Life Before Man (19 page)

As he rummages among the clutter on the shelves behind his table, Elizabeth looks around. The room has changed, been rearranged. Time has not stood still, nothing here is frozen. Chris is definitely gone. She cannot bring him back, and for the first time she no longer wants to. He’ll punish her for that thought later, no doubt, but at the moment she’s clear of him.

She walks slowly down the marble stairs, fingering a handful of fur. Scraps. All that’s left of Chris, whom she can no longer remember whole. At the door she stuffs the bundle into her purse, then takes the subway up to St. George and along to Castle Frank. She walks along the viaduct till she’s roughly in the middle, over the snow-filled ravine and the rushing cars below. Like Auntie Muriel, she needs her burial rituals. She opens her purse and throws the fur scraps one by one into space.

L
esje is sitting in Elizabeth’s living room, balancing a small cup of what she supposes is excellent coffee on her left knee. In her right hand she’s holding a liqueur glass half-full of Benedictine and brandy. She doesn’t know how she’s ended up with two containers of liquid and no place to put them. She’s positive she will very soon spill at least one and probably both of them onto Elizabeth’s mushroom-colored carpet. She’s desperate to get away.

But the others are all playing a game that substitutes the word “moose” for any other word in the title of a Canadian novel. It has to be Canadian. This apparently is part of the joke.

“As for Me and My Moose,” Elizabeth says, and everyone else in the room chuckles.

“A Jest of Moose,” says the wife of the man from Greek and Roman who works at the
CBC
.

“A Moose of God,” replies the man, whose name is Philip. Nobody calls him Phil. Elizabeth laughs and asks Lesje if she’ll have some more
B & B
.

“I’m fine,” Lesje says, hoping she has murmured, fearing she’s blurted. She needs a cigarette but has no free hand. She doesn’t read novels and she hasn’t recognized a single one of the titles the others, even Nate, even, sometimes, William, have been batting around so easily.
The Lost Moose
, she could say. But that isn’t Canadian.

The whole dinner has been like that. Just a couple of friends, Elizabeth said. Casual. So Lesje wore pants with a long sweater-coat, and the two other women are in dresses. Elizabeth for once is not in black; she’s wearing a loose grey chiffon number that makes her look younger and thinner than she does at work. She even has a necklace on, a chain with a silver fish. The other woman is in flowing mauve. Lesje, in her perky, clean-cut stripes, feels about twelve years old.

She’s only been able to see Nate once before this evening. In desperation she called his house; one of the children answered.

“Just a minute.” Abruptly; the slam of the phone hitting the floor. It must have tumbled from the table. A shout. “Dad, it’s for you!”

They’d arranged to meet at the coffee shop in the indoor mall at the bottom of Lesje’s building. Reckless: what if William?

“Why is she asking us to dinner?” Lesje wanted to know, by this time frantic. She couldn’t back out now, it would look funny. To William as well. And if she’d said no at first it would have looked funny too.

Nate was cautiously holding her hand. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve given up wondering about her motives. I never know why she does anything.”

“We aren’t that friendly at work,” Lesje said. “Does she know?”

“Probably,” Nate said. “She didn’t tell me beforehand she was asking you to dinner. I couldn’t tell her not to. She often asks people to dinner; or anyway she used to.”

“Did you tell her?” It was suddenly the kind of thing he would do.

“Not exactly,” Nate said. “I guess I’ve mentioned you a few times. I’m thinking about you a lot. Maybe she picked up on that. She’s pretty sharp.”

“But even if she does know, why would she ask me to dinner?” This would be the last thing she herself would do. One of William’s old girlfriends, a dental technician, is in the habit of suggesting they all three of them have lunch sometime. Lesje has consistently vetoed this.

“I guess she just wants to take a look at you,” Nate said, “up close. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. She won’t
do
anything. You’ll enjoy the dinner, she’s a great cook when she feels like it.”

Not that Lesje could tell. She was so paralyzed by apprehension that she could barely chew. The
boeuf bourguignon
could have been sand as far as she was concerned. Elizabeth graciously ignored the large amount left on Lesje’s plate. During the first course she asked Lesje three well-informed questions about power-structures in Vertebrate Paleontology, a truthful answer to any of which might have cost Lesje her job if repeated in the right quarters. Lesje hedged awkwardly, and Elizabeth switched the talk to
CBC
gossip, with the wife of the man from Greek and Roman supplying.

Elizabeth concentrated on William during dessert. She found his work with the Ministry of the Environment fascinating, and so worthwhile. She supposed she really should make the effort to cart all her old bottles and newspapers to those things, those bins. William, gratified, lectured her on the doom awaiting the world if she should fail to do this, and Elizabeth agreed meekly.

Nate, meanwhile, moved in the background, chain-smoking, drinking steadily but without visible effect, avoiding Lesje’s eyes, helping with the plate-clearing and pouring out the wine. Elizabeth directed him unobtrusively: “Love, would you get me a slotted serving spoon?” “Love, could you just turn on the coffee while you’re out there?” Lesje sat, nibbling the edges of her meringue,
wishing the children were there. At least she would have someone she could talk to without blushing and mumbling and the certainty that at any minute she would open her mouth and some tactless clinker would roll out onto the linen tablecloth. Something about suicides or hotel rooms. But the children had been sent to spend the night with friends. Sometimes, Elizabeth said, much as one loved one’s children, one wanted to spend a little free adult time. Nate didn’t always agree, she said, directly to Lesje. He was such a doting father. He’d like to be with his children twenty-four hours a day. “Isn’t that true, love?”

Don’t call him
love
, Lesje felt like saying. You can’t fool me. But she supposed it was a habit. After all, they’ve been married for ten years.

Which Elizabeth has taken care to emphasize. There have been references all evening to Nate’s favorite foods and Nate’s favorite wines and Nate’s peculiarities of dress. Elizabeth wishes he would get the back of his hair trimmed more often; she used to do it herself with the nail scissors, but she can’t get him to hold still long enough any more. Nate’s behavior on their wedding day has been mentioned, though not explained; everyone in the room, including the Greek and Roman couple, seems to know this story. Except Lesje and, of course, William, who was in the bathroom at the time. Where Lesje herself at this moment fervently wishes she could be.

William has produced his pipe, an affectation he by and large reserves for company. “I know a better one,” he says. “Ever played Star Trek?” But nobody has, and the rules, as William starts to expound them, are pronounced too complicated.

“Lifeboat,” says the Greek and Roman woman.

Nate asks if anyone would like more
B & B
. He himself is going to pour himself a Scotch. Would anyone care to join him?

“Sensational,” says Elizabeth. She explains that this game is very simple. “We are all in a lifeboat,” she says, “and the food
is running out. What you have to do is convince everyone else why you should be allowed to remain in the lifeboat instead of being thrown overboard.” She says that this game is often very revealing psychologically.

“I sacrifice myself for the good of the group,” Nate says promptly.

“Oh,” Elizabeth says, giving a mock frown. “He always does that. It’s his Quaker upbringing. Really it means he can’t be bothered.”

“Unitarian,” say Nate. “I just think it’s an unduly vicious game.”

“That’s why it’s called Lifeboat,” Elizabeth says lightly. “All right, Nate’s overboard. The sharks have him. Who wants to begin?”

No one does, so Elizabeth tears up a paper napkin and they draw lots.

“Well,” says the Greek and Roman man. “I know Morse code. I can help us get rescued. And I’m good with my hands. When we land on the desert island, I can build the shelter and so forth. I’m a pretty good plumber, too. A tool man.” He smiles. “It’s nice to have a man around the house.”

Elizabeth and the
CBC
woman, laughing, agree that he should be allowed to stay on the boat.

Elizabeth is next. “I’m a sensational cook,” she says. “But more than that, I have a very strong survival instinct. If you try to push me overboard, I’ll take at least one of you down with me. How’s that? I don’t think we should be kicking people out of this boat anyway,” she adds. “We should be saving them and eating them. Let’s drag Nate back in.”

“I’m already miles away,” Nate says.

“Elizabeth’s using threats,” the
CBC
woman says. “Any of us could use the same ploy; I don’t think it should count. But if we’re thinking of a long-term plan, I propose that I should be saved instead of Elizabeth. She’s almost past child-bearing age and if we want to establish a colony, we’ll need babies.”

Elizabeth goes white. “I’m sure I could still squeeze a few out,” she says.

“Not many,” the
CBC
woman says brightly. “Come on, Liz, it’s only a game.”

“Lesje?” Elizabeth says. “You walk the plank next.”

Lesje opens her mouth, then closes it. She can feel herself blushing. She knows this is not just a game, it’s a challenge of some sort. But still, she can’t think of a single reason why she should be permitted to remain alive. She isn’t a good cook, and besides there’s nothing much to cook. She can’t build shelters. The
CBC
woman has used up the babies, and anyway Lesje has a narrow pelvis. What is she good for? None of the things she knows, knows well, is in any way necessary for survival.

They are all looking at her, embarrassed now by the length of time it’s taking her, her obvious confusion. “If we find any bones,” she says at last, “I’ll be able to tell you whose they are.” As if the history of bones matters, to anyone but her and a few other addicts. She’s attempted a sort of joke, but it’s hardly witty repartee. “Excuse me,” she says, her voice a whisper. Carefully she sets down her cup, then her glass, on the beige rug. She stands up and turns, catching the cup with the side of her foot, and bolts from the room.

“I’ll get a cloth,” she hears Nate saying.

She locks herself into Elizabeth’s bathroom and washes her hands with Elizabeth’s peculiar brown soap. Then she sits, closes her eyes, elbows on her crossed knees, hands covering her mouth. The B & B must be getting to her. Is she really this graceless, this worthless? From her treetop she watches an Ornithomimus, large-eyed, bird-like, run through the scrub, chasing a small protomammal. How many years to learn to grow hair, to bear young alive, to nurture them? How many for the four-chambered heart? Surely these things are important, surely her knowledge should not perish with her. She
must be allowed to continue her investigations, here in this forest of early conifers and pineapple-trunked cycad trees.

Everyone has a certain number of bones, she thinks, clutching for lucidity. Not their own but someone else’s and the bones have to be named, you have to know what to call them, otherwise what are they, they’re lost, cut adrift from their own meanings, they may as well not have been saved for you. You can’t name them all, there are too many, the world is full of them, it’s made of them, so you have to choose which ones. Everything that’s gone before has left its bones for you and you’ll leave yours in turn.

This is her knowledge, her field they call it. And it is like a field, you can walk through it and around it and say: These are the boundaries. She knows why the dinosaurs do many of the things they do, and about the rest she can deduce, make educated guesses. But north of the field history begins and the fog takes over. It’s like being far-sighted, the distant lake and its beaches and smooth-backed basking sauropods clear-edged in the moonlight, her own hand a blur. She does not know, for instance, why she is crying.

E
lizabeth is lying in bed, arms at her sides, feet together. The weak light from the street lamps comes in stripes through the bamboo blind, falls in bars on the walls, broken by the shadow of the spider plants, curved fingers which do not hold or reach for anything. The window is open a little at the bottom, the wooden slat covering the three holes in the sash of the storm window is lifted, cold air sifts through. Elizabeth opened it before she went to bed, she needed air.

Elizabeth lies with her eyes open. In the kitchen below her, Nate moves dishes. She notes him, pushes him back. She can see up through the dark ceiling, through the joists and layers of plaster and the worn linoleum, blue squares, which she, slovenly landlady, should have replaced long ago, past the beds where the tenants lie asleep, a mother, a father, a child, a family, up through the pink ceiling of their room and out through the rafters and the patched and leaking roof to the air, the sky, the place where there is nothing between her and nothing. The stars in their envelopes
of bright gas burn on. Space no longer frightens her. She knows it is uninhabited.

Where did you go? I know you aren’t in that box. The Greeks collected all the pieces of the body; otherwise the soul could not get away from the upper earth. To the happy islands. Philip said that tonight, between the
boeuf bourguignon
and the meringue with chocolate ginger sauce. Then he changed the subject, he remembered and was embarrassed, he knew he shouldn’t be talking about funerary customs. I smiled, I smiled. It was a closed coffin, naturally. They shipped him north in dry ice, rigid among the cold crystals, fog coming off him like a Dracula movie. Tonight I thought, they forgot something. Part of him has been left behind.