Fragility
Carol Shields
Carol Shields (1935–2003) was an American-born Canadian writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the Governor General’s Award in Canada. Shields published ten novels, three collections of poetry and five collections of short stories.
We are flying over the Rockies on our way to Vancouver, and there sits Ivy with her paperback. I ask myself Should I interrupt and draw her attention to the grandeur beneath us?
In a purely selfish sense, watching Ivy read is as interesting as peering down at those snowy mountains. She turns the pages of a book in the same way she handles every object, with a peculiar respectful gentleness, as though the air around it were more tender than ordinary air. I’ve watched her lift a cup of tea with this same abstracted grace, cradling a thick mug in a way that transforms it into something precious and fragile. It’s a gift some people have.
I decide not to disturb her; utterly absorbed in what she’s reading, she’s seen the Rockies before.
In the seat ahead of us is a young man wearing a bright blue jacket – I remember that once I had a similar jacket in a similar hue. Unlike us, he’s clearly flying over the Rockies for the first time. He’s in a half-standing position at the window, snapping away with his camera, pausing only to change the film. From where I’m sitting I can see his intense, eager trigger hand, his steadying elbow, his dropped lower lip. In a week he’ll be passing his slides around the office, holding them delicately at their edges up to the light. He might set up a projector and screen them one evening in his living room; he might invite a few friends over, and his wife – who will resemble the Ivy of fifteen years ago – will serve coffee and wedges of cheese cake; these are the Rockies, he’ll say – magnificent, stirring, one of the wonders of the continent.
I tell myself that I would give a great deal to be in that young man’s shoes, but this is only a half-truth, the kind of lie Ivy and I sometimes spin for our own amusement. We really don’t want to go back in time. What we envy in the young is that fine nervous edge of perception, the ability to take in reality afresh. I suppose, as we grow older, that’s what we forfeit, acquiring in its place a measure of healthy resignation.
Ivy puts down her book suddenly and reaches for my hand. A cool, light, lazy touch. She’s smiling.
“Good book?”
“Hmmm,” she says, and stretches.
Now, as a kind of duty, I point out the Rockies.
“Beautiful,” she exclaims, leaning toward the window.
And it is beautiful. But unfortunately the plane is flying at a height that extracts all sense of dimension from the view. Instead of snow-capped splendor, we see a kind of Jackson Pollock dribbling of white on green. It’s a vast abstract design, a linking of incised patterns, quite interesting in its way, but without any real suggestion of height, or majesty.
“It looks a little like a Jackson Pollock,” Ivy says in that rhythmic voice of hers.
“Did you really say that?”
“I think so.” Her eyebrows go up, her mouth crimps at the edges. “At least, if I didn’t, someone did.”
I lift her hand – I can’t help myself – and kiss her fingertips.
“And what’s that for?” she asks, still smiling.
“An attack of poignancy.”
“A serious new dietary disease, I suppose,” Ivy says, and at that moment the steward arrives with our lunch trays.
Ivy and I have been to Vancouver fairly often on business trips or for holidays. This time it’s different; in three months we’ll be moving permanently to Vancou-ver, and now the two of us are engaged in that common-enough errand, a house-hunting expedition.
Common, I say, but not for us.
We know the statistics: that about half of all North Americans move every five years, that we’re a rootless, restless, portable society. But for some reason, some failing on our part or perhaps simple good fortune, Ivy and I seem to have evaded the statistical pattern. The small stone-fronted, bow-windowed house we bought when Christopher was born is the house in which we continue to live after twenty years.
If there had been another baby, we would have considered a move, but we stayed in the same house in the middle of Toronto. It was close to both our offices and close too to the clinic Christopher needed. Curiously enough, most of our neighbors also stayed there year after year. In our neighborhood we know everyone. When the news of my transfer came, the first thing Ivy said was, “What about the Mattisons and the Levensons? What about Robin and Sara?”
“We can’t very well take everyone on the street along with us.”
“Oh Lordy,” Ivy said, and bit her lip. “Of course not. It’s only—”
“I know,” I said.
“Maybe we can talk Robin and Sara into taking their holidays on the coast next year. Sara always said—”
“And we’ll be back fairly often. At least twice a year.”
“If only—”
“If only what?”
“Those stupid bulbs.” (I love the way Ivy pronounces the word stupid: stewpid, giving it a patrician lift.)
“Bulbs?”
“Remember last fall, all those bulbs I put in?”
“Oh,” I said, remembering.
She looked at me squarely: “You don’t mind as much as I do, do you?”
“Of course I do. You know I do.”
“Tell me the truth.”
What could I say? I’ve always been impressed by the accuracy of Ivy’s observations. “The truth is—”
“The truth is—?” she helped me along.
“I guess I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?” Her eyes filled with tears. This was a difficult time for us. Christopher had died in January. He was a tough kid and lived a good five years longer than any of us ever thought he would. His death was not unexpected, but still, Ivy and I were feeling exceptionally fragile.
“Ready for what?” she asked again.
“For something,” I admitted. “For anything, I guess.”
The first house we look at seems perfect. The settled neighborhood is dense with trees and shrubbery, and reminds us both of our part of Toronto. There are small repairs that need doing but nothing major. Best of all, from the dining room there can be seen a startling lop of blue water meeting blue sky.
I point this out to Ivy; a view was one of the things we had put on our list. There is also a fireplace, another must, and a capacious kitchen with greenhouse windows overlooking a garden.
“And look at the bulbs,” I point out. “Tulips halfway up. Daffodils.”
“Lilies,” Ivy says.
“I think we’ve struck it lucky,” I tell the real-estate woman who’s showing us around, a Mrs. Marjorie Little. (“Call me Marge,” she’d said to us with west-coast breeziness.)
Afterward, in the car, Ivy is so quiet I have to prompt her. “Well?”
Marge Little, sitting at the wheel, peers at me, then at Ivy.
“It’s just,” Ivy begins, “it’s just so depressing.”
Depressing? I can’t believe she’s saying this. A view, central location, a fireplace. Plus bulbs.
“Well,” Ivy says slowly, “it’s a divorce house. You must have noticed?”
I hadn’t. “A divorce house? How do you know?”
“I looked in the closets. Her clothes were there but his weren’t.”
“Oh.”
“And half the pictures had been taken off the wall. Surely you noticed that.”
I shake my head.
“I know it sounds silly, but wouldn’t you rather move into a house with some good” – she pauses – “some good vibrations?”
“Vibrations?”
“Did you notice the broken light in the bathroom? I’ll bet someone threw something at it. In a rage.”
“We could always fix the light. And the other things. And with our own furniture—”
Ivy is an accountant. Once
I heard a young man in her firm describe her as a crack accountant. For a number of years now she’s been a senior partner. When this same young man heard she was leaving because of my transfer, he couldn’t help ragging her a little, saying he thought women didn’t move around at the whim of their husbands anymore, and that, out of principle, she ought to refuse to go to Vancouver or else arrange some kind of compromise life – separate apartments, for instance, with weekend rendezvous in Winnipeg.
Ivy had howled at this. She’s a positive, good-natured woman and, as it turned out, she had no trouble finding an opening in a good Vancouver firm, at senior level. As I say, she’s positive. Which is why her apprehension over good or bad vibrations is puzzling. Can it be she sees bad times ahead for the two of us? Or is it only that she wants solid footing after these long years with Christopher? Neither of us is quite glued back together again. Not that we ever will be.
“I can’t help it,” Ivy is saying. “It just doesn’t feel like a lucky house. There’s something about – ”
Marge Little interrupts with a broad smile. “I’ve got all kinds of interesting houses to show you. Maybe you’ll like the next one better.”
“Does it have good vibes?” Ivy asks, laughing a little to show she’s only half-serious.
“I don’t know,” Marge Little says. “They don’t put that kind of info on the fact sheet.”
The next house is perched on the side of the canyon. No, that’s not quite true. It is, in fact, falling into the canyon. I notice, but don’t mention, the fact that the outside foundation walls are cracked and patched. Inside, the house is alarmingly empty; the cool settled air seems proof that it’s been vacant for some time.
Marge consults her fact sheet. Yes, the house has been on the market about six months. The price has been reduced twice. But – she glances at us – perhaps we noticed the foundation…
“Yes,” I say. “Hopeless.”
“Damn,” Ivy says.
We look at two more houses; both have spectacular views and architectural distinction. But one is a bankruptcy sale and the other is a divorce house. By now I’m starting to pick up the scent: it’s a compound of petty carelessness and strenuous neglect, as though the owners had decamped in a hurry, angry at the rooms themselves.
To cheer ourselves up, the three of us have lunch in a sunny Broadway restaurant. It seems extraordinary that we can sit here and see mountains that are miles away; the thought that we will soon be able to live within sight of these mountains fills us with optimism. We order a little wine and linger in the sunlight. Vancouver is going to be an adventure. We’re going to be happy here. Marge Little, feeling expansive, tells us about her three children and about the problem she has keeping her weight down. “Marge Large they’ll be calling me soon,” she says. It’s an old joke, we sense, and the telling of it makes us feel we’re old friends. She got into the business, she says, because she loves houses. And she has an instinct for matching houses with people. “So don’t be discouraged,” she tells us. “We’ll find the perfect place this afternoon.”
We drive through narrow city streets to a house where a famous movie idol grew up. His mother still lives in the house, a spry, slightly senile lady in her eighties. The tiny house – we quickly see it is far too small for us – is crowded with photographs of the famous son. He beams at us from the hallway, from the dining room, from the bedroom bureau.
“Oh, he’s a good boy. Comes home every two or three years,” his mother tells us, her large teeth shining in a diminished face. “And once I went down there, all the way down to Hollywood, on an airplane. He paid my way, sent me a ticket, I saw his swimming pool. They all have swimming pools. He has a cook, a man who does all the meals, so I didn’t have to lift a finger for a whole week. What an experience, like a queen. I have some pictures someplace I could show you – ”
“That would be wonderful,” Marge Little says, “but” – she glances at her watch – “I’m afraid we have another appointment.”
“—I saw those pictures just the other day. Now where—? I think they’re in this drawer somewhere. Here, I knew it. Take a look at this. Isn’t that something? That’s his swimming pool. Kidney-shaped. He’s got another one now, even bigger.”
“Beautiful,” Ivy says.
“And here he is when he was little. See this? He’d be about nine there. We took a trip east. That’s him and his dad standing by Niagara Falls. Here’s another—”
“We really have to—”
“A good boy. I’ll say that for him. Didn’t give any trouble. Sometimes I see his movies on the TV and I can’t believe the things he does; with women and so on. I have to pinch myself and say it’s only pretend—”
“I think—”
“I’m going into this senior-citizen place. They’ve got a nice TV lounge, big screen, bigger than this little, bitty one, color too. I always—”
“Sad,” Ivy says, when we escape at last and get into the car.
“The house or the mother?” I ask her.
“Both.”
“At least it’s not a D.H.” (This has become our shorthand expression for divorce house.)
“Wait’ll you see the next place,” Marge Little says, swinging into traffic. “The next place is fabulous.”
Fabulous, yes. But far too big. After that, in a fit of desperation, we look at a condo. “I’m not quite ready for this,” I have to admit.
“No garden,” Ivy says in a numb voice. She looks weary, and we decide to call it a day.
The ad in the newspaper reads: WELL-LOVED FAMILY HOME. And Ivy and Marge Little and I are there, knocking on the door, at nine-thirty in the morning.
“Come in, come in,” calls a young woman in faded jeans. She has a young child on one hip and another – they must be twins – by the hand. Sunlight pours in the front window and there is freshly baked bread cooling on the kitchen counter.
But the house is a disaster, a rabbit warren of narrow hallways and dark corners. The kitchen window is only feet away from a low brick building where bodywork is being done on imported sports cars. The stairs are uneven. The bedroom floors slope, and the paint is peeling off the bathroom ceiling.
“It just kills us to leave this place,” the young woman says. She’s following us through the rooms, pointing with unmistakable sorrow at the wall where they were planning to put up shelving, at the hardwood floors they were thinking of sanding. Out of the blue, they got news of a transfer.
Ironically, they’re going to Toronto, and in a week’s time they’ll be there doing what we’re doing, looking for a house they can love. “But we just know we’ll never find a place like this,” she tells us with a sad shake of her head. “Not in a million zillion years.”
After that we lose track of the number of houses. The day bends and blurs, square footage, zoning regulations, mortgage schedules, double-car garages, cedar siding only two years old – was that the place near that little park? No, that was the one on that little crescent off Arbutus. Remember? The one without the basement.
Darkness is falling as Marge Little drives us back to our hotel. We are passing hundreds – it seems like thousands – of houses, and we see lamps being turned on, curtains being closed. Friendly smoke rises from substantial chimneys. Here and there, where the curtains are left open, we can see people sitting down to dinner. Passing one house, I see a woman in a window, leaning over with a match in her hand, lighting a pair of candles. Ivy sees it too, and I’m sure she’s feeling as I am, a little resentful that everyone but us seems to have a roof overhead.
“Tomorrow for sure,” Marge calls cheerily. (Tomorrow is our last day. Both of us have to be home on Monday.)
“I suppose we could always rent for a year.” Ivy says this with low enthusiasm.
“Or,” I say, “we could make another trip in a month or so. Maybe there’ll be more on the market.”
“Isn’t it funny? The first house we saw, remember? In a way, it was the most promising place we’ve seen.”
“The one with the view from the dining room? With the broken light in the bathroom?”
“It might not look bad with a new fixture. Or even a skylight.”
“Wasn’t that a divorce house?” I ask Ivy.
“Yes,” she shrugs, “but maybe that’s just what we’ll have to settle for.”
“It was listed at a good price.”
“I live in a divorce house,” Marge Little says, pulling in front of our hotel. “It’s been a divorce house for a whole year now.”
“Oh, Marge,” Ivy says. “I didn’t mean – ” she stops. “Forgive me.”
“And it’s not so bad. Sometimes it’s darned cheerful.”
“I just – ” Ivy takes a breath. “I just wanted a lucky house. Maybe there’s no such thing—”
“Are you interested in taking another look at the first house? I might be able to get you an appointment this evening. That is, if you think you can stand one more appointment today.”
“Absolutely,” we say together.
This time we inspect the house inch by inch. Ivy makes a list of the necessary repairs, and I measure the window for curtains. We hadn’t realized that there was a cedar closet off one of the bedrooms. The lights of the city are glowing through the dining-room window. A spotlight at the back of the house picks out the flowers just coming into bloom. There’ll be room for our hi-fi across from the fireplace. The basement is dry and very clean. The wallpaper in the downstairs den is fairly attractive and in good condition. The stairway is well proportioned and the banister is a beauty. (I’m a sucker for banisters.) There’s an alcove where the pine buffet will fit nicely. Trees on both sides of the house should give us greenery and privacy. The lawn, as far as we can tell, seems to be in good shape. There’s a lazy Susan in the kitchen, also a built-in dishwasher, a later model than ours. Plenty of room for a small table and a couple of chairs. The woodwork in the living room has been left natural, a wonder since so many people, a few years back, were painting over their oak trim.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 59