Red Plaid Shirt

by Diane Schoemperlen

  Train B is just as full of festive weekend travellers as Train A. The passengers on Train B are just as happy to be going to City X as the passengers on Train A are to be leaving it. (Assume that this apparent paradox is a manifestation of the notion that the grass is always greener on the other side. Assume that the shortage of grass in many areas of City X is not prohibitive to the exercise of this notion.) Although most of those aboard Train B genuinely enjoy living in City Y, still sometimes they get restless. City Y is so quiet, so safe, so boring, so parochial. Some of its residents long for the bustle of the big city, the pulse, the vigour, the culture, the grit. While visiting City X, they feel alive again.

  Other residents of City Y are not the least bit impressed by City X. These people are utterly convinced that should they ever venture into its congested malodorous streets, some ferocious urban evil would immediately befall them and they might or might not be lucky enough to escape with their lives. What proportion of these people are right?

  The passengers on Train B have just been served exactly the same lunch as the passengers on Train A. Their porter has been around to collect the garbage and has scolded several people for changing seats when he wasn’t looking. Now the passengers are settling themselves in for the rest of the ride. They are wiggling into more comfortable positions, dozing, or pulling out newspapers, crossword puzzle books, and fat paperback novels by Stephen King and Danielle Steel. Many stare vacantly out the windows, searching still in vain for incipient signs of civilization. Nothing yet: just fields and trees, cows and birds, a cloudless August sky. They sigh impatiently and resume making plans for the weekend ahead.

  Depending on their particular predilections, they will partake liberally of the many amenities which City X has to offer. Some of them will shop in malls as big as airports until they are exhausted and broke. Confronted with such a vast array of merchandise, some of them will become overstimulated. Their hearts will beat too fast and they will hyperventilate while running all their credit cards up to the limit. Others, paralyzed by indecision, will walk away empty-handed, sulky and tearful in a fit of frustrated consumerism.

  Some people will spend all day long in museums and art galleries, soaking up culture like sponges. In the evening they will dine in expensive restaurants and then go to the theatre, the opera, the ballet, or a poetry reading. How many of these people don’t really like poetry? How many of them would rather be at a baseball game, a strip club, or an X-rated movie?

  Families with young children will go to the zoo, an amusement park, an afternoon show featuring six-foot-tall cat puppets and a man dressed as an elephant playing the violin. How many of these children will pee their pants or throw up while waiting in line to have their faces painted?

  The passengers aboard both Trains A and B come from all across the demographic spectrum. This, after all, is one of the beauties of train travel. While in transit, people are held in temporary suspension, free for the moment from all the obligations and inhibitions normally imposed upon them by class, race, religion, gender, and by all the doubts they may usually harbour about the rest of humanity. While in transit, people often find themselves telling total strangers things they have not told their best friends.

  On Train A, for instance, an elderly woman with blue hair finds herself sitting beside a teenager with green spiked hair and three rings in her nose. They are discussing their favourite brands of hair dye and how hard it is to find a hairdresser you can really trust. (Assume that, although the teenager may eventually dye her hair blue, the elderly woman is not ever going to dye hers green. Assume also that the elderly woman will never have her nose, her tongue, or her nipples pierced.)

  Across the aisle, a born-again Christian with a Bible in her purse is assuring an unhappy-looking young man with severe acne and bad teeth that if only he will give himself over to the Lord, all his problems will be solved. How many years will pass before this young man’s acne clears up, suddenly, miraculously, without leaving a single scar? How many years will pass before he wins the lottery and uses some of the money to get his teeth fixed and then gives the rest anonymously to the Divine Temple of Supreme Virtue? (Assume that God works in mysterious ways.)

  Similarly, on Train B, a grey-haired man in a three-piece suit is listening avidly to an attractive buxom woman with a husky voice describing in great detail her now-estranged husband’s reaction to her belated revelation that she had begun her life as a man. (Assume that after years of intensive therapy, the husband will get over it. Assume that the grey-haired man in the suit will not. Assume that he will have erotic dreams about this woman for the rest of his natural life.)

  Across the aisle and three rows down, a pale woman in a green dress is pretending to sleep in an attempt to avoid any further conversation with the woman in the mauve blouse beside her. Let the woman in the green dress be Woman A. Let the woman in the mauve blouse be Woman B. Ever since they both boarded Train B at the station in City Y, Woman B has been talking. She is ten years older than Woman A who is the same age now as Woman B was when her youngest child was born. Woman A is five years older now than Woman B was when she got married. How old is Woman A? How long has Woman B been married? Why is Woman A so unfriendly? (Assume that the oldest child of Woman B is the same age now as Woman A was when she lost her virginity. Assume that Woman A was very much in love with the boy who deflowered her. Assume they got married four years later. Assume that this husband of Woman A does not know that she is now aboard Train B on her way to City X. Assume that he thinks she has gone shopping at the mall and will be home in time to make his supper. Assume that until now Woman A has always done what was expected of her.)

  While Train B has been steadily approaching the bridge, the river, and City X, Woman B has told Woman A all about the shag carpeting she has just had installed in her living room, the many interesting ways she has found to use cream of mushroom soup, and the colours she intends to repaint the bedrooms in the fall. She has gone on at great length about her husband’s mid-life crisis two years ago during which he had an affair with his secretary—let the secretary be Woman C—and she, Woman B, pretended she never knew a thing about it until finally her husband got it out of his system and fired Woman C and now their marriage is stronger than ever and they are going to Bermuda at Christmas.

  Now Woman A is wishing she had the nerve to tell Woman B to shut up. She can feel the details of Woman B’s life bubbling into her ears, filling up her nose, her mouth, her throat, her lungs. She is afraid that if she listens to Woman B long enough, she will either scream or be swept away by the torrent and turn into her. What are the odds that she is right? (Assume that Woman B represents everything Woman A is running away from. Assume that Woman C has her own problems.)

  Woman A, the one in the green dress, is Karen, who once waved to her friend, Julie, from her sixth-floor apartment on Markham Street in City Y. (Assume that years have passed since then. Assume it was Melanie who got pregnant and dropped not only out of school but out of sight as well. Assume the secret Melanie told Julie, who then told it to Karen, was that she had finally gone all the way with her boyfriend, Joe.

  Assume this story played itself out in a predictable way: Melanie pregnant, Joe gone, Melanie’s parents horrified but anti-abortion, Melanie sent away to a home for unwed mothers, intending to give the baby up for adoption but changing her mind at the last minute, Melanie’s parents disowning her, Melanie and her baby never heard from by Karen or Julie again.

  Assume that Julie finished high school with good grades, went on to university, moved far away from City Y, and became a veterinarian. Assume that Julie always loved animals.)

  Now Karen aboard Train B en route to City X feigns sleep until her garrulous seatmate nods off herself, snoring lightly with her mouth ajar. Karen opens her eyes and looks out the window. The sky is beginning to cloud over. They are still in the middle of nowhere. If nowhere has a middle, does it also have a beginning and an end? What formula must be used to measure the dimens
ions of nowhere? What other properties of nowhere can be accurately ascertained? Is nowhere vegetable, animal, or mineral; a solid, a liquid, or a gas? (Assume that nowhere is probably most like water: a shape-shifting liquid which can also disguise itself as a solid or a gas. Assume that no matter in which form it is encountered, nowhere, like water, can be fatal.

  Assume it is Karen’s penchant for the contemplation of this and other metaphysical questions which has led, at least in part, to her growing dissatisfaction with her quiet normal life in City Y and, subsequently, to her purchase of a one-way train ticket to City X. Assume that her recent realization that her husband is a stupid, boring, insensitive man who is as selfish in bed as anywhere else is also a contributing factor to her defection.)

  Karen sits perfectly still and lets Train B carry her forward. She lets all possibility, all promise, all freedom and the future wash gently over her. Ever since those high school days when she lived with her parents on Markham Street in City Y, Karen has been waiting for her real life to begin. Now she imagines that in City X she will find a whole new life and live it, happily ever after. She thinks she will never be bored, lost, or lonely again. She thinks she is going to finally find herself in City X.

  (Assume that once Train B crosses the bridge, Karen will imagine it and all other bridges like it bursting into jubilant flames behind her. Assume that Karen will never look back.)

  In fact, it is Train A that reaches the bridge first. On the right bank of the river there are four small boys with fishing rods. Considering the heat, the season, and the time of day, how many fish are they likely to catch? (Assume that not one of these boys has ever heard about the three young women who drowned in this river two years ago in the spring. Assume that, as far as these small boys are concerned, there is nothing beneath the surface of the water but many elusive, tantalizing fish and several old tractor tires illegally dumped there by the owner of a nearby farm. Assume that when the boys’ fishing lines get snagged, it is on one of these tires, on a rock or a branch, not on a long-dead body still waiting to be raised from the depths.)

  Many of the people aboard Train A admire the river, the boys, the quaint and nostalgic picture they make. The boys on the bank wave at the train. The passengers smile and think beatific watery thoughts. They think of floating on their backs with their eyes closed for hours, of warm waves lapping sandy beaches, blue lakes still and clear as windows, aquariums filled with graceful multicoloured tropical fish. They think of brooks babbling, a raging thirst quenched, mermaids, sailboats, the sea.

  It is only the born-again Christian with the Bible in her purse who thinks about the drownings. She crosses herself and thinks of the four rivers of paradise, the four rivers of hell, the purifying sacrament of baptism, and of how in the olden days those accused of witchcraft were immersed in water and if they floated they were deemed guilty but if they sank they were declared innocent and saved. She imagines the souls of the innocent flying up to the waiting arms of the Lord. (Assume that someday this woman will be one of them. Assume that even now she can feel her wings beginning to grow.)

  After Train A has crossed the bridge, it passes Train B, which has stopped briefly to allow Train A to safely proceed. Then Train B continues on to the bridge. The boys on the riverbank are still fishing. Again they look up and wave at the train. What are the odds that any of the passengers on Train B are having exactly the same watery thoughts while crossing the bridge as did the passengers on Train A just minutes before? (Assume the observation that you can never step into the same river twice is still true.) What percentage of the passengers on Train B find themselves thinking about sharks, sewage, tidal waves, floods, water on the brain, water on the knee, too much water under the bridge?

  Woman B, the garrulous seatmate of Karen, Woman A, has been awakened by the stopping and starting of the train. The minute her eyes are open, she starts talking again. Why is it not surprising that Woman B knows all about the three young women who drowned? Karen does not want to think about them. Karen wants to think about how, when floating in still water of just the right temperature, you cannot feel your body anymore. Woman B keeps talking, apparently angry at the three young victims for having been so careless, so foolish, so selfish as to go out and drown themselves like that. What were they doing out in that little boat anyway when the river was obviously dangerous, what with the spring runoff, heavy rains the week before, warning signs posted all over the place? Why weren’t they wearing life jackets at least? What, she wants to know, what on earth were they thinking of?

  (Assume they were not thinking of death. Assume they were thinking of fish, sun, sex, shopping, school, the case of beer in the bottom of the boat. Assume they were not thinking of water as a symbol of both fertility and oblivion, of water as both the source of all life and the end of it, or of the river as the point of transition from one life to the next. Assume that they, like Karen, were thinking they still had their whole lives ahead of them.)

  A small boat floats upside down in the middle of a wide deep river which is spanned by a concrete railway bridge. (Assume that someone has spray-painted a crude drawing of a naked woman on the side of the bridge. Assume the drawing is visible only from the river, not from any train crossing over the bridge.) How high is the bridge?

  The boat is wooden, white. (Assume that on both sides of the bow are the words JESUS SAVES painted in red block letters.) How big is the boat?

  On the left bank of the river, Body A is caught in the roots of a tree 33.75 feet from the boat. (Assume this tree in the middle of nowhere is a weeping willow. Assume that Body A will be found first, bobbing face down in the reeds.) How old is the tree?

  On the bottom of the river lies Body B. The angle of depression from the boat to this body is 53°. (Assume that soon enough the river will spit out Body B which will then be carted away in a large black bag.) How many men will it take to lift the bag?

  Body C is nowhere in sight. (Assume that by the time she is found, her hair will have turned into seaweed, her eye sockets will be filled with shells, and her feet will have sprouted silver-green fins. Assume that by the time she is found, there will be no one left to identify her.) How many miles downstream has Body C travelled?

  The surface of the river sparkles in the sun. (Assume it is disturbed only by fish jumping, ducks diving, the gentle shudder of the wind.)

  How deep is the river?

  Five Small Rooms (A Murder Mystery) (1996)

  I have learned not to underestimate the power of rooms, especially a small room with unequivocal corners, exemplary walls, and well-mannered windows, divided into many rectangular panes. I like a small room without curtains, carpets, misgivings, or ghosts.

  I. SMALL ROOM WITH PEARS

  I like a room painted in a confident full-bodied colour. I steer clear of pastels because they are, generally speaking, capricious, irresolute, and frequently coy. Blue is a good colour for a small room, especially if it is of a shade called Tidal Pool, Tropical Sea, Azure, Atoll, or Night Swim.

  I once painted a room a shade of blue called Rainy Day. I find a rainy day to be a fine thing on occasion, particularly after an unmitigated stretch of gratuitous sunshine. In that blue room, I kept a stock of umbrellas ready at hand just in case. This was the first room I ever painted all by myself. For years I had believed that painting a room was a task I could never master, a task better left to professionals or men. After I finished painting this room, I was as proud of myself as if I had discovered the Northwest Passage.

  This room had many outstanding features including lots of large cupboards and a counter ample enough to perform surgery on if necessary. In the cupboards I kept all kinds of things: dresses that no longer fit or flattered me, a bird’s nest I’d found in the park when I was six, a red and white lace negligee, the program from a musical version of Macbeth, several single socks and earrings, instruction manuals for a radio, a blow-dryer, and a lawn mower that I no longer owned, a package of love letters tied up with a black satin r
ibbon. No matter how many secrets I stowed in these cupboards, they never filled up.

  Often I found myself wandering into the blue room in the middle of the night. I would stand naked staring into the refrigerator at three in the morning, until the cold air gave me goose-bumps and my nipples got hard. It was a very old refrigerator which sometimes chirped like a distant melancholy cricket. I was searching not for food so much as for memories, motives, an alibi: how it looked, how it happened, when.

  I would reach into the refrigerator and pull out a chunk of ham, a chicken leg, a slice of cheese, or some fruit. Pears were my favourite. Imagine the feel of the sweet gritty flesh on your tongue, the voluptuous juice on your chin. Pears are so delicate. My fingertips made bruises on their thin mottled skin.

  This was nothing like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? / I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. / I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. Peaches I am not fond of. Their fuzz gives me shivers like fingernails on a chalkboard. The colour of their flesh close to the pit is too much like that of meat close to the bone. My consumption of pears had nothing to do with daring or indecision. It was strictly a matter of pure pleasure, which always comes as a great relief. At that point in my life, I’d had no dealings with mermaids and did not expect to. I am tone-deaf and, much as I admire a good body of water, I have never learned to swim.

  As for the women who come and go, they are not likely to be talking of Michelangelo.

  II. SMALL ROOM WITH SEASHELLS

  Later there was another small blue room, this one painted in a shade called Atlantis because it was situated on the very edge of the ocean. In this room I enjoyed the omnipresent odour of salt water and the ubiquitous sound of the surf. These struck me as two things I would never grow tired of.