He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how he has changed. How he looks from the car behind him, through the eyes of a driver he has just punished by slowing down. He didn’t know his staff in Ottawa were afraid of him. He didn’t know his son loved him.
The news allows you to forget. Tirelessly reordering the world, which crumbles daily. Reporters are the king’s horses and men who put Humpty together again, every day, several times a day. News imparts the reassuring illusion of time passing, of change. No need to tap into the undercurrent, which is slower and so much stronger and costs us grief and knowledge. News is a time substitute, like coffee whitener.
He knows who killed his son. The Americans. Their arrogance, their false innocence. Their short-sightedness, their love of tyrants, their greed, their lies. As surely as if Richard Nixon had come into his home and murdered the boy. Because before Vietnam, everything was fine. Crinkle.
Now he is drowning slowly, sitting in his chair. His lungs have been filling quietly, like the North Sea rising over the land. Congestive heart failure.
When mines are abandoned, they often become flooded. Caves fill from within, water leaching from the earth that has been gouged and left for dead. This happens to lungs when the pump begins to fail.
The only way for the earth to heal itself is to flood or to cave in, or both. This is a slow process that begins immediately upon abandonment. Drip, drip, slight shift, crumble and line of scree. Millions of small changes underway, brought to bear suddenly one day in a great fall of earth and stone; or quietly, when the water in the cave finally rises to kiss the roof of its mouth.
The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow.
HERS
Your children grow up, they leave you,
they have become soldiers and riders.
Your mate dies after a life of service.
Who knows you? Who remembers you?
Leonard Cohen, You Have the Lovers
MIMI DOES HER BEST not to cry in front of her husband any more. In the months after they received official word that their son was missing in action, she cried. Jack comforted her and predicted a hundred happy outcomes, a hundred bureaucratic errors, a worst-case scenario involving their boy lost in the shuffle, lying wounded but alive in a field hospital. She endured the incoming tide of sorrow, and the slow draining away of hope. Emotional anemia. She kept busy around the edges, which were all anyone could see. At the centre was a bare patch—it could not be called a clearing. Nothing would ever grow there again. Like irradiated soil. Sterile.
She confides in a few good friends. New friends: Doris, Fran, Joanne. She leans, catches her breath, but never collapses on any of them. If no one ever says “poor Mimi” again, she will have done her job.
No one can keep up with her—the Heart Fund, the Cancer Society, the Liberal Party, the Catholic Women’s League, her nursing job. She keeps busy, but Mimi has never had a talent for sidestepping time. She becomes aware of a metallic taste in her mouth—forty years of smoking has never interfered with her ability to season a sauce, this is new. Something has to change. Something does change. No one is able to tell, not her husband or her daughter. Here is her recipe for grief:
Keep busy. But care that the young couple on the corner have planted a new tree. Care that the woman whose husband died last year has a new dog—a mature mutt from the pound—Mimi doesn’t even like dogs, “Ah, mais il est mignon!” bending to pat his bony head. Care that someone had a baby. Cook something, bring it over. Go for a walk every Thursday morning at seven with Joanne, who, what with her long grey hair and Greenpeace pamphlets, reminds Mimi of Karen Froelich, and therefore seems the unlikeliest of friends. When consumed by jealousy of Fran with her grandchildren, by anger at the number of worthless young men who are allowed to survive, sit in your car with the engine off and squeeze the steering wheel. Cry until your throat hurts and the steering wheel is wet and it leaves a notched impression on your brow. Think of the Blessed Virgin, she knows what you are suffering. If you have the presence of mind—in the way that an epileptic might look for a safe place to lie down at the first sense of a seizure coming on—remove your makeup first. Cry at night, careful not to shake the bed. Get up, empty the dishwasher, bake muffins for your daughter in Toronto. Wait until six A.M., then call Yvonne in New Brunswick, where it’s seven. Gossip, judge, tell her not to judge so harshly, laugh. Look after your husband.
Upward tilt of the head for the morning kiss. Co-conspirators:
“When did you get up, Missus?”
“I’ve been up since six.”
“Something sure smells good.”
Look after him. Women live longer than men. Men are delicate, Mimi ought to have taken better care of hers. Both of them.
Put the kettle on. Look out the kitchen window.
Love what remains.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
“‘How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another!’”
Alice, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
SHE HAS FIVE MINUTES before meeting Christine for lunch, then she has an appointment with Shelly to show her material for Stark Raving Madeleine—a mere paragraph, but just add water. She is walking along Harbord in the direction of the university campus and Christine’s office when a title in the window of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore catches her eye. So she makes her way through the usual knot of demonstrators outside the abortion clinic next door, and goes in.
The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation. Feminist goddessy take on Jungian healing blah-blah. Nina stuff. She flips through—cocoons, butterflies…. She sighs. Do I have to heal now? Who’s got the time? The whole idea makes her crave a dose of Dirty Harry. But she buys the book and lingers to chat with the cute dreadlocked girl at the cash, not leaving till she has heard the analysis behind every political button pinned to the bib of her denim overalls.
Get your laws off my body! shouts a pin on the girl’s left suspender. Bi now, gay later, muses one on the right. She smiles at Madeleine and says, “Do you like reggae?”
“I love it.” Overstatement.
“I’m at the Cameron House on Thursday.”
“Are you a singer?” Are you even of legal drinking age?
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” What a nerd. Cool. What a maroon!
“I love your show,” says the girl, leaning forward, elbows on the counter.
Madeleine flees. Hit and run, duck and cover.
She picks up a falafel and eats it on the way to meet Shelly—what a gorgeous day. When she gets home, she writes an inscription in the book and, before taking the phone out to the balcony to call Olivia, leaves it on the kitchen table, a gift for Christine. More up her alley. And God knows, if therapy has taught Madeleine anything, it’s that Christine could use a little honest introspection.
Later that same week:
Madeleine stands stranded on her old Persian carpet in her empty living room. Her office is the only fully furnished room remaining, but she is avoiding it—rebuke of the blank computer screen, posters of past triumphs looming a merry reproach from the walls.
“Take the stuff,” said Madeleine.
And Christine did.
Madeleine had forgotten their lunch date. She had had a terrible meeting with Shelly, who believes in her. Her peripheral vision had gone wavy in one eye, and pins and needles had consumed both hands up to her elbows when she was in the Bloor Supersave buying eggs. And Christine left her.
Nyah, what’s up, doc?
She has enough money to continue nervously breaking down for another eighteen months, if she buys bulk. That’s the beauty of television residuals. Soon she will go to Ikea and fill up an oversized cart. Trawl the aisles, along with the other divorcées, and families with young children. Today is
Saturday, she could get started this afternoon.
“What about dinner?” she asked stupidly as Christine unlocked her bike from the veranda.
“Cook it yourself.”
That’s not what I meant.
They had been going to go for Vietnamese food with friends. Friends of Madeleine-and-Christine. Christine-and-Madeleine.
“You call them,” said Christine, dragging her bike down the wooden steps. “They were never really my friends anyway. You’re the shiny one, Madeleine.” Then she rode off on her beautiful old Schwinn Glyder with the generous gel-pad Drifter saddle.
She returned the next day, with a U-Haul and an undergrad. Madeleine helped. Now she has no furniture. She has a beach towel. A Melmac plate, bowl and mug; a knife-fork-spoon combination. At least she still has a bed. She has been to Honest Ed’s and bought a complete set of pots and an ironing board. She brought it all home on her bike, having had no need for the car when she nipped in with the intention of buying bagels. She forgot the bagels. She is as pathetic as any deserted husband. More so, having no home-repair skills.
“Why don’t you just go to her, that’s what you’re going to do anyway.”
“Go to who?” asked Madeleine. “Whom?”
Christine just shook her head and went into the bedroom. Madeleine followed like a spaniel. Christine started yanking open drawers.
“What are you doing, Christine?”
“What does it look like?”
Madeleine said robotically, which was how she knew she was in trouble, “I love you, Christine, please don’t leave. Don’t leave, Christine.”
“You’re incapable of feeling, Madeleine.”
The two of them had been drawn together by one another’s sadness. Residue of childhood in the eye. The problem is, neither was particularly compelled by the other’s idea of happiness.
“You hate it when I’m happy, Madeleine. You always choose that moment to stick the knife in.”
That’s not fair. Madeleine can’t bear to hurt her, so she always waits until Christine is up before … raising issues.
“You’re too cowardly to confront me,” said Christine, folding, flinging clothes onto the bed.
Maybe she was right and Madeleine did prefer the sad Christine. The helplessly angry one. The one who strangled.
Christine slammed her drawers shut, eyes flaming. Madeleine wanted to laugh because Christine was so worked up, full face flushed with rage like an angry doll.
“What’s so funny, Madeleine?”
Madeleine formed a serious expression, and Christine turned away in disgust.
Not disgust, says Christine, sadness. I’ve never been so sad in all my life.
Madeleine saw two dark splotches appear on the mauve duvet cover. Don’t cry, Christine—but who the hell is Madeleine to say such a thing?
Why isn’t love enough?
“I hate myself when I’m with you,” said Christine, wiping the corner of her eye, still packing with the simple vigour of a hausfrau.
Madeleine clung to her for seven years because she believed Christine could really see her, right down to the bottom.
“You’re so much fun with everyone else, but with me you’re always in a crappy mood,” said Christine.
With you I am myself, Madeleine would have replied at one time, but that was no longer true. With you I lead a double life. Chuckle and Hide. “Why are you leaving?”
“’Cause you don’t have the guts to leave me.” Christine almost spat it. “What are you waiting for, Madeleine? Go to her.”
Madeleine, honestly stumped, stood—not rooted, but slumped on her strings.
Christine muttered to her gaping drawers, “That bitch.”
What bitch?
Christine said, “She’s been after you from the start, pretending to be my friend too, coming over for dinner. I cooked for her! Now she’s got you in that stupid project and you’re neglecting your own work.”
Olivia.
“You think Olivia and I …? She’s my friend, babe.” Madeleine felt the foolish grin of masculine guilt creep over her features, masking her already unreal face. “It’s not true!” Then why does this feel exactly like a lie?
“I quit, Madeleine. I’m sick of this codependent bullshit.”
But what will I do without you? Now that I am more and more successful and beloved. No one else will ever know how bad I am. No one else can possibly see me as you do.
Madeleine watched, immobilized, while Christine stuffed clothes into a knapsack. “Why don’t you use the suitcase?” asked the robot. “It has wheels.” Christine ignored her. Christine had never understood that when Madeleine was most “real”—feeling most acutely—she turned into a puppet. Painted wood. Christine was tired of sharing a bed with a grown woman who still perched a grimy old Bugs Bunny on the pillows.
Madeleine had been on the phone with her father when the final conflict flared. They’d been arguing and she had resorted to out-talking him, asking how he could object to American foreign policy, yet laud Reagan’s bogus Star Wars plan, “the product of a cryogenically preserved brain! George Bush is actually running the country from a CIA desk littered with GI Joes and conversational Arabic tapes, oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea!” and Jack was laughing and egging her on. Christine came in with a pastry box and new highlights in her hair. She stood smiling for an instant, and Madeleine glanced up—“My dad says hi.” When she got off the phone, Christine had already dragged the forty-gallon knapsack from the attic.
Madeleine was grateful for marathon Thursday, sailed through shooting Friday, laughed and heckled at the Pickle Barrel while Ilsa gave her a scalp massage with her blood-red talons, and filled three foolscap pages for Shelly. No one suspected that her life was falling apart. She felt like a high-functioning alcoholic: slithering down the drapes at three, greeting hubby, bright-eyed and breath-minted, at five.
For three nights she cried into her air mattress—canvas, silty water smell reminding her of the Pinery campgrounds and Lake Huron. She wept for Mike at twelve, she wept for her smiling self at nine, she grieved the smack of a good catch, baseball arcing from glove to glove like a dolphin in the after-supper sun; she wept for childhood, and for anyone who had ever been a child. Amazed, even through tears, at the thematic sweep of her grief. Concentric bands of sorrow radiating outward from ground zero. Centralia.
At a quiet moment—tears on empty, not yet dawn—she pulled his string. He spoke, wise-crackling and unintelligible like a transmission from outer space. She hugged him and fell asleep. Don’t tell.
On Saturday morning she went to Honest Ed’s for cutlery and came home with a portable black-and-white TV, the kind they have in hospitals and taxicabs. She has spent the day cross-legged on the carpet, watching infomercials and The PTL Club and letting the answering machine take the calls. Shelly, her mother, Tony, Janice, Tommy, five others and Olivia. Ring…. She ignores it. She has ordered an all-purpose cleaning agent not available in stores, and responded with a hundred-dollar pledge to Goldie’s plea on PBS. Ring…. She switches to Secret Storm—klachunk. “If you have a message for Madeleine, please leave it after the beep; if you’re looking for Christine, call 531–5409.” Bee-eep. A voice through the machine: “Good day Mrs. McCarthy? My name is Cathy? And I’m calling from Consumer Systems Canada? And I wonder if you would be kind enough to phone me back at 262–2262 extension 226 and consent to participate in a brief questionnaire concerning certain well-known consumer items—?”
Madeleine grabs the phone—“Hi, Cathy?”
“Oh, hello Mrs. McCarthy—?”
“Look, I’ve just been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer.”
“Oh my—”
“Yeah, so I drowned the kids in the bathtub.”
Silence.
“Cathy?”
“Um … I—I can call back.”
“Sure, why don’t you do that, I’m just wrapping them in the shower curtain.”
Click.
Poor
Cathy.
On Sunday morning, by dint of supreme effort, Madeleine reaches forward and switches off the television. In a display of strong-mindedness, she decides to take a shower. She finds The Pregnant Virgin behind the toilet, its pages fanned into an accordion. Did Christine drop it in the bath on purpose? She sits on the porcelain edge of the tub and starts reading: “Analyzing Daddy’s Little Princess.” Oh please! Not to mention you can tell right away it’s written mainly for straight women. Oh well, to be gay is to be on simul-translation from day one, finding the universal in the particular and ingesting the distilled nourishment; like any minority that hopes to eat from the big table. “Integration of Body and Soul….” She starts reading. She reads until she has a crick in her neck and moves to the floor with her back against the tub. She reads until she is hungry. She reads until she has finished the book.
Madeleine knows that while she had Christine, she could be the unfucked-up one. Now, in the wake of Christine’s departure, Madeleine’s friends and colleagues will see through her crumbling facade, smell the bodies amid the rubble and turn away. Anyone foolish enough to stick around would have to be an idiot.
“No, McCarthy,” says Olivia, “you’re the idiot.” They are on the phone. Olivia says she’s coming over.
“No, I’ll come over to your place.”
Madeleine climbs the fire escape, past a cat or two. Dingy bricks cooking in the mellow light of five o’clock, peeling black of the iron stairs that ring out low like church bells; visible between the slats below, drift of garbage in the grease-slicked alley, old cushions, dog-torn plastic bags, smell of pot and lilacs; the bar and grill at the front is playing Annie Lennox…. Look up. Olivia is sitting at the top of the steps, on a milk crate, in a slant of sun, smoking Drum tobacco, roll-your-own.
The Way the Crow Flies Page 76