An Audience of Chairs

by Joan Clark

“We’ll take the room,” she says.

  “I should warn you it overlooks the street and can be noisy. We have quieter rooms at the back.”

  Moranna says they’ll put up with the noise and races up the grand staircase. She can hardly wait to see the room. By the time Bun catches up, she’s stretched out on the antique bed, hugging herself with delight. “Just think, Oscar Wilde slept here!”

  “Who’s Oscar Wilde?”

  “A famous Irish playwright.”

  Bun laughs. “So we’re onstage,” he says.

  “You could say that,” Moranna says, and going to the window opens the burgundy velvet curtains wide.

  Room 127 of the Computer Science Building is a lecture room with a floor sloping away from the door and seating accommodation for more than a hundred. Moranna wants to sit in the first row, but all the seats in the front rows are taken by faculty and students and the closest she and Bun can sit is at the end of the sixth row to the left of the lectern. There’s no sign of Bonnie, and loosening the wool Bun has tied to her hair, Moranna brushes the end of her braid against her chin while glancing over her shoulder, eager to catch sight of her daughter walking through the doorway.

  At five to eight, Bonnie arrives, accompanied by a tall, reedy-looking man who drops into a seat by the door while she continues to the front where a white-haired man is waiting. Shaking hands, they stand talking like old friends. Bonnie’s wearing a brown suede jacket and brown slacks that make her look both casual and elegant. Otherwise she looks much as she did on television, wide-eyed and composed. Every so often the white-haired man says something that amuses her and she grins and tilts her head.

  After a few minutes, Bonnie sits down and the white-haired man, who identifies himself as Dr. Eric Kahn, says that it’s a very great pleasure to be introducing Dr. Bonnie Fraser because when she was a student of his at Dalhousie, she was one of the “bright lights,” someone he knew would one day distinguish herself. Recently she had done just that by being the youngest person ever to win the prestigious Canadian Science Award. He goes on to say that although she considers herself a Nova Scotian, Dr. Fraser wasn’t born in the province but in Ontario, “in our nation’s capital.” From Ontario she went to the United States and then to England where, with the exception of her years at Dalhousie, she took her schooling, earning a doctorate at Cambridge in 1993. But now she is back in Canada, he hopes to stay, and has accepted a position at the University of Toronto. Prior to that appointment, she spent two years working with a team of scientists in Australia, and it is the results of that experience she will be sharing tonight. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Fraser.”

  The audience claps, no one longer than Moranna, while Bonnie stands at the lectern calmly shuffling her notes. After a few brief remarks, she asks for the lights to be dimmed and the tall reedy man gets up and turns them down. Bonnie clicks a hand-held control and a diagram of the world sliced like a pie appears on the overhead screen. Speaking in a not-quite British voice—again Moranna picks up the twang—she explains the divided pie is meant to show that aerosols, tiny particles suspended in the air, occur naturally in the world through salt and sea spray, dust storms, forest fires and volcanoes, and unnaturally through the burning of fossil fuels and grasslands. Clicking again, another diagram appears, this one showing clouds with low and high aerosol concentrations. She goes on to explain that aerosols seed clouds with moisture droplets and that scientists are interested in manipulating them into rainmakers producing moisture in areas of the world where extreme drought results in widespread famine.

  Spellbound, Moranna stares at her daughter, absorbing every feature of her face, every gesture she makes. Bonnie talks with her hands, alternately sweeping them wide, then folding them close to her chest. At one point Moranna catches the flash of a ring on her left hand and at another point a gold bracelet on her left wrist. Bonnie is now talking about her work in the Australian outback and clicks on a photo of herself dressed in shorts and a safari hat standing beside what looks like an oil derrick with protruding arms and legs. She explains that the device, which measures the presence of aerosols in the atmosphere, is hooked up to a computer. “Like many other parts of the world,” she says, “Australia is undergoing drastic fluctuations in weather.”

  Overwhelmed by Bonnie’s accomplishments, Moranna hangs on to every word and if she wasn’t completely in awe of her would stand up and shout, “Look at my daughter! See how brilliant she is!” She wonders if Brianna is here listening to her sister. When the lights come on, she’ll look around the audience for her.

  Bonnie shifts the focus of the lecture and begins talking about the economic consequences of extreme weather changes and how they affect people’s lives. Now her slides show the devastated landscape of the Australian bush ravaged by fire, a village in India submerged beneath a swollen river, a rainless landscape in Zaire where a long line of famine victims make their way to a humanitarian depot in the expectation of food. Bonnie explains that aerosols affect climate by changing the properties of clouds and affecting the amount of rainfall with disastrous and costly results. She ends the lecture by showing diagrams of the greenhouse effect. Aerosols, she explains, cool the Earth’s surface and reflect sunlight back into space, which reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. But no one knows to what extent they control the greenhouse effect. The fact is, Bonnie says, that the study of aerosols is still in its infancy and requires a great deal more work before scientists understand exactly how they affect the health of the world.

  The lights go on and Eric Kahn announces that Dr. Fraser will be willing to answer questions. At once, half a dozen hands in the first row shoot up and Bonnie answers the questions one by one, explaining the properties and behaviour of aerosols and the network of aerosol observatories around the world. While her daughter’s speaking, Moranna cranes her head this way and that, trying to see if Brianna is in the audience. At one point she stands and scans the rows behind. “Sit down!” someone says, and she does, glancing at Bonnie, who is fully engaged in conversation with the students. So far Bonnie hasn’t looked at her once. Driving here from the inn Moranna imagined Bonnie and her looking at one another in instant recognition. She imagined the joyful shock of that moment, both of them rushing into one another’s arms. Realizing this won’t happen and that Bonnie doesn’t even know who she is, Moranna begins muttering in distress. Bun reaches over and squeezes her hand, which calms her for a time.

  Finally the questions stop and Eric Kahn joins Bonnie at the lectern. After thanking her, he says, “I hope you won’t mind me sharing the fact that in a few months you are returning to Halifax to be married.”

  Bonnie grins. “I don’t mind at all. It’s true that in June, David Switzer,” Bonnie nods toward the reedy man sitting at the back, “and I are returning to be married in St. Matthews where David’s father was minister for many years.”

  “Married!” Moranna shouts while behind her there’s another stir of disapproval. “She’s being married in June!”

  “Can we come?” one of the students in the front row says and the girls sitting on either side of her giggle.

  Bonnie says tactfully, “It will be a small wedding.” Picking up her notes, she moves away from the lectern, and is immediately surrounded by students vying for her attention.

  Moranna turns to Bun. “Let’s go,” she says.

  “Don’t you want to wait and talk to her?”

  “No.” Moranna says. Shame has swooped down without warning and is leaking into every part of her being. It’s not a feeling she’s used to and it’s taken her a few minutes to recognize what it is. Now that she has, she wants to get out of here fast. During her breakdown, when Duncan came to see her, she felt shame but that was a long time ago. Along with shame, she now feels awkward and unworthy and has no confidence that she could go to Bonnie and tell her she is her mother, the woman her father abandoned thirty-four years ago. Even if she could manage to say it, she has no con
fidence Bonnie would be interested. After all, she lived in Halifax while attending this university without making a single attempt to communicate with her mother. There is also the difficulty of being able to approach Bonnie alone—she is still talking to students, and waiting nearby is the man who is to become her husband. There is something humiliating about having to stand in line to talk to a daughter who might not even recognize your existence. Enough of the formidable MacKenzie pride remains in Moranna to make her turn away. “It’s not the time,” she tells Bun. “It has to be the right time.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.” Bun says. He has no way of knowing how or when to confront a long-lost daughter, but it does seem to be an occasion requiring time and thought.

  He expects Moranna to mope for the rest of the evening, but when they return to the inn she insists they make love on Oscar Wilde’s bed and afterwards she tells him about the playwright whose work she once studied. She says she feels strongly connected to Wilde, a brilliant man who had been made an outcast because of his views and his sexual preferences.

  The next day, driving back to Cape Breton, Moranna is subdued, talked out, having gone on for hours last night after Bun fell asleep, relating bits of Wilde’s life and reciting what she remembered of The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan.

  FOURTEEN

  THERE IS NOW A beige plastic telephone on Moranna’s kitchen wall, where the ugly hole used to be. Bun jokes about it, telling her that she has finally done something he’s wanted her to do for years although he knows full well that the reason Moranna decided to install a telephone had nothing to do with him but with Bonnie’s wedding. Sure enough, the linesman had barely hooked up the telephone—his truck was still in the driveway—when Moranna was on the telephone asking Information for the number of St. Matthew’s United Church. Ten minutes later, having talked to the helpful church secretary, she extracted the information that the Fraser–Switzer wedding was scheduled for 2 p.m., June 6, and that the groom’s brother lived in Halifax on South Street.

  Bun asks what she intends to do with the information.

  “On her wedding day, I’m going to send Bonnie flowers with a card attached.” Choosing to forget the fact that she didn’t attend her brother’s wedding, she adds, “I’m sure Brianna will come from wherever she lives to attend the wedding and I’ll send her flowers too.”

  “That sounds like a sensible way to become reacquainted,” Bun says. “Sensible” isn’t a word Moranna recognizes and when she doesn’t reply, he asks what else she has in mind, meaning does she plan to go to the wedding? Moranna says she doesn’t know for sure but she probably will. The fact that she hasn’t been invited won’t stop her, but Bun thinks going to the wedding might be a mistake. Her ex-husband will be there and although she rarely mentions him, it’s impossible to predict what she would do if he snubbed her or, worse, pretended she didn’t exist. When she attended Bonnie’s lecture, Moranna was completely thrown by the fact that her daughter didn’t know who she was and it’s taken a couple of weeks for her to get her confidence back. What would happen if her ex shunned her? Sure, she got up in the mornings to play the piano board and work at her carving, but until today she hasn’t shown the freewheeling aplomb on which Bun has come to rely. “Aplomb” was the word his mother used after meeting Moranna. Until then Bun hadn’t known what the word meant and was surprised his mother did.

  Having recovered from the disappointment of failing to be reunited with her older daughter after she finally found her, Moranna is now imbued with a sense of fearlessness and invincibility. At the same time she knows that the shame and worthlessness she felt after Bonnie’s lecture could return without warning. The cloak of shame, patched and sewn with all the errors and mistakes she’s made in her life, could come down on her shoulders at any time without warning. No fairy-tale cloak, it has the power to make her feel she’s invisible to everyone. She wants to attend the wedding but not if she’s wearing the cloak of shame. She has to plan her appearance carefully, rehearse for it as if preparing for a role in a play. In this way she hopes to avoid doing something impetuous or rash. Her days of madness are gone, but her fantasies remain, and it is her fantasies that have the power to seduce her into making mistakes.

  After Moranna telephones the church, Bun asks if she’s going to tell her brother about seeing Bonnie.

  “I’m not telling him anything. I’m sure he already knows about the wedding from Ginger. I certainly won’t tell him about sending flowers because if I did he might try to stop me.” Her lips widen in a puckish grin. “But I can hardly wait to tell him I have a telephone.”

  While Bun watches, she dials Murdoch’s number. Davina answers and immediately hands over the receiver. “It’s your sister.”

  “Guess what?” Moranna says as soon as Murdoch comes on the line. “I’m speaking to you on my new telephone.”

  “I don’t believe it.” She hears him whisper, “She’s got a telephone.”

  “It was installed this morning.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “As you said, it’s convenient.” In a generous mood, she lets him believe she’s taken his advice. “You won’t have to drive here on icy roads any more to see me.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m hoping to make it up your way tomorrow.”

  “Why?” Murdoch almost never visits when Bun is here.

  “There’s something I want to discuss with you and Bun.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’ll keep until I get there.”

  After she hangs up, Moranna tells Bun that Murdoch is coming to see them tomorrow.

  “Did he give a reason?”

  “He says he wants to discuss something with us.”

  “Us?”

  “He said, with you and Bun.”

  For Bun, Murdoch’s wanting to discuss something with him is unwelcome news. Generally Murdoch ignores him and Bun wants to keep it that way. From the little time he’s spent with Moranna’s brother, he’s sized him up as an uptight bloke and he has no desire to become better acquainted. Although he has a pretty good idea what Murdoch wants to discuss, Bun doesn’t mention it to Moranna. No point upsetting her if it turns out he’s wrong.

  When Moranna hears the car in the driveway next morning, she glances out the window and watching her brother head for the barn, wonders why he’s visiting Bun first, instead of her. Bun must be wondering too because she sees the surprise on his face when he opens the workshop door and there’s Murdoch. She notices Bun’s lips moving and thinks he’s likely saying, “Hi there, Murdoch. What brings you this way?”

  “Oh, I just dropped by for a little chat,” Murdoch is probably saying as Bun gestures for him to come inside and closes the door.

  There was a time when Moranna wouldn’t have been able to leave Bun and Murdoch to themselves, when she would have stormed out to the workshop and demanded to know what was being said. Suspicious and mistrustful, she would have laboured under the delusion Murdoch was trying to persuade Bun that she needed to be packed off to the mental hospital. Moranna no longer harbours such suspicions and, while the men visit, keeps herself busy rounding up dirty laundry and scrubbing it against the washboard in the sink. There’s a wringer washer in the pantry, but she hasn’t used it since the day her braid caught between the rollers. She smiles as she works, thinking that at long last Murdoch might want Bun for a friend.

  Murdoch thinks of Bun as his sister’s partner and has no desire to have him as a friend. He doesn’t have any close male friends and regards the men he knows as acquaintances rather than friends. Somehow, he lost the knack for male friendship when he married Davina. In addition to wanting a wife and family, what drew him to Davina was the recognition that she was someone who would fulfill his modest need for friendship, making it unnecessary for him to overcome his reticence with others. Murdoch’s natural reserve has grown stronger over the years, and although he feels obliged to attend Rotary, unlike his father, he nev
er volunteers to give speeches and the most he can manage is to present the treasurer’s report and take a turn saying grace.

  Murdoch chose to come to Baddeck on this particular day because early this morning Davina flew to Toronto, leaving him on his own. Once a year she and Janine attend a trade fair where they order materials for their interior decorating business, which they operate out of a large, rambling house in North Sydney. Janine’s husband, Noel, runs his medical practice from the front of the house, and Janine runs the decorating business from the back—she has the organizational skills and Davina the taste. Together they have acquired a clientele of professionals in the Sydneys who look to Murdoch’s wife to tell them how they should decorate their homes. If asked, Murdoch would describe Davina’s taste as a Canadian version of Cape Cod. She’s fond of using stained-glass panels made by an artist in Sambro and water fountains handcrafted by an Arichat potter, and relies heavily on milk cans, shoeshine boxes, stools and washboards decorated with tole art. Apart from these exceptions, she doesn’t care for folk art and dismisses Moranna’s carvings as too primitive and crude to be within the boundaries of good taste.

  Because of the animosity between the two women, it’s easier for Murdoch to deal with his sister when his wife’s away. Davina is of the opinion that he coddles his sister who, she says, is lucky to have a roof over her head. According to Davina, if it weren’t for his coddling, Moranna would be living on the street with all the other homeless mental patients who won’t take their medication. It irks his wife that his sister refuses to take the proper medication. The reason she refuses it, Davina says, is because it would make her as ordinary as the next person and Moranna will never accept that.

  After showing a cursory interest in the ships in bottles while he sips at a can of Bluenose beer, Murdoch finally gets around to explaining the reason for his visit. Pulling himself to the edge of the sofa and placing the beer on the floor between his feet, he says, “We’ve had an offer on the farmhouse. A Dutch developer wants to build condos and a hotel on this piece of land.” He waves a hand, partly to disperse the smoke from Bun’s cigarette. “It’s prime property, on the edge of the village and the Bras d’Or.” He pauses, waiting for Bun to weigh in, but Bun doesn’t say a word. Instead he grins. Murdoch interprets the grin as a sign Bun’s pleased to hear about the offer, which is why he broke the news to him first. He wants Bun on his side before he approaches Moranna.