“Is he a poet?” Rose said.
The lecturer in English Literature said, “He told me he had burned all his poems.”
“How flamboyant of him,” Rose said. She was delighted with herself for saying this, and with them for laughing.
The lecturer began to think of Tom Swifties.
“I can never think of any of those things,” said the writer mournfully, “I care too much about language.”
Loud voices were coming from the living room. Rose recognized Patrick’s voice, soaring over and subduing everyone else’s. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, to cover him up – she knew some disaster was on the way – but just then a tall, curly-haired, elated-looking man came through the hall, pushing the passionate couple unceremoniously apart, holding up his hands for attention.
“Listen to this,” he said to the whole kitchen. “There’s this guy in the living room you wouldn’t believe him. Listen.”
There must have been a conversation about Indians going on in the living room. Now Patrick had taken it over.
“Take them away,” said Patrick. “Take them away from their parents as soon as they’re born and put them in a civilized environment and educate them and they will turn out just as good as whites any day.” No doubt he thought he was expressing liberal views. If they thought this was amazing, they should have got him on the execution of the Rosenbergs or the trial of Alger Hiss or the necessity for nuclear testing.
Some girl said mildly, “Well, you know, there is their own culture.”
“Their culture is done for,” said Patrick. “Kaput.” This was a word he was using a good deal right now. He could use some words, clichés, editorial phrases – massive reappraisal was one of them – with such relish and numbing authority that you would think he was their originator, or at least that the very fact of his using them gave them weight and luster.
“They want to be civilized,” he said. “The smarter ones do.”
“Well, perhaps they don’t consider they’re exactly uncivilized,” said the girl with an icy demureness that was lost on Patrick.
“Some people need a push.”
The self-congratulatory tones, the ripe admonishment, caused the man in the kitchen to throw up his hands, and wag his head in delight and disbelief. “This has got to be a Socred politician.”
As a matter of fact Patrick did vote Social Credit.
“Yes, well, like it or not,” he was saying, “they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.”
“Kicking and steaming?” someone repeated.
“Kicking and screaming into the twentieth century,” said Patrick, who never minded saying anything again.
“What an interesting expression. So humane as well.”
Wouldn’t he understand now, that he was being cornered, being baited and laughed at? But Patrick, being cornered, could only grow more thunderous. Rose could not listen any longer. She headed for the back passage, which was full of all the boots, coats, bottles, tubs, toys, that Jocelyn and Clifford had pitched out of the way for the party. Thank God it was empty of people. She went out of the back door and stood burning and shivering in the cool wet night. Her feelings were as confused as anybody’s can get. She was humiliated, she was ashamed of Patrick. But she knew that it was his style that most humiliated her, and that made her suspect something corrupt and frivolous in herself. She was angry at those other people who were cleverer, or at least far quicker, than he was. She wanted to think badly of them. What did they care about Indians, really? Given a chance to behave decently to an Indian, Patrick might just come out ahead of them. This was a long shot, but she had to believe it. Patrick was a good person. His opinions were not good, but he was. The core of Patrick, Rose believed, was simple, pure and trustworthy. But how was she to get at it, to reassure herself, much less reveal it to others?
She heard the back door close and was afraid that Jocelyn had come out looking for her. Jocelyn was not someone who could believe in Patrick’s core. She thought him stiff-necked, thick-skulled, and essentially silly.
It was not Jocelyn. It was Clifford. Rose didn’t want to have to say anything to him. Slightly drunk as she was, woebegone, wet-faced from the rain, she looked at him without welcome. But he put his arms around her and rocked her.
“Oh Rose. Rose baby. Never mind. Rose.”
So this was Clifford.
For five minutes or so they were kissing, murmuring, shivering, pressing, touching. They returned to the party by the front door. Cyril was there. He said, “Hey, wow, where have you two been?”
“Walking in the rain,” said Clifford coolly. The same light possibly hostile voice in which he had told Rose she looked delicious. The Patrick-baiting had stopped. Conversation had become looser, drunker, more irresponsible. Jocelyn was serving jambalaya. She went to the bathroom to dry her hair and put lipstick on her rubbed-bare mouth. She was transformed, invulnerable. The first person she met coming out was Patrick. She had a wish to make him happy. She didn’t care now what he had said, or would say.
“I don’t think we’ve met, sir,” she said, in a tiny flirtatious voice she used with him sometimes, when they were feeling easy together. “But you may kiss my hand.”
“For crying out loud,” said Patrick heartily, and he did squeeze her and kiss her, with a loud smacking noise, on the cheek. He always smacked when he kissed. And his elbows always managed to dig in somewhere and hurt her.
“Enjoying yourself?” Rose said.
“Not bad, not bad.”
During the rest of the evening, of course, she was playing the game of watching Clifford while pretending not to watch him, and it seemed to her he was doing the same, and their eyes met, a few times, without expression, sending a perfectly clear message that rocked her on her feet. She saw him quite differently now. His body that had seemed small and tame now appeared to her light and slippery and full of energy; he was like a lynx or a bobcat. He had his tan from skiing. He went up Seymour Mountain and skied. An expensive hobby, but one which Jocelyn felt could not be denied him, because of the problems he had with his image. His masculine image, as a violinist, in this society. So Jocelyn said. Jocelyn had told Rose all about Clifford’s background: the arthritic father, the small grocery store in a town in upstate New York, the poor tough neighborhood. She had talked about his problems as a child; the inappropriate talent, the grudging parents, the jeering schoolmates. His childhood left him bitter, Jocelyn said. But Rose no longer believed that Jocelyn had the last word on Clifford.
The party was on a Friday night. The phone rang the next morning, when Patrick and Anna were at the table eating eggs.
“How are you?” said Clifford.
“Fine.”
“I wanted to phone you. I thought you might think I was just drunk or something. I wasn’t.”
“Oh, no.”
“I’ve thought about you all night. I thought about you before, too.”
“Yes.” The kitchen was dazzling. The whole scene in front of her, of Patrick: and Anna at the table, the coffee pot with dribbles down the side, the jar of marmalade, was exploding with joy and possibility and danger. Rose’s mouth was so dry she could hardly talk.
“It’s a lovely day,” she said. “Patrick and Anna and I might go up the mountain.”
“Patrick’s home?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God. That was dumb of me. I forgot nobody else works Saturdays. I’m over here at a rehearsal.”
“Yes.”
“Can you pretend it’s somebody else? Pretend it’s Jocelyn.”
“Sure.”
“I love you, Rose,” said Clifford, and hung up.
“Who was that?” said Patrick.
“Jocelyn.”
“Does she have to call when I’m home?”
“She forgot. Clifford’s at a rehearsal so she forgot other people aren’t working.” Rose delighted in saying Clifford’s name. Deceitfulness, concealment, seemed to com
e marvelously easy to her; that might almost be a pleasure in itself.
“I didn’t realize they’d have to work Saturdays,” she said, to keep on the subject. “They must work terribly long hours.”
“They don’t work any longer hours than normal people, it’s just strung out differently. He doesn’t look capable of much work.”
“He’s supposed to be quite good. As a violinist.”
“He looks like a jerk.”
“Do you think so?”
“Don’t you?”
“I guess I never considered him, really.”
Jocelyn phoned on Monday and said she didn’t know why she gave parties, she was still wading through the mess.
“Didn’t Clifford help clean it up?”
“You are joking. I hardly saw him all weekend. He rehearsed Saturday and played yesterday. He says parties are my idea, I can deal with the aftermath. It’s true. I get these fits of gregariousness, a party is the only cure. Patrick was interesting.”
“Very.”
“He’s quite a stunning type, really, isn’t he?”
“There are lots and lots like him. You just don’t get to meet them.”
“Woe is me.”
This was just like any other conversation with Jocelyn. Their conversations, their friendship, could go on in the same way. Rose did not feel bound by any loyalty to Jocelyn because she had divided Clifford. There was the Clifford Jocelyn knew, the same one she had always presented to Rose; there was also the Clifford Rose knew, now. She thought Jocelyn could be mistaken about him. For instance, when she said his childhood had left him bitter. What Jocelyn called bitterness seemed to Rose something more complex and more ordinary; just the weariness, suppleness, deviousness, meanness, common to a class. Common to Clifford’s class, and Rose’s. Jocelyn had been insulated in some ways, left stern and innocent. In some ways she was like Patrick.
From now on Rose did see Clifford and herself as being one sort of people, and Jocelyn and Patrick, though they seemed so different, and so disliked each other, as being another sort. They were whole and predictable. They took the lives they were leading absolutely seriously. Compared to them, both Clifford and Rose were shifty pieces of business.
If Jocelyn fell in love with a married man, what would she do? Before she even touched his hand, she would probably call a conference. Clifford would be invited, and the man himself, and the man’s wife, and very likely Jocelyn’s psychiatrist. (In spite of her rejection of her family Jocelyn believed that going to a psychiatrist was something everybody should do at developing or adjusting stages of life and she went herself, once a week.) Jocelyn would consider the implications; she would look things in the face. Never try to sneak her pleasure. She had never learned to sneak things. That was why it was unlikely that she would ever fall in love with another man. She was not greedy. And Patrick was not greedy either now, at least not for love.
If loving Patrick was recognizing something good, and guileless, at the bottom of him, being in love with Clifford was something else altogether. Rose did not have to believe that Clifford was good, and certainly she knew he was not guileless. No revelation of his duplicity or heartlessness, towards people other than herself, could have mattered to her. What was she in love with, then, what did she want of him? She wanted tricks, a glittering secret, tender celebrations of lust, a regular conflagration of adultery. All this after five minutes in the rain.
Six months or so after that party Rose lay awake all night. Patrick slept beside her in their stone and cedar house in a suburb called Capilano Heights, on the side of Grouse Mountain. The next night it was arranged that Clifford would sleep beside her, in Powell River, where he was playing with the touring orchestra. She could not believe that this would really happen. That is, she placed all her faith in the event, but could not fit it into the order of things that she knew.
During all these months Clifford and Rose had never gone to bed together. They had not made love anywhere else, either. This was the situation: Jocelyn and Clifford did not own a car. Patrick and Rose owned a car, but Rose did not drive it. Clifford’s work did have the advantage of irregular hours, but how was he to get to see Rose? Could he ride the bus across the Lions Gate Bridge, then walk up her suburban street in broad daylight, past the neighbors’ picture windows? Could Rose hire a baby sitter, pretend she was going to see the dentist, take the bus over to town, meet Clifford in a restaurant, go with him to a hotel room? But they didn’t know which hotel to go to; they were afraid that without luggage they would be turned out on the street, or reported to the Vice Squad, made to sit in the Police Station while Jocelyn and Patrick were summoned to come and get them. Also, they didn’t have enough money.
Rose had gone over to Vancouver, though, using the dentist excuse, and they had sat in a café, side by side in a black booth, kissing and fondling, right out in public in a place frequented by Clifford’s students and fellow musicians; what a risk to take. On the bus going home Rose looked down her dress at the sweat blooming between her breasts and could have fainted at the splendor of herself, as well as at the thought of the risk undertaken. Another time, a very hot August afternoon, she waited in an alley behind the theater where Clifford was rehearsing, lurked in the shadows then grappled with him deliriously, unsatisfactorily. They saw a door open, and slipped inside. There were boxes stacked all around. They were looking for some nesting spot when a man spoke to them.
“Can I do anything for you?”
They had entered the back storeroom of a shoe store. The man’s voice was icy, terrifying. The Vice Squad. The Police Station. Rose’s dress was undone to the waist.
Once they met in a park, where Rose often took Anna, and pushed her on the swings. They held hands on a bench, under cover of Rose’s wide cotton skirt. They laced their fingers together and squeezed painfully. Then Anna surprised them, coming up behind the bench and shouting, “Boo! I caught you!” Clifford turned disastrously pale. On the way home Rose said to Anna, “That was funny when you jumped out behind the bench. I thought you were still on the swing.”
“I know,” said Anna.
“What did you mean, you’d caught us?”
“I caught you,” said Anna, and giggled, in what seemed to Rose a disturbingly pert and knowledgeable way.
“Would you like a fudgsicle? I would!” Rose said gaily, with thoughts of blackmail and bargains, Anna dredging this up for her psychiatrist in twenty years’ time. The episode made her feel shaky and sick and she wondered if it had given Clifford a distaste for her. It had, but only temporarily.
As soon as it was light she got out of bed and went to look at the day, to see if it would be good for flying. The sky was clear; no sign of the fog that often grounded planes at this time of year. Nobody but Clifford knew she was going to Powell River. They had been planning this for six weeks, ever since they knew he was going on tour. Patrick thought she was going to Victoria, where she had a friend whom she had known at college. She had pretended, during the past few weeks, to have been in touch with this friend again. She had said she would be back tomorrow night. Today was Saturday. Patrick was at home to look after Anna.
She went into the dining room to check the money she had saved from Family Allowance checks. It was in the bottom of the silver muffin dish. Thirteen dollars. She meant to add that to what Patrick gave her to get to Victoria. Patrick always gave her money when she asked, but he wanted to know how much and what for. Once when they were out walking she wanted to go into a drugstore; she asked him for money and he said, with no more than customary sternness, “What for?” and Rose began to cry, because she had been going to buy vaginal jelly. She might just as well have laughed, and would have, now. Since she had fallen in love with Clifford, she never quarreled with Patrick.
She figured out again the money she would need. The plane ticket, the money for the airport bus, from Vancouver, and for the bus or maybe it would have to be a taxi into Powell River, something left over for food and coffee. Cliffo
rd would pay for the hotel. The thought filled her with sexual comfort, submissiveness, though she knew Jerome needed new glasses, Adam needed rubber boots. She thought of that neutral, smooth, generous bed, which already existed, was waiting for them. Long ago when she was a young girl (she was now twenty-three) she had often thought of bland rented beds and locked doors, with such luxuriant hopes, and now she did again, though for a time in between, before and after she was married, the thought of anything connected with sex irritated her, rather in the way Modern Art irritated Patrick.
She walked around the house softly, planning her day as a series of actions. Take a bath, oil and powder herself, put her diaphragm and jelly in her purse. Remember the money. Mascara, face cream, lipstick. She stood at the top of the two steps leading down into the living room. The walls of the living room were moss green, the fireplace was white, the curtains and slipcovers had a silky pattern of gray and green and yellow leaves on a white background. On the mantel were two Wedgwood vases, white with a circlet of green leaves. Patrick was very fond of these vases. Sometimes when he came home from work he went straight into the living room and shifted them around a bit on the mantel, thinking their symmetrical position had been disturbed.
“Has anybody been fooling around with these vases?”
“Well of course. As soon as you leave for work I rush in and juggle them around.”
“I meant Anna. You don’t let her touch them, do you?”
Patrick didn’t like to hear her refer to the vases in any joking way. He thought she didn’t appreciate the house. He didn’t know, but maybe could guess what she had said to Jocelyn, the first time Jocelyn came here, and they were standing where Rose stood now, looking down at the living room.
“The department store heir’s dream of elegance.”
At this treachery even Jocelyn looked abashed. It was not exactly true. Patrick dreamed of getting much more elegant. And it was not true in the implication that it had all been Patrick’s choice, and that Rose had always held aloof from it. It had been Patrick’s choice, but there were a lot of things she had liked at one time. She used to climb up and polish the glass drops of the dining-room chandelier, using a cloth dipped in water and baking soda. She liked the chandelier; its drops had a blue or lilac cast. But people she admired would not have chandeliers in their dining rooms. It was unlikely that they would have dining rooms. If they did, they would have thin white candles stuck into the branches of a black metal candle-holder, made in Scandinavia. Or else they would have heavy candles in wine bottles, loaded with drippings of colored wax. The people she admired were inevitably poorer than she was. It seemed a bad joke on her, after being poor all her life in a place where poverty was never anything to be proud of, that now she had to feel apologetic and embarrassed about the opposite condition – with someone like Jocelyn, for instance, who could say middle-class prosperity so viciously and despisingly.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 98