by John O'Neill
He mulled over their exchange. He was perturbed that Cynthia’s first words were about money. That she had repeated the words: Why now? The question of timing was really her anxiety over finances. In the months previous to the trip, she’d been lobbying for a pay raise at her job. It hadn’t come, and this made her reconsider the vacation plans. But Leonard had reassured her, reminding her that his salary was about to increase, and that her mother had offered to pay for all the accommodations. Leonard knew his wife often exaggerated their financial precariousness to distract herself from more menacing matters. But he never addressed the real issues himself, in some ways grateful for her preoccupations. So, his annoyance seemed unjustified. Nevertheless, he bit into it like a dog. Chewed, let his eyes roll back, felt the sudden heat of his displeasure flash through him. Decided he needed to get out of the house. Make a phone call. But his clothes were in the bedroom. Once he’d managed noiselessly to turn the glass knob and slip inside, had gathered his jeans, t-shirt and a clean pair of boxers, he hazarded a look at his wife. She had kicked off the brown comforter and twisted herself tightly inside the yellow-flowered sheets. The only trace of flesh was her right hand, stuck out from the mummification. Her fingers were open, relaxed, indicating that she had travelled to a benevolent dream place, and in that place was asking for alms, an answer to be placed, like a coin, in her open palm. Leonard hoped it would come. That the languor of her hand would move into the rest of her body and that in time, her life would give her ease.
As he was sidling out Cynthia sat bolt upright in the tangle of sheets and shouted: “Leave those, goddamn you. You’re not taking anything.”
“I’m getting dressed,” he said. “They’re my clothes.”
“Goddamn it, leave those. You’re not taking anything.”
Her voice exerted a gravitational pull. Leonard observed the mixture of rage and confusion in her face and saw that she’d woken from some thieving nightmare. He dropped the clothing. Cynthia ushered him out with please, leave me alone, please, before she buried her face again.
He stood in the hall, looking out at his car in the driveway. Decided that, despite his pyjamas, he needed to leave. That he’d risk the stares of others in order to make a phone call to tell Alison what had happened. He needed to relieve the mortification that was stiffening him, causing him to walk as if he needed to defecate. He wondered if he always walked this way in the morning but hadn’t noticed before.
9
ANIMAL
He drove to a small market nearby and parked the car. Hesitated, looked down at his matching pyjama pants and shirt, his plaid slippers. He needed to make the call, decided he’d sneak between cars until he came to the payphone; it was tucked in beside a bin of fake fireplace logs near the market’s main doors. There, he could stand in shadow, safe from the eyes of anyone who might assume he’d just escaped from the psychiatric ward of Scarborough General Hospital.
And the market was a place where judgement would come: it was upscale and very popular; a tin-ceilinged, brick building with dim lighting, extravagant plants above spacious aisles, rows of well-maintained bulk bins, wagonloads of sparkling fresh fruits and vegetables, islands of fish, a quaint deli, a bakery and an old-fashioned butcher’s counter, complete with porcine butcher. The market was always filled with customers who lived in the neighbourhood south of Kingston Road, a gathering of old houses close to the scenic Scarborough bluffs, whose real-estate prices were substantially higher than the neighbourhoods north of Kingston. Most of the SUVs and mini-vans exiting the parking lot turned south toward the lake. And Leonard would invariably find himself waiting in line behind women and men who wore natty business suits, or, on the weekend, Nike sweats, pushing huge double strollers that looked like they’d been designed by NASA. He liked the market, though, because for a few moments, out of the glare of the concrete, prairie-like expanse of the sprawling city, out of the sight of neon signs that hummed and rusted and dirtied the sky above the deteriorating motels that ran along Kingston Road from Brimley all the way to the 401, he could dream that he was just off Queen Street in the tree-lined Beach, or browsing among stylish shops in Bloor West Village.
After passing between cars and walking across the open space that separated the parking lot from the plaza, Leonard found the phone occupied by a young woman in shorts and flip-flops. This forced him to stand out beyond the firelog bin, in full view of the shoppers who flowed in and out of the automatic doors. But the woman wasn’t using the payphone, was merely leaning against it and talking into her hand, her long tresses of dirty blonde hair concealing her face and cell phone. He moved closer and waved his hand and said excuse me twice to get her attention. He heard the phrase American Idol, spoken reverentially. She didn’t lift her head or meet his eyes, nor examine his pyjamas or slippered feet, but slowly moved off so that he could make his call. When she did raise her gaze, her face registered such a look of revulsion that Leonard looked down, afraid that his penis had flopped into view through the loose slit in his pyjama pants.
He was relieved when Alison’s roommate Beverly answered. In a businesslike style, she told him that Alison would be gone all day and in the evening would be projecting a film at Innis College. He was afraid of Alison’s reaction to the news that he’d told his wife that he had feelings for another. Alison hadn’t said anything about feelings but he trusted she shared his belief that the connection between them ran deep, that their groping each other in the car was just a fumbling introduction to, if not a life together, then certainly the beginning of an intense, mercurial relationship. But did Alison share his feelings? He feared that he’d projected many of these impressions. He was glad that they wouldn’t have to discuss it through a blind telephone line. His was news too shattering, too hot for the phone. He needed to see her reaction in person. That night, he’d drive downtown and surprise her at her workplace. Her reaction would tell him much about the possibilities of a future together.
To kill time, he drove to the Scarborough Bluffs and parked the car on a street that ran parallel to the edge. There had been a grass fire and the ground was seared in places. The houses here, each with a balcony or large window eating up southern exposure, had all been renovated to maximize the view of the small park and lake beyond. The park was deserted, save for a woman in a sari who was leaning over a book on a blanket. Leonard wandered down a pathway, glad when the dry overgrowth concealed his slippers, and was soon standing before a chain-link fence that cut the lake into diamond shapes. The afternoon sun drained colour from water and sky. The bushes and trees that here and there softened the edge of the land were dusty and still. The day recalled childhood Augusts: all stillness and weeds and a dryness that prickled the skin. As if the sun had nailed everything down, singed it, preserved it. There was comfort in this: the idea of not moving, the impeccability of stillness, nostalgia of summer heat. He wished it had infected him earlier, that he’d let summer stop him, burn him, dry him out, pin him down and collect him.
As he walked back to the car, his foot strayed off the path. Some sharp object cracked under his weight. He withdrew his foot, leaned down to find a bleached white skeleton; likely a raccoon, its spine winding like a little bridge into its newly crushed skull. Leonard shuddered, lifted his foot, examined the sole of his slipper. The woman in the sari stared at him.
He smiled stupidly, said, loudly, “Animal” and moved off toward his car.
Once inside, he sat for several minutes, trying to account for his anger.
When he arrived home, two hours after he’d left that morning, he could hear the television in the basement, the sound of voices, obsequious applause. Dr. Phil. He went down, ready to comfort Cynthia, to tell her that every relationship had problems, that they could probably see their way through this, that he just had to figure some things out. That he loved her. Once inside the room, he hesitated.
She was on the couch, wrapped in a brown throw. Before he could speak, she, without turning from the TV said, blandly, �
��I had that dream again. You remember, the one where you’re dead? In fact, I had it twice before I woke up.”
She then shifted, her swollen face in profile, right eye bloodshot.
“I hope you’re going out again. I can’t stand to look at you, till things change.”
Leonard pondered the ambiguity of her last phrase, rubbed his foot on the brown carpet, leaving a dusty white footprint.
10
APPARATUS OF LIGHT
Innis College is part of the University of Toronto. It’s the film college, where students can take any number of courses on film history and aesthetics. Back in the eighties, Leonard had taken the introductory course, Film 101. He’d achieved a distinguished mediocrity, handing in a series of vaguely clever but poorly written papers on topics like “Fellini’s Democratization of the Grotesque” and “Buster Keaton: Samuel Beckett’s Real Father.” But he liked attending the film screenings every Wednesday afternoon in the Innis Town Hall. He often found himself, though, at the end of a day of enervating lectures, or of pushing himself through an essay’s first draft, nodding off in the cool theatre, a susceptible prey to darkness, the flickering images, the soundtrack’s lull, and the stupefying obligation to pay close attention. The Innis College building is a lean, nondescript two-storey structure on St. George Street. It has none of the gothic, patronizing ambience of, say, Victoria College, or the corrective feel of St. Michael’s. It has, on the inside, the look of an office space, glassy hallways bisected by workstations. It is 70ish, with ugly orange-cushioned, coffee-stained couches in the fish-bowl lobby. The spaces are all incidental, serving only as extensions of the centrepiece – the wide, bright Town Hall, with its retractable movie screen and rows of seats in a leisurely semicircle. When Leonard was a student there, these chairs were mostly filled by the University’s fringe crowd, those students who were drawn to a more informal kind of academia, those who resisted the tyranny of the written word and recognized the increasing dominance of the image and so wanted to learn its language. Innis’ interior space was the backdrop for the traffic of bodies in black: long, serious faces, heavy-lidded eyes, those who in high school enthused more about Eraserhead than Star Wars. Leonard imagined that things had not changed much in the last 20 years, so thought of Alison as a member of this mildly subversive crowd. And her subversiveness was reinforced by the fact that she was one of Innis’ projectionists, and thus controlled the machinery that propelled this dark segment of university life.
The thought of all this, of Alison’s present participation in his past, got Leonard excited.
“Yesterday is a place,” Leonard thought as he parked on Huron Street, just behind Innis. “Tomorrow is an open sky.”
When he stepped out of the car, he felt pain in his hands and forearms; he’d been gripping the wheel too tightly. He had no recollection of the route he’d taken. The back of his t-shirt, white with thin black horizontal stripes, was soaked with sweat. He walked past a row of chained bicycles, then through the side doors of the building. The worn couches and torn chairs were empty but strewn with discarded student newspapers. He heard faint music from a soundtrack. Innis College, though officially shut down for summer vacation, was host to a public film series featuring a number of Italian and French directors.
He walked around to the back of the auditorium where he found the metal staircase that led up to the projection booth. At the top, Sue Lyon’s face revealed itself slowly as he ascended, a red lollipop in her mouth and heart-framed glasses pushed down on her nose. The poster from Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita. Leonard decided he needed to do something about his sweaty shirt. Went back down and found a washroom, pulled his t-shirt over his head and spent five minutes stretching it over the hand-dryer. Wrestled the t-shirt on again and doused his face with cold water. Went back up, knocked lightly on the door of the projection booth. Once. Twice. The third time, more firmly. Alison answered.
She was dressed exactly as she’d been when he’d dropped her off at Warden Station: ragged, cut-off jean shorts, sandals, black t-shirt. She was startled, but let her blue lips curve into a smile.
“Oh my God, hi,” she said. “I didn’t expect you. I have to catch my breath.”
She put one hand flat against his chest, as if to push him away but looped the other around his neck, drawing him into a hug.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he said.
“Me, too, but. Come in. I have to change reels.”
Holding his hand, she led him past two large projectors. They resembled thin furnaces, but each with an hourglass shape, bulging where the film reels turned. Air ducts snaked from them up into the ceiling. Several large silver cases stood against the wall: film canisters battered and pasted with labels. On the wall was a cork bulletin board pinned with strips of film, flyers, a crude QUIET sign, a calendar and a single white glove with fingertips stained black. The room was dim, humid. Alison’s hand felt wet.
They entered a small side room papered with film posters. A bookcase held shelves of binders, videotapes and DVDs. Against the wall overlooking the auditorium was an ugly orange couch like the ones in the lobby. Alison invited Leonard to sit down. Instead, he leaned against the doorframe that separated the two rooms and watched Alison as she peered through the horizontal glass into the dark auditorium. As soon as she moved into the dark space where the film glided through the machinery, her face took on a grim formality.
Done, she led him to the couch. She sat next to him, one leg tucked under, leaning in as she’d done in the car before she slid onto his lap. But the grimness on her face hadn’t entirely disappeared.
“So, what’s happening?” she said. “Your wife’s back? Are you all right? Is everything all right?”
Disappointment. “Is everything all right?” Alison’s words implied that she expected that his life would resume again, fall into the same groove it had occupied before she’d put her hands and mouth on it. He’d hoped that, for Alison, his wife’s returning would be the beginning of things not being all right, that the resumption of his normal life would represent an intolerable obstacle to Alison’s desires. Now he had the sense that she hadn’t surrendered to any kind of expectation. But her hand on my neck, her smile when she opened the projection room door. He decided that he should also accept this non-expectation. That he should let Alison know that he, too, assumed life would carry on as it had before. That their rendezvous may have been the inevitable and satisfying culmination of a long-standing infatuation, but was nevertheless adolescent, temporary. A mistake.
“I’m moving out,” he said.
Alison shot up from her seat, sat back down.
“Whoa, you’re kidding? Oh my God, Leonard. What happened? I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to ruin things for you.”
He collapsed more completely into the couch. Something poked him through the material. He stared straight ahead at a magazine photo pinned to the wall; a picture from the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, a sculpted Marlon Brando over a cowering Jessica Tandy. He felt, beneath waves of misgivings, ennobled, suddenly brave for having said the words. Saying them gave him license. The possibility of unfaithfulness seemed less a sin, in this half-light, in this random yet electric space, than a style. It was the shape of an idea.
“It might be temporary,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s for the best. I thought you’d be happy.”
Alison didn’t move. Her hands were interlocked in her lap. She was pressing them together, releasing, pressing them together again. She was waiting for some sign, waiting to discover how his confusion, and the resolution that had sliced through it, I’m moving out, would modify his body.
His anxiety, and what he thought was want in her eyes, made him lean forward again, place one of his hands on hers. The warmth of Alison’s skin forced everything else into the background. Even the memory of the desolation on his wife’s face, the same impulse that had inspired him to approach her earlier that day, now pushed him to draw clos
er to Alison; giving himself to her would force Cynthia into a new space, a new consciousness, where she’d find peace. Touching Alison was a way of comforting Cynthia and letting her go. As he hesitated, he became aware again of the sound of the projector, the images winding through it, the non-judgement of this, the spin toward a conclusion, the relentless mechanics of it all. There was a little explosion in his stomach. He realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Felt the need to pass wind. He restrained himself, shifted in his seat just as Alison took both his hands.
“I know things will work out,” she said. “Usually things, there are reasons that make everything settle.”
Leonard wasn’t sure what she meant. He leaned forward. From out of the movie voices he heard the word andiamo. He touched his mouth to her cheek. She moved as if she were about to kiss him but didn’t. She reached around under his shirt, ran a fingernail from the small of his back to his neck. Suddenly, she’d broken away and was standing rigidly, a weird no-man’s land between them, a vacuum, and the fear of an empty space. Leonard imagined all of the objects in the room – the posters, books, tapes, her beige handbag, leather jacket – all being sucked into the gap, like a hole blown in the side of an airplane.
“God, you’re sweaty,” she said laughing. She turned, went into the projection room, reappeared in the doorway, said: “We’ve got a few minutes.”
His stomach rumbled again. She approached him in her staccato way (Alison always moved in short bursts, several tight steps in rapid succession before slowing down, pausing, as if the rhythm of her heart contained little gaps that made her reconsider her destinations). Now, Leonard was the gap, the hesitation. She crouched in front of him, sat on the floor, finally resting her head in his lap, the way a child might do.