When Boomers Go Bad

by Joan Boswell

  I want that feeling.

  I don’t want my children ever thinking they are the product of bad genes. This is what all the divorce books warn against. Telling the truth about your former mate within earshot of the kids will make them wonder if you hate the part of him that is in them. I don’t want that to happen. Anyway, I believe more in nurture than nature. They will turn out fine, as long as I can find the money for the orthodontia.

  Margie and I leave the cafe and wander down the street, pausing to window-shop. We pause at the consignment clothing shop. The prices are too steep in there; I go to the Goodwill these days. We keep walking. Margie remembers she has to buy a card, so we duck into one of the trendy gift shops. I automatically adjust my purse so that it is firmly under my elbow. I don’t need to break things at these prices.

  We laugh at a few cards, but the overtly sexual ones begin to depress me, so I wander over to the knickknacks and gifts. Maybe I can find something for the girls. Fat chance, things are really too pricey here, and I am trying to wean them from always expecting gifts.

  Margie is still deciding on a card.

  I let my hand wander through the bin of plastic animals. Amid the dinosaurs and the tigers and what seems to be a warthog, I find myself holding a whale. I laugh to myself at the silly synchronicity, but I don’t toss it back into the bin. I look over the aisles to see Margie looking at candles. I head to the cashier, who takes my money without looking me in the face. Maybe she is embarrassed at the prices. More likely, she just hates people. I put the small white plastic bag in my purse. Margie joins me at the till. She hasn’t noticed my purchase, and I say nothing. We head back to my car. I drop her off and head home to the empty house. The house always seems so much bigger on the weekends that the children are away.

  I busy myself with laundry, with chores for work next week, with scrubbing the kitchen floor. I look at the chairs lined up in the hall and regret that I didn’t leave this job until the kids were back. They like to play train when I wash the floor. I make a pot of tea and take it into the living room, a mug dangling from my fingers, the almost empty carton of milk in the other hand.

  I have rented a movie, but it doesn’t grab me, and I don’t turn it back on after I’ve taken a bathroom break. I wander down the hallway, bemused at the sight of myself walking towards me in the mirror at the end of the hall. I am always surprised to see myself in the mirror, and I wonder why I cannot retain an image of myself away from reflective surfaces.

  The whale is sitting on my desk. Four ninety-five is too much for a molded piece of plastic. I am still not sure why I bought it, I am telling myself, even as my hands are wrapping it in used tissue paper left over from the toes of a new pair of shoes for my eldest. I place it in a small mailer box and type a label, although I don’t kid myself that he will have ever bothered to notice any identifiable characteristics of my handwriting. I wear kitchen gloves to affix the label, and I wet down a line of five stamps, which should be enough to transport it across town. I pop it into a plastic grocery bag and hang it on the back doorknob, to drop in a mailbox on my way to pick up the children tomorrow.

  It is several days later that I see an advertisement for a collector’s plate featuring killer whales in one of the safe, family magazines at the grocery line up. Once upon a time I would have been too “sophisticated” to put one of these magazines on top of my boxes of frozen waffles. Now, though, I cannot bring myself to buy other magazines, the sexy ones that scream “Tell him what you really want in bed” from their covers. It would be too embarrassing to let the check-out clerk think I would read those. However, there is no shame in reading “How to organize your kitchen” and “When your child is bullied”. I watch carefully as the bagger slides the magazine between the boxes of fiber-enriched cereal.

  When the children are asleep and the only light in the kitchen is the bulb in the range hood, I pull on the gloves once more, and carefully pull out the advertising page. I cut the picture of the plate out carefully, with the same concentration my littlest one exhibits when creating snowflakes from coffee filters. I fold the almost perfect circle (“image shown smaller than real size”) in half and slip it into an envelope. Again I type a label. I place the envelope between several bills that I must mail tomorrow. I wad up the cut bits of magazine and stow them carefully down the side of the garbage, dumping a used tea bag over top of them for good measure.

  In the bath, as I am contemplating the shower head high above me and the article I’ve just read on energy efficient plumbing (“Save pennies all over the house”), it occurs to me to analyze what I’ve been doing. What am I hoping to accomplish by mailing anonymous whales to my ex-husband? Are these the actions of a sane woman? I slide down so that the hot water laps around my shoulders, sighing as the tension lessens. Sanity is an over-rated virtue, I think to myself, and settle in to shaving my legs.

  I begin to see whales everywhere. I keep a folder of cut-out photos, since I can’t send them all at once without losing some unconsidered effectiveness. I mail a tape of flute and whale songs that I find in a discard bin at the drug store, after washing the wrapping in Windex. Envelopes with a picture go out every week or so. The children mention that their father is getting whales from someone as a prank. He apparently suspects an old college roommate. The youngest plays with the first plastic whale in the tub on their weekends there.

  His lack of fear doesn’t bother or deter me. I continue to find whales, as if God and Carl Jung are gaming, with me as some latter day Job. I parcel up a used copy of Paul Quarrington’s Whale Music, an old coaster from a flea market, a picture of the singing whale from a Disney flyer. Every time I close the mouth of the mailbox I feel lighter, and I am laughing more these days. I don’t think it’s a malicious laugh.

  I pick the children up. The youngest announces that their father is growing a beard. I realize I haven’t noticed this fact while I was asking if their shoes were packed in the duffel bag. I strain to see him, but I can’t bring his face into my mind. We go out for fast food and decide to stay there and play in the playroom. My eldest says she is too old to be allowed on the slide. There is no one else there. I promise to stand guard and tell her to drool if anyone in a uniform pops in. She looks shocked. I wink.

  I am sitting on my eldest’s bed. The young one has been asleep for ages, but it seems that sleep eludes the other. She wants to talk. We talk about her friends at school, about my new part-time job, and finally she gets around to what she wants me to know.

  It seems her father has been seeing someone. This is someone he knew from university days, someone before I appeared. This someone is now a marine biologist. He may move to where she lives, which is, of course, on the coast.

  I tell her that he will always be her father, no matter where he lives. She seems at ease, now that I know the score, and turns into her pre-sleeping position on her side, clutching her stuffed rabbit. I smile and pat the covers around her still tiny frame.

  I smile as I pad down the darkened hall. I can see the scenario as clearly as if I had been there. Him straining to figure out the source of the whales, hitting upon the old girlfriend, looking her up. Her denying her participation, him thinking it coyness. So, he will soon be moving toward the sea.

  It’s a start.

  Janice MacDonald is the author of the Randy Craig mystery series set in Edmonton, Alberta, which is also where she is settled. Much like her fictional heroine, she teaches writing and English literature when not writing mysteries, children’s fiction, university textbooks, short stories and essays. She has two beautiful and accomplished daughters, and one amazing husband. She sneezes in threes, she plays the banjo and she is nervous of the ocean.

  Glass Eats Light

  Susan C. Gates

  In one of those weird boomerangs life throws your way, I found myself schlepping out to Yvonne Bellinger’s suburban Mississauga home on a Friday evening. As a freelance journalist, I’d been assigned to write my first feature profile on Yvonne’s pio
neering thirty-eight-year banking career. I had an “in” with my subject—she’d been the lead instructor at the Dominion National Bank’s training centre when, fresh out of business school, I’d started my own short stint as a banker.

  This job for the National Business Review was an opportunity to break into the ranks of their staff reporters. Yvonne had deflected my requests for an interview; she was too busy winding up her affairs at the bank and preparing for an extended trip. I found this odd, because the Yvonne Bellinger I knew had never shied away from sharing her successes. But my piece was due Tuesday, so I’d used another contact in the bank’s public relations office to secure this meeting.

  I’d wondered if Yvonne would be annoyed and uncooperative, but she smiled broadly when she opened the door to me. “Sandra, thank you for coming.”

  Could this woman be almost sixty? I was fifteen years younger, yet she had fewer wrinkles. She’d probably been as disciplined in using sunscreen and keeping her figure trim as she’d been in her work life.

  Even in her own home, Yvonne Bellinger was dressed formally in a knee-length blue tweed skirt and a periwinkle sweater set. As she took my coat, a subtle waft of Chanel No. 5 tickled my nose.

  “Come this way, won’t you?” Yvonne said, inclining her elegant white head ever so curtly, managing to appear commanding, yet genteel. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable.”

  I cast a glance at my wrinkled khakis and ten-year-old tweed blazer in the hall mirror. Deja vu threatened to swamp me. Even tending my babies hadn’t made me feel as inadequate as I did in the company of this imposing woman.

  My cellphone rang. “Sorry,” I said, mortified. “Do you mind if I take this? My girls are still at the sitters.”

  “As you wish.” Yvonne disappeared through a doorway to the right of the foyer.

  I pressed the talk button, “Hello?”

  “Coleman? Bob O’Donoghue here.” Bob was a senior reporter at the Review. “I hear you’re meeting with Yvonne Bellinger tonight.”

  “Just about to start the interview, Bob. What’s your interest?”

  “I’m tracking a rumour about an embezzlement case at the DNB. Can’t get anybody at Head Office to comment. Makes me think I’m on to something.” I could hear Bob take a long drag on a cigarette. “Millions, I hear.”

  I lowered my voice and moved closer to the front door. “You think Bellinger’s involved?”

  “Hell, no. Just thought you might pump her for information.” Bob coughed. “I’m told you know their Security Chief.”

  “Vandenburg? He’s more circumspect than a priest at a deathbed confession.”

  “Then what about your other DNB sources?”

  “Shared byline?”

  “Depends on what you bring me, babe.” With that, Bob disconnected, and I went looking for Yvonne.

  I found her in an intimate sitting room. Two teal upholstered arm chairs were drawn up to a smoked-glass coffee table facing a leather loveseat. Above the sofa hung a tall oil painting splashed in vivid strokes of royal blue, red and yellow on a churning background. I found the choice of modern art curious for a woman who’d maintained a lady-like appearance throughout the eras of Women’s Liberation and Casual Fridays.

  “So you didn’t stay with banking, Sandra?” Yvonne appraised me through sharp blue eyes. “I thought you had the right stuff.”

  “Except for my face!” I said, taking the seat she’d indicated.

  Yvonne’s back stiffened, and both her expertly pencilled eyebrows shot up. “Pardon me?”

  “When you assessed my performance, you told me I could be successful, but I ‘needed to do something about my face.’”

  “Oh heavens, yes.” A delicate laugh followed. “You asked if I was recommending plastic surgery. Such a sensitive young woman. But that was exactly my point, your face was far too expressive. You needed to master your emotions, so staff and customers wouldn’t gain the upper hand.”

  “I took up poker.”

  “Really?” She didn’t sound convinced. “Let’s have a drink, shall we? Come.” Yvonne rose and walked into an adjoining room, stopping in front of a console table beneath an open stairwell.

  She fixed me a scotch on the rocks and poured a glass of sherry for herself. The room was cavernous, with a twenty-foot vaulted ceiling sliced by long skylights that admitted shafts of waning, natural light. A solid sheet of thick glass laid across a pair of sturdy bronze “Xs” created the dining room table. Above it hung a massive chandelier fashioned from frosted cubes of glass. The windowless walls were lined with shelves displaying glassware and crystalline art objects, dazzling in a combination of sunlight and recessed halogen spotlights.

  “Heavens, I’ve seen Macintosh & Watts shops with less display space and inventory.”

  “Ah,” Yvonne said, handing me my drink in a heavy, squat tumbler. “The object of my obsession—Bertil Vallien.” She swept her free arm to the far end of the room, where three narrow, squared columns of bronze metal commanded attention.

  The outer posts each held a luminous oval head, placed on its ear. These faces, crafted from glass, were more alien than humanoid. Pricks of clean, white light served to create exclamation marks above them. The taller, central stand stood empty.

  “My interest in Vallien’s work was ignited when Richard and I chose items for our bridal registry,” Yvonne said. “The glassware offered by Kosta Boda, where Vallien worked as a designer, enchanted me. Richard preferred the sturdiness of their stemware.”

  She directed my attention to some of her favourite pieces, a clear glass tile inlaid with a smiling primitive mask and a suspended ship’s hull, embedded with a mummified figure. She lifted a medieval-looking crucifix down from its prominent position on the staircase wall and handed it to me.

  “Pendulums, masks, bridges and ships are all recurring themes in Vallien’s work. He likes to play with opposing concepts of connectivity and isolation, revelation and intrigue.”

  I’d sooner have guessed Yvonne Bellinger was a dominatrix than an admirer and collector of Swedish glassworks. I’d always imagined Chippendale or Georgian antiques and pastel Chintz would fill her home.

  “Why can’t I see through the glass?” I asked, as I ran my fingers along the rough surface of the cross.

  “It’s sand cast,” Yvonne explained. “Vallien’s famous for his expression: ‘Glass eats light.’ Conventionally, people expect glass to reflect light, but he prefers to play with its light-absorbing qualities, creating something truly startling and mysterious.”

  “So are some of these pieces valuable?”

  “The earlier pieces aren’t. They’re considered mere decoration, mass produced. Some of my later acquisitions— reflecting Vallien’s concentration on art over industrial design —are.” Yvonne nodded toward the sideways faces on the poles. “My first bust was a gift from Lions International after I managed one of their vision care projects in the Caribbean.”

  Hefting the crucifix in both hands, I began to realize why I always felt so frumpy next to this woman. The only item of Swedish design I owned was an IKEA lamp.

  “In retirement, I plan to visit galleries and museums in Europe and Tokyo, where some of his best work resides. After Richard died, I filled my time travelling to Vallien’s exhibits in the United States.” Yvonne extended her hands to retrieve the cross.

  I grasped the piece tightly to hand it back to her.

  “Careful,” she said, but not in time. Blood spurted out of a gash in the web of tissue between my thumb and forefinger. Dismayed, I watched as red droplets splashed onto the pristine cream broadloom.

  By the time Yvonne had dressed my wound and sprayed stain remover on the rug, I’d managed to collect myself. And drain my drink. Time to get control of this interview. With what I had so far, I could write an excellent article for Art In America, but it wouldn’t get me a spot on the Review’s roster.

  “What our readers want to know, is how you broke through the glass ceiling in this male-domina
ted field.”

  The question stilled Yvonne. “What makes you think I did?”

  I counted off her accomplishments on the fingers of my left hand, including her appointment as the first female branch manager in Ontario. “All this with a secretarial school education.”

  “Ah, well. One’s education is never an indicator of one’s intelligence, is it? Mind you, most of my male contemporaries had no post-secondary training. But yes, compared to the women who went before me, I did benefit from greater opportunities.” She picked a minute speck of lint from the weave of her skirt. “It helped to start my career at a time when there were social pressures to create greater equality for women in the workplace. It came from the commercial side of things, too. Women were demanding personal and business credit. The bank didn’t want to lose out on their share of this new market.”

  “So, good old-fashioned capitalism was responsible for busting the glass ceiling?”

  “Perhaps for raising its height.” Yvonne placed a palm on each knee and leaned toward me. “Look, I made the best of the opportunities that presented themselves. And,” her shoulders relaxed, “sometimes it can be an advantage to be underestimated.”

  “Has that happened a lot?”

  Yvonne shifted in her chair, crossing then re-crossing her legs. “Really, Sandra. I fail to see how my little career will be of the slightest interest to your readers. With the state of branch banking these days, I sincerely doubt that exceptional young women would find it a challenging career.”

  “Because?”

  “Customer service, administration and lending even, all rely heavily on computerization. There’s so little expectation that staff will think for themselves.” Yvonne’s pitch had climbed a notch or two. “Machine-generated scores have replaced human judgement.”