by Shani Mootoo
White wicker furniture that will stay out all winter long to furnish an ambiance of colonial leisure is displayed on some of the curved front porches of the red-brick bed and breakfasts we pass as we drive through the village. Imposing wide concrete stairs are hemmed in by elaborate white-painted concrete banisters. Like ours, many of these houses were built in the last half of the nineteenth century. Red-and-blue banners announce the presence of a glass artist’s studio or a painter’s, a ceramicist’s, a forged-iron worker, the arts and crafts store, the French grocery, a secondhand and antique shop, and that they are open for business. I imagine I am Prakash driving through this neighbourhood and seeing its appeal, and I see it myself as if for the first time. I feel pride in having chosen to move to such a picturesque place. I am pleased to be showing it off to him.
“Last year at this time,” I say, “it was minus nineteen degrees Celsius and everything was under ice. Look at it now, it could just as well be spring.” The sky is less cerulean than when I’d come out earlier to drive Skye to her house, but it is still bright, and bulbous milk-white clouds fringe the horizon. From shrubs and trees dangle a few stubborn, dried-out orange-coloured leaves, and their long pale bones draw fanned-out fingers against the sky. As beautiful as it is, it is a discordant winter scene because the lawns around the homes have recently been mowed and remain vibrant green. Prakash doesn’t answer. He’s texting something on his cellphone. I want to ask him not to text while he’s driving, but I don’t want to sound bossy, or timid.
Our village’s Christmas parade will take place the following weekend, I tell him. He should have come next week instead of this week. It’s a quaint affair, I say, with Santas driving tractors and elves in carts drawn by donkeys dressed up as reindeer. He glances at the road and then back to his phone repeatedly, muttering to me um-hm. His hair has indeed greyed. I imagine I must look to him as aged as he looks to me. But he’s aged well. Doors and verandah posts are garlanded with boughs of dark green fir that hang in arched loops, each section anchored by oversized red bows, and shiny gold, red, and blue baubles and long white candy canes are propped in the nest of bare limbs atop mulberry trees. Iridescent bluebird ornaments dot deciduous trees and glisten in this winter light. We pass a house on whose lawn is parked a life-size sleigh overflowing with large wrapped boxes tied elaborately with ribbon. It all looks out of place without any snow on the ground. I want him to see this place in which we live, but he is not paying attention. In the main part of the village I count three plastic snowmen, all exactly the same, with black-gloved hands raised in greeting. We must slow down in the area of a handful of boutiques and restaurants, some of which are open. In this commercial hub, where a sudden profusion of cars lines both sides of the street, pedestrians cross as leisurely as if they own the road. I want to point out our local pasta joint, and our favourite place to buy hostess gifts, and the new oddity — a Japanese-style coffee shop that recently opened — but Prakash uses the slowdown of the traffic to find a file on the cellphone with pictures of his children. He hands it to me and tells me to scroll through them, and as I do so he glances to see which I am looking at. I have never met them, but I’d seen photographs of them before. They are no longer children. I don’t recognize them. One of the boys has a moustache. I think the girl resembles her mother.
“Varuna is sixteen,” he says. “I’ve spoiled her. She thinks she’s a princess. I’ve always made her feel that way. When she isn’t treated like that at her school, it shocks her.” He laughs. He is a proud father. I scroll and there are the two boys. “Vikram on the left, Arjun on the right.” I ask what they are up to these days. “They’re on holiday from school,” he says, “and are currently in India with their mother.”
“Why haven’t you gone with them?” I ask, hoping for more understanding of his life today.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me, “there’s time enough for all of that later.”
His response irritates me, but it is in keeping with his usual manner. The mysteries and intrigues that aren’t at all mysteries or intrigues, but rather his need to control the moment, and when and how stories are told and information is let out. “So for the time being you’re a free man,” I say.
He responds rather seriously, “Actually, I am a free man; the secret is that I’ve always been a free man. Don’t you know that?”
* * *
Outside of the village, where the residential houses thin out and the road widens, the speed jumps from fifty kilometres to eighty. The car lurches forward. We pass farmhouses, acres apart from one another. As we climb a small hill that a bicyclist in light cool-weather gear struggles to mount, he turns to face me, and asks, “So?”
I watch the car veer across the centre line as he waits for an answer. “So what?” I answer. A vehicle approaches and he pulls us back onto our side.
“Tell me.”
“Well, what do you want to know?” I suspect he means for me to tell him what I meant when I said minutes before that I had things about which I wanted to speak with him. But the urgency I’d felt earlier has faded.
“I want to know everything,” he says.
Weak words dribble from my mouth. “I’ve taken myself out of the centre,” I say.
“Um-hm,” he says encouragingly, but I regret my vague words. They sound like a plea, and it shocks me that it takes nothing more than being alone with him for just a few minutes before I revert to my old role with him, the one in need, appealing to him for help or sympathy. I suddenly don’t remember anything I’d begun the morning wanting to say to him. My mind has gone blank.
I fumble and try to hold on to the last words spoken, and I open my palms out, gesturing for him to look around on either side of the highway — fields, a farmhouse here, one there, silos, barns, more fields. “Last year this time,” I say, “these fields were under a heavy cover of ice and snow, and then more ice and more snow. I can’t get over the difference this year. Last winter, any of us living down here could have been felled by the elements, but this winter, cyclists are still out riding. There is so much uncertainty living in the countryside.”
As we near the roundabout, the home of the Syrian refugees comes into view. The house remains closed up, the van still not there. “That’s where the island’s first Syrian refugees live.”
He glances at the house and says, “Um-hm.”
I wait, and he offers nothing more. I ask, as we pass the closed-up roadside farmer’s market next door, “Do you think about them much, about the Syrians?”
He says, “Of course. I think about them all the time.” But he offers no more.
I don’t pursue it. I wonder if pointing out their home irks him, if I’ve played into some stereotype he knows only too well. I look at his arm, I want to touch his wool jacket and apologize. I don’t. If I do, I won’t be able to stop apologizing. If I reach out and touch him, I’m not sure what I’ll be encouraging.
We pass more bare fields, a large spread of a hardware store surrounded by a big asphalt parking lot in which there are a few cars and trucks. More farmland. A couple more farmhouses. An auto-repair garage and a garden centre. A home for seniors. A vineyard and an optometrist next to each other on the local highway.
“So, carry on. You were saying,” he says eventually.
“This is not the centre,” I say again, a little deflated, and not quite sure what I mean.
He says, “Um-hm.”
“There’s nothing going on here,” I say, aware — but unable to stop myself — that I am talking as if the move here was a mistake. I don’t want him to think I am in bliss. Now that he’s back, I am not sure I want him to disappear again. Perhaps he will if he thinks I don’t need him. “I miss the city. I sometimes feel as if I’ve removed myself from the hustle and bustle, the diversity and the unexpected, wonderfully crazy flow of life. It can be lonely down here.”
“I thought so. I can see that. You’re not th
e country type. Tell me more,” he says.
He’s ready to sympathize. I am speaking as if I want him to think I regret what I’ve done, that I’m as broken as ever. That I’m not benefitting from this relocation. It’s a pattern, this dance with him, and how compelling it is. But it wasn’t hours ago that I so strongly felt I no longer want his pity. I want him to see that I am strong, that I can fend for myself. With Alex at my side, I can.
I’ve begun to perspire. My ears feel as if they’re on fire. I remove my jacket. I press the control to lower the window an inch. He turns down the heat. I sip water from one of the bottles.
I say, “Yes, I’m not a country person, but neither am I a city person,” and, having come to a stoplight, I point in the direction we must go.
He looks over at me and asks, “I can tell you’re lonely. Are you happy?”
The car veers, and as there are vehicles passing us constantly, I want to point this out, but before I do he has pulled back to our side again. I guess he knows he has this tendency to veer whenever he takes his eyes off the road.
Is this the entitlement of an old friend who thinks that because they’ve known you longer than your lover has, they are free to speak their mind? It irritates me that he watches me so closely, that he thinks he knows how I am. I say, “Of course,” and leave it there. We are quiet for a few minutes. Then, to soften the abruptness of my response, I add, “But is there anyone who’s really happy? Are you?”
He says, “Good point. It’s possible, but you have to be willing to be blind, to be deaf, to not think too much. To not feel. To not feel sadness or happiness, for that matter. That’s happiness. But your brain, Priya, works overtime. You’ll forever be searching for happiness, and it’s that search that makes people unhappy.”
This used to be one of his pastimes — analyzing me, and the philosophizing, as if he is the voice of Brahma or Buddha. I tolerated it in the past. I will again now.
But I’m caught off-guard when he says, “Do you realize I’ve met several of your girlfriends?”
He waits for a response; I’m annoyed but I don’t want to show this.
“Hmm? How many people can say that?” he continues. “I probably have known more of your girlfriends than anyone else who knows you. We’ve known one another for a long time.”
I wonder where this might be leading. He rephrases: “What I meant was, are you happy with Alex?”
What does he really want to know? Was he suggesting that Alex is simply one among the several girlfriends he’s met? What should I tell him? Was this drive a bad idea?
“Yes,” I say. “She’s amazing. She’s different. She’s not like other people.”
He says, “Yes, not like the others — not like the ones before. She’s not young like the others were.”
“They are no longer young either. We’re all older,” I say. Alex would be horrified if she knew we were discussing her in this manner. “She’s good for me. I’m probably less good for her. I brood a lot. But I really do love her. I love being with her.”
“Um-hm,” he says. “But can she accept that unstoppable brain of yours? I’ve always thought you needed to be with someone who will let you ruminate and then catch you before you fall because of that very rumination.”
“Well, in that way, she and I are alike,” I tell him. “We catch each other. We entered this relationship late. Late in life, so to speak.” Everything I say to him will be an explanation. I will unreel before him like a tossed ball of twine. “We were already formed when we met. We didn’t grow together to become the people we are today. I wouldn’t make the same choices, nor the same mistakes — at least, I hope not — that I did back then.”
“Um-hm,” he says again.
He doesn’t like her. I can tell. She’s too strong for him. I’d wanted them to like one another. Was I daft, or what?
* * *
We come to Madame Bovary’s and I tell him to turn off the main road, we can park in their lot at the back, but he says, “No, let’s drive. Do you know a pretty route?”
And, in fact, I do, an unusual one on which I enjoy taking visitors. “Shall we get a cup of tea to go?” I ask.
He says he’s already had enough tea at the house, and he laughs as he adds, “You know what that means.”
I tell him, “Let’s take the free ferry across the bay. It is an event — a small event — in itself. We could head in the direction of Kingston along the coastal road and turn back whenever we’re ready. Yield at the Y intersection,” I say, “and then take the arm on the right.”
“So how long has it been?” he asks.
I don’t know if he means how long since he and I last saw one another, or how long since we moved here. Before I can check myself, I am saying, “Alex and me? Six years. I’ve learned it takes about that amount of time to only just begin to see your partner. You should know. How long has it been for you?”
“Let’s not talk about my marriage. I’ve come here for a break. You’re my break.” I don’t respond, and he asks, “Are you willing to be my break?”
I don’t know what he means, but I say, “Sure. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”
“You don’t appear to be close, the two of you,” he says.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I don’t like this insinuation into my life. This is what he used to do, and I used to allow it, but this can’t carry on. I must let him know that.
“Alex,” he says. “As I said, she’s not like the other women you’ve dated. She’s not very warm. Is it because of me, or is she always like that?”
“She is a warm person,” I say defensively. “The ones you knew, you met years ago. I am nothing like I was in those days. Alex doesn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve. She’s as warm as she needs to be.”
In response to my obvious defensiveness, he answers, “Yeah. I know, I know. I didn’t mean anything. I just worry about you.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t have to worry about me and put an end to this talk about Alex. At the same time, perhaps I can commiserate with him. I can’t speak with my friends here about difficulties with Alex because they are all her friends, too. Perhaps I can be open about my unhappiness. But I’m not really unhappy; it is he who says I am. I don’t think I really am. But in some ways it’s true: Alex isn’t as warm as one might wish in a partner; she doesn’t rush to carry me nor want to be carried herself; she will be there if I need her, but she doesn’t swoop in under me unasked; her independence is often a source of conflict between us. It is true: she is so self-sufficient and expects me to be so, too, that it’s clear we are two separate people, not bound up in each other. For this reason there might not appear to be much passion or chemistry between us. Perhaps that’s what he’s talking about. I guess he saw something back there at home.
“I was just thinking of your Ismaili girlfriend. Yasmin,” he says, pulling me back onto the road with him with a jolt — I hadn’t thought of Yasmin in a very long time, and had forgotten he’d met her. That was almost twenty years ago. “She didn’t like me,” he says, “but my God, she had a beautiful body.” He puts his hand on my knee and says, “Do you remember her? Her breasts?”
Oh God, I can’t let him do this. I must stop this at once. “Oh, come on, Prakash, that’s crude,” I tell him. “I don’t want to talk about past girlfriends. Nor about women’s bodies.”
“But I do,” he says.
Such firmness from him is new to me. He’s never contradicted me before. I decide I can at least try to change the subject. I return to something he was clearly pleased to speak about — his refugee story. “Hey, that story you were telling us in the kitchen — you’d told me some of it, but we’ve known each other for a long time, and that was the first time I ever heard the details.”
“It’s not a story.” I think he instantly regrets the firmness in these words, for he quick
ly adds, with a show of peevishness in his tone, “And besides, you never asked. In any case, back then it wasn’t something I could talk about. I would have tried if you’d asked — if you’d asked — but not otherwise. I can speak about it nowadays as if it happened to someone else, but back then I couldn’t remember any details. They’ve only just been coming back to me. But it’s not a story. It’s all true.”
“You can talk about it now because of the Syrians, do you think?” I ask, still trying to sort out in my mind why he mentioned Yasmin.
“Yes. There’s so much sympathy for them here, coast to coast. In my day, people were curious, but not so sympathetic. I bet they don’t get teased about their accents and clothing and manners the way we did. It brings up a lot of stuff for me. I’m thinking of going back, you know. Lots of people are going back, reclaiming their land and trying to restart their businesses. I’m thinking of checking it out.”
We are nearing the ferry terminal. I am no longer sure that leaving this side of the island is the best thing to do. It seems as if going to the other side is taking me much farther away from Alex than I want to be.