Life Before Man (23 page)

At the hospital they said she hadn’t drunk any of the furniture polish. The open bottle was a sign, Caroline’s last message; an indication of where she’d gone, since for all practical purposes she was no longer in her body.

Elizabeth watches while William finishes off his club sandwich and orders apple pie with cheese and a cup of coffee. She dislikes his tie. Someone with William’s choirboy complexion should not wear beige and maroon. If Lesje lives with a man who has such poor taste in ties, she’s hardly worth defeating.

William doesn’t seem to have noticed that Elizabeth isn’t eating; he’s explaining why colored toilet paper is so much worse than white. Elizabeth knows she will take scant pleasure in sleeping with him or even in making the revelation she’s come here to make. Perhaps she won’t bother. She’s amazed sometimes at the lengths to which people will go to distract themselves. She amazes herself.

L
esje is cataloguing giant tortoises from the Upper Cretaceous.
REPTILIA
, she writes.
Chelonia, Neurankylidae
.
GENUS
&
SPECIES
,
Neurankylus baueri, Gilmore
.
LOCALITY:
Fruitland, New Mexico,
U.S.A. GEOLOGY:
Upper Cretaceous, Fruitland shale.
MATERIAL:
Carapace & plastron.

How ignominious to be dug up in Fruitland, Lesje thinks, after so many million years of peace. She’s never been to Fruitland but she pictures little souvenir stands where plastic fruits are sold: grape lapel pins, magnetic tomatoes. Or probably, since it’s the United States, college students dressed up as giant peaches and apples strolling among the crowds. Like Disneyland.

There’s a number in black-ink figures on the slip of paper attached to the carapace, and she adds this number to the filing card. When she’s finished with the larger specimens, she knows there’s a whole tray of carapace fragments awaiting her. She’ll cart it from the storage shelves up to her office, past the sandblasters and dentist’s drills they use for cleaning fossils; when she’s finished with it she’ll cart it down again and slide it into the storage rack. After that
she’ll start on the fish earbones from the Miocene. There are hundreds of fish earbones, hundreds of tortoise fragments, hundreds of assorted vertebrae, knuckles, claws, hundreds of teeth. Thousands of pounds of rock, locked into the patterns of the once-living. Sometimes she wonders whether the world really needs more fish earbones from the Miocene. On days like this she wonders whether her job isn’t, really, just glorified filing.

When she’s settled in her cubbyhole of an office with the shell fragments and her clean cards, the phone rings. It’s another school group, wanting a tour. Lesje slots them into her calendar. She no longer anticipates school tours with much pleasure. Once she thought she could teach them something. Now she knows there will be at least one child who will want to throw something at the dinosaurs – a bubble-gum wrapper, a pop-bottle top, a pebble – to show he isn’t afraid. Mammal cubs, jeering their old enemies. Don’t walk on the ledge, she will say. If you push all the buttons at once you won’t be able to hear.

Should she make a cup of instant coffee in the wet lab, bring it back to her windowless cubicle, and stay late to finish the tray? Or should she, for once, leave on time?

She peers through the door of the large office adjoining the wet lab. Dr. Van Vleet has already gone, shoehorning his damp rubbers on over his scuffed black shoes and paddling off like a stooped tweed duck into the February slush. Lesje has always been compulsive about her job – she wants very much to do it well – but she’s become irritable with it lately. No one, probably, will ever look at the Miocene fish earbones again, once she slots the tray into place. Except her, surreptitiously easing it back out some day to admire their symmetry and size and to imagine the gigantic fish with their bony sheathing, sliding like huge knees through the ancient oceans.

She completes one more card, then closes the filing-card box and goes for her coat. She slips her arms into it, bundles her head, checks her shoulder-bag for money. She’ll stop at Ziggy’s on the way back to the apartment and pick up something nice for dinner, something nice for William. Ever since she’s come to suspect that she may eventually leave him, she’s been very solicitous about William. She buys him surprises, tinned sardines, clams, things he likes. When he sniffles she gets him pills, lemons and boxes of Kleenex. It’s as if she wants to make sure he’s in good condition when she passes him on, trades him in. See, she’ll say to him. Look how healthy you are. You don’t need me.

She doesn’t know how she’ll tell him, though; or even when. Nate doesn’t want to make any sudden moves, because of the children. He thinks he will rent an apartment or, better still, part of a house, so there will be room for his machines, and move into it a little at a time. He’ll tell the children it’s a workshop. He hasn’t yet indicated when he would like Lesje to join him, just that he would. Eventually. When the children get adjusted. Sometimes they look at the want ads, trying to decide where he, or possibly they, will finally live.

Lesje looks forward to this time – it would be good to be with him in a neutral bed with no fear of opening doors – but doesn’t exactly believe in it. She can’t picture, for instance, actually moving. Folding sheets and towels, taking down her posters (from the Museum, mostly, stuck to the walls with masking tape), putting her few dishes and the frying pan her mother gave her when she left home into cardboard cartons. If she really is going to move, she ought to be able to picture it. (And where will William be? At the office? Standing by with arms folded to see that she doesn’t take any of his books, or the shower curtains, which were his own purchases, or the
Organic Eating
cookbook they never use?)

Nate hasn’t discussed this future move with Elizabeth, though
he’s discussed other things. Elizabeth knows about them. He and Elizabeth had quite a good talk about it one night while he was having a bath. It’s a long-standing habit of Elizabeth’s to talk to him while he’s in the bathtub, Nate tells her. Though it bothers Lesje slightly to think of them having habits together, she asked, “Was she angry?”

“Not at all,” Nate said. “She was very good about it. She’s glad I’ve found someone congenial.”

For some reason Elizabeth’s approval annoys Lesje more than her anger would have.

“She does think, though,” Nate said, “that you should tell William. She feel it’s a little dishonest not to. She thinks it’s only fair to her. She …”

“It’s none of her business,” Lesje said, surprising herself by her own abruptness. “Why should she care what I tell William?”

“They’ve become quite friendly,” Nate said mildly. “They seem to have lunch together quite a lot. She says it puts her in a false position with William, that she knows and he doesn’t.”

Lesje hadn’t heard about this friendship, these lunches. She felt left out. Why hadn’t William mentioned anything about it? Though he rarely tells her who he has lunch with. But this may mean only what she thinks it means: that, like her, he seldom has lunch at all. She sees, too, the threat behind the message; for it was a message, Elizabeth the sender, Nate merely the unwitting deliverer. If she doesn’t tell William soon, Elizabeth will tell him herself.

Yet she’s been unable to say anything. There hasn’t been an opportunity, she tells herself. What’s she supposed to do? Interrupt a cribbage game to say, “William, I’m having an affair”?

She swings along the street, head down, carrying the bag of potato salad and fried chicken she’s bought at Ziggy’s. William once told her she walks like an adolescent boy. But so does he, so they’re even.

When she reaches the apartment, William is sitting at the card table. He has a solitaire game spread in front of him, but he’s looking out the window.

“I got some stuff from Ziggy’s,” Lesje says cheerfully. William doesn’t answer, which is nothing new. She walks through the kitchenette, leaving the bag on the counter, and goes into the bedroom.

She’s sitting on the bed, pulling off her leather boots, when William appears in the doorway. He has a strange look on his face, as if his muscles are in spasm. He comes towards her, hulking.

“William, what’s wrong?” she says; but he pushes her down on the bed, one arm across both shoulders, his elbow digging in beside her collarbone. His other hand rips at the zipper on her jeans.

William has always liked to tumble around a little. She starts to laugh, then stops. This is different. His arm is against her throat, cutting off her wind.

“William, that hurts,” she says; then, “William, cut it
out
!”

He’s got her jeans worked halfway down her thighs before it occurs to her that William is trying to rape her.

She’s always thought of rape as something the Russians did to the Ukrainians, something the Germans did, more furtively, to the Jews; something blacks did in Detroit, in dark alleys. But not something William Wasp, from a good family in London, Ontario, would ever do to her. They’re friends, they discuss extinction and pollution, they’ve known each other for years. They live together!

What can she do now? If she fights him off, kicks him in the nuts, he’ll never speak to her again. She’s almost certain she could: her knee’s in the right position, he’s crouching over her, fumbling at her nylon crotch. But if she lets him go ahead, there’s a good chance she’ll never speak to him again. It’s absurd, and William, huffing and puffing and grinding his teeth, is absurd too. But she knows if she laughs he’ll hit her.

This is frightening; he’s hurting her on purpose. Maybe he’s always wanted to do this but never had the excuse. What is the excuse?

“William, stop,” she says; but William tugs and rips, silently, relentlessly, forcing his torso between her knees. Finally she is angry herself. The least he could do is answer her. She clamps her legs together, tightens the muscles of her neck and shoulders, and lets William batter himself against her. He’s pulling her hair now, digging his fingers into her arms. Finally he groans, oozes, unclenches.

“Finished?” she says coldly. He’s a dead weight. She pries herself out from beneath him, buttons her shirt. She pulls off her jeans and underpants and mops her thighs with them. William, pink-eyed, watches her from the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Lesje is afraid he’s going to cry. Then she will have to forgive him. Without answering, she goes to the bathroom and stuffs her clothes into the laundry hamper. She wraps a towel around her waist. All she wants to do is have a shower.

She leans her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. She can’t stay here. Where will she go, what did she do? Her heart is racing, there are scratches on her arms and breasts, she’s gasping for air. It’s the sight of William turning into someone else that has shocked her. She doesn’t know whose fault it is.

E
lizabeth is having a bad dream. The children are lost. They are only babies, both of them, and through carelessness, a moment of inattention, she’s misplaced them. Or they’ve been stolen. Their cribs are empty, she’s hurrying through unfamiliar streets looking for them. The streets are deserted, the windows dark; there’s no snow on the ground, no leaves on the hedges, the sky overhead would be full of stars if she could only look up. She would call, but she knows the children will not be able to answer her, even if they can hear her. They’re inside one of the houses, wrapped up; even their mouths are covered by blankets.

She turns over, forces herself awake. She looks around the room, the looming bureau, the spider plants, the stripes of light through the blinds, making sure she is here. Her heart quiets, her eyes are dry. The dream is an old one, an old familiar. She began having it after Nancy was born. At that time she would wake crying convulsively, and Nate would comfort her. He would take her to the children’s
room so she could listen and see that they were all right. He’d thought she was dreaming about their own children, but even then she had known, though she hadn’t told him, that the lost babies were her mother and Caroline. She’s shut them out, both of them, as well as she could, but they come back anyway, using the forms that will most torment her.

She doesn’t want to go back to sleep; she knows that if she does she’ll probably have the same dream again. She gets out of bed, finds her slippers and dressing gown, and goes downstairs to make herself a warm milk and honey. As she passes the children’s room she listens, then pushes open the door just to make sure. Pure habit. She will probably go on doing this for the rest of her life, even after they are really gone. She will go on having the dream. Nothing ever finishes.

L
esje’s knife squeaks on china. They’re having roast beef, which is a little tough. Her mother has never known how to cope with roast beef. Lesje cuts and chews; nobody says anything, which is not unusual. Around her is the sound she remembers from childhood, a hollow sound, like a cave where there might be an echo.

They didn’t know she was coming until the last minute. Nevertheless her mother has set out the good plates, the ones with pink roses and gold rims that belonged to Lesje’s grandmother. The other good plates have blue borders with silver rims and scenes of Scottish castles; they belonged to the other grandmother. The meat plates. Lesje’s parents got them because, despite his transgressions, her father was the only son. Her aunt got the milk plates and has never ceased to resent it. There’s a third set of dishes for everyday, which her parents bought themselves: oven-to-table stoneware. Lesje feels more comfortable with these, which are a neutral shade of brown.

Her mother offers her more Yorkshire pudding. Lesje accepts, which makes her mother smile; a placid, mournful smile. She has
braids wound around her head only in old photographs, Lesje can’t remember her with them, but she looks as though the braids are still there, shining through the matronly permanent she renews every two months. A rounded face, tidy features. Lesje’s father too is round, which makes Lesje’s height and stringiness a family mystery. When she was in her teens her mother kept telling her she would fill out when she got older, to console her for the lack of breasts. But she has not filled out.