Part 14 (2/2)

A quiet man! Well, he'd have to be, wouldn't he?

A nurse peeped in, nodded cryptically, disappeared.

All at once, in a surge of irritation and disgust, Mr. Michaeli said, ”My wife and daughter don't want to let me go. Already in the Red Cross I was ready to die, but my wife insists for her sake I live. Why this fear? Death, you know, is nothing. But Gitte believes in getting back. Showing them you won. So here I am, waiting for my gold medal.”

”They love you,” I said.

But his outburst had exhausted him. ”Yes, yes,” he said, his voice retreating. ”Love we definitely have.” He shut his eyes; he wanted me to leave.

It seems we have countless ways of knowing-we surmise; we half-know; we know and don't know-and everything between. With dismaying clarity, Mr. Michaeli had spelled it out for me: Rosie's project was to offer compensation for her father's suffering by means of her talent for happiness, while Mr. Michaeli's project was to satisfy Rosie and Mrs. Michaeli by staying alive.

”I'll wait outside,” I whispered. I wasn't sure whether he could still hear me.

I returned to the waiting room and considered the news of my mother's secret courts.h.i.+p. In fact, it made sense: for the past few months she'd been taking off several times a week, right after dinner. If before Mr. Michaeli's revelation I thought about these excursions with anything other than relief, I must have supposed that my mother's circle of card-players was expanding.

She had also made herself some new outfits recently: a sequined black dress, a white jacket with a purple collar. Her soft cherubic knees were now in view; her lipstick was palest pink. Wandering into her room one evening I had come across a paperback ent.i.tled, remarkably, How to Ma.s.sage Your Man How to Ma.s.sage Your Man. All the same, it hadn't crossed my mind that in the real world there might be a man for her to ma.s.sage. I was accustomed to thinking of my mother as sole inhabitant of a microcosm that no one could alter, and that, therefore, no one could enter.

I felt betrayed, until it occurred to me that an entire area of discourse was in fact consistently absent from my mother's fractured soliloquies. The taboo subject wasn't s.e.x; on the contrary, when free love was celebrated as a revolutionary concept I thought both its proponents and its critics were strangely obsessive.

Rather, it was the future that, apart from generalized presentiments of disaster, was missing from our lives. I'd never heard my mother mention prospects or plans; we avoided discussing even the week ahead, never mind the broader outlines of hope and desire. I once showed my poor mother a photograph of mirrors reflecting each other to infinity. I was fascinated by the photo: we humans were truly amateurs, incapable even of grasping a concept as basic as endlessness. But Fanya covered her eyes and backed away-don't don't show me already I am dizzy- It was not, therefore, a polite Russian man my mother was hiding; it was what he might be planning for the two of them.

I leaned my head against the wall and stared at the fluorescent lights. t.i.torelli ... t.i.torelli ... t.i.torelli ... t.i.torelli ... I was a frequent patron of the Verdi, a repertory cinema on St. Laurent Street that ignored the censors.h.i.+p board's eighteen-and-over age restrictions. I enjoyed it all: the good, the bad, and the s.e.xist. David Hemmings's libidinous camera and gestalt investigations in I was a frequent patron of the Verdi, a repertory cinema on St. Laurent Street that ignored the censors.h.i.+p board's eighteen-and-over age restrictions. I enjoyed it all: the good, the bad, and the s.e.xist. David Hemmings's libidinous camera and gestalt investigations in Blowup Blowup; Rita Tus.h.i.+ngham wide-eyed and overwhelmed in The Knack The Knack; circus burlesque and hat fetishes in Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits Juliet of the Spirits. Other movies educated me: the focus on c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s in some obscure Swedish film was particularly illuminating. And if I had trouble falling asleep at night, I had only to think of Romy Schneider displaying her webbed fingers to Josef K and asking, Has she any physical defect Has she any physical defect? or recall the mad, lascivious laughter of the wild girls who reached out through bamboo bars and cried out, t.i.torelli, t.i.torelli ... t.i.torelli, t.i.torelli ... and I'd drift off. and I'd drift off.

I drifted off now in the waiting room chair, and in Proustian pre-sleep I reconstructed the words tinker tailor soldier sailor tinker tailor soldier sailor according to shape and size and colour. I had a confused notion that when I graduated I'd find a job diving underwater in search of people who had lost their vision by drowning. I'd bring them to sh.o.r.e and teach them Braille. according to shape and size and colour. I had a confused notion that when I graduated I'd find a job diving underwater in search of people who had lost their vision by drowning. I'd bring them to sh.o.r.e and teach them Braille.

By the time Rosie returned from the cafeteria I was wide awake. She handed me a container of rice pudding and a plastic spoon.

”Ooh, yummy,” I said. ”Thanks, Rosie.”

”How did it go at Patrick's?” she asked.

”It was crazy. Patrick played chess with his mother and they talked about Hegel Hegel!”

And the word, for teenaged-girl reasons, made us collapse into helpless giggles.

1973.

I've come to the last diary, the one that seems to glow like kryptonite, the one that marks off a before and an after. This is where they make their appearance, the demons who rise from the underworld to clutch at our ankles.

It's silver, in fact, this notebook, not kryptonite green; I remember how pleased I was with the colour when I bought it, just before we graduated-how fitting it seemed, for soon I'd be starting a new life, and who knew what splendour it would bring?

You think you can change things when you're young, that you control the plot, and if something goes wrong, that you can step over it and move on. If your raft capsizes, you can swim to sh.o.r.e, even make a sport of it.

I did swim into this afterlife, this aftermath, but it strikes me, now and then, that I may have headed in the wrong direction.

We wrote our last matriculation exam on a Friday morning in late June. I could hardly believe as I put down my pencil that I was free, absolutely free, for the rest of my life, to do as I pleased.

I had picked up a velvety blue-green corduroy s.h.i.+rt, and I wore it everywhere. My mother had sewn two embroidered bands onto the ends of my bell-bottom jeans, and I'd found a perfect pair of leather sandals with braided straps for only three dollars. I had a hat too-a funny, floppy felt hat, and Janis Joplin sungla.s.ses. Janis herself had died, along with other music celebrities, and we were at the tail end of the hippie era, but the defiant, pacifist spirit and flower-strewn iconography were still a part of the landscape.

What I wanted now was a celebration. ”I'll die if I don't go somewhere,” I said for the third time that afternoon. Rosie and I were sitting at my kitchen table, nibbling on Bubby's fruit salad. Rosie didn't like the grapefruit, I didn't like the sliced banana, so we traded. ”Where can we go?” I whined. ”There must be somewhere.”

Rosie was also at sea: that morning, her parents had left for Paris with a small group of post-war immigrants from Europe. Mr. Michaeli had resisted at first, but his wife was suddenly animated-even the colour of her eyes seemed to change from dull grey to soft blue. As far as I could tell, Mr. Michaeli felt it would be inexcusable to hold her back; he had commented more than once that she hadn't known what she was going into when she married him. As for his health, a new drug had worked wonders, and his doctor said he could travel if he didn't overstrain himself.

The wonderful coincidence-Rosie available just as I was hankering to get away-proved that it was meant to be.

”We need someone rich,” I said. ”Someone who can drive us and pay all our expenses.”

”Patrick!” we exclaimed in unison. Rosie wasn't entirely serious, but I immediately began looking for his number.

Though Patrick and I had not stayed in touch, and I hadn't heard from Anthony, I often thought of the Moores in their various hideaways around the globe: monastery, attic, mansion, LA.

I dialled Patrick's number. ”This isn't Giovanni's Gardening Supplies,” he said glumly.

”Patrick? Is that you? It's Maya.”

”Oh, hi.” He seemed pleased to hear from me. ”I keep getting calls for this gardening supplies store. They printed my number on some flyer or something.”

”How are you?” I asked. ”Rosie's here, she says hi.”

”I'm the same,” he said with his signature sigh.

”Listen, can we come over? We want to ask you something.”

”Yeah, sure. You want a lift?”

He remembered my address and said he'd be there soon. Rosie and I sat by the front window, on the lookout for a white Mercedes. ”Where should we ask him to take us?” I wondered, drumming my fingers impatiently on the sill.

”Ottawa?”

”Ottawa! I was thinking of something a little more exciting, Rosie-like the Rockies, maybe. A road trip, right across Canada-that would be cool. Like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, except we wouldn't be as obnoxious as those guys. Or stoned out of our skulls.”

”Let's get stoned!” Rosie cheered, and we belted out an unrestrained, partly improvised rendition of ”Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” We moved on to ”Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and were in the midst of making loud, silly sniffing noises along with reluctantly aging Lather when Patrick's car screeched to a stop in front of the house. We sprinted downstairs and toppled onto the leather seats. Patrick was half-baffled, half-relieved by our giddiness. He'd grown a beard since we last saw him, a friendly, curly beard with surprising threads of gold.

”Cute beard,” I said. ”Makes you look like Che Guevara.”

”I just got bored shaving. What did you want to ask?”

We told him what we had in mind.

”The Rockies ...” he said doubtfully. ”That seems like a long way off. I mean, what if we get on each other's nerves? We'll be stuck. But ... well, I'm not sure it's still around, but we used to have a country house up north. You could go there, if it hasn't been vandalized. Or sold. I'll have to ask my mother.”

Rosie, who was sitting in front, touched Patrick's shoulder in grat.i.tude. He drew away with an unmistakable flinch. Rosie wasn't offended. She turned around and said, ”It is kind of far. What if I have to come home suddenly? What if Daddy has to come back? I wouldn't want to be way out in Alberta!”

Patrick's body relaxed, though whether because Rosie had withdrawn her hand or the plan, I wasn't sure.

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