’t. They had barely spoken since she’d left, or only when they had to because of something to do with Johnny’s son. They were like people who had gone through a divorce.

  She missed him, though. It still felt acute. She had almost said to him, when he called and said he was coming, that he shouldn’t come to the house, that he should meet Jesse at a neutral location so she wouldn’t have to see him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him. She just needed more time. Maybe another few months, and she would be over him and be able to be in his presence without worrying about the magnetic pull, painful to resist. But instead she had forced herself to say, “Okay, then, see you tomorrow,” and she had hung up the phone.