Eleanor Rigby

by Douglas Coupland

  He pulled items from the fridge I’d barely remembered were in there. Chives. Some old cheese. A bottle of pickled something or other.

  “You can cook,” I said.

  “Vocational school. My ticket out of hell. It doesn’t matter what happens in the world, we’ll always need chefs. Even during Armageddon, the troops will still need their mashed potatoes.” He winked, and suddenly he was joking about themes that had so recently terrified him. After the highway incident I didn’t have the energy for religious debate.

  He cracked open eggs, and then whisked them with confidence, adding pinches of things along the way. Bowls and utensils came and went, and for the first time I could see the reason TV cooking shows might be watchable.

  “You know, I was with Family Number Six once, and—”

  “Wait—Family Number Six?”

  “Yes. The sixth family I was placed with.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I was with Family Number Six visiting some hillbilly agricultural fair up north in Lac La Hache. This guy who brought our hamburgers to the table had two different-coloured eyes. So I said, ‘Wow, one blue and one brown eye,’ and Family Number Six froze in their seats, and remained frozen until the waiter was well out of sight. I didn’t know what the big deal was, so I asked, and finally Father Number Six said, ‘Don’t you know what that means?’ and I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘It means he’s related to himself.’ Isn’t that a hoot?”

  “That was your sixth family?” I was still stuck on the number six.

  He folded something into the eggs and looked heavenward, counting his family history aloud to ensure he was correct. “Six. That’s right.”

  “How many have you had?”

  “If you don’t count repeats, eleven; with repeats, fourteen.”

  “I always pictured you as living down the street from me in a friendly suburb.”

  “That would have been nice. I was adopted by a family up north—moose, rifles, drunk drivers and Jesus. When I was in kindergarten, they made the mistake of telling me I was adopted, and their twins, who were a few years older than me, let me know it, too. It was bad: bruising and broken bones and a burn here or there. I ran away in grade two, and because of that I was labelled a problem child. Once that happens, you only ever move lower down the foster family food chain, until you’re living in what used to be a luggage storage room owned by otherwise normal-looking serial molesters who are there merely to collect their foster care cheque from the government—which is the only reason they don’t kill you, it’d cut their cash flow.”

  What could I say? I said, “The omelette smells wonderful. I’m going to have a small shot of Baileys to go with it. Would you like one?”

  “You have anything else?”

  “Not really. Wait—some of that Greek stuff—ouzo.”

  “That’s it? How come so little?”

  “Because I’m afraid of keeping booze in the house because it’ll turn me into a spinster lush.”

  “Let’s pour the Baileys into coffee. Do you have coffee?”

  I did. I like coffee. I made some, topped up our mugs with the Baileys, and then we sat down to eat.

  This may sound odd, but it felt like I was on a date—or rather, what I imagined a date must be like. The recognition of this temporarily froze me. My long-lost son shows up and I’m sitting there with him chatting about dog species, global warming and Mariah Carey’s career arc. More to the point, I was appalled by what we weren’t discussing: why he ended up being adopted in the first place, my own family history, my attempts to locate him … But that’s what family members are for. We crave them and need them not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about but because they know precisely which subjects to avoid. Jeremy already felt like family.

  We were almost done eating when the phone rang. Jeremy was closer to it and picked it up. “Liz Dunn residence.”

  A pause.

  “Uh-huh. No, she can’t talk right now.”

  A pause.

  “Because we’re having lunch. Whom shall I say called?”

  A pause.

  “No. As I said, we’re eating lunch. I’m sure she’ll phone you once we’re done.”

  Pause.

  “I’ll tell her that. Goodbye.” He hung up. “That was your sister.”

  “You shouldn’t answer my phone!”

  “Why not—are you ashamed of me?”

  “Jeremy, chances are she’s already dialed 911.”

  “Why?”

  “You know darn well why. Because in my entire adult life nobody’s ever answered my phone but me.”

  “You never have people here?”

  “What do you think? No.”

  “You care what your family thinks?”

  “Yes. I do. They’re all I have.”

  “You have me now.”

  “I just wanted you to meet them …”

  “Meet them how?”

  “Differently.” In my head I saw curtains being raised, an orchestral fanfare, flocks of dyed pigeons released on cue, and a long ramp lit by thousands of strobing flashbulbs.

  Jeremy started clearing the dishes. I was immobilized by a small humming noise in my head. I sat at the table in this trancelike state and waited for Leslie to show up, which she did, maybe eight minutes later. She buzzed me from the front door and I let her in.

  “Hello, Leslie.”

  “Lizzie, who was the man that answered your phone? You never have men here.”

  “Thank you, Leslie.”

  Holding her cellphone, she whispered, “Should I call the cops?”

  I said, “Is it really that odd that I should have a man at my place?”

  “Of course it is.” She walked into the kitchen, expecting to see the man in my life. I followed her, but he wasn’t there. I heard water noises from the bathroom.

  Leslie whispered, “What’s his name?”

  “Jeremy.”

  “Jeremy? No one our age is called Jeremy.”

  “He’s not our age.”

  At that moment Jeremy emerged from the bathroom, shirtless, saying, “Liz, do you have a shirt I can borrow? The one I was wearing is kind of shot.” He spotted Leslie and casually said, “Hi. I’m Jeremy.”

  To judge from Leslie’s reaction it might just as well have been a dancing Snoopy emerging from the bathroom. She took the hand he offered, saying, “I’m Leslie,” in a voice that betrayed total inner confusion.

  Jeremy asked, “Liz, let’s have some dessert. What do you have?”

  “You know the kitchen better than I do.” I threw him a T-shirt from a cupboard, a HARD ROCK CAFE HONOLULU shirt William had given to me.

  Jeremy looked at Leslie. “Dessert?” She nodded feebly as he slowly pulled the shirt over his head. He looked like a call boy; poor Leslie was a mess.

  All we found in the kitchen was chocolate pudding in plastic tubs. Jeremy took them and began whipping them into something mousse-like and French. “So this is your sister, then?”

  Leslie said, “Why do I feel like I’m dreaming?”

  I said, “Leslie, there’s something you need to know …” I watched Leslie’s pupils shrink to the size of pinpricks. What an odd thing to notice at that moment. I took a glass from the counter, and the nearly empty Baileys bottle. “Drink?”

  “Sure.”

  I poured a glass and gave it to her. “Leslie, this is my son, Jeremy. Jeremy, this is your Aunt Leslie.”

  Leslie sat down on a stool, and her face looked as if she had remembered where she placed something precious she’d lost many years before.

  Jeremy said, “Nice to meet you.” Leslie still couldn’t speak, so Jeremy said, “Well, no need to let a beverage go to waste.” He topped up Leslie’s glass and took a sip.

  Leslie looked at me, and I said, “Yup. It’s true.”

  * * *

  The day after we landed in Rome was a Sunday, and we were driven to Vatican City in our Albanian motorcoach. All I knew about the Vati
can was that my dad was annoyed I’d be going there, and, well, that’s about it—I still have no idea what the Pope is supposed to do. Given my limited knowledge of office politics at Landover Communication Systems, I can only imagine what a political viper’s nest the Vatican must be.

  Alain, the only Catholic in the class, kept his distance from us, knowing that our heretical energy might easily consume him. To paraphrase the warning he gave us before we arrived: “Religions are designed to outlive individual people, and so what looks evil and bizarre from the outside is actually just a long-term survival system.”

  On a practical level, the girls on the tour were ticked off that women weren’t allowed to live within the City’s limits, and that knowledge made our jaunt to St. Peter’s Square seem like time travel. We hated it. Memory of our charming Elfs, as we called them, evaporated amid thousands of old people holding beads, looking ancient and mad. Colleen kept asking where the witch-dunking tank was. None of us felt at all remorseful about smoking outside the bus, one bus among thousands, parked on cobblestones smelling of Europe’s then-omnipresent odour of diesel and urine. Mr. Burden was no narc; we puffed away. He also knew that chiding us about smoking in Europe would be about as effective as chiding us for shopping in Vancouver. Not a chance.

  The boys were bored and, like us, jet lagged. The Vatican trip felt forced and dutiful. It made us wonder if Rome had the equivalent of a Playboy Mansion that was deliberately being concealed from us. We stood there like dock pilings, waiting and waiting and waiting for this little white dot of a man to come out onto a balcony and do something with his hands while his amplified voice frightened pigeons and reminded us that we were hungry and that the morning’s caffe latte and croissant had long since been metabolized. The staging and the mood all served to make us feel as if we were trapped in a dying and corrupt world, one we wanted to shatter and rebuild into something better.

  Back on the bus, I began to feel homesick again. It was Sunday, and the restaurant we’d been scheduled to eat in was closed, either by a strike or bad planning. The entire city, save for the Vatican, seemed to be closed. We were a dozen starving teenagers, and all we could find was a newspaper stand that sold chewing gum.

  We drove past the Colosseum, but we weren’t scheduled to see it for a few days yet. Mostly we drove through thousands of narrow streets designed for chariots and processions for the dead. Every shop on these streets was shuttered. I began to wonder if Italy even had an economy. That day we witnessed a sunset worth remembering, coral pink rays that fluttered above dark birds that flocked from tree to tree. It also shone over a place that actually sold food, on the highway a few miles from the hostel, on the city’s outskirts. It sold hamburgers coated with Dijon mustard, which we scraped off with black plastic knives. I ate half of one, plus some more of Mr. Burden’s anti-homesickness pills. By now I’d decided that I simply wanted to be under a general anaesthetic for the nine remaining days.

  And thus, my second day under my belt, I once again cried myself to sleep. Boo hoo hoo. Why was I so homesick? No idea. I look back on it now and think of how visiting another country is really just the same as going into someone’s house to soak up its aura. Technically, I ought to have been revelling in Italy.

  Did I see many naked statues during that second day? God, yes. Everywhere. It was hard not to see them. It was even harder trying not to be seen seeing them. The girls cackled when confronted with stone genitalia; the boys were silent at the sight of breasts. Me, I think there’s nothing erotic about female statues; as a sex we don’t turn to marble well. We flourish only in paintings, whereas males in marble run the thin line between art and porn. In any event, I quickly burned out on nakedness; homesickness blotted out everything else. Unlike loneliness, it has a simple cure: going home. If only loneliness could be so easily fixed. Merely being around other humans doesn’t help me—loneliness in a crowd is the most pathetic variant. On the other hand, at least in a crowd you have a chance, however slim, of meeting that cosmic person whose presence will still your fevered lonely brain. Alone in your condo, your chances are zip.

  I’m doing the thing that lonely people do, which is fine-tuning my loneliness hierarchy. Which is lonelier … to be single and lonely, or lonely within a dead relationship? Is it totally pathetic to be single and lonely and be jealous of someone lonely inside a dead relationship? Again, remember, this is all theoretical to me. Okay, here’s another one … is it possible to be lonely within a dead relationship while the other person isn’t lonely at all? Or the corollary of that question: is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time?

  When I calibrate loneliness into its own little status yardstick like this, I begin to believe I deserve what life sends me. No, Liz, don’t think like that.

  Seven years ago.

  It feels like a thousand years, and it feels like yesterday.

  I think I’ll pour myself a glass of white wine right now.

  * * *

  Oh boy.

  This is harder than I thought.

  … I’m back—and I very much need to keep things in perspective here. The trip to Italy was more than twenty-five years ago. Hale-Bopp and Jeremy were seven years ago. Here I am in 2004, sitting in my condo, writing about the trip to Italy, when BOOM!—in the same way some people get flashes of light before a killer migraine, I have the aura that precedes a loneliness blizzard, those sweeps of loneliness that feel not just emotional but medical. Whenever I sense a blizzard about to attack, I have a few tactics I immediately employ that drain it of potency. I hop in the car, I drive to a mall or someplace filled with people, and I look at the colours of all the things on the shelves and listen to all of the voices. When the stores close, I try to find a comedy at the theatres, or I go to a coffee place. The 1990s were great because suddenly lonely people had a place where they could all be lonely together while pretending to be fine on the outside. Well, that’s what I do in coffee shops. My head may be cyclonic with desperation on the inside, but I’ve worked damn hard to ensure I don’t look the way I feel. I try to look as if I have a meaningful slot in society. Do people look at me, Liz Dunn, and wonder if I merit a fully stocked condo and a late-model Honda Accord? I have a job, and I’m good at it, but what if I were so messed up that I couldn’t contribute to society? What if I were so messed up that I couldn’t even stuff envelopes for a living? Strap her onto the iceberg and cast her out to sea. If it does happen someday, I’ll be angry, but I won’t be shocked.

  * * *

  Leslie can’t be considered an idiot for having had no idea I was pregnant. I was a very fat and not too communicative teen, and she’d left home for college that summer after the Italian trip. When she saw me at Christmastime, I merely looked fatter than usual.

  Yes, a nephew out of the blue twenty years later was a shock, but maybe not quite as big a shock as the fact that I, Liz, had done something gossip-worthy.

  “Lizzie, when? How? How could you have been pregnant—ever?”

  “Leslie, I may be dull, but I am fertile.”

  “How old is he?” She looked at Jeremy. “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty.”

  Leslie looked at me. “That’s not possible. You were in high school.”

  “Yes. I was.”

  Jeremy looked at me. “Was that hard for you—having me during high school?”

  “Actually, no.”

  Leslie barged in. “You were never pregnant in high school.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Who was the father?”

  “Leslie, shut up already. I’m not telling you.”

  “Mother and Father knew you had a kid?”

  “They did.”

  “Did William know?”

  “No.”

  She was insulted. “They never even let on. Does Mother know about him—now?”

  “No. You’re the first. We just met yesterday.”

  Jeremy said, “You guys call your parents Mother and Father? That’s so old
-fashioned. Do you all dress like Sir Lancelot and Maid Marian, too?”

  I said, “It sounds odd, but William was the first-born, and that’s what he started calling them, and then it stuck with us.”

  Leslie was overwhelmed. “I just don’t know what to say. Yes I do. Jeremy, where did you grow up—here?”

  “No. All over B.C.”

  “Where’s your family?”

  “That’s a tough one.”

  “Did you find Liz, or did she find you?”

  “I found her.”

  I looked at Leslie and said, “Leslie, knock it off. We have plenty of time for things to unfold.”

  “How am I supposed to feel here, Liz?”

  “Well, as this isn’t really about you, I suggest you look at it as entertainment, and sit and watch the movie as it plays.”

  “He’s twenty, Liz. And suddenly, now, you tell me you have a kid?”

  “Well, you barged in here, and again, I remind you, it’s not about you.”

  “How come you two met just for the first time yesterday? What happened to cause that?”

  I looked at Jeremy. “It wasn’t out of the blue. Jeremy was in the hospital.”

  “What for?”

  Jeremy took the cue. “I OD’d—on some lame party drugs.” He walked over and showed Leslie his bracelet.

  Jeremy held the Baileys bottle upside down, hoping for a few extra drops.

  Leslie was on to her third cigarette, and asked, “How long have you known about Liz—your mother?”

  “A few years now.”

  “Why did you wait so long to introduce yourself?”

  “My families have all been disasters. I tried to make it on my own, but that’s not going too well. I just want to have nice, unscrewed-up family members around to make me feel normal. Without Liz, I’m going to be a write-off.”

  Bang! The room suddenly felt enormous—like a cathedral. And then the room grew so quiet I could almost hear Leslie’s cigarette smoke swirl.

  Leslie said, “That’s a fair whack of responsibility to dump on one person.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  I asked Jeremy, “Where do you live? Should I be getting you home? I’m really knackered from no sleep.”