Part 11 (1/2)
After he slept, a quiet hour pa.s.sed. How long has this been going on? How could you? Humiliating, unsayable cliches, dead idioms. Jake's toothbrush buzzed.
”Goodnight,” I said. ”I'm watching the news.”
Then a PBS doc, the US invading Grenada. I dragged upstairs. At the sight of him in our bed, I U-turned to huddle by the TV till dawn.
Off Henry went to school, my clever boy. Then he'd go to grand-mere's, to make mince tarts. Her pastry, inimitable.
Mr. Suns.h.i.+ne was p.r.o.ne in the living room, applying tape by the baseboards to keep the floor clear of paint. He held the roll between his teeth.
”How long have you been f.u.c.king Melanie?”
Jake didn't tear the tape. Silence. Like greetings that give the avid caller only a circling whisper for unendurable seconds. Hi there! Hal and Mich.e.l.le are having too much fun to answer the phone, so leave a message.
”It's got nothing to do with us. Totally separate, totally.” Another 80s word.
Then why pray tell have you kept it secret?
”There's no difference for you and me! We make it nearly every day.”
There is so. You have lied, in your body.
Mr. Suns.h.i.+ne scrambled up, headed for the door.
”Don't you run away! I'll call her. That'll be different!” The soccer list, by the phone. I dialled. f.u.c.k you I'd say. Jake grabbed at the receiver. Ringing. I spat in his face, cliche. He backed off. Thanks for calling. Melanie and Curtis aren't able. . . A warm voice. Why wasn't she there, the b.i.t.c.h?
”You G.o.d-d.a.m.ned b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It's over.”
I went to work.
Subsequently I repeated the above many tedious times. It's also possible to cry so often it gets boring. Not tears again!
”This isn't f.u.c.king necessary, Lauren!”
”f.u.c.king her wasn't necessary!”
We could shout because our boy was helping to move grand-mere's sofa so her cleaner could vacuum behind. Then they'd watch Charlotte's Web. For hot chocolate they grated bittersweet, melted it over hot water. Neither admired Debbie Reynolds as the spider's voice. They were re-reading the novel. Soon they'd move on to Jimmy Stewart and Alastair Sim.
Henry would go on living in his home, Jake and I decided. We'd take fortnightly turns with him. How to tell them?
”Madame will think it's crazy.” Here we agreed.
Shortly before Christmas, again the taped f.u.c.k you, the m.u.f.fled start and finish.
A woman. Myrna, Rosalind, Lesley, Robin, Andrea?
When I knew they'd be out I phoned, listening three times to spiteful Andrea who'd once asked Rosalind, ”What do you want a baby for? You haven't even got a man of your own.”
No match. Erase.
As I was driving my mother to our house on Christmas Eve she remarked, ”You look worried, Lauren.”
”I am.” Which I hadn't planned to say.
”Is it Henry?”
”Is what? Has he said something?”
The car moved along the silent road. Snow in Vancouver isn't common. The whiteness brings a quiet that's always surprising. She doesn't even answer me, I could say at book club.
In January I escorted my mother to a game. She sat in the car with the heater on, to watch her grandson's team win. Melanie and Curtis were visible. Jake did not join us. No one went to Tom & Jerry's.
Next day, listening to the messages, my brain was full of a library crisis. Perhaps that freed my ears?
She'd had to struggle past the expletive's initial consonant. He's fff.u.c.king you over. As if in a movie my mother sat at her desk, her linen handkerchief wrapped round the receiver.
When at the next book club I opened her dossier of old age and frailty, when I observed how those greedy ears yearned for more, I knew the novelist's power. I had those women. Elated, I took them to wartime France to see my mother's loving guilt. They clasped their hands, wept softly. ”Oh, Lauren, your poor mum. So hard, so sad.” Next I catalogued her doctor's a.s.sessment, the geriatric social worker's, her housecleaner's. My husband's. Saying Jake axed open my throat.
”He, he, he's,” horrible guttural, ”been unfaithful. You can't imagine how long it's been going on.”
”Years!” cried Fair Rosalind, and slid off her chair in a faint.
Later she said a hundred times, ”Jake swore he'd told you.”
”You knew, Lauren!” he himself shouted. ”You couldn't believe I was just tree-planting in Terrace every year!”
Unread codes.
Done for. No good life could grow there again.
”I won't do that,” Henry said. ”I'm going to live with grand-mere.”
”Mum and I will take turns, here.” Jake spoke gently, though an hour earlier he'd been roaring, ”Rosalind talked to me. For you I was just a dumb hunk.” Those cliches too.
”I don't want turns,” said Henry.
We tried.
We tried with my mother. She did her wave thing.
Not the weekends but the long turns were the worst.
Each summer Henry was with me for a month. Thirty-one days. Not long. Long enough to feel the child in his room close by in the apartment, to hear him breathe and stir in our shared air, to watch him dream, yet soon so soon to feel time draining and sucking away as it does during the speed-of-light week before the deadline set for the worst thing ever: helping my boy pack his little clothes, his books and games, and releasing him to the other parent.
Men have abounded, mostly s.e.xual amateurs. An unsuccessful migrant word, that, its meaning muddled en route to a new tongue.
I still love my work. Friends, books, movies. Not plays. My son doesn't speak of his father.
Renaissance, that's what happened to grand-mere after Henry moved in. She died in her nineties, weeks after dancing at her grandson's wedding. What price did she pay for breaking her own code to send that foul message to her distant child? Not quite idiomatic. Crucial. She'd have wiped her lips, after. As for the answering machine, only last week I saw one at Too Much Collectables, in a window full of retro tchotchkes and faux-distressed chairs. I walked on towards Bean a While. Their coffee's good. Rosalind and I still meet sometimes, to talk. Lesley bought our machine. In itself that old technology was reliable.
Addresses THE RIGHT APARTMENT. MEANING WHAT?.