by Roger Smith
Breathing through the anxiety that grips his gut he tries to look casual, leaning against the counter as his wife comes in carrying parcels of wine and deli food.
“Hi Bev,” he says.
She dumps the bags beside him and busies herself with unpacking her booty: an olive loaf, plastic tubs of artichokes, humus and sun-dried tomatoes.
“So, he’s gracing us with his presence,” she says.
Beverley has taken to using this third-person, slightly sardonic sitcom style delivery on him the last few months, pausing after each line as if she’s waiting for the canned laughter to die.
“Can we have a chat?” Lane asks.
“Ah, so he’s decided it’s time for a chat,” she says, uncorking a bottle of Riesling and pouring herself a glass without offering him one.
“Bev,” he says.
She ignores him, taking a knife from a drawer and sawing the crust off the olive bread, laying it on a side plate and smearing it with humus. She arranges a couple of slices of sun-dried tomato and artichokes on top and sits at the table.
Taking a bite she wipes a smear of brown paste from her lip with her perfectly painted index finger, staring at his left hand.
“Where’s your wedding ring, Michael?”
Before he can stop himself he has hold of his ringless finger, rubbing it.
“In the bathroom upstairs, probably,” he says, although he knows it lies in a drawer in his desk at the bookstore.
“Did it offend her? Your little tart?”
“Bev.”
She sips her wine, stares at him impassively. “Sit down, Michael.”
He obeys, feeling sweat ramping his ribcage.
“Listen to me very carefully. I don’t care if you’re banging that silly girl from the bookstore. I don’t care if you’re rediscovering your lost youth night after night in her grungy flat. But if you’ve come here to talk about a divorce, don’t waste your breath.” She sees his expression and laughs. “God, you’re so transparent.”
“Why do you want to carry on like this?”
“Michael, you can’t just wish away what we did, to Lyndall and that girl. Those actions come with a price tag.”
“You can’t blackmail me. Revealing the truth would send Christopher to prison. And you.”
“I’m not an idiot, I know that. But if you think I’m going to let you do anything to endanger this family, you’re crazy. I’ll contest the divorce. I’ll retain a shark of a lawyer who’ll tie you up in discovery hearings for years before you can even think of a court date. It’ll be attritional, Michael, that I can promise. I have the money and, believe me, I have the will.”
Beverley sips her wine, slightly flushed cheekbones the only hint of her anger.
“Screw her silly, get over your schoolboy crush, then come home to us. You’ll thank me, Mike, when you regain your senses.”
He stares at her and shakes his head.
Bev stands and prepares another slice of bread, fills her wine glass and walks through to the living room. The over-orchestrated theme to one of her TV courtroom dramas blares out.
Lane leaves via the garage, his BMW parked in the driveway. He sits behind the wheel, listening to the screams of sorority girls being murdered in Chris’s room. He can’t face Tracy. Gullible as she is, she’ll know if he lies to her, and telling her the truth is impossible.
Lane starts the car and drives a few blocks down to the Southern Sun hotel on Main Road. He checks in and as soon as he gets up to the room he raids the minibar for a Scotch, lies on bed and clicks on the TV.
His phone rings. Tracy.
“Hi,” he says.
“Where are you?”
“Newlands,” he says.
Not exactly a lie.
“How’s it going?”
“Okay.”
“Can’t you talk?”
“Not really.”
“Are you coming over later?”
“No, I think I’ll get this talked through and stay here tonight.”
“Okay. No kissing and making up now, you hear?”
Lane finds something that resembles a laugh and she’s gone.
He pours another drink and empties his glass as he channel surfs. A haggard Mel Gibson leering. Bruce Willis with hair. The South African president dressed in skins, brandishing a spear.
Lane kills the tube, closes his eyes and falls asleep, fully dressed.
4
Loud knocking wakes Louise. She sits up on the couch, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, hard sunlight flooding the apartment. Eyes gummed with sleep she hurries to the front door, Harpo barking and almost tripping her up. The knocking persists as she stares through the spy hole. Mrs. Rosen’s son.
Louise opens the door. “Hi, David.”
He looks as if he hasn’t slept, thinning hair awry, unshaven. “Ja, sorry, uh . . .”
“Louise.”
“Louise, listen, I’ve got some bad news. My mom passed away last night. It was a stroke.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. Do you want to come in?”
“No, I must get some papers and things from her place. I didn’t have a number for you, so I thought I’d come and tell you.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Ja, well, thanks for helping her out.” He looks down at Harpo. “Look, about the dog, I can take him to the vet.”
“What for?”
“To have him, you know, put to sleep. I can’t have dogs at my place.”
“No!” she says. “No, please. I’ll keep him.”
“You’re sure? He’s getting pretty old.”
“I’m sure. I’ll look after him.”
“Okay, well, fine then.” He nods and she closes the door.
Louise goes through to the kitchen and gives Harpo some food and fresh water, boiling the kettle for hot chocolate.
She starts to cry as she stirs in the chocolate powder; crying more for herself than for Mrs. Rosen. Staring down at the surface of the drink she can’t stop herself sliding back all those years to that warm kitchen in Newlands, Michael Lane reading to her.
Before she can talk herself out of it, she showers and dresses and leaves food and water for Harpo. He grabs his leash in his mouth and follows her to the door, his little bug eyes pleading.
“I’ll walk you later, Harpo,” she says, edging out and closing the door.
Louise hurries to the elevator and descends into the brightness of the day, walking down to Beach Road to grab the bus through to Long Street.
5
Driving toward the city, the traffic slow as sludge, Lane rehearses what he has to tell Tracy: that Beverley will forever cast a shadow over their lives, that they won’t be able to marry, that their child will be illegitimate. Lane is surprised that he cares about this, but some old conservative nerve has been struck. His wife knows exactly what she’s doing, how she can wield a constant and undermining power while remaining invisible.
Lane has been to the Newlands house, to collect clothes that haven’t yet migrated to Tracy’s apartment. The curtains to Christopher’s room by the pool were drawn, the DVD muted. Beverley was at the gym. Brenda Passens, dusting the living room, nodded to him when he came in and climbed the stairs.
Gathering his clothes and toiletries took a few minutes. His book collection cluttered the office at the bookstore. His music collection lived on his iPod. He had no use for photographs and memorabilia.
Lane left his suitcase in the corridor and opened the door to the bedroom he and his wife had shared for fifteen years. The bed was made, the curtains open, Beverley’s cosmetics neatly arranged on her make-up table, her fragrance—Chanel—a muted presence in the air. He remembered when that perfume, mixed with the musk of her juices, had so aroused him on this bed, but he felt nothing now.
It was only when he saw a pair of reading glasses lying beside the latest John Irving on the bedside table that he experienced a pang of loss. The glasses were new, he hadn’t known she needed them, and this evid
ence of her frailty—her humanness—and the knowledge that he would not grow old with this woman left him feeling suddenly empty.
He retreated from the room and grabbed his suitcase, hurrying down the stairs, Brenda Passens watching him with incurious eyes.
“Goodbye, Brenda.”
“Goodbye, Michael.”
He stowed the suitcase in the trunk of the car and headed down the driveway, the gates swinging open and freeing him.
Lane clicks on the radio, navigating away from a news report that is another impassive tolling of the victims of the city’s crime epidemic, finding a music channel, something bland and poppy to lift his mood.
He tells himself that despite Beverley he and Tracy and Emma can build a new life, make a fresh start, and, as he rounds Hospital Bend and sees the city and the ocean spread out below him, the sun warm as treacle, he almost believes it.
He negotiates the traffic, parks in the alley and walks to the bookstore, the bell jangling merrily as he opens the door.
The store is empty of customers and Tracy sits behind the cash register, smiling at Lane. He crosses to her and kisses her on the forehead, his hand automatically finding its way to the bump—just visible now—beneath her dress.
“Hi,” he says.
“So?” she asks. “Did she agree?”
He steps back and looks into her blue eyes and when he speaks he hears the voice of a liar.
“Yes,” Lane says. “There will have to be the usual horse-trading when it comes to assets, and knowing Beverley there’ll be a few complications, but it’ll happen.”
Tracy smiles, radiant. She kisses him again. “I love you, Michael.”
“I love you too.”
She slides out from behind the counter and grabs a small pile of books that need to be shelved. He hears her singing as she climbs the stairs.
Lane stands a while, staring blankly at the African fiction shelf, marveling at his newfound gift for deception.
When the buzzer sounds he reaches for the button and the door has opened and a slim, androgynous form has entered, before he realizes that he’s looking at Louise Solomons.
“Hi, Michael,” she says.
“Louise,” he says, “this is a surprise.”
6
She almost bolted, almost chased after the bus that dropped her near Lane’s Books. To calm herself Louise ducked into a coffee shop opposite the bookstore and ordered a sparkling water. Sipping the water, staring out across Long Street, she asked herself again just what she was doing here. What she was looking for.
Not closure, that corny agony show catchall. No, she wanted to confront Michael Lane, to see the evidence of his suffering up close and really fucking personal. That’s what she wanted.
And there he was, right on cue, stepping into the bookstore.
Louise threw money onto the table and hurried across the road before her courage deserted her, jabbing at the buzzer, hearing the door click as the lock was released, shoving it open and entering the store she’d loved since she was a child, the wonderful musty smell of books filling her nostrils.
Michael, startled, tries to hide his discomfort.
“How have you been, Lou?” he says.
“Fine.”
“I heard about your mom. I’m so sorry. I did leave a couple of messages.”
“I know, I got them. It was just a crazy time.”
He’s staring at her, as if he’s trying to work out if she’s a threat or not.
“Where’s the old lady?” she asks. “Mrs. Coombs?”
“Oh, she’s in Italy, on some kind of a sabbatical. I think she’ll retire when she comes back.”
“So it’s just you here?”
Michael is about to reply when footsteps on the stairs announce the arrival of a young, very pale-skinned woman with dark hair. There is something about the way the woman walks—how careful she is—that tells Louise she’s pregnant, and when she comes to join them, standing very close to Michael, smiling up at him, Louise understands that the Michael Lane she has conjured in her imagination—the depressed, suffering Michael Lane—is very different from the one before her.
She turns and flees the bookstore, oblivious to Michael’s shouts, oblivious to the horn of the taxi that nearly hits her. She runs until a stitch knifes at her ribs and, as she slumps down on a bench at a bus stop, she thinks, what now, Louise, what the fuck now?
7
Their child lies dead inside Tracy’s womb.
Lane is certain of this as the elevator chimes and the doors oil open onto the hard fluorescent glare of the corridor at the hospital where his father died and his son’s leg was taken.
Tracy clutches his hand and he forces his fingers to squeeze hers and says with all the phony reassurance he can muster, “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
But as they walk toward the consulting rooms of Tracy’s gynecologist, Lane can’t shake the feeling that he is about to be presented with the tab for all he has done.
Tracy, after Louise Solomons bolted from the bookstore, was suddenly racked by cramps. When she discovered that she was bleeding and could feel no movement in her womb, Lane called the gynecologist, secured an emergency appointment and drove Tracy the three city blocks to Barnard Memorial.
Lane opens the door to the doctor’s rooms and ushers Tracy inside. Two couples and a few women on their own look up as they enter. Tracy crosses to the desk and speaks to the nurse, who takes her to give a urine sample.
Lane sits beside a very young couple who are huddled together, whispering, the man’s hand on his wife’s belly. They laugh and the boy kisses the girl on her forehead.
Tracy returns, depositing her urine sample in a tray. She beckons Lane as a nurse opens the door to the consulting room. The doctor, a young woman with a thatch of blonde hair, smiles at them and points Tracy toward the high examination bed. Lane sits on the stool at the head of the bed.
“So you’re having pains?” the gynecologist says, as Tracy lies on her back.
“Yes and there’s some blood.” Tracy, fighting tears, is even paler than usual.
“Okay, let’s take a look.”
The doctor lifts Tracy’s blouse away from her stomach and applies a coating of gel to her abdomen. She places a handheld probe, connected by an umbilical to an ultrasound machine, onto Tracy’s belly, moving it across her skin.
Lane squints at the monitor, the bell-shaped image reminding him of the interior of a snow globe rendered in high contrast monochrome, a pointillist swirl that coalesces into the shape of something vaguely organic as the doctor stills the probe.
Before he can properly decode the image the gynecologist drives the probe toward Tracy’s pubes and Lane is left staring at a flurry of dead channel static until a foot, shocking in its clarity—the toes perfectly formed—swims out of the boiling pixels.
The doctor nudges a switch on the machine and a waveform appears on the monitor and Lane hears a rapid, muffled pulsing, like a sonar reading from the depths of the ocean.
“Well, the heartbeat is normal,” the gynecologist says. “I think you can relax.”
Tracy allows tears to come and Lane strokes her head.
The doctor smiles at him. “Why don’t you wait outside while I examine Tracy?”
Lane leaves, hurrying out into the corridor in search of a bathroom. He shuts himself in a cubicle and kneels, shooting a hot jet of bile into the toilet. He gags again but produces nothing more than a tendril of slime.
When Lane flushes and heads for the sinks the young husband is there, drying his hands on a paper towel.
“Hey, man, I thought it’s only the chicks who get the nausea thing?”
Lane manages a smile as he washes his face and rinses his mouth.
“You okay?”
“Yes, thank you. Some dodgy seafood for lunch.”
“What you guys having?” the man asks.
“A girl.”
“Cool. Ours is a guy. A little Province supporter.”
>
The man taps his blue and white rugby jersey and Lane relives the moment that Christopher was tackled, hears the sudden hush of the crowd, hears his own silent cheers.
When the flashback fades he’s alone, staring at himself in the mirror. He wipes his face, smoothes down his hair and exits the washroom. Tracy waits for him in the corridor.
“Everything okay?” Lane asks.
“Yes, fine.” Tracy takes his arm. “She says the bleeding was external, a little tear or something. She wants me to come back tomorrow afternoon for another scan, but she’s just being super careful. It was a false alarm.” She kisses him on the cheek. “Sorry if I freaked you out.”
“No. I’m just pleased you’re okay.”
They ride down in an elevator and emerge into the yellow light of late afternoon.
As he unlocks the BMW Lane asks, “Are you hungry?”
“God, I’m starving.”
“Me too,” he says, even though he’s not.
But he knows this good news demands a celebration of some sort and he drives to the bistro across from the bookstore, the staff recognizing them, ushering them to their favorite table by the widow, where they watch a blanket of mauve light fall upon the city.
There is no wine tonight but there are plates of tapas and they feed each other over the candle. When Tracy talks excitedly about plans for their wedding and where they are to live with their child, Lane has to look away, out into the night.
When he turns back to Tracy and sees her surrounded by ghosts (Errol, Petunia, Little Brandon, Melanie Walker, Lyndall Solomons, Sally Stringer) Lane knows he has to tell her everything, even if it means losing her.
“Trace,” he says, falling into the abbreviation used by her young friends, the ones she seldom sees these days.
“Yes?” she says, lifting a loop of squid to her mouth.
The words are lining up like an invading army, ready to spill from Lane’s mouth, when the ghosts disperse and all he sees is this dark-haired Botticelli beauty with a smear of olive oil on her chin, and he says, “I love you.”
