The Sky Is Falling (21 page)

Do they?

I got up for a drink of water and, realizing then how stiff I was from lying on my futon all morning, decided to go out for a walk. I left the house and for several blocks walked with my head down, agitated but pretending not to be, trying to think about my paper without thinking about the implications of that line, so by the time I reached Kropotkin Street and looked up, what I saw stopped me in mid-stride: the avenue ahead in full frothy bloom, as though a pink mist was streaming down it on both sides. I crossed quickly over. A cumulus of blossoms. Overnight these few blocks of Third Avenue had been transformed. Nature had performed this action which, indisputably, trumped ours. All at once I felt like sobbing, the way I had at the end of
If You
Love This Planet
when Dr. Caldicott declares how deeply in love she is with the world and how seeing it in spring especially makes you realize you have to change the priorities of your life. Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but everything seemed magnified, more intensely coloured,
pinker
. I desperately loved the world! That was what I was feeling, I decided. The pure embrace of life.

I broke off a cluster of blossoms that, back home, I placed in a glass of water on my card table. Over the next few hours I kept glancing up at it, reassuring myself I hadn't dreamed what I'd seen and felt.

Mid-afternoon Sonia called up and asked what I was doing. “Reading,” I said.

Ya chitayu
.

I got an idea. I plucked all the petals off the branch, waited a minute, then called her name. When she appeared under the grate, I released them, pink, liberated moths, watching as they fluttered down on her smiling, upturned face.

One hundred and forty-nine pages later, Kitty, having been made physically ill when Vronsky abruptly transfers his attentions to Anna, is taken by her mother to a German spa. There she meets a Russian girl of her own age, Varenka, and
Kitty, as
often happens, felt an inexplicable attraction to this Mademoiselle
Varenka.

The similarities disturbed me:
as young girls do
,
as often happens
. Did it? I knew it happened now, because of Carla, but I had assumed that lesbianism was a modern phenomenon, that it had to do with feminism, with taking a stand against men, not with love. But now I read in a book more than a hundred years old that Kitty
was aware, when their eyes met, that Mademoiselle Varenka
liked her too
.

Five chapters are dedicated to Kitty's obsession with Varenka, chapters that had apparently not seemed very important the first time I read the novel since I barely remembered them. Varenka, Kitty decides from a distance, while pretty, is
not likely to be
attractive to men
. The two women see each other daily in passing but, not having been formally introduced, are obliged to communicate with their eyes. Kitty's eyes say,
Are you the delightful
being I imagine you to be?
and Varenka's answer,
I like you too, and
you are very very sweet.

Kitty begs her mother for an introduction until the Princess Shcherbatsky, weary of these entreaties, approaches the Russian girl at last. “
My daughter has lost her heart to you.
”

Varenka: “
It is more than reciprocal, Princess.
”

And so they finally meet.
Kitty blushed with happiness, long
and silently pressing her new friend's hand, which did not return her
pressure but lay passively in hers. The hand did not respond to her
pressure but Mademoiselle Varenka's face glowed with a soft, pleased,
though rather sad smile. . . .

Exactly the way Sonia's looked when I showered her with petals! I remembered, too, how she had held my hand during that first NAG! meeting, and my confusion about what to do. I, too, had gone limp. Like Kitty, I blushed now.

Kitty becomes
more and more fascinated by her friend
,
enraptured
by her. Soon she learns that Varenka has also been wounded in love. “
Why, if I were a man, I could never care for anyone else after
knowing you
,” Kitty tells Varenka.

“How good you are, how good!” exclaimed Kitty and, stopping her,
she kissed her.

She kissed her.

I touched my face, feeling that tingle again. No, I couldn't write about it. As I reshelved
Anna Karenina
in the milk crate, the word
palpitations
came to mind, though it felt more like my heart was hurling itself against the bars of its cage. Eventually these protestations subsided. I had other, more pressing things to distract me: our date with the end of the world, my long mental slog toward another essay topic.

At our next house meeting we decided to have a party. After the requisite bickering, we reached consensus on a date—the following Friday—who, and how many people we would invite, and what each of us would do to get ready. Then, on Friday, I came home to an unusual domestic scene, Sonia on her knees angrily scrubbing the kitchen floor while Pete sat cross-legged on the table, well out of her way, shelling peanuts into his lap.

“Let me,” I begged her. “I'll do it.”

“That's not the point,” she said.

The point was that we, the women, were yet again cleaning while they, the men, were not. Sonia glared at Pete. I hurried out with the teeming compost, knocking another rotting stave off the fence in my eagerness to stay in the we that included her. When I came back with the empty bowl, Pete waved me over and dumped his shells in it.

Since hinting wasn't working, Sonia sat up on her haunches and asked him outright: “Pete! Why aren't you helping us?”

“I got the snacks.” He waved the bag of peanuts.

“When we said we'd get the house ready, we meant put the food out and decorate. We didn't mean do everybody's chores.”

“So put the food out and decorate.”

Her little nostrils quivered. The effect was charming. “You go around saying you're a feminist! If you really were, you'd help!”

“Wrong. I really am a feminist, therefore I refuse to treat you differently than I'd treat a man.” He cheerfully cracked another shell with his perfect teeth. “Ask Dieter. He'd be happy to patronize you.”

This was why anarchism would never work, I thought. No one would ever want to wash the kitchen floor. When I made the mistake of voicing this, Pete replied, “Wrong, Zed. This is actually an example of how perfectly anarchism works. Someone always wants the kitchen floor to be clean. In this case, Sonia wants it to be clean, so she's washing it. She's washing it of her own free will. If I relinquished my principles and went ahead and washed it, even though I'm perfectly satisfied with the condition of the floor, I wouldn't be an anarchist. Because an anarchist will not be limited in the exercise of his will by fear of punishment or by obedience to any person or metaphysical entity. He—or she—is guided in his—or her—own actions by his—or her—own personal understanding and ethical conceptions.”

Dieter walked in then and Sonia got up off the floor and threw the sopping rag at him. It slapped his chest with a horse-dungy plop that made me laugh out loud. Sonia shrieked that she was on strike and ran out.

“Asshole,” Dieter told Pete.

“I didn't do anything.”

Dieter dropped his books on the table and, tugging his pant legs at the thigh, got down on all fours. I knew then that he still liked Sonia, though he hardly bothered her any more. His glasses hung off his face as he worked, clinging to his temples by the arms. Pete kept on cracking peanuts.

I went after Sonia and, finding her lying on the meadow of her bedspread, sat down to watch the fortunate air filling her up, the unfortunate air leaving. I felt so awkward around her now, a different kind of awkwardness than when I had first moved in. Then I had felt invisible, but now I felt far too obvious, like the sleeve I wore my heart on was fluorescent or Hawaiian.

“I'm exhausted,” she said after a minute.

“You should have waited for me to get home. I would have helped.”

“It's not just that. Jane? After exams? After my practicum?”

“Yes?”

She was staring up at nothing. “Do you want to move out? We can get an apartment.”

“Together?” I said.

“Yes.”

It was hours before it really sunk in and the euphoria hit. What she said and her proviso: “If we're still alive, I mean.”

We had said eight o'clock but no one came until almost ten, after which the house was full of noise. Some of Dieter's
amigos
turned up, including Hector, back from Victoria in the hope that his refugee application would finally be processed. For this Latin American contingent we played music happy with maracas, buoyant with unintelligible choruses, until midnight, when Pete brought down his milk crate of tapes and put on
Purple
Haze
. People from SPND and EAR were there, too, and every-one from NAG! Belinda and Carla had set up in the kitchen, Belinda straddling a backward chair while Carla wove tiny braids into her hair. Several times during the evening Pete came in and asked, “Are you done yet?” to which Belinda replied, “God,” without looking up.

I tagged along while Sonia hugged everyone and made sure they had drinks. Everything she did—replenishing the chip bowl, stashing a six-pack in the fridge—she did with grace. I was
fascinated
,
enraptured
. Then Ruth came over. “Can I talk to you, Jane?”

“I'm helping Sonia,” I said and blushed. The adoration in my voice. So obvious! I followed Ruth out in case she'd noticed.

No one was in the living room despite all the effort Sonia and I had put into festooning it with cranes. Ruth closed the French doors after us then slumped on the chesterfield and, face in her hands, began to cry. I was supposed to hug her, I knew, but I didn't. I waited until she had blotted her tears on her paisley scarf. Taking a few pulls from the bottle jammed between her thighs, she said, “I'd do anything, Jane.”

“For whom?”

She burped into her fist. “To get into NAG! I know you're in now. Sonia told me. How did you do it?”

I felt sorry for her and told the truth: “I live here.”

“I knew it! I tried so hard. You have no idea how hard I tried to get in. I even sucked up to Dieter.” Ruth started to sob in earnest now and, embarrassed, I looked out the ponchoed window. Someone was coming up the walk in moon boots. More than out of season, the glowing white boots were out of climate, but I was accustomed to strange garb by then, to T-shirts that screamed slogans, to tie-dye in the full spectrum of purple, to work socks worn with long Indian cotton skirts, to Birkenstocks, buffalo sandals, huaraches, clogs. He set down the duffle bag he was carrying and removed something from it—a book.

“I'm so depressed,” Ruth said.

How strange that our roles should be reversed, that Ruth with her barely blue eyes and blond hair and her pretty peach-fuzzed face should be miserable while I was so exultant. Strange, too, that I had the power to save the night for her. All I had to do was tell her why I was so happy. Ruth was drinking with intent now. I said, “Sonia and I are moving out.”

She looked at me. “When?”

“After finals.”

“Thank you,” she gasped.

“Together,” I added, in case she hadn't understood that I loved Sonia. There. I'd finally admitted it.

“So
two
rooms will be free?” she said, incredulous.

The doorbell rang and, tingling all over from my confession, I went to answer it. The book was under his arm now, the duffle on the porch, a dark grey parka with a fake fur–trimmed hood draped over it. I only noticed because it was the same coat that got so many boys through Alberta winters, that boys all over Canada wore, presumably, but that I'd never seen in Vancouver because parkas were unnecessary. His hair, brown and wavy, flopped in his eyes.

“Does Dieter Koenig live here?” he asked in a voice thick with hope.

I nodded and stepped aside; he whisked the duffle in with him. There was something so comical about how he did it, bowing and bobbing and brushing away the hair, that the people who were hanging around in the vestibule smiled. Or maybe it was the boots. “Go ahead,” I said. “I think he's on the deck.” Just then Ruth came out of the living room, blotted and beaming, and I hurried after the newcomer before she had the chance to thank me physically.

“Through that door.” I pointed.

Sonia, tidying the counters, collecting empties, smiled at me.
How good you are, how good!
I thought, as Dieter's friend in the boots came clomping back inside, the book clutched to his chest like a flat black breastplate. “I don't see him,” he told me.

We went out together where about a dozen people braved the chill. Dieter was in the corner with Hector, the two of them talking with their hands. When Dieter spoke English, even when Hector did, their arms hung limply at their sides. English seemed to bring on a semi-paralysis, while Spanish animated everyone who spoke it. I wondered what Russian did. Made you drink vodka probably. “Dieter!” I called over the voices, the boom-box maracas, and pointed to Moon Boots, who raised a tentative hand and smiled. Dieter waved back blankly. A joint that was circulating reached us just then and Moon Boots took it with wide eyes, looking from the person who'd passed it, to me, as though he'd won a prize.