by John O'Neill
She lifted one of the items, a square of red tissue, and said, laughing: “I don’t even remember what some of these are.”
She playfully ordered Leonard into the living room, saying she had things for him. She sat next to him on the couch. He focused on her gentle enthusiasm as she fiddled with the bow of string on the red parcel, then handed it to him.
“I can undo strings myself,” Leonard said.
“We’d be here till Christmas.”
He unwrapped the red tissue, discovered a square can, cookie tin, painted with John Tenniel’s illustrations from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass: Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice and the White Knight, Alice and the Queen of Hearts. Leonard was a Lewis Carroll fan and happy at the gift, for a few moments enthralled, forgetful. Inside the tin, floating in more tissue, was an exquisite Queen of Hearts chess piece, carved from wood, beautifully painted. He fingered it, held it close to his eyes, rolled it in his hand, and stood it up in his palm. He leaned over and kissed his wife.
“Where did you get these? This is great.”
“Oxford. There’s an Alice shop there.”
“Of course.”
“I wanted to buy the whole set, but it was too expensive. I was lucky to get the one. I had to talk the clerk into selling an individual piece. She only did because the artist carved some extras. This one’s a bit flawed. Look at the crown, there’s a spike missing. The tin is a reproduction of the original that was produced during Lewis Carroll’s lifetime.”
“Great. Thank you. Not things I’d find around here.”
Leonard leaned over, touched Cynthia’s shoulder. Examined the Queen of Hearts again, put his little finger in the space left by the missing spike. Placed her on the coffee table, next to the two porcelain Civil War belles. Then, shifted her farther away, as if she might come to life and chop off their prim heads.
Cynthia went on to describe the side trip she and Candace had taken from London to Oxford, and to catalogue the vexing, sometimes infuriating actions of her mother. But Leonard’s interest was not specifically in what his mother-in-law did or didn’t do; said or shouldn’t have. Cynthia had engaged on a mission on his behalf. His wife had read in one of the travel guides that Oxford had been the home of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), so she’d talked her mother, no small feat, into taking the train there to buy something special. She’d endured Candace’s objections to the uncomfortable train seats, her wide theatrical yawns as they walked the grounds of Oxford University, her uncomprehending looks as Cynthia took digital photos of the wall that enclosed the famous garden where the Liddell children, daughters of the Dean, Alice among them, used to play. And she’d ignored her mother’s advice that buying a chess piece for a non-player was sort of silly, isn’t it? Why not get him a nice t-shirt? But more than these, Cynthia would have had to ignore her own misgivings. His wife had never admired Lewis Carroll, always suspecting, like many people, a perverseness in Carroll’s infatuation with young girls, and that this perverseness found a lucky sublimation in the author’s wordplay and eccentric characters. Leonard had argued with her, explaining that Dodgson had been a stammerer and so found more ready acceptance among children, and that in all the biographical material related to Carroll, even in Alice Liddell’s memoirs, there was no hint of inappropriate behaviour on the author’s part.
But Leonard knew Cynthia’s suspicion of Carroll was her transference of her own fear regarding her husband in his relationships with female students. His wife had witnessed many times, after performances of school plays he’d directed, excited young women, flushed, still in makeup, milling about with parents and friends, but always having time to give their teacher unabashed smiles, to nestle against him in a flirtatious buzz amidst the swirl of bodies.
And sometimes Cynthia would remember that the girl who’d sidled up against her husband while the parents snapped a picture was the same one he’d described earlier as being extraordinary or smart as a whip. Leonard was sure that Cynthia had met Alison at one of these post-play scrums. He also recalled a story he’d told Cynthia about this “terrific girl” who graced his grade-nine drama class ten years before.
One of the orientation games Leonard had students play in drama class was called Fox and Rabbit. The rationale behind such games was to foster a sense of community, of playfulness, and to act as a physical warm-up for activities requiring greater concentration. The students would pair off, each couple joining arms and distributing themselves evenly around the carpeted room. They placed their free hands on their hips, so that each couple resembled a teacup with two handles. Two volunteers became the fox and rabbit. Essentially it was a game of tag, the fox chasing the rabbit. However, the rabbit could escape by looping his/her arm onto one of the pairs situated around the room. Once the rabbit accomplished this, the person on the other side of the pair became the new rabbit and so had to escape.
As in many games, those with athletic ability have an advantage. In this case, a small, stringy-haired and slightly bowlegged girl suddenly found herself the new fox. Once it dawned on her that she was the engine of the game, she closed her eyes, opened them again in mid-roll, then began to lurch around the space, always out-manoeuvred. To make matters worse, her prey was a dreamy, pale-skinned boy (Leonard remembered his name, Dexter) who had milky eyes, and who seemed, at first or second glance, to be as awkward as she. But Dexter found in the game his apotheosis. His mouth was set with determination. His legs churned. He began to take pleasure in deliberately slowing down, letting the poor bowlegs come tantalizingly close, then blasting off just as her hand was about to brush his wrinkled, gravy-stained uniform vest. After three near-misses, the girl stopped, looked at her teacher. Her lips quivered. As Leonard was about to end the game, the bowlegs saw her prey lock arms with one of the couples. The new rabbit girl, also angular, with a mop of black hair and mournful eyes, seemed confused and was slow to launch. The bowlegs, encouraged by this sign of weakness, moved quickly enough to tag her, then escaped.
But not that quickly. And the fox with the mournful eyes began to play the game, to chase the new prey, with such litheness, that Leonard suspected she’d let herself be caught. And he knew that, though the incident might have seemed trivial, in the highly charged and competitive atmosphere of a first-year high-school drama class, where self-consciousness positively throbs and where image is everything, this girl’s little play of confusion, her feigned awkwardness, was almost heroic.
This was Leonard’s first introduction to Alison, some 10 years before. The incident was one of many he was sure he’d told Cynthia about. He had likely seen in Cynthia’s eyes a glint of suspicion or worry, as he did whenever he’d share some anecdote about a female student who’d distinguished herself. This memory, now, of his wife’s constant and what he believed were irrational suspicions, combined with the thought of her dragging her mother to Oxford to buy him a special gift – all in the face of her Alice-like discomfort – made him weak, breathless: the fox and the rabbit.
Cynthia asked him to join her in the bedroom. She wanted to hear about what he’d been doing for the past month. Fortunately, he could relate the details of his mother’s deterioration. Yet, in sharing the story with Cynthia, he was impatient, aware he would rather have been sharing it with Alison. His melancholy over his mother’s illness ennobled him, and he wore his newfound nobility like a scar, a battle wound. His whispered evocation of his mother’s decline, his hard-won insights into the terrible vagaries of life, would provide more that Alison could wrap her heart around, next her arms and legs. Any passion he spent in telling Cynthia about his mother was a wasted investment.
Nevertheless, he talked. He described, as his wife got undressed, his mother’s spitting up. His father’s impatience. He looked away when Cynthia pulled her blouse over her head, when she unlatched her bra. Her disrobing was routine, quick, with no trace of eroticism, even on this night, when they’d been apart for weeks. Cyn was demonstrating ho
w their separation hadn’t changed anything. She slid under the covers and, as was her habit, wrapped the sheet tightly around her head. He’d always found this odd and endearing, only the little oval of her face visible. She wore the whole bed like a nun’s flowing habit, as if, every night, she were embarking on a pilgrimage. And, indeed, thought Leonard, this husband and wife did go their separate ways, even when they lay down together.
She did say, once he’d turned out the light, she was glad to be home. That she’d missed him. He went downstairs. A descent seemed appropriate, under the circumstances, like the idea that he was retreating into a hole to commune with the changing notion of himself. To begin his own pilgrimage.
“Pilgrimage,” he said aloud.
It made him sad. He grinned with vigour to see if he could hold the contradiction in his face, for the sake of dignity.
The blue stairs creaked. Brown carpet hissed. Leonard stretched out on the couch. The white stucco walls, between pseudo-Tudor beams, sweated. Little beads oozed from each stipple. He imagined that Cynthia was levitating above the bed, held aloft by a summer wind, the blankets hanging like vestments, her untroubled face a virginal moon. But she was too grounded for that to happen: too rooted to the earth for such a flight. His hands began to ache. He jerked up from the couch, went to the downstairs bathroom, filled the sink with warm water. His hands crawled in. He watched them there, as if examining starfish in an ocean pool. Went back to the couch, came face to face with the telephone on the coffee table. Their old black rotary sat larger than the table, larger than the couch. It blocked the view of the television, looked heavy as an anvil. Alison was inside it. Leonard could hear her speaking, her scratchy, rusty-hinged voice. He would not, could not, pick up the receiver. Cynthia was hovering above the bed; Alison was in the telephone. It was all wrong. He had to free Alison, weigh his wife down. But he could not, would not, do this.
He resolved to let it go, to dismiss the notion that he might build a new life with Alison, and decided to resign himself to his wife. He’d engage fully in their life together, redeem himself in silence and endeavour. He’d phone Alison, apologize profusely, keep the image of Cynthia’s face, swathed in dreaming sheets, before him. But it would be a mistake to tell Cynthia about his tryst, unless he was willing to harrow through the implications of his act. All of his dissatisfactions, and Cynthia’s dissatisfactions, would move intractably to the centre of their marriage, would demand to be acknowledged and wrestled with. Their life together would revolve around, at least for a time, his transcendent, condemning moments in the car. If he kept it to himself, he could wage a private battle with his conscience and still take pleasure in the comforts of his marriage, still draw solace from Cynthia. And he wouldn’t be able to bear her hurt, endure it and prevail against it; or how she’d look at him and not look at him, and how she would try to disguise, then displace, her own desire for reassurance. How she’d close her eyes, or take refuge in her work in the garden; and her eyelids would be sealed, as if covered with dirt, as if she were dead and gone. And he knew that the memory of Alison’s mouth, her hands, her body rising and falling, would be ruined, in rising again, by the knowledge of his wife’s pain. Even the scrape of her lips against his neck. Hollows of her shoulders. Light of her long fingers. Eyes opening against his. How all his memories of her as a student, prolonged moments of desire, would gather, narrow to a trembling, irrevocable point.
The next morning, Leonard told Cynthia everything.
8
TEN YEARS
Well sort of, in a blurred, general way, over breakfast. The ground seemed to move under his feet. If it would only open up and swallow him whole, then he would completely disappear.
“I think we need to separate, for a while. Something’s wrong. I don’t quite understand it myself. I care about you, obviously. But, I’ve had strong feelings for someone else. Maybe it won’t come to anything. But, I want to be fair. To you.”
Cynthia reached out across the small kitchen table. Her fingers brushed Leonard’s mouth.
“You have some crumbs there,” she said.
On a blue-trimmed plate, Leonard’s bagel sat half-eaten. The coffee pot was nearly empty, a crust of black at the bottom. Beside it was the Lewis Carroll tin. Cynthia had already pressed it into domestic service, filling it with tea bags.
She placed her hands flat on the table. Her face seemed blank, featureless; her eyes blurred, like stones seen through fast water.
Leonard thought: “Nothing feels necessary. No moment has felt like this before.” In an instant, he and Cynthia had been reborn. As if his announcement had liberated her, he had the sensation that the moment might go on forever, indefinitely flattering her.
He made the mistake of shifting his eyes from her face to their two half-empty coffee cups – side by side on the table, they looked sad, utterly beyond use; and they would take all objects with them. And neither he nor Cynthia could live in a world without objects, without the floor to walk on, without doors to enter and leave by, without walls to tell them where they should be. What was once outside was now in; and what remained of the interior now seemed to be outside, trading places.
Cynthia lifted her face and went to the sink. She appeared to be looking into the backyard, accomplishing something he couldn’t fathom, looking for the garden, the plants and trees to steady her and reassure her in some way. She turned around, stepped back to the table, clutched the Lewis Carroll tin in her hand, lifted it, put it down again. She closed her eyes: her eyelids were two crescents of red. She opened them, turned toward a shelf and took hold of one of two, large, blue wine goblets that they’d received from her brother as a wedding gift, ten years before. Stepped past Leonard out through the doorway into the foyer and pitched the goblet down the hall, watched it explode.
“Christ, Cynthia,” Leonard said.
She lunged against the doorframe. The wood cracked. She began to walk in small circles. Leonard stood up, took a few steps down the long hall, saw the shards of glass on the hardwood. His wife was still circling, closing in on something, or measuring the possibilities of escape. He felt an impulse to open the front door, let her out. Instead, he looked down at his plaid slippers. He was standing pigeon-toed. Cynthia was in a whirlpool, shouting at him from its outer rim.
“Why fucking now? I just spent money on a trip. We can’t afford this. We have a house, asshole. Why now? Why fuck, fucking now?”
Leonard moved closer. He wanted to be helpful. Cynthia broke from her spin and planting her feet, stood rigid, hands fisted.
“Jesus, I just need time,” he said. “I’ll still keep paying for the house. Don’t worry about money. We need to work on other things.”
“Well, you’re sure as shit not living here,” she said. “Make some arrangements. I don’t want to see you. Maybe you can live with the cunt.”
“Please, Cynthia.”
“Fuck you. I go away for a month. Why now? Who is she? One of your fucking students?”
A pain shot through him. Sharp, knuckled, white. He went lightheaded with the relief that he could say, truthfully, that she was not one of his students. Alison had graduated five years before. Former student, yes: alumna.
“That doesn’t matter. You must have known this was coming. We have problems, Cynthia. We’ll have to try harder. Maybe get some help.”
“This is your version of trying harder? I missed you. I thought this might be a beginning. I thought if you, we, had some distance. You think I was dying to travel with my mother?”
“You never seem interested,” he said. “Last night, you just went to bed.”
“I was tired. You make no effort. You never touch me.”
He wanted to say about how it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t just a matter a being apart for a few weeks. A deeper incompatibility had taken root and had grown between them. But then it was as if Cynthia, too, saw him as a child, and despised his hurt look, feigned juvenile innocence.
“So who the fuck is she?�
�� she asked again. “What happened? Something must have happened to push you to this.”
He looked straight at her. Narrowed his eyes, raised his voice to convince her all this was just as painful for him.
“It doesn’t matter who,” he said. “It’s not about that.”
“Like shit it isn’t. Does she know you’re married? That you’re a liar? That your wife was away on a trip? With her mother? Does she know how lousy things will be with you? Does she know that when you’re unhappy you hide, say you’re having career doubts? Does she know how fucking helpless you are, that you haven’t paid a bill or cooked a meal in ten years? Has she seen your arrogance? Cowardice? Don’t tell me what this is about. I know what this is about. I don’t care what happened. I don’t care who she is. But if I find out. You’re sleeping downstairs tonight. But I want you gone. Fast.”
Cynthia moved past him. Splinters of glass cracked under her slippered feet. She went into the bedroom, closed the door. Softly, softly. He noted the gentleness of this action, how she must have fought the impulse to slam it, how she had already begun to resist the scripted movie role of betrayed wife, the hint of resignation. He leaned against the kitchen doorframe. It cracked again.
He occupied himself with immediate, menial tasks. Turned off the coffee maker. Scraped the plates, placed the dishes in the sink. Put the cup of cream into the fridge. Placed the Lewis Carroll tin between sugar and flour tins on the counter.
After he’d collected the large pieces of blue glass from the hall floor, he took the dustpan and broom from the closet, swept up the glistening fragments and powdery residue. He did this quietly. He was sure Cynthia would be annoyed, upset by his petty diligence, angry at the symbolic implications of him sweeping up the shattered wedding gift, one half of a seldom-used pair.
Before the bedroom door, Leonard crouched down. He rubbed his thumb into the quarter-inch gouge left by the goblet’s impact, and could hear Cynthia breathing on the other side. She’d slept for some nine hours the night before and they’d sat in the kitchen that morning for less than an hour before he’d introduced ruin. She was gone again.