My Life Among the Apes (4 page)

MONDAY. OPEN MIC TONIGHT. I pull into my gravel spot, throw myself out of the car, fumble with the key to open the motel room, yank the guitar out of its case, and start to practise. I fuck up totally. Calm down, calm down. I put the guitar onto the spongy armchair, take off my suit, and step into the shower. I decide not to shave again and dress in jeans, untucked lumberjack shirt, sneakers. I heat up a can of Campbell's chunky beef soup and, taking the pot, perch on the bed and look out the window to the townhouses across the way. The streetlights are working now, casting overlapping circles on the street and the little front lawns. I eat a few spoonfuls before putting down the pot and taking up the guitar again. And now the time is already gone and I put the guitar in its case, wondering why I don't chicken out. But I go out the door and walk along the highway holding my guitar case, like the figure on the cover of some pathetic folk record.

The parking lot of Bob's Place has half the usual number of motorcycles parked out front, Monday not being the most popular night of the week. Inside, I have to let my eyes adjust to see three young guys already setting up their Fenders and a small drum kit. I make my way to the bar where the bartender is filling ketchup bottles.

“Hey there,” she says. “Number eight on the list, right?”

“I think so.”

“You want a Blue?”

“Thanks.”

“I remember what everybody drinks. It's just a memory thing I have. Even if you don't come in for three months, I remember. Not that it's going to do me any good, with the place shutting down.”

“What do you mean?”

She slides the beer in front of me, a line of foam slipping down the cold glass. “Going to be a Valu-Mart here. Groceries and shit. For the new subdivision. And a halfmile down the road there's going to be a mall with six movie screens. Hey!” she shouts to the band. “Why don't you stop messing around with the damn mics and start playing?”

But the band takes another few minutes. The lead singer does this weird snake motion while he sings and then their three songs are over and two women in suede vests are already coming up. One has a regular guitar, the other a Dobro, and they sing two Loretta Lynn songs and sound all right, like they've been playing in crummy Nashville honkytonks for years. Louder applause from the bikers. The bartender slides over to me.

“You're on next, honey.”

“But I'm number eight.”

“Well, number three has pussied out and number four is in the washroom so I'm slipping you in. You go and rock this place, tiger.”

It takes a total refutation of all my instincts to get myself to pick up the guitar case and carry it across the room. It knocks against the arm of a biker who shoves me back hard. By the time I reach the stage I am shaking like a man pulled out of an icy river. I pull the macramé strap over my head, take the pick from my pocket, and perch on the stool. The glare from the small spotlight turns the audience dark and menacing, which they actually are.

“Get the fuck on with it.”

MY CELLPHONE IS CHIMING on the night table by the motel bed as I unlock the door. I take my time putting down my case, dropping the keys, walking over to pick up the phone. The numbers pulsing on the little screen are Candice's. I stare at them as if I'm looking at the winning numbers of a lottery ticket that I've already thrown away.

“Hello?” I say tentatively.

“Mitch. I've been phoning all night.” I can hear the shakiness in her voice but also the annoyance. “I need to talk to you. Come over.”

“It's midnight. I'm a forty-five minute drive away.”

“It's kind of important, Mitch.”

“It's over then, the new thing?”

“I was an idiot. No, not an idiot. I mean I understand myself better now, what I had to put myself through.”

“Us. Put us through.”

“Yes, us. I need you, Mitch.”

“I just played a song,” I say.

“What?”

“In a bar. A biker bar, if you can believe it. I got up with a guitar and sang ‘Bird on the Wire.' When I got down again the bartender, this older woman, she had tears in her eyes. She said to me, ‘Bob used to sing me that song.'”

“Mitch, I don't know what you're talking about.”

A TULIP BULB LOOKS LIKE a little onion, like you could bite into it. I put one into each of the small holes I've dug with a spoon and pat down the earth. It's too late for them to bloom this year, but they'll come up next spring.

On the next lawn two young boys are tussling over a soccer ball. Their names are Daya and Rajif. Some older kids have made a ramp out of a sheet of plywood and some blocks left by the construction company and are taking turns jumping on their skateboards. It is an absolutely beautiful morning, like the sun has risen for the first time over the world.

I hear my name and look up to see Mrs. Kankipati crossing the street with a plate in her hands. She is a handsome woman with greying hair and large brown eyes whose husband is an importer who flies to Kashmir every six weeks. Mrs. Kankipati says, “Mitch, I just made some pakoras. I think you will like them.”

“Oh, I love pakoras.”

“But in the restaurant it isn't the same. You try one of these.”

She holds up the plate and I take one. It is almost too hot to hold and leaves oil on my fingers. It is savoury and delicious.

“Amazing, Mrs. K.”

“You need a wife to cook for you. Maybe a nice Indian girl, what do you think?”

“I need to learn how to cook. Then I'll bring you over something.”

We both laugh and she puts the plate down on the grass and retreats back to her own house. I return to my gardening, knees pressing into the still-new grass, the smell of the earth in my nostrils. The cries of seagulls and the steady hum of traffic from the highway remind me of the ocean.

I Find I Am Not Alone on the Island

IN THE SUMMER OF 1989, Chloe Tillman was working in a diner while dithering about going to graduate school. She had been accepted at Princeton and offered a scholarship, but had so far failed to convince herself that the intense study of difficult texts was a worthwhile or even defensible pursuit. It was one of those rare periods when she was without a boyfriend, having dumped Tim Veldhuisen in April. Tim had started to say “I love you” and give hints that he was working up the nerve to ask her to move in with him. The thought of waking up every day beside him had filled her with dread. The truth was she hadn’t been in love with any of her boyfriends, a nagging secret that she had kept from even her closest girlfriends. She did miss Tim for a couple of weeks, but she took the measure of her happiness and decided that she had made the right decision.

The diner was at Yonge and Wellesley, before that part of town had begun to change. The customers were tourists walking down to the Eaton Centre, strippers on their way to work in the nearby clubs, provincial government office workers, and those who Liana, the owner’s daughter, lumped under the category of “freaks.” Chloe always gave large portions to the strippers, who called her “dear” or “honey.” Her favourite customer, a pleasant, balding man with round black glasses who always left a twenty percent tip or better, liked to sit under the framed print of the Parthenon by the kitchen door. He was friendly without trying to flirt, and he was funny but didn’t try to make her linger at his table. His order was a western sandwich, a Greek salad, or occasionally a tuna melt, which he blamed for his “middle-aged swell.” Every so often he would joke about his daughter, his son, or his wife, but always in an affectionate way (she despised male customers who made cracks about their wives). He claimed that one day he would quit his government job, buy a sailboat, and take them all to the Caribbean — this despite his never having gone sailing in his life and being, he said, afraid of large bodies of water. He’d been working for the province for seventeen years but claimed not to know what his actual responsibilities were other than to furrow his brow and tap his pencil on those rare occasions when the minister came in.

He always carried a book and read over lunch — one of the classics of western literature:
Madame Bovary, Crime and Punishment, Middlemarch
. She asked him about his reading and he told her that he’d only developed a taste for fiction in the last few years and was now trying to catch up. “But I’m hoping to die of old age before I get to James Joyce.” He’d heard a little about her, too — where she came from, what she studied, her dilemma over graduate school. “Well, I’m impressed by Princeton. If I were you, I’d go just to make other people feel stupid. I mean, you’re making me feel stupid right now and you haven’t even accepted.”

And then he stopped coming. He had occasionally missed a day, and so it was half a week before she registered his absence and another couple of days before she began to really wonder. Perhaps he was on vacation with his wife and kids, or was sick. Perhaps he’d dropped dead or been hit by a car, although she didn’t consider those possibilities. She was disappointed to think that he was taking his meals elsewhere.

The last time Chloe saw him he’d been reading
Robinson Crusoe
. While she wiped down the table next to his, he told her what a great adventure story it was. “I feel like I’m twelve years old again.” He joked that he might try to survive on an island using the book as a guide and she reminded him that he was going to buy that sailboat. “You’re right,” he had said. “I almost forgot. There’s this really great line in the book. I underlined it, which is a bit nerdy of me, I know. Want to see?”

He’d held the book up and she had read the underlined words.
I find I am not alone on the island
. She had agreed that it was a great line although privately she had thought it a little awkward and then she had gone into the kitchen. When she came out again, he was gone, leaving some bills and change on the table.

Picking up a lunch order, she said to Liana, “Have you seen that middle-aged guy with the black glasses lately? The one who always sits at number seven?”

“I need a little more information here. How does he take his coffee?”

“Cream, not milk. Sometimes he orders the apple pie.”

“Oh sure. Good tipper. But you usually serve him. I can’t really picture his face.”

“He hasn’t been in for a couple of weeks.”

“He hit on you or something?”

“No, he’s not creepy. I was just wondering.”

“You ever notice how you can tell people are on blind dates? The way they say the person’s name as if it’s a question.
Melanie? Simon?
I always want to say, ‘Go home, both of you, before it’s too late.’”

IN THE NEXT WEEK, TIM left two messages on her answering machine. She started running in the early evenings. Her friend Natalie called from Paris, where she had gone to study art history. She didn’t know anybody yet and was lonely; why didn’t Chloe come and stay with her for a week or ten days at the end of August? She might be able to pick up a cheap last-minute ticket. But Chloe dithered on that, too.

And then on Friday she was setting a table when she saw the man’s photograph, a small black-and-white shot on the front page of some government newsletter left on a chair. The photograph looked five or ten years old; the man still had all his hair.

Economics Development Officer Fondly Remembered.

So, she thought, he really was dead after all. His name was Gerry Lembeck. He had been a “vital” part of the negotiating team that had kept two automotive plants in Ontario. He had died “suddenly” — that was all it said, except that for years he had bravely struggled with an unspecified illness. He left behind his wife, Rita, head of personnel for a chain of pharmacies, his son Joe and two-year-old daughter Naomi. A memorial had already been held for ministry employees.

She showed the article to Liana. “You know what ‘suddenly’ means, don’t you?” Liana said. “It’s code for suicide. I’m guessing the illness was depression. Did he seem depressed to you?”

“No,” Chloe said. “I mean, yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” She meant to take the article but somehow it wasn’t in her bag when she got home. At ten o’clock her friends came to get her and they cabbed it to a club on King Street to see a band called the Stuffed Triggers. In the crowd they met up with more friends, including a guy named Daniel, a theatre major at George Brown. She had a rule against going out with actors, since in her experience they were all revoltingly needy narcissists, but Daniel was funny and good-looking and tall (which always attracted her), and he never once talked about his acting ambitions. In the early morning hours he walked her all the way home, telling her about his family’s disappointment that he didn’t want to go into the building trades. He made her laugh, so she took him upstairs. He was quite beautiful in the pre-dawn dark, his sleek back, his chest, his face. It didn’t feel like a first time. Afterwards, she easily fell asleep.

HER PARENTS LIVED IN a hundred-and-twenty-year-old farm house in Newmarket. The lawn sloped down to the river where her father kept his canoe and rowboat. Some of the surrounding land was being developed into suburban housing but in back of the house, with the surrounding spruce trees and the willows by the water, it was possible for her to have the illusion that little had changed since her childhood. Her father was a retired high school science teacher; her mother had taught physical education and home economics. Their house, with its mismatched farm-sale furniture, worn rugs, and books, had long ago set her own tastes. Every friend she had ever brought here had immediately fallen in love with both the house and her parents, and when her father would start handing out the martinis at four o’clock, the friend would invariably ask to be adopted. What her friends saw, Chloe always thought, was no more or less valid than how any other household presented itself.

She found her father reading
Scientific American
in a Muskoka chair, their golden lab at his feet. Her mother, in rubber knee pads, was weeding the garden. She and her father hugged lightly while her mother took off her gloves, saying she was glad for an excuse to stop. Her father asked whether she had decided yet about Princeton, giving her his “patented” look, meaning that he couldn’t imagine what was holding her up. Her mother changed the subject to Chloe’s sisters — to May, who had given up trying to get pregnant and was hoping to adopt a baby from China, and to Lauren, who had just started to date a year after her divorce.

They asked her about Tim, who she had made the mistake of bringing up to visit and who had made almost too good an impression. She said nothing about Daniel, of whom they were less likely to approve. After an hour or so she grew restless and announced an intention to take out the canoe. “You won’t enjoy it,” her father said. “You can see all those new houses along the way. And now there’s always trash floating in the river.”

She went anyway, the dog wagging anxiously from the shore as she pushed out. Her father was right about the garbage: she saw a floating Coke can, a broken chair, plastic bags snagged on the willow branches. She was an elegant canoeist and her strokes were almost silent. It didn’t surprise her when she started to cry, for she had felt it building for a couple of days. She drifted until she grew quiet again and then she turned around. By the time she reached her parents’ house, she had recovered.