There was another reason for my anger. Everyone has memories that, if not perishable, are still too precious to be exposed to bright light. Whatever my wife, Susan, and I had shared all those years ago belonged to me, and me alone. That file had been stamped Private and Confidential. I bitterly resented Mildred’s trotting out for inspection something which happened thirty years ago; moreover, for the sole reason of tarting up my CV. My daughter will be given away by “my brother the widower,” not “my brother the fag.”
“I’m sorry, did I say something out of line?” Lois Fullerton dropped her question into a silence beginning to congeal.
I snapped to. “Not at all. Just woolgathering. I was married a long time ago, and I guess your remark sent my thoughts off the rails onto a siding. Do I have time for another pop?”
“Of course.”
“Why don’t I just help myself?”
“No, let me.”
I could see she was determined to be ingratiating. I like whenever possible to pour my own drinks. That way I can keep track of consumption. Like most nondrinkers, Lois Fullerton’s idea of hospitality was a drink the colour of strong tea. More is more.
“I suppose it is a bit unusual,” she continued as she resumed her seat, “holding the wedding in the groom’s home town rather than the bride’s. But, as Mildred explained, your mother is not up to going to Toronto, and as she is paying for the wedding, your sister is quite prepared to accommodate her.”
The blip that flashed onto my radar screen nearly knocked me out of my chair. Mother was to pay for the wedding? The implications caused such an information overload that I could barely bring myself to reply.
“Mother has never liked to travel. And now that she is old …”
“I fully understand.”
I seemed to be learning about this wedding through dispatches, like news of a war being fought on several fronts. Unlike Audrey Crawford, however, a woman I have known most of my life, Lois Fullerton was a total stranger. Call it pride, call it privacy, call it family solidarity, I was not about to admit ignorance of the proposed financial arrangements.
“She is quite understandably excited about the first wedding in the third generation. As you probably know, Jennifer is the youngest. But I don’t think either Richard or Elizabeth will marry for a while. They are both career-oriented at the moment.”
Unlike Mildred, I did not feel obliged to fill in the blanks. Not only was Richard aimed towards a performing career, he was also gay, a fact that made his marrying remote. Elizabeth had won a scholarship to the University of Indiana to study singing, especially opera. She had spent the last two years studying voice in Montreal, and, according to the grapevine, she was getting quite a name for herself, but not as a singer. If she does marry, her husband will be either a halfback or a hairdresser.
“Mind you,” Lois said, cradling the glass, an attractive gesture that put her remarkable hands into relief, “I fully expect to assume some of the costs of the wedding. The time has long since passed when the bride’s family paid the whole shot. Both Mildred and I want the occasion to be memorable. It may be the first wedding for her, but as Douglas is an only child it will be the only wedding for me. You’ve met Douglas?”
“Not yet. The last time I went to Toronto he and Jennifer were in Montreal, and I just missed them.”
“I think he’s very special, but then I’m prejudiced. I know he’s a bit young to get married, but he’s a serious boy. He’s designing the wedding rings.”
“He’s what? I mean – I didn’t know he was interested in jewellery.”
“He’s very artistic. It was a toss-up between art school and a graduate degree in English.”
“I see.” A hearty swallow helped me to digest the bit about the wedding rings. There is sensitive and then there is sensitive.
It was almost with relief that I saw the maid appear in the doorway to announce dinner in her lilting Caribbean voice.
“Bring your drink to the table.”
I stood, determined to make some effort to be pleasant over dinner. Up to now I had been about as scintillating as open heart surgery. So far the evening had been mined with surprises. I could only hope they had all been sprung, leaving me free to concentrate on being at least a civil dinner guest. I paused in front of a painting, one of those three-hour paletteknife studies of the trackless Canadian north, the thicker the paint, the more serious the intent.
“That is very fresh and arresting.”
“I think so.” Standing beside me, Lois put her hand lightly on my arm. I knew she would touch me sooner or later, the first move in the courting ritual. With her other hand she traced an arc across the upper half of the picture. “I love the way he has handled the sky. There is so much colour in each stroke.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed as I followed her hips towards the dining room. I really don’t much like gooey paint, or impasto as it should be called. Except for Van Gogh. But he used his heavy paint with passion. Everyone else is merely sincere.
To live on the income of megabucks enables people to play games, one of which is to pretend that nothing really takes any effort. The rich float through life on a sea of diminutives: little dressmakers who charge by the stitch, intimate gatherings for no more than a hundred people, ten-day jaunts to Tokyo and Hong Kong. The sin lies not in having but in noticing one has.
A glimpse of Lois Fullerton’s massive mahogany dining table, set with Crown Derby Imari flanked by baroque silver and softly lit by two immense ormolu candelabra, suggested the cook had been preparing more than potluck supper, an impression the oysters Rockefeller did nothing to dispel. A Gewürtztraminer glowed in Waterford goblets. Knowing the mythology surrounding oysters, I wondered about the casual care that had gone into planning this particular menu.
Like Little Tommy Tucker I was raised to sing for my supper. To be a dinner guest is not unlike going on stage; one is expected to perform. By now I was feeling the beneficial effects of the scotch, that temporary suspension of a week’s fatigue, which is a kind of mild euphoria. Lois was an accomplished hostess, adroit at asking the right questions but not so forward as to be importunate. I told about the case I was currently occupied with, in broad outline naturally, for much of the information was privileged. We talked about “Masterpiece Theatre,” guilt-free television, that grab-bag program whose credits unroll against what appears to be a high-class garage sale.
The pillaged oyster shells gave way to a crown roast of lamb, neatly dismembered in the kitchen and handed around by the maid. It had been a while since I was served in this fashion – most of my eating out is in restaurants – but I remembered how. For all its supposed gentility, handing around food is awkward. The dish is seldom in the right position, certainly not for an arm twitching from the aftermath of bursitis, and the fragrant steam carries with it a good deal of heat. But my excellent Chateauneuf-du-Pape, decanted and acknowledged, went straight to my shoulder.
Lois and I continued our conversational pas de deux. During the exchanges, I looked as much as I listened. I suppose I was looking for a hallmark, like the one clearly visible on each knife and fork. But try as I might, I could not place Lois Fullerton, which I suppose is another way of saying she did not strike me as native to the community. I could not picture her wearing a down-filled coat and rubber boots, pushing a cart through the supermarket. If she once carried a hallmark, it had become illegible. My instinct told me she was a woman who had created herself in her own image, a do-it-yourself Adam’s-rib project. Everything was right, almost too right. I looked in vain for the rough edge, the blurred line, the dropped stitch.
A lemon mousse the consistency of cloud followed by a piece of Stilton, which must have been delivered by Brink’s, brought to a conclusion a meal that had been less potluck than potlatch. Over decaffeinated coffee, which we had crossed to the library to drink, we returned to the topic that quite obviously concerned the hostess far more than either my work or my taste in movies did, namely t
he wedding. It was her suggestion that Mildred take charge of the ceremony itself and Lois pick up the tab for the reception. Having scant experience of weddings myself, I found her offer both reasonable and generous, particularly as she wanted to engage the Oval Room at the Ritz. It might not be available at this late date, in which case she would try the Four Seasons. To engage the Oval Room, one of the most elegant reception rooms in the city and to feed the guests, which included an open bar, and to underwrite an orchestra – no records or tapes for this reception, thank you very much – would take a sizeable bite out of any budget. It was perfectly evident that I was expected to endorse the suggestion, and I did.
“And now,” she began, setting down her cup and leaning forward, “let’s talk about you.” I couldn’t be dead certain, but I’d be willing to bet she had used just a touch of eyeshadow to emphasize her cleavage. She reached up to adjust one of her earrings, and in so doing exposed the palm of her hand. I read a magazine article once, probably in the dentist’s office, which explained that when a woman shows a man the palm of her hand it means the light is green.
Two can play at body language. I crossed my legs so the outside of my left thigh blocked a frontal attack, sat upright in my chair, and held onto the cup and saucer.
“There’s really nothing to talk about. If I tried to tell you about the real, the inner, the quintessential me, you’d be fast asleep in four and one half minutes.”
She laughed a well-rehearsed dismissive laugh and flashed her laser dimples. “I don’t believe that for a second. Attractive single men are always in demand.”
I was already bored with this conversation. One thing about the gay subculture I do admire is the absence of sexual shadowboxing, which, I suppose, is another way of saying that by the time you get around to speaking to someone who has caught your eye, going to bed is a foregone conclusion. Sometimes it’s not necessary to speak at all. Even when I was younger and still trying to make it with this or that girl, my idea of flirting was to put my hand inside her blouse. Sex is something I like to do, not talk about, read about, or watch.
“Attractive men, yes. But I assure you, to know me is not to love me. I have been told that bracing truth so many times I’m beginning to believe it is probably correct.”
It is sometimes a disadvantage to be taken for what passes as straight in a heterosexual world, especially at a time when declaring one’s sexual taste is almost considered a virtue. Today’s young homosexuals flaunt their preferences with a candour that threatens to give them whiplash. But, for better or worse, I was raised to believe that serving up your sexuality on a platter was bad manners, an attitude I have been unable to discard. Discretion is its own protective colouring, and to have been married, even all those years ago, has caused more than one woman to set her cap, or her cups, in my direction.
Lois was a case in point. “If that is true, I’d enjoy having the chance to find out for myself.”
She rose and reached for a log from a small, neat pile on the hearth. The logs looked as though they had been dusted before they were brought into the house. After placing one on the now glowing ashes, she appeared to stumble. By putting her hand firmly on my knee, she steadied herself and rose to her feet, but not until I had been offered a bird’s eye view of her splendid breasts hang-gliding above the hearth. I studied them with the detached interest of the judge at a country fair examining a fine Ayreshire heifer. I also decided it was time this tête-à-tête came to a conclusion.
I rose to my feet. “May I use the washroom?” I could certainly have used a pee, but I was more interested in shifting the pieces on the board.
Lois paused just a second before answering. “I’m sorry to say the powder room on the ground floor is out of order. Why don’t you use the one off the master bedroom, just at the head of the stairs to the right.”
As I climbed the wide, carpeted staircase I could not help thinking that Lois Fullerton would not tolerate a plugged sink or a blocked toilet for even an afternoon. A plumber would arrive, by limousine if necessary, to put the recalcitrant plumbing instantly to rights. In other words, I was being sent upstairs for a reason. As I turned into the master bedroom I realized what that reason was. In fact, I was so astonished by the room itself I almost forgot my reason for climbing the stairs.
I felt as though I had somehow travelled backward through time to land in a photo spread from Life magazine. Who would have believed an all-white bedroom could still be found in the 1980s, outside the Smithsonian Institute. White rooms belonged to the thirties, a fad of the jet set when it still flew in planes powered by propellers. White bedrooms were the stuff of screen legend, when movie stars seemed larger than life, both on screen and off. To find such a room on Mayfair Crescent struck me as no less astonishing than stumbling across a perfectly preserved pre-Columbian city in the Central American jungle.
Furthermore, the furnishings were bandbox fresh, no mean achievement in a city where the air pollution index is read daily by a radio announcer in a worried voice. Dominating the room stood an immense bed from whose canopy, shaped like a crown, fell luxuriantly draped billows of white brocade flanking a white quilted satin headboard outlined in scalloped white carving highlighted in gold. A counterpane of heavy white satin fell to the floor in pleated folds only partially subdued by a second, fitted counterpane of ecru lace. From white and gold valances, trimmed with swags of ivory brocade, hung heavy curtains of the same fabric. A dressing table surmounted by a large mirror framed in bare bulbs, like that of a theatrical dressing room, matching bureaus and boudoir lamps, occasional tables, a pair of Hepplewhite chairs (copies, one hoped), all echoed the white-and-gold motif against white-flocked wallpaper, their feet in casters sinking into the deep pile broadloom. On that untrammelled surface my footprints looked like those of the Abominable Snowman.
I waded across the carpet to an immense white bathroom, whose basic white plumbing fixtures looked perfectly at home. It is not even necessary to point out that there was a sunken tub, with Jacuzzi alongside a shower stall, bidet, double sink, everything necessary to scrub, sluice, soak, and soothe after a hard day at the orifice. I have always had mixed feelings about double sinks. Marriages can survive a good deal – adultery, abuse, prolonged absence – but not the daily sight of the other half brushing teeth.
I do not ordinarily wash my hands after micturition because I do not pee on them, but I felt obliged, positively compelled, by this pristine and gleaming sanctuary of sanitation. I ran water over my hands and blotted them on a velours pile handtowel, whose colour I need not mention, lifted from a freestanding towel rack that looked like a crucifix. I left the towel folded over the edge of the counter, a sign of my passage like white pebbles or bread crumbs.
I mushed across the broadloom to the bedroom door, where I turned for one last, disbelieving look at that expanse of pristine vulgarity. I remember reading a supremely silly article written by a woman on how to seduce a man on home turf. She suggested the bedroom should be painted blue and filled with plants to give him the illusion he is making love in the great outdoors under a cloudless sky. Small wonder the gay population is growing by leaps and bounds.
But even if I were interested in grappling with Lois Fullerton, I would have found this bedroom daunting. Allowances made for muted lighting, with a few drops of her perfume on each light bulb so the heat sends her fragrance into the air, discounting the satin sheets, which I knew lurked under that counterpane, the whole effect was so self-consciously shop-girl erotic that it failed to arouse. To make love on that theatrical bed would be like shooting a porno movie without the camera. And I had been manoeuvred upstairs to glimpse this bower of bliss as though it were a preview of coming attractions.
It was quite obviously time for me to go home. But one difficult situation not covered by the Boy Scout Handbook is how to get gracefully away from a hostess who has absolutely no intention of letting you go.
The lights in the library had dimmed considerably by the time I return
ed, no doubt the result of a carefully controlled rheostat, and the cocktail clutter had been replaced by a tray of liqueurs, those lethal concoctions of alcohol and sugar that guarantee insomnia. The hostess was at the ready.
“Liqueur, or brandy? Or would you prefer a highball?”
“To be candid, I would really like all three, in that sequence. But prudence dictates I pass. I have to work tomorrow.” The more patent the lie, the more glibly it must be uttered. I could easily have delivered the next line verbatim.
“Oh, but you can’t leave yet. The evening is still young.”
“I warned you, Lois. When they pick the ten dullest men in Montreal I will be the first seven. It has been a long week.”
“We don’t have to converse. I just had a compact disc player installed. The sound is quite extraordinary.”
“I’m sure it is. But music, like anything else, requires concentration. And I fear mine is beginning to flag. I really should be pushing along. It’s been a delightful evening.”
“How would you like to put your feet up and watch a movie?” Lois dropped her voice, the way she had when she first telephoned my office. Her eyes suggested an infinity of unimagined delights. She managed the remarkable feat of seeming to pulsate while standing absolutely still.
“Not at the moment, thanks. I’ll weaken and have a nightcap or three and feel slower tomorrow.” I stepped towards the door.
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