Crossings (15 page)

There was a great crash at the basement door. And all the winds of hell broke loose. Peter was flinging himself bodily against the wood; and I could hear his nails going ratchety-ratch as he tried to claw his way through.

‘What's all that racket down there?' yelled Mrs Flynn from upstairs.

I dashed out to the kitchen and eased the door open a fraction. ‘It's the cat having kittens. I've got to keep the father out or—' But he had levered his way through and was past me, a flash of brown and black, screaming like a banshee.

When I got back to the chesterfield, the first kitten was out and Peter was enfolding it in his mouth.

‘You stop that!' But he was licking it into life, gently as a caress.

Sally sniffed at the sodden white lump and decided to have nothing further to do with either of them.

Peter's pink tongue went rasp rasp, and the lump gave a great sighing mew and pushed its nose into Peter's belly fur. ‘Oh you sweet old thing,' I said and he gave me such a look, long-suffering and responsible, as the kitten began to suck.

Sally, meanwhile, was having a nap. By the time the second one started, she had given herself a shake as if to say, Oh yes, now I remember what it's all about. She heaved and grunted and moaned and panted and howled.

Peter, cautious of the kitten still hanging on somewhere in the region of his left testicle, would reach out to give her a pacifying lick on the ear, but she, ungrateful bitch, would spit and hiss and bat him as if it were all his fault. But he went on licking haplessly, in a hangdog way. When the new one came out, she ate the sac dutifully to get her milk going but again it was Peter who had to lick the bundle into life. Sally began to purr, deep machine throbbings of pride. Look what I've done! thinking she was through. And off she wobbled to the kitchen to get herself something to eat, leaving Peter with two white rats sucking his fur.

And back she came to sniff them, snarl, hiss, saying, Who are you? And up and cuddle down on top of them, not for their sakes, but to get Peter to wash her instead.

There were four born that night. I left them, curled into an exhausted cocoon of domesticity, and fell into my own bed. Sometime in the small hours the beggars dumped their brood under my covers and went scuttering off, fancy free as ever, through the kitchen window for their sunrise romp.

I woke up to sharp little claws kneading my flesh urgently, and questing mouths in search of suitable tits.

It was really spring now. The daffodils were up and I had missed my second period. Mist rose in clouds from the early ground and Mrs Flynn gave me baleful stares and complained of cat dirt in her flower beds. ‘When's your husband coming home?'

Of course she knew about Robin. Sometimes I saw her peering out behind the ecru curtains upstairs when we went out in the mornings.

And one night I come home from work and there's Ben's car out front.

‘The kittens are marvellous,' he says.

‘Yes, aren't they lovely?'

I move out the next day. Where did I sleep that night then? I must have slept beside Ben, it must have happened. I can't remember. Perhaps it didn't seem terribly important by then. We must have talked. Yes. He told me about his silk-screening process, something new he'd devised, the postcards he was going to make. San Francisco was wonderful. Sam was going through a bad time. He wanted to marry Edna, but all he could think of was all those men in Ottawa. Sam thought that maybe if he and Edna did a pilgrimage to Ottawa, visited all the shrines as it were, the stations of the cross, then maybe he could exorcise the experience. Edna acceded to this piece of lunacy, incidentally.

I borrowed Ben's car and went looking for an apartment. And found one almost right away. On the
ground
floor. With a window that looked out on the leaves of trees instead of their roots. God, how I hate basements. Within walking distance to work. The dark green sofa made up into a bed and there was a walk-in closet for cooking. I don't remember moving. Ben must have helped me. It was hard to say goodbye to the cats.

‘Don't tell Rod my address,' I said. I didn't want to think about being pregnant. I didn't want Rod around asking me what I meant to do. He'd become very solemn lately, very portentous.

I was working on calculations one day and Robin came in and we had a cup of coffee together in the little office in front of the lab. It was Marcie's office, but I used it when I was making up the reports.

Marcie came in, rather breathless and wind-blown. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘Oh. Excuse
me.
' And she rushed out again, into the lab.

‘Come have coffee,' I called.

But she didn't answer.

When Robin had gone, she came in again, her face very red, her lips tight. ‘I wish you wouldn't have him in here.'

‘Why not?'

‘That's my desk. This is my office. It's not yours anymore.'

‘I know, but I always do the calculations here.'

‘It's my desk and my office and I wish you wouldn't have that person in here.'

‘Oh.'

‘It's disgusting,' Marcie said. ‘I can't bear the sight of him. Ben's such a fine person.'

‘I didn't know you knew.'

‘I don't see how you
can,
Vicky!' She began to cry. ‘It fills me with such'—she took a deep breath; she'd been rehearsing it for some time, I think—‘It fills me with such moral horror.'

Moral horror. Moral horror. My god. Moral horror. I think I laughed.

When I wrote this first I put in, “‘You insufferable little prig,” I said.'

But I didn't. I never know what to say. I don't believe it, for one thing. But I wish I had said that. ‘Marcie, you insufferable little prig.'

I did take off my lab coat. I did leave the calculations half-done. I hope she made a botch of them. As usual.

I went back to my ground-floor apartment, and I closed the drapes, and I didn't come out again.

Oh I must have. Yes, I did. Of course I did. It just seems like I didn't.

The day I took back Robin's forest-green sweater, I saw Marcie. Yes. I went into the lab and picked up my things. Yes. And she said, ‘Well, I'm not your precious Sister Mary Joseph. I suppose
she'd
have forgiven you.'

You're right, Marcie. She did.

I began to write a play about a witch and a girl caught in a tree and a warlock who rescues her when the nights are short. It was supposed to illustrate some fine philosophical point; I was going to read it at one of the evening seminars. But the witch kept talking about the long nights.

Robin came over once but I worried about the landlord, and he made the sheets dirty. I don't think he ever took a shower, that boy.

I stayed in the room and I didn't see anybody. Or so it seems. Where were they then, Grace and Edna and Jocelyn? I don't remember. I don't remember seeing anyone at all.

Except Ben. Ben came over a lot.

I borrowed the car one night and asked Robin to go for a drive with me.

When I stopped beside the Pauline Johnson Memorial, he said, ‘Whew! I thought you were going to kill us both.'

‘Was I driving fast?'

He laughed.

I wanted to show him Siwash Rock in the moonlight. We stood at the barricade and I told him a story: ‘Once upon a time there was an Indian maiden and an Indian brave living on this peninsula. But they were of different tribes. Her father, a chief, said he would kill them both; his father, a chief, said
he
would kill them both. They ran away together, to this spot.'

‘And what happened?'

‘They killed them both. The brave became Siwash Rock. It means “Clean Fatherhood.” The maiden was taken into the sea.'

‘And what is the moral?' said Robin.

‘I don't know.'

I never told him. It's some comfort to know that. That I kept the gentleman's agreement to that extent. The legend is probably a lie. I probably made it up.

I drove him back to his rec room. ‘You don't love me, do you?' I said, having to know, having to hear it.

‘No. I don't love you, Vicky.'

The next day I took him back his forest green sweater. I threw it across his desk at him. He said, ‘Does it have to be this way?'

For an exit line, not so profound as I would wish.

I took the car back to Ben's place. I didn't go in. Just left the keys in the ignition and walked away. I resigned from the philosophy course.

Someone did drop by to see me. A graduate student. Very practical and down-to-earth. Would I clean up her thesis, spelling and grammar, all that. A hundred years later, she says to me, ‘I could see you were dying to talk about it. But I wouldn't let you … Talking would only have vitiated the whole thing. I said to myself, Let her stew in it. When it gets bad enough, she'll go back to Ben.'

I don't remember dying to talk to her about it, dying to talk to anyone about it.

I hugged the little round lump inside me to myself at night. I woke and retched and my breasts ached. And every day was a victory, another step closer to the point of no return. I'd heard that when you reached the fourth month, there was no turning back.

I sold the play about the witch.

I sat in the room and the third period passed.

Ben came over to see me.

I sat in the room and the fourth period passed.

Ben came over. “I've arranged for us to see a marriage counsellor,' he said.

And I, secure at last, said, ‘I'm pregnant.'

He didn't believe me. ‘Have you seen a doctor?'

‘No.'

‘Then how do you know?'

‘You know.'

I don't remember. Why did I go to the marriage counsellor? Because I felt so safe? Because it would shut Ben up? Because it would show my good faith? I don't know. I went to the marriage counsellor.

His name was Mr Brockington and he said he had never heard of a marriage like ours before.

I acted the smart ass. I answered sardonically. I made cynical clever talk.

He said, ‘You're behaving quite selfishly, you know. You're having this baby for entirely selfish reasons.'

‘If she's having a baby at all,' said Ben. ‘I think it's all hysterical.'

They were together in this, Ben and Mr Brockington. Older and wiser. Men.

Ben and Mr Brockington had long conferences about me. Ben would come over to report that Brockington thought I was almost psychotic. Brockington thought I should have an abortion.

‘He
said
that?'

‘You
said
I should have an abortion?' This in a private interview.

‘I think you should certainly consider the possibility.'

‘You think I should murder my child?'

‘Now Mrs Ferris.'

‘I want to hear you say it.'

‘All right. Very well. I think, yes, you should seriously consider an abortion.'

It hadn't occurred to me that this might happen.

‘I'm in my fourth month,' I said. Smugly.

‘Yes, if you are in fact pregnant.'

‘I am pregnant.' And, ‘You realize you are suggesting an illegal operation?'

‘I realize that you are, at this moment, too sick to become a mother.'

I didn't go back to Mr Brockington. I went to a doctor, a Dr Webb, and I said, ‘Help me have a baby.'

Dr Webb was young and kind and he didn't give me a pelvic. He said women know when they're pregnant. We talked about marriage and had a few laughs. He told me he was happy, you know, not wildly happy, but happy, most of the time, he and his wife got along. And she'd put him through medical school, he owed her a lot.

He gave me some pills to help me sleep.

When Ben knocked. God. I can hear that knock.

Duh
duh-duh
duh
-duh
duh duh
.

I didn't answer the door.

I pulled the covers over my head and I bit my knuckles and I did not answer the door.

He knocked and knocked and I did not answer the door.

Then the envelopes began to come. Slipped under the door. Long white envelopes in Ben's fine artistic hand. Black ink.

Clearly, as to an idiot, the letters spelled out the alternatives: A) I could have an abortion; he had made inquiries; they were relatively easy to procure: Jocelyn's boyfriend knew someone. He had told Jocelyn! B) I could come back home and have the baby and he would accept it legally; or C) I could have an abortion and then he, Ben, would give me a baby.

It was all terribly fair. I always read them, waiting until I was sure I heard him move away from the door, I always read them. Like a fool.

It's all right, look, it's all right. Just type it, and copy what you've got down. Don't think about it. It'll be all over soon.

There's something. I forget. Something about the play. Yes, I had to do re-writes. Yes. I had to do a re-write and the knock came at the door and it wasn't the knock and so I answered it, because I had the play in the typewriter and I wasn't scared and it was the professor, come to see how I was getting on and would I give a lecture to his engineering class on creative writing, yes, I would, that'd be fine, and then the knock comes, and it's Ben, and the professor looks at me as if I'm mad, not answering the door like that. So I have to let Ben in. The professor leaves. Ben asks me to give him a urine sample. Just to be sure.

He gives me a bottle. A huge bottle. A jam jar. I'm to do it in the morning, first thing. I'm not to drink anything or eat anything after supper.

Yes, All right, I will. I'll put it outside the door. Okay. Yes.

Okay. No, I won't eat anything or drink anything after supper. Yes, first thing in the morning.

And I do. I put that bottle in a paper bag and I leave it outside my door. I hear Ben's steps coming up the hall. I hear them going away.

Three days later, the knock comes.

I open the door. Doom is written all over his face. He is carrying another brown paper bag. It has brandy in it. A bottle of Liquor Store brandy.