Crossings (13 page)

One evening, after the philosophy seminar, I am walking back across the quad with Robin and I say, ‘What do you think about this magic business of Sartre's? If there were a bear, could you really make it disappear?' I remember because later he quotes me, laughing, saying, ‘You were so intense.'

I didn't understand. It still seems to me a good thing, an incantation against bears.

One night I give him a lift, and we sit out in front of the Varsity Grill for three hours, talking about Life. Robin tells me how he was put in an English jail for three months, for being a conscientious objector. ‘I forgot to fill in the forms,' he says. ‘So it became an issue.'

I tell him about wanting a baby.

‘Doesn't your husband want children?'

‘No. He says the world is over-populated already.'

‘I think people should be able to have babies if they want them,' says Robin, after a moment's judicious thought.

He tells me about the sorority girl he's in love with. I've seen her. She's got shoulder length blonde hair, which turns under smoothly; and she wears cashmere sweaters with matching skirts. It's hopeless and he knows it, and I, looking at him, think it's hopeless too.

Robin is thin and smells. He has terrible acne and often forgets to wear socks.

I cry a bit before he gets out. Then I drive home.

‘The supper's ruined,' Ben says, furious. ‘Completely ruined. You could have called to let me know.' He has that silly look on his face. I know he's drunk but I'm too far gone to care.

‘I want a baby.'

I haven't said it for almost a year.

But Ben says, ‘If you're going to start that again, I want a divorce.'

There is a great sighing whoosh in my head. I sit down, still in my coat. The television is on. I seem to be watching it.

‘I mean it,' says Ben. ‘I'm getting a divorce. I'm leaving you.'

It occurs to me that I really do not want Ben's baby. Ben has terribly thin skin. When we used to make love, the marks from my fingernails would rise up in white welts on his back. I wouldn't want a baby with thin skin.

‘I'm leaving tonight,' says Ben. ‘I'm warning you. If you bring that up once more.'

‘I want a baby.'

‘I want a divorce!' Ben says.

All right. All right all right all right.

‘I'll go down to Berkeley and stay with Sam. I'll give you grounds.'

Yes all right yes yes oh god thank you yes.

Ben stomps off into the bedroom. It's a basement suite as usual. He has to go down two steps into the kitchen and up two steps into the bedroom. I hear him opening drawers. I see him come back down into the kitchen and up two steps to the basement door. I hear him getting down a flight bag.

I am still watching television. It seems a queer thing to be doing, sitting in my black winter coat, forty-eight dollars. I was wrong. Neither Grace nor Terence liked it, good taste or not.

Ben comes back into the front room. He is wearing his Mexican shirt and the suede jacket I gave him. But it's February. It's going to be cold, driving down to Berkeley.

‘I'm all right,' he says. ‘I really am leaving you,' he says.

‘Have you got enough money?'

‘I've got enough,' he says but I don't think so. I don't think he can have more than ten dollars.

‘All right,' I say. ‘I'll get a baby somehow.'

‘I know about it already. You've been going to bed with that beatnik. That Robin French. I know.'

I shake my head. ‘No. But maybe I will.'

‘Well, I'm through with you. I'm really finished this time. I mean it.'

‘All right.'

‘I think you are mentally ill,' says Ben and goes, closing the door softly after him.

It was our first fight. We've never fought before. I turn off the television.

Not wasting a moment, I telephone Robin, who, miraculously, is home. Then it must have taken longer than I thought. He had to eat and walk down the hill.

‘Look,' I say, ‘did you mean that, about people having the right to have babies?'

‘Sure. What's up?'

‘My husband's left me. Will you give me a baby?'

There is a long pause. ‘I'm not in love with you, Vicky.'

‘I know.' I'm not in love with him either.

‘We'll have to have a gentlemen's agreement about this,' Robin says.

‘All right,' I say. I'm used to gentlemen's agreements. I've been a gentleman all my married life.

I call a taxi and get off at the address Robin has given me on the phone.

It's a house right across from the beach. Locarno Beach. A rather large, new, imposing house. Robin lives in the rec room. I don't go in at first. I cross over the road and look at the ocean. Moving lugubriously in the fog. A moral idiot. The fog horns sound from across the water. Lonely. The loneliest sound in the world, a fog horn on a foggy night. In February.

Robin lets me in the basement door, going ‘Shh, shh' because of the landlady upstairs. I can hear her TV droning on like a retarded child. It is very chilly in this rec room. My heels are congealed with cold. My marrow has burst into ice crystals. Frostbite appears on my fingers.

There is a large stone fireplace and a chair. A table. A hot plate.

A mattress lying on the floor. I just get undressed and lie down on the mattress. I spread my legs. The mattress smells awful, like Robin. Rancid.

Later I use the shower to pee down. The bathroom is upstairs. I thank whatever gods that I don't have to have a bowel movement.

That's all. It's very jerky and very quick.

I think, I hope it doesn't get his acne.

Robin has to creep upstairs and muffle his voice to get me a taxi.

Then I go home.

Old bacon grease gone nasty, I think. That's what he smells like. So that's sin. So that's adultery. Some fun. Big deal.

As soon as I get home, I get down the ironing board. No, I get it out from the basement. I iron Ben's shirts. I spray starch them and iron them and fold them carefully, for easy packing. Ironing was my one domestic chore and I did it well. I enjoyed it. I was professional about it. Jocelyn still says, ‘But you
like
ironing,' as if it were some perverse sexual thing.

‘It's hell now, with all this drip dry stuff,' I say.

I put on Haydn and then I put on Bach and I ironed away. Then I wrote a cheque for $128, payable to Mr Benjamin Ferris, signed V.E. Ferris (Mrs).

It's an odd figure. I can't imagine why that figure. Maybe it was half what I had in my account. I don't know. That seems logical. Half what I had. Or maybe it was what he would have got on welfare, if he'd applied. God knows. I remember all the numbers so well, with such a mean fidelity of spirit. The book makes me remember. I'm not going to get away with anything.

Along about two o'clock, the key turns in the door and there he is. The prodigal husband. Crying.

They'd turned him back at the border. He hadn't enough money.

I feel my selfishness harden inside me, like a jewel. Yes, a jewel. Strong and invincible. A great gleaming emerald, harder than diamonds. Burnt in the sun for a million years. Hard and ruthless and bright. I've never felt it before, this coldness my mother spoke of, but now I feel it. Yes, there it is, my power and my safety. Me, inside there, hard and cold and brilliant. Yes! Me. Victoria Ellen Carrington Ferris. There I am. Impermeable. Impregnable. Cruel. Vicious. Dangerous. It shines through me with a deadly radiance, as light through your fingernails. I wonder he doesn't throw up his hands to shield his eyes.

‘I ironed your shirts,' I say.

‘You always iron your troubles away,' he says. ‘You always do that.' He is trying to smile, trying to forgive me.

‘They're all done.'

‘I'll just have a cup of coffee. I can go to Ivan's.'

‘There's a cheque for you. On the desk. Cash it tomorrow morning and then go to Sam's.'

‘All right.' He picks up the kettle but I take it from him.

‘I'll make it.'

He sits down and waits for the coffee. Bach's Brandenburg comes to a stop and the record goes zzz zzz rrr rr. Ben goes to put up the arm.

‘Will you take back the Haydn?' he says. He means to the music library. ‘And the Scarlatti?'

I'll take them back.

‘You always listen to the Brandenburgs when you iron.' He is trying again.

‘I know nothing about music. I like them, that's all. They're so neat. Like calculus.'

‘You like good things though,' says Ben.

But he lies. I like
Bye Bye Birdie
too.

The cats come out of the bedroom, yawning, what's going on? Sally's tum is full and round.

‘I hate to leave the cats.'

I give him his coffee. I can't remember what he took. Isn't that strange. But I say I'll get it, whatever it is, sugar or cream, or both.

‘Let's talk, Vicky.'

I am still standing. I start to fold up the ironing board. ‘There's nothing to talk about.'

‘Yes, there is. I was upset. You were late for supper and I had it all ready. I was upset. You should have called.'

I don't admit it. I don't admit anything.

‘And I'd been drinking.' Big news.

‘The point is, we're in no position to have a child right now.'

Right
now?
Oh you bastard.

I can feel Robin's semen on my legs. Cold and sticky.

‘Until I get a job or start making money from my art.'

‘You made money from cartoons.'

‘You know I want to do serious work.'

‘You could do cartoons. I do murder mysteries.'

Yes. Well, we all know Vicky, the big sell-out. Ben sighs.

‘We must try to be reasonable.'

‘You
said!
' I scream. ‘You said you wanted a divorce. You said you were going.'

Grace says to me, ‘You listen to the words, Vicky. You don't listen to what's going on underneath.'

Even Anna says, ‘What did she say?' and when I give the words, she says, ‘But how did she say it?'

All right. I knew. Like I knew Ben didn't mean it when he said go ahead, practice free love. I knew he wasn't going to leave. I knew he didn't want a divorce. But the bastard held me to my word. I would hold him to his until hell froze over.

‘You
said,
you
said,
you
said.
' Over and over.

‘Let's not have a scene.'

Not have a scene?

‘It's too late,' I say. ‘It's too late now.'

‘No it isn't. Vicky.' He is crying again. Oh god, how I hate to see men cry. Like my mother. Saying, ‘Forgive me, forgive me, say you forgive me.'

It goes on for hours. Neither one of us says anything crude or vulgar, or accuses the other of bad behaviour. Except for that one moment, we don't raise our voices. I don't, I mean. Ben never does. The main point is simply: I
agreed,
he
said.
I promised. He said. On and on.

 

ALL RIGHT. Let's be fair. I can explain Ben. I suppose. Part of it, anyway.

We'd been married six weeks. We were in Banff. Ben was driving a bus and I was taking a scholarship course. His mother and dad arrive from back east.

The first great trip of their lives. They get themselves a little cabin and Ben and his dad go fishing. The father is an undertaker and he makes jokes about people who, just as he is about to slice them from their gullet to their zilch, sit up, not dead after all. Ho ho. He is wearing a belt snitched from a corpse. ‘You never see the waist anyway,' he says.

I ask if he takes their rings and watches. The mother looks at me as if I've said something in terribly bad taste. Not so bad as stealing belts, lady.

She is helpless and envious and goes around saying, ‘Ooooh, ooh, I wish I looked like you, Vicky.' ‘I wish I was as smart as you, Vicky.' ‘I wish I was as brave as you, Vicky.' One day, believe it or not, she says, ‘I wish I were as
young
as you, Vicky.'

She's afraid of everything. Bears. Moose. High roads. Mountains. Rivers. One day the car breaks down and we have to hitch-hike into Lake Louise. She's afraid to put out her thumb! ‘oooh ooh. You're so
brave,
Vicky.' Shit.

Christ, I was wonderful and she hated my guts.

I take it and I take it and I … and one day I say, ‘I
am
younger than you are, Winnie. It's a fact of life. Don't worry. I'll get old.'

Her lips quiver and she ducks her head. Tries not to show how hurt she is.

‘What did you do to Mom?'

Like a beaten animal. Quiver quiver. I was a saint. I should have pushed her into a river, off a mountain. Couldn't get her on the chair lift.

She limps. With a small embarrassed smile, she limps around the cabin. Cooking for us. Arthritis. But when Ben was a child she told him it was cancer. Caused by, guess what, his birth.