by Cecelia Frey
She came to the place where when she thought of the Cave and her sisters, instead of regret of loss she felt acceptance for what was right and inevitable. She understood that leaving the safe place is necessary for growth. No one escaped. Escaped what? she questioned. Life, was the answer. What had happened to them was life. To escape life would be not to live, not to have experiences, good and bad. After all, we can’t expect to have only good happy experiences, she reasoned. The word “good” is misunderstood. It’s all good, because it’s all life.
This understanding was one of her major breakthroughs.
The day came when she could no longer see George. She could not see him in his new life: walking to the university, bouncing a child on his knee. She could not see him in their house, his house now, Veronica’s house. The place he should have been was blank, a blank spot in her vision like the precursor to a migraine.
She still loved him and she expected he still loved her. This love helped her to find the strength to know that a segment of her life was finished, as was a segment of his. The task now for each of them was to get on with the next segment.
Behind her, the phone rang. She could tell from the display that it was Helena. She should pick up the phone. Helena was so good to her, so thoughtful, visiting her last summer, phoning her on a regular basis, following her to Toronto in the first place. Two years ago she had given Helena a terrible shock. She had not told her sister until half an hour before the taxi was to arrive to take her to the airport that she was leaving George. Helena would demand details, would demand that she stick up for her rights. Esther could not face that interrogation and advice. But, then, she’d had to relent and let Helena follow her to Toronto on the first available flight. It was the only way she could get off the phone.
That first month in Toronto, between the commiseration, advice, and loving care of Helena and Delores, they were all in Delores’s small apartment, Esther’s resolve threatened to shatter. She needed to be alone to mourn properly. Sharing her grief diluted it and confused her. She managed to pack Helena back to Ben with the promise of phoning her every day and letting her come again at a later date and she started to look for her own apartment.
The phone calls had tapered off to once a week but the subject was the same. While Esther was finished with it, Helena was not. “I can’t believe that you just walked out of there and let them have the house. It’s your house. You can still get it back. Let him move.” Helena wanted to talk about her own feelings of guilt in the matter. “I should have known. I was living in the house for two months, with the two of you, I can’t believe I didn’t detect something was wrong, that I was so insensitive, the way I went on and on about my troubles and didn’t even ask you about yours. You must have been suffering so. And you didn’t tell me!”
At first Esther tried to comfort and reassure her. “I wasn’t suffering. I didn’t have any troubles, I keep telling you, I didn’t know about George.” But the words did not penetrate Helena’s outrage and sense of failure. Now, usually, Esther listened patiently, nodded and said yes, dear, but tonight she did not feel like rehashing it all again. She did not feel like being quizzed about her life or her feelings. She did not want to be bawled out for not upgrading her education degree to get Ontario accreditation. She knew if she did that she could get a job that paid better, but the children needed her and were so dear to her. Helena couldn’t seem to understand that she liked her job.
And Helena kept chipping away at George and Veronica, listing their shortcomings, citing the faults that kept them from being lovable or even likeable creatures. She did not understand that Esther needed to keep her love strong and alive and not let anyone destroy it. To hate Veronica would diminish herself and certainly not affect Veronica in the least. To verbally abuse George would jeopardize the love within herself, which was her integrity in the world.
Besides, she was looking forward to the evening. She did not want to start it off with Helena’s scathing comments about Veronica and criticism of George ringing in her ears. She let the message service answer. She would phone her sister tomorrow when she felt up to it. She returned the phone to its cradle.
And there was the door buzzer.
Esther walked slowly and regally, all of five foot two and dimply plump, through her apartment toward the door. She felt quite trendy in her long skirt, newly purchased loose top, and open-toed sandals. She could almost imagine that she was tall and slim with long flowing blonde hair, the recent Hollywood style. At her recent pedicure, she’d had the girl paint a delicate flower on each of her shiny red big toe nails. As the skirt swished about her thighs, she felt the ordinary world fall away and knew that something extraordinary awaited her.
She reached out her arm and opened the door to a smiling man, not too tall, sturdy but trim, with greying hair and laughing eyes, who held flowers in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.
XIV: THE LOVERS ELOPE SKYWARD
“I DON’T KEEP THINGS from you. Do you keep things from me?”
“No. Of course not. Well, trivial things, things you wouldn’t be interested in.”
“How do you know what I’d be interested in?”
“You can’t tell another person everything,” Benjamin said. “There aren’t enough hours in the day. And a person forgets. And so much that happens is insignificant.”
“What seems insignificant to you might be significant to me,” Helena contended.
They were walking on a paved pathway that wound through the river valley park. To one side was the brown sluggish North Saskatchewan, to the other, a high, shrub-covered embankment falling from the drive above which bordered the valley rim, the same drive where, farther along, closer to the university, George used to jog between his two lives. Up the hill from where they were walking was their new home, the apartment they had taken together.
Along the path, growth was abundant. The green was vibrant, trees and bushes exulted with life. The air was full of lilting fragrance, buoying up the walkers and runners who had turned out en masse to enjoy a glorious Sunday morning.
“I find it hard to believe,” Helena said, sidestepping a jogger. “We’re an old married couple. An old story.”
“With a happy ending.” He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close. Her hair brushed his cheek. An effusion of dark curls framing her face was one of the signs, an outward manifestation, of her return, if not to the happy girl of her youth, at least to a woman who was confident of the future. “I’m ready for a few years of comedy myself.”
“Yes, I want to be happy for a while. I’m tired of the darkness. It seemed like we were just climbing out of the pit when Esther was tossed into it.”
“But she’s managed to climb out, too.”
“I hope so.”
“You doubt her word?”
“No, but she may not want to worry us. We used to tell each other everything, when we were young, young girls confiding in each other. But I don’t know any more. She thought she had a happy marriage. It must have been such a shock for her to find out she didn’t. She must have been so upset. But she didn’t say a word about it to me. And we were living in the same house!”
“I think it all happened so fast, Ver … that woman showing up at the door, Esther’s decision. And you’d moved out by then. She didn’t have the opportunity to discuss it with you.”
“Well, she should have made the opportunity. I would have advised packing his bag and throwing it out the door after him. Instead, she packed her bags and walked out. It was like going to a nunnery. Renouncing the world.”
“But she’s done the opposite. Embraced the world.”
“It makes my blood boil, when I think what she’s let him get away with. Especially the house. Esther loved that house.”
“Shhh.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s her life. You have to let her do what she wants with it.”
“But is that what she really wants? Exiling herself away from her friends, away from us?”
“Delores is there.”
“Yes, that’s one good thing.”
They walked in silence a while. In that silence Benjamin thought how he could not possibly tell her about his part in Esther’s decision. How could he tell her about their talk on the park bench that bleak spring day two years ago? In the first place, she would be struck with guilt that she had not been there to take Esther’s phone call. And if she had been there, would three people’s lives now be different than they were? Would Helena have convinced Esther to hang on? Throw the bum out! That had been her stance. Still was. And yet she had liked George. Maybe at some level she still did. Maybe what really infuriated Helena was Esther’s total capitulation to the demands of Veronica. And likely she would be furious with him for taking it upon himself to give advice to her sister, sticking his nose into her family’s affairs. The fact that Esther had not followed his advice would be irrelevant in Helena’s judgment of the situation.
And how could he tell her that he knew about George three days before she did? He had made a promise to Esther. He had been bound to secrecy. Their conversation, as far as he was concerned, had the sanctity of the confessional. But what if, in a forgetful moment, Esther mentioned the park bench incident to Helena? Or what if Esther assumed that he had told Helena about it even though she had told him not to and so mentioned it herself? And then there was Veronica.
“…What she must have been going through!”
“I don’t think she was going through anything.” Since Benjamin had been listening to this replay for nearly two years, he was able to tune into Helena’s remarks and answer accurately. “She didn’t know about George then.”
“So she says.”
“Don’t you believe her?”
“Oh yes. One must believe Esther. But she’s good at fooling herself. Likely she knew but didn’t know, the way you can know things but you don’t let yourself know them.”
“I think she was completely innocent of that knowledge when you were staying in her house.”
“George was carrying on for years! She must have suspected something.”
“Esther is very trusting.”
“Naive might be a better word. Let’s face it, she’s not swift in some ways. But you’d think she might have felt there was something wrong. After all, they shared the same bed! How is that possible?”
“Esther would be easy to deceive. She’s entirely without suspicion.”
“Maybe you’re right. She would have told me. Even if she had just suspected, she would have told me. Or I would have known. I would have sensed something. Sisters can’t keep these things from each other. No, she seemed the perfectly happy little housewife doting on her middle-aged husband when the child was gone.” Helena thought a moment. “And Esther wants everything to be nice. She builds a scenario in her mind, a nice scenario. She wants everybody to be happy, everything to be wonderful. Discord, fighting, scenes, they always did upset her. If our parents so much as had a difference of opinion, she would be terribly upset. Now, that woman George has taken up with, she looks like a person who wouldn’t be much upset by scenes.”
“Esther prefers not to see,” Benjamin quickly brought the conversation back to Esther as a topic. As always at mention of Veronica, he felt a stab of conscience. It was conceivable that he might some day tell his wife about Esther’s phone call and their talk that cold spring day on a park bench, but how could he ever tell her about Veronica? The fact that he had had an affair with the woman who, in her opinion, had ruined her beloved sister’s life would be damning enough, but the fallout of that affair in the intolerant eyes of his wife would be unforgivable. But what if she found out from someone else? What if Helena and Veronica met at a university function? It would be just like Veronica to say something awkward.
“Maybe she’s changed. She was telling me on the phone that she’s started wearing her glasses. You know how she never would wear them even when she couldn’t see traffic signs? Well, it seems she was invited to a party by someone in her building. She saw an attractive man across the room, at least she thought he was attractive, she couldn’t see him well enough to be sure and she couldn’t be sure of his age. And was he wearing a wedding ring? All of a sudden the stupidity of the situation struck her. She excused herself, found her handbag in the closet, put on her glasses then and there, and hasn’t taken them off since.”
“She’s turned out to be a survivor. Tougher than we thought.”
They had come to the end of the path. They stood and looked at the city, the buildings rising tall on the opposite embankment, the slow river. A riverboat with bright flags chugged past carrying a load of passengers, but when Helena spoke it was obvious that her thoughts were not on the scene. “I scarcely saw her those few weeks before she left. After I moved, she’d call and I was too busy to talk. I was spending all my time with you and getting back into my dissertation. She must have needed to talk. The story of my life. Not to be there when people need me. It’s a sort of betrayal. I seem fated to betray people.”
“There you go again, making a myth out of ordinary life.”
“Something I learned from you.”
“But I cured myself. Or, at least, I’m curing myself. Let’s sit a moment.”
They found a bench off the pathway. Benjamin took off his glasses and massaged the narrow bridge of his nose, the deep cleft either side. He held his face up to the sun. He closed his eyes.
Helena’s voice invaded his dreamlike state. “I wouldn’t elevate my life to the mythic. It’s more like a third-rate Harlequin. Except for the time with you.”
“What’s that? A Thomas Hardy? A Dostoevsky?”
“I hope not. They’re so grim. I’d rather be in a comedy.”
“Tragedy and comedy are the same, though, aren’t they? It just depends on when you tune in to the story. And when you leave your characters. It’s all cyclic. Take you and me. Right now we’re flying high. But at one time we had fallen with a thud.”
“Do you think we’ll fall again?”
“If we do, then we’ll just have to try and rise again.”
“I hope George and that woman are in a tragedy.”
“No, you don’t. I hear she’s pregnant again.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I saw George.”
“And you didn’t tell me!”
“It was only yesterday. I’ve been going to tell you.”
“My God, two kids at George’s age! That must be a comedy. It’s amazing, though, isn’t it? How everything settles down and nobody cares.”
“No one remembers. Half the faces on the history department staff are new. And most people are busy with their own problems. But, here’s something else I haven’t told you yet. George is up for some research award, quite prestigious. International.”
“Sorry, I don’t want to hear about anything good happening to him.”
“Try to remember the old days. George was a good guy. All his life he’s been involved in intellectual pursuits. His life and his mind disciplined to the scientific order. Maybe he had to do something that didn’t involve his intellect. Maybe he had to do something outrageous before his life was over.”
“Likely I’d be more forgiving if that outrage hadn’t involved my sister.”
“Esther wanted to work with disadvantaged children. She’s finally doing what she wanted to do. Try not to hate George.”
“I’d hate anybody who caused my sister such misery.”
I can’t tell her now, thought Benjamin. Maybe he would never be able to tell her that Esther’s misery was his fault — that if he had done as much for Veronica as he did for his unfortunates at the Centre, if he had treated her with compassion, with human kindness, he might have saved everyone a lot of grief. And what of Veron
ica and George now? Can a relationship that started with revenge possibly turn out well?
Was Veronica capable of love? He didn’t know. And how about George? In the Cave days, neither George nor Esther seemed to inquire too deeply into emotions. George was too much the scientist and Esther was too busy being nice. But he didn’t know if his assessment was accurate. What can we really know about another person’s deep thoughts and feelings, he asked himself, which was why complete honesty between people was impossible. Even if you share information with another person, they can only have a surface understanding of what you’re talking about. They cannot internalize your situation. He had told Helena about his visit to Amanda and that she had helped him see things in a different way. But how could he ever explain to her the deep mystical experience of Amanda? Since he was a person who never had mystical experiences, deep or otherwise, he could not even explain it to himself. Even if he tried to tell her, she could never fully understand. She could never feel it as he had. They could only share the surface story. The truth is that you can never tell another person everything, decided Benjamin, because they can’t know your truth.
“What is the truth?” A voice inserted itself in his thought.
Startled, he turned his head quickly toward Helena. Had he spoken out loud? Had she read his thoughts?
“Behind George,” Helena elaborated. “I can’t understand how he would choose Veronica and upheaval instead of Esther and comfort. It just doesn’t sound like George.”
Benjamin pulled Helena to her feet. “The truth is, it’s none of our business. It’s up to George and Veronica to redeem the situation for themselves. They’re the only ones who can.”
They started walking again. All it takes is control, thought Benjamin. He didn’t know about Veronica but he was pretty sure George was good at control. As for himself, he supposed he could never entirely control his thoughts. He still sometimes thought about the war. Sometimes, he believed himself a coward who had come north to escape having to face physical discomfort. Sometimes, he believed he had come here because he had felt a need to rebel against his father. At other times, he distinctly remembered that he had, in fact, taken a definite moral stance against the war, against his country’s exploitation of weaker countries for its own gain. He could not know with certainty what his motives had been. He could not remember the details. His past life was slipping away in his mind and through time would become ever more dim. He had thrown away physical reminders; he had thrown out the tin box. When he and Helena were packing to move into their new apartment, he had held the box in his hands for a long time. It was all he had left of his mother and father. It contained his father’s words, his mother’s words. But they were the wrong words. They were not helpful. They were words that would hold him back, that would hamper him in his attempt to get through life. It was better to remember his parents during happy times, occasions of his childhood and boyhood. He had willed himself to toss the box into the large black plastic garbage bag overflowing with all the other residue of a former messy existence.
