Crossings (12 page)

‘I said to my mother, “It's out there, in the back yard,” and she laughs. “Oh yeah.” She almost died when she saw it. But I'd been saving for a year. I told her I was saving for a horse, and it was my money, I'd earned it.'

‘What's the bit about the one stirrup?'

‘Well, when I got out of hospital, this one,' and I lifted it, ‘was like a table leg. I'm not kidding!' because he is laughing. ‘So I took off the right stirrup and rode that way all summer. And it came back. My leg.'

‘Yah,' Mik says. ‘You can't tell the difference.' And, ‘You must have been one tough kid.'

‘So how were you in the war?'

‘My buddy and me, we signed up when we were fifteen. Lied about our ages. I was in Italy when I was sixteen.' And he tells me stories about the war.

‘I come up and this guy, he's yelling and hollering and he says, “For christ sake, kill me.” His balls is blown off. So I take out the pistol and I shoot him through the eye.'

And, ‘I see this German bastard crawling away, his ass in the air, and I shoot him like that, in the asshole.'

‘You must have been one tough kid yourself.' Mik laughs.

We walk home through the soft air and he does not touch me. In the front room I say, ‘Well, goodnight,' and he says, ‘See ya.' And picks up the newspaper. Up in our bedroom I think of Desdemona and how she said, ‘He told me stories.' But then I think, But who is Othello, which one? And I laugh too, softly, so Jocelyn will not hear.

One day I come back from the Nut Lady and I take down the bottle of meprobamates and I chew them, one by one, sitting on my bed. Looking at Jocelyn's.

I don't think about what I am doing. I don't give it a name. I just start to chew them up, one by one. They taste terrible. Jocelyn's bed is a mess.

When I came in a few minutes ago, Mik and his friend George were in the front room. They were drinking beer. I said hello and came upstairs. I can't remember what had happened with the Nut Lady. I know I had the dream again last night. Neon blue. Water. The baby in the neon blue water and the mirror cracks.

As usual, Jocelyn's bed is unmade. A week ago I gathered up all her things, from all over the house—boots, stockings, books, nose drops, her grey wool blouse, bloody panties from our closet floor, pearl nail polish—and dumped them in the middle of her bed. On the comforter I made her out of foam rubber and nine yards of orange cotton. The comforter leaks. The foam rubber is all over the floor. And the dust. From here I get a good view of under her bed. Arrgh. The afternoon light is pitiless. All the things there, for a whole week. She just crawls in under them at night. Kafka is on top.
Crime and Punishment
is on the floor, she has stepped on it, its spine is broken.
The Magic Mountain
is on the floor too, with a cup of old tea on top, making a stain, no doubt. The new black skirt I gave her for Christmas is crumpled hopelessly at the bottom of the bed, wedged in between the mattress and the bed posts.

I get under my blankets, lying down, still chewing.

I feel very light, very peaceful. The ceiling is neat.

The door bursts open and Mik comes into the room. His face looks as though it has been boiled. I hide the pill bottle under my pillow.

He has never been in here before. I am ashamed of the mess.

He is drunk.

He kneels down beside my bed, not touching me, and he says, ‘I love you.'

And, ‘I only ever loved one other person in my whole life. Gil. And I killed him.'

I am not able to say anything. I just lie there, looking into his face.

‘He was clean and good, like you. His name was Gil. We were in Palestine and there was this fight and I heard him yell. He yelled “Mik!” and I come running. I had this knife in my hand and I come round this corner and there's this fucking Arab coming at me and I let him have it. In the gut. And after, when they put on the lights, it's no Arab. I never loved anyone else like that. You're like my mother's kitchen cupboards. All clean and good.'

Later, Mik denies the whole thing. He never came into my room. He never killed Gil. Yes, he had a friend called Gil, but he never killed him. He never said he loved me.

I've been over it and over it. I've told myself it was just another hypnagogic vision. And I've answered, ‘But I'd never use the kitchen cupboards metaphor.'

I don't remember his leaving. I remember waking up and coming downstairs.

I remember Jocelyn saying to me, ‘What's the matter with your eyes?'

I remember saying, ‘I'm sorry about the pile. On the bed.'

I remember she doesn't answer for a while. Then she says, ‘Okay. I'm sorry I'm such a slob.'

‘I shouldn't have done it.'

‘I'd have left it there till kingdom come,' she says.

When I go up again, later, the pile is gone, both our beds are made, everything is mopped and clean. There's even a safety pin in the comforter.

When I'm sure Jocelyn is asleep, I masturbate. I pretend Mik has just burst into the room and he has said, ‘Now I'm gonna give you a baby.'

 

ONE OF MY professors phones and says, would I like to come over for a few days to the island.

I go, with my typewriter, and I work on my play and he works on his article.

It is very quiet, very peaceful. Sometimes we swim. One night he says, ‘Let's swim nude,' and we do, our fingers and toes shooting sparks in the phosphorescent water. I'll never forget that, the dark red water and the flashes of lightning coming out of my fingers and toes.

He says, ‘Homer was right. The sea is the colour of wine.'

We were very peaceful together, this good old man and I. He hates liars. He honours what he calls ‘the Real.' In the evenings we read each other what we have written, and drink gin and tonic, listen to Stravinsky. The night comes down and I feel very safe. I sleep in the guest house. One wall is glass, and when I wake in the mornings I see arbutus trees, their barks curling softly away from the clean undersides.

He is a good man, a kind man, and he asks me about my marriage. What went wrong. I hate it, when people ask me, but I don't hate him. I want to tell me, I want to tell him the truth.

‘But it's so hard,' I say. ‘I don't really know myself. I was unfaithful to Ben, you know.'

‘Were you?'

‘Yes. Do you remember Robin French?'

‘That English boy? The one with the bare feet?'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought he was queer.'

 

‘YOU
AGREED,
' said Ben, that night in Mexico. ‘You
agreed.
' And he took his sketches and tore them across. Threw them into the fireplace and poured the glass of tequila over them. The worst thing he could have done.

We had gone to Mexico so that he could be free at last. To be an artist.

He had worked all those years and put me through university. Now it was my turn to support him. He tore the sketches across and threw them in the fireplace. All the sketches. All the work of months. So very few. So very bad.

After that night, he never touched me again. Not until the end. I would brush against him at night and he would wince away as if I were a cattle prod. We had used to curl up together, his arms around me, my face against his chest. Ben was very hairy. I loved the way it curled up at the neck of his shirt, like furry spiders' legs. But I had liked spiders. I would pick them up and carry them out into the garden. If you love them, they don't bite.

I finished my book. Clackety-clack. Ben drank. I went to the clinic.

One day the doctor says to me, ‘Shall I tell you a comedy? Shall I tell you what they call you? The villagers?'

My Spanish has improved. We have got to the point where we can tell each other comedies.

‘What do they call me?'

‘
La gringita virgita
.'

The little American virgin.

‘But I'm not American,' I say.

And, after a minute. ‘Nor am I a virgin.'

‘
Que?
' Or whatever it was. I've forgotten it all. That looks French.

He is staring at me, his eyes very Indian again. ‘But you wear no ring?'

‘No. We don't believe in rings. The bull, he wears a ring in his nose, is it not true?' But my Spanish isn't good enough for this comedy. The doctor does not laugh. I don't know how to say ‘principle' and ‘freedom' and ‘private property ethic,' though I am certain he would understand if I could. He is a Marxist, the doctor, though he wears a medal around his neck.

‘My husband, he does not wear a ring,' I say.

‘Your brother?'

‘My
husband. Sposo
. No brother.'

‘
Sposo? Verdad?
'

‘Yes, for seven years. Since seven years.'

‘You should wear a ring,' says the doctor. He looks very cross.

‘But
you
wear too many rings,' I say, meaning the medal and the party card, but he does not laugh.

‘All these times, since so long, I have called you “
señorita
.”'

‘But you call all the American volunteer ladies “
señorita
.”'

‘That is a comedy, because they are so old and fat.'

One day Ben says, ‘I want to go home.' We leave the next day. I send a message with the only American lady I can trust. I give her a key to the morphine cupboard. ‘That's why they came, you know,' I say to her. ‘All the women from the colony.' I am very indignant. When I found out, I did a thorough inventory and put a lock on the door. The volunteer rate dropped alarmingly. But this one still came so I give her the key. And the message for the doctor. I am ashamed to tell him myself. I feel as though I am deserting him.

We drive back through the long high deserts, past the mauve hills. We stop for a while with his mother, with mine. My grandmother dies while I'm there. I sit by her bed for a long time but at the end, Uncle Forbes sends me out for cigarettes and I go, knowing. When I get back it is over. Aunt Foster gives me Grandma's wedding ring.

Back in Vancouver I go to work full-time in the lab, and take a philosophy course toward my Master's. I withdraw my thesis, my novel about the Marxist and the wife who wants a baby. I say I do not believe in creative writing degrees. The acting head is delighted; he has fought the program from the first. Everyone thinks me very noble and high-minded. But the truth is, I am ashamed of the book. I do not quite know why. I only know that when, at last, I gave it to Ben to read he said, ‘It's very interesting.' I never sent it out. I put it away in the trunk.

Ben buys me two Siamese cats. And a television.

Peter is the male and the female is Molly. But one day we hear a car screech, and she is dead. She lies in the road, all the air gone out of her, looking so small. And Peter pines. He refuses to eat. So we get Sally. At first she pays no attention to Peter at all. Very practical, Sally was. She checks out the food dish, the water pan, the kitty litter, then she circles Peter. Pouncing at him. Sidling up stiff-legged. But all Peter does is howl and yowl and say, ‘Leave me alone, my heart is broken, I want to die.'

And she circles him. ‘Go away,' he spits. ‘Go away and let me die in peace.' Sally circles. Round and round, closer and closer. When we go to bed she is sitting on Peter's head. From under her rump come the most appalling noises. Indignation mingles with self-pity. When we get up, there he is, weak and wobbly, eating.

A Siamese is the only other animal who likes to do it all the time. Besides humans, I mean. Maybe monkeys are like that too, I don't know.

But I mourn Molly. Her death seems an omen.

By January, Sally is pregnant.

I go to work in the mornings and Ben makes sake. He has a large green bottle with spigots and hoses and it is all very complicated. When he isn't making sake, he is drinking it. When I come home, my supper is ready. The apartment is spotless. Ben is drunk.