Jacintha

by Lorraine Davies

  But she wouldn’t show him the Blake book. She had a firm plan now, and if he was the right man, her having the book might tip her hand.

  February 2012

  Richard,

  I was surprised that you portrayed Skitch almost tenderly — the pretty boy who had to learn to be tough. Surprised considering what he ultimately did to you. At least, I’m presuming he was the one, since, this being a novel, it would probably complicate the plot too much to give Jacintha a second boyfriend.

  I have no quarrel with your depiction of Jacintha. I can well believe she had a terrible childhood. You told me some of it, of course, but never in so much detail. I presume she told you most of that at some point. Anyway, I’ve never been able to completely excuse her for what she did, however hard her life had been. Nor have I been able to excuse you, a different thing from forgiving you, which I have mostly done.

  Carol

  Dear Carol,

  I don’t want you to excuse me. Nor do I want you to blame Jacintha. I take all the blame, as I hope you will see.

  As for Skitch, he was my saviour. If he hadn’t done what he did, I might have plummeted into the pit. I was wobbling on the edge, leaning dangerously, and his was the restraining hand. Ironic, I know.

  Best wishes,

  Richard

  EIGHT

  AFTER GABE EXTRICATED himself from underneath her, Carol rolled onto her back. Now her thighs and bum were sticking to the leather of the couch and for a moment she was seventeen again, in the back seat of a car, sticking to hot vinyl with a boy pungent with sweat grunting against her and then rolling off and turning away as if she were an embarrassment. She’d been disgusted and ashamed.

  Gabe, of course, was nothing like that boy. Gabe had been her friend for years and she’d gone to him for sympathy and ended up getting comforted in a more thorough way than she’d intended. In fact, his lovemaking was surprisingly comforting. She liked his thick body, the stiff, dark hair on his chest, even his ridiculous moustache. He was so unlike Richard; maybe that was part of his appeal. She thought of it, fleetingly, as so different from sex with Richard that it was more of a friendly coupling than cheating, and then she saw how crazy that was.

  Gabe, even though he was head of the English department at UBC, was her friend, not Richard’s. Richard had never liked him. (She couldn’t have stooped so low as to have sex with one of his friends.) Richard considered Gabe a bit of a buffoon, but although he was given to rather silly jokes, he was intelligent and very knowledgeable about Carol’s field: art history. She had once told Richard that Gabe was like an erudite bear, and Richard had replied that he was more like a bear snuffling and snorting out of hibernation.

  The first time she and Gabe were together, his weight had frightened her, and as he propped himself above her, ready to press in, she’d panicked, reliving the moment when the mattress had almost smothered her in the landslide. After that she was never under him.

  They were in Gabe’s office, his door locked. They’d been meeting there a couple of times a week for a month.

  Gabe finished doing up his belt buckle, knelt down beside her, and took her hand in his large and warm ones. “Carol, I feel lucky you wanted me, but I don’t think this is making you any happier.”

  “Do affairs ever make people happy?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had any affairs, really. A few encounters, you might say; none that my ex-wife found out about. It was she who found someone else.”

  “Anyway, you’re right,” Carol said. “I’m not happy about this. I feel driven.”

  The warmth and lightness of satiety went away so quickly after sex now, and her body became as heavy as her mind until the next time the craving electrified her, made her jumpy and horribly needy.

  “Things aren’t getting any better with Richard, I gather.”

  “No.” She’d told Gabe only that she and Richard had become estranged since the landslide. “And he still won’t go to counselling with me.”

  “Have you considered seeing a counsellor alone?”

  “I should see someone, I know.” She sat up and Gabe sat beside her and pulled her to him. When she looked into his eyes, she saw with a jolt that he was feeling a lot more than friendship. Too much longing. Oh, hell, she didn’t want him to fall in love with her. She wasn’t being fair to him.

  “I should leave you alone, not drag you into this,” she said.

  “No, please don’t leave me alone,” Gabe said.

  “I do have to go now.” She retrieved her pants, pantyhose, bra, blouse, scarf — all scattered around the couch and floor — and dressed quickly. She took out her compact, removed mascara smudges from under her eyes, reapplied her lipstick. These everyday acts made her feel suddenly deeply lonely. The small death, indeed, and the return to life was a walk out into a hot, uncaring world. The campus, for all its beauty, seemed airless and bleak today.

  Gabe opened the door, peered out to make sure no one was in the hallway, and ushered her out with a peck on the cheek. “Remember, I care very much,” he whispered, but his words did not comfort her.

  That evening Carol made a meal of deli lasagna and prewashed salad greens with a vinaigrette, and called Richard to dinner, for the first time that week. They had got out of the habit of eating together, a time in which they had always shared their day and grown closer for it.

  Richard noticed that Carol seemed nervous, chirpily describing how she’d chosen the lasagna and used cider vinegar instead of balsamic in the dressing.

  As she sat down at the table, she exhaled loudly and smiled tentatively. After two mouthfuls of salad, she asked, “Are you happy to be back teaching?”

  “Yes, fairly,” Richard said. “I’m having my students write a version of The Tempest. With an environmental theme. In honour of Jenny, you know. She talked about doing it herself. We’ve started it in class and it’s going pretty well.” He hadn’t told Carol about it earlier because it had seemed too private, just between him and Jenny, but now, since at least twelve others knew about it, it was obviously foolish not to tell.

  “Oh.” Carol’s face clouded.

  “I should have told you sooner,” Richard said.

  “No, it’s all right,” Carol said, but she was still frowning. She shook her head as if to banish hurt or resentment, Richard wasn’t sure which.

  After another forkful of salad, she said, “Anyway, I like it. It’s a lovely way to remember Jenny. And even if you don’t get something stageable out of it, it’s a way for your students to become intimate with the play. You can always take what they come up with — they’re bound to have a few good ideas — and make it into something viable yourself.”

  “Not exactly unconditional support. Sorry I mentioned it,” Richard said. He’d heard mainly “even if” and “a few ideas,” as opposed to “enough ideas.”

  “I am giving you unconditional support! No need to get defensive. I’m saying I have faith in you as a teacher no matter what happens, and just as importantly, I have faith in you as a writer. I believe you could write it yourself, and no doubt you’ll have a lot of input about both content and style. It might be the spur you need to get back into writing.”

  “What makes you think I want to get back into writing?”

  “Richard. Calm down.”

  “Sorry. I’m probably too close to this because of Jenny.”

  “I know.” She stood up, leaned down, and put her arms around him. “I know, I know,” she said, her breath on his cheek.

  Suddenly she pulled away, and smiled too brightly, Richard thought, like a mother who is promising ice cream to a boy with a scraped and bloody knee.

  She said, “When it’s finished, you can send a copy of the play, with a dedication, to Jenny’s parents.”

  “But no pressure,” Richard said.

  “No pressure,” Carol said and laughed.

  Richard moved to the living room to read The Tempest again, starting where he’d left off the last time, at one of
the most beautiful of all the speeches, by Caliban: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. When he read Stephano’s reply, he realized he’d never before seen the full significance of it: This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing. Wasn’t that what he, Richard, had been assuming all his life? Didn’t most privileged people expect to have all the good things in life, without making any sacrifices? Wasn’t that why he needed to make a profound change?

  When he’d told Carol, a few weeks earlier, that he might like to work with AIDS orphans in Africa, she’d said, “Coming from you, that sounds more like a death wish. You don’t even like camping. Mosquitoes drive you crazy, and then there’s the risk of malaria. And you’re paranoid about getting bitten by a tick. Your idea of an ideal vacation is a five-star hotel in New York City.”

  “But I can change,” he’d said. “I have changed. Everything I do now seems trivial.”

  “You’re simply depressed,” Carol had said. “You should see a doctor.”

  “Don’t start that again,” had been his conversation-ending reply.

  February 2012

  Richard,

  It must have cost you something to imagine me with “Gabe” (of course, I know who you mean) especially considering how much you disliked him. But I suppose it’s the job of a writer to imagine things that hurt his oh-so-sensitive psyche.

  I suspect there will be other things about my sex life that you will bravely reveal. You know I’m not a prude (remember I was all right with your handling of our sex scene) and yet I am disturbed, in this case, by being laid on the page like that, if you’ll pardon the expression.

  Carol

  Dear Carol,

  Yes, but it might have been more painful for me to make your lover someone other than Gabe. Maybe I chose him because I thought of him as a lesser man than I.

  Writing is often painful for writers, but most of us try not to be cruel to others, and it certainly wasn’t my intention to hurt you. I understood why, at that time, you felt in need of someone.

  I don’t believe Faulkner would have sold his grandmother for a good story, as he’s supposed to have said, but he might have sacrificed bits of her, a little at a time. Writers pin pieces of even their most beloved ones to the page (laid on the page!) in their efforts to reveal their own sins, guilt, and hopes for forgiveness. And their desire to create something worthwhile from the torn remains.

  Osiris was hacked to pieces and put back together in order to father a god. All right, maybe a bit over the top as a metaphor, but you get my point. For “god,” read “work of art.” Or, more modestly, a novel.

  All the best,

  Richard

  NINE

  “WHO WANTS TO go first and read the scene you wrote during the week?” Richard asked.

  “We will,” Aiden said. “Kevin and I wrote an opening scene that’s a takeoff of the original. Kyla has the flu and Max was too busy to join us. So, anyway, it’s Scene One, The storm. Two sailors. We’ll each read a part.”

  “I’ve never seen such a wicked storm before.”

  “Yeah, tornadoes and hurricanes are getting worse all over the world. Yet you still deny that climate change is real. Maybe you should pray to the Gods of Denial so we won’t end up as bloody corpses on the rocks.”

  “‘The Gods of the Nile?’ Those Egyptian dudes?”

  “No, douchebag. Denial, like it’s not happening. You think people can clear-cut as many virgin forests as they like and the world will go on as usual.”

  “Are we in the Virgin Islands? I thought this was BC.”

  “God save me from ignorant fucking deckhands! You couldn’t find your way from Kits Beach to Jericho Beach. Oh, shit. Quick, take in the topsail. Down with the topmast. Hurry, the rest of you slackers. I don’t want to die because of slow asshole drunks.”

  “No, my friend, the real drunks are below, guzzling martinis with Mr. Tony Prosper. Oh, here they are now, heads popping up like gophers from a flooded hole.”

  “Gophers! Are you a prairie boy at sea? Would explain a lot.”

  “Oh Christ, oh Gods of the Nile, or Denial, any goddamned gods, help us! We’re running aground — the ship is breaking up. Save yourselves! Jump!”

  “That’s it,” Aiden said. “Comments, anyone?” Richard asked.

  “It kind of gets some of the goofy humour in Shakespeare, like the bad puns,” Anna said. “And introduces the theme of protecting the environment.”

  “I think we need to feel more scared and excited by the storm,” Jacintha said. “We need to feel that it’s real.”

  “I thought in performance there’d be sounds of wind and crashing waves, and sailors moaning and cursing,” Aiden said.

  “That’s true, but there could be more reaction in the dialogue,” Richard said. “Anyone else? No? Are you all underwhelmed? Not a bad effort, though, Aiden and Kevin.”

  The next group’s offering was even less impressive. “A bit short,” “kind of stilted,” and “boring” were some of the comments.

  Third was Jacintha’s group.

  “We didn’t do a scene,” she said. “Beth wrote a poem in which our Ariel, a member of the community who is a visionary, channels a shaman of a local First Nation. The shaman tells how much their land has already been degraded. She’s a kind of sympathetic Sycorax, not Shakespeare’s hag. Beth asked me to read it.”

  Listen to them laugh and babble, this Prospero and his gang.

  This island was mine to roam undisturbed, a grieving spirit.

  Is he any better than those who destroyed my first home?

  My people’s fault was this: We showed the strangers

  The abalone beds, shining and plentiful.

  They laid them waste.

  And fields of camas, vast and

  Blue as lakes, now dull as dry grass.

  Once we listened with joy to what sounded like

  Heavy rainfall — millions of fish,

  Splashing, foaming through the narrows,

  Salmon, herring, oolichan.

  Frogs sang in their thousands.

  Some still sing, but I fear the day

  When silence reigns forever.

  A long silence mirroring the last lines was broken by a single “whew” from Jason.

  “Whew, indeed,” Richard said. “You’ve evoked the abundance of a virgin land very well.”

  “All that still existed about a hundred years ago,” John said. “I did some of the research. Camas is an edible bulb, very nutritious.”

  Another long silence. Anna was the first to speak. “It all seems so hopeless sometimes. I get depressed.”

  “Yet in this captious and intenible sieve / I still pour in the waters of my love,” Richard quoted. “From All’s Well That Ends Well. About faith and hope.”

  “Trying to catch water in a sieve isn’t exactly hopeful,” John said.

  “No, probably not an entirely appropriate quote,” Richard said. “Anyway, a beautiful poem, Beth. Well done. In the next class, let’s begin to work out who our characters will be. What they want will show us what’s at stake, what the conflicts will be, and can lead us toward a plot. We already have the visionary Ariel; that’s a good start. See you all next time.”

  TEN

  BY THE END of the third class, the students hadn’t come up with any kind of consensus about characters, and Richard despaired of them being any better at agreeing on a plot.

  Afterward, Jacintha asked if she could speak to Richard privately after lunch. Now he sat waiting for her in his office. He was nervous. What did she want? Maybe she was just going to tell him she was quitting. But that shouldn’t make much difference to him; the number of students would still be adequate. He had barely finished that thought when another one tumbled over it: I want her to stay.

  Jacintha rushed in — he had left his door open — and sat down across the desk from him before he could speak.

  “Thanks for
seeing me,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m curious about why you want to see me.”

  “It’s about the play, of course,” she said. “I don’t think the way we are doing it is going to work out. I thought maybe just some of us could write the new version. All these groups are cumbersome, and today was just chaotic. I’ve discussed this with Beth and Anna and John — they’re all keen, and they’re willing, as I am, to do it on our own time.”

  Richard, relieved, breathed more deeply. She wasn’t leaving. A moment later he berated himself for caring — or at least for caring what seemed an inappropriate amount.

  Jacintha stared at him, waiting for him to speak, and finally he said, “Well, that’s a lot to take in.”

  “I know, but it’s going to be impossible to do this whole class thing when we can’t even agree on what form it will take. And I don’t think the groups are ever going to work, either.”

  “It’s not working at the moment, I grant you,” Richard said.

  “I think once we have a simple but powerful theme, the play will come together,” Jacintha said. “I’d like to try to make it work.”

  She leaned forward eagerly. Richard was transfixed for a moment. He remembered how different she had been in the first class. Her first comment had been delivered in a dry, cynical tone of voice: all that “satisfying revenge” on the way to reconciliation.

  “Professor Wilson?” she said, when he was slow to speak.

  “Ah, theme, yes.”

  “Environmentalism is too obviously political. It really doesn’t work as the central theme, don’t you think? I’m an activist for the cause — I’ve started a protest group called the Gaia Collective — but writing a play about the subject without proselytizing could be very difficult, could easily become preachy and boring. I think a better theme would be the marriage of male and female, which includes gender equality and power versus powerlessness. These things are crucial to saving the earth.

  “But the way we were headed this morning, emphasizing saving an island from developers who want to clear-cut it, was too on the nose. If we’re going to even approach the sensibility of The Tempest, magic has to be central. And the kind of poetry that magic inspires.”