“I tried to call Christmas Day,” he says. “I couldn’t get through.”
This is followed by loud crackling noises.
“Are you all right?” he shouts.
And I shout back, “Perhaps I would feel better if I were indifferent.”
And that is the only thing Alan seems to hear clearly. He sounds puzzled; his voice is choked. I hear, “Indifferent? No, Simone, not indifferent.” But it’s too late to try to erase. We hang up, suffering. For that brief second, I recognized the temptation to punish him for leaving.
Kristina and Tim prepare to go. They have already extended their visit to a week. I would like them to stay longer, but they have made the emotional switch; their thoughts are back in their own home. All of the activity here moves towards departure.
I am saddened by this and think of it only in terms of being left. Karla picks up my mood and we irritate each other.
When the car is packed, Kristina and I go for a last walk in the fresh snow along the riverbank. It might be a year before I see her again, and by then Alan will be home. But Kristina, knowing my mood, is bent on handing out sympathy, which I hate. I am angry and want no part of it. What does she know of separation? I walk beside her, bitter and silent. Our conversation ends; we have had our parting. But at the car door, Kristina says, “I never realized how weak you are, Simone. All through our childhood, I thought of you as being so strong.”
I think of Miss Ellis. Vulnerable, yes, but do I have to believe this, too?
“No, Kris,” I tell her. “You’re wrong. It’s just that, from here, I can’t see the end of it. But it’s my life and I’ll arrange it the best way I can.”
Karla goes back to school; I begin to paint. I work upstairs near the south window where the sun streams in. Some days while Karla is in school, I wander outside, taking walks in the cold air, keeping my back to the west wind. I hike through the woods and watch the sun as it glazes over icy patches on the surface snow.
Cars move slowly and continuously, up and down our street. The women in them seem to travel in groups, four or five to a car. In and out of cars much of the day. What do they do? Play bridge? Coffee? I cannot imagine. When we first moved here four years ago, they came calling, clusters of them, like neglected nettles. I wanted no part of that. They know I paint; they leave me alone; we greet one another on the street, that is all.
But Miss Ellis is not like that; she is unique, alive. There is nothing of loss about her, nothing of death—only life. She tells Karla, “How wonderful is life, Karla, if you only take hold.”
In the bookstore I overhear two women of the town discussing Miss Ellis.
“Poor brave thing,” says one. “I wonder how she manages alone in that big place.”
And the other: “She is a brave little soul, isn’t she. I feel so sorry for her.”
And I am angry because they dare to describe her with pity.
I recognize one of the women who describes her so; she is a tall, beautiful woman who dresses in brightly coloured two-piece ski outfits. I see her from my studio window, daily, walking around and around the block. Around and around, day in, day out.
I recall another conversation, overheard at Karla’s Christmas concert. I was sitting in a row of metal chairs in the school gym, awaiting the curtain. The gym was filled to the back doors, and parents who could find no chairs stood in the doorway. Behind me, someone unknown. But I watched as another woman pushed her way along the row and leaned over my shoulder to speak to that person behind.
“Angela,” she said, her voice urgent and business-like. “A boy in our parish has crashed into a fallen tree while sliding—ruptured his spleen. He’s in hospital.”
“What shall I do?” said the voice behind, as if accustomed to this line of conversation.
“Could you, over at St. Mark’s, pray? He’s Anglican, but the parents don’t go to church. I thought if we all prayed, it might work better.”
“Sure,” said the voice. “I’ll get on it right away. I’ll call the minister after the concert.”
“Fine. We’ll do the same at St. James.”
The lights dimmed; the voices hushed. The woman made her way back out to the aisle. All of this in rapid talk they both understood—drums in the jungle. A pipeline, sleek and implicit.
By March, I am at peace again. The trees surrounding the house creak in the north wind. Birches bend, laden with ice. On sunny days, the snowbanks that line the street are honeycombed with their own melting. One day I see a black spider hurrying through these empty chambers, promising spring. I think of the weeks following Christmas, how preoccupied I have been with the separation. Days when I seemed to be running on the edge of despair, sinking into it, fleeing into its face. But I have been painting steadily. I have set my own rhythm. Always, at the back of my mind, wondering what it is about Alan that is essential to me. An essence, a bond that has never been broken. I see Karla watching me sometimes, searching for something of her own.
When the ice on the river begins to break up, I walk over the hill every afternoon and sit, watching. I take a sketch pad with me; my knuckles become red and cold as I work, but the sun is strengthening. I feel it, daily.
The floes shift downstream, sometimes lazily. They slur into one another, and smaller pieces hurriedly break away through fluid paths of the darkest blue. With the sun so hot, I feel as if I am part of a spell: sitting on a large stump, knees drawn up, hearing and feeling the swish of ice as it pushes on and on. Dead trees and branches waggle back and forth, caught by underwater roots or logs. Surprising objects float past on the surface of the larger floes—a sleigh, three paint cans, a car fender. No matter how much ice jams against the bank, there is always some greater force behind, ready to dislodge or crush what has gone before. This, too, has its own rhythm. Steady, steady. It is a rhythm of destruction that will yield only to spring.
A brochure arrives in the mail—an application for a two-week course at an arts centre I know, not far from here, by the sea. It would be an overnight trip by train, that is all. The instructor this year is a well-known artist from the west. She has just had a show on the west coast; I read about it in the weekend papers that are sent by mail.
“How would you like to go to the sea?” I ask Karla, when she comes in after school.
“Oh!” she says. “Remember the last time? We jumped over the waves! “ She is breathless with memories.
“But it will be too cold to go into the water,” I tell her. “It will be during the late part of May and the water won’t be warm enough then.”
“We can pick up shells, can’t we?”
“Yes, we can pick up shells. We’ll even take the train to get there—a bedroom on the train. Would you like that?”
In response, she runs upstairs, comes back with a shell from her old collection, and threads a long string through it. She places it around my neck and says, “You are the Queen of the Mommies!”
“It’s settled then. We’ll go.”
I decide to book rooms on the top floor of a lodge in the little town of Sea View. The rooms face the sea; there will be light enough to work. I try to remember those upper rooms, and recall a kind of loft arrangement. Alan and I stopped to eat in the lodge dining room one summer evening, and looked around while we were there. The lodge sits on a cliff, old and silent, facing the gathering winds of the north.
“So,” says Miss Ellis to Karla, when we tell her. “You’re travelling far as ever a puffin flew.”
“And I’m suffering,” says Karla. “My mother says I have butterflies and I’m really suffering.”
The evening we are to leave, there is elation in the air. I seem to be doing the same things over and over, checking and rechecking uselessly. Why can’t I just go? Pick up and leave—no luggage—but no, we have to prepare.
Karla studies me for a while and says, “You told me not to get too excited.”
We drive to the country station, fourteen miles from town, and leave the car in the stati
on master’s care. We stand in the night and wait beside the tracks, peering back in at the station office—an old swivel chair, a goose-neck lamp, a rolltop desk, a wide, black iron safe. We listen for the long warning whistle. There is a full moon, and the air has a heavy sweetness about it, a promise of early flowers and still, hot nights. I think of the day before, when Karla and I were in the car coming home from shopping. There’d been a sudden heavy downpour, which stopped as quickly as it began. We drove through a double rainbow, through the arc of it, where two rainbows met and intersected. When we were through the arc, I pulled the car over and turned back to look. Karla whispered, “It must be magic. It has to be magic.”
The train shakes like an old black rattle through the night. We hear it before we see it and then, a conical white beam blinds us from high in the centre of the tracks. All other noise dims before the train. Karla gasps at its size as she is lifted aboard, and the porter shows us to our sleeping compartment.
All night, she tosses against me, waking and sleeping, wide-eyed at the whistle and the rumble beneath her head. Her excitement and happiness keep us both awake and finally we push up the blind and sit close, looking out as the ribbons of dark fall away from the track. The moon casts its glow on this Maritime landscape. Karla looks up at me, independent and fearless.
In the morning, we smell the sea. It is cooler here, a forlorn damp day. The gulls fly high, coasting on upper breezes. The short-tailed swallows are here, too, swooping and diving into the cliffs. Karla and I settle into our room and a half in the loft, and I hope for two productive and undisturbed weeks. We move in on a Thursday; classes will begin half days, Monday.
But I find that, whereas at home Karla attended school every day, here she is with me every moment. We walk and walk by the edge of the sea, waking in the early morning, out before breakfast. Sun rises like moon, cool and silver across a rippled sea. Light sifts over the sand and cliffs, colours changing moment by moment. Karla talks continuously; her chattering rivets my thoughts. Any inner peace I have is continually drained off. With Alan gone, having no one with whom to share the parental responsibility, my reserves are getting low. I hadn’t thought about my emotional energy in this way before and see now that I am close to having none at all. During class days, Karla will be looked after under arrangements with the centre. I find myself longing for the week to start, longing for the company of other adults.
Several students have arrived at the lodge, and we pass them, wandering along the beach. We share some sense of vigour; I see it on their faces and feel it in myself. I am glad to be here and although I think of Alan often, it is better to be away, for a time, from our home.
On Sunday afternoon, Karla and I, in our boots, wade along the edge of the waves and watch red jellyfish babies that have drifted into the Gulf. They turn on their sides, rolling in the shallow surf like rusty wayward wheels. We are delighted as we watch them sink, puff out to the surface fully billowed, turn and wheel gracefully away. They deflate and pull ahead in one perfect quiver, like strands of gossamer. It is such a wonder to watch that I am taken by surprise when a man’s voice says, “Simone. I knew it would be you. I knew when I saw the list that it couldn’t be anyone else.”
Karla and I are both astonished. It is Justin Kempe, an artist with whom I studied years ago in Montreal. Karla has never met him, and watches wide-eyed as we hug and laugh and both talk at once. The last time I saw Justin was at a show he gave in Toronto. It was the year Justin was married and the year before Karla was born. We had dinner together and he drove me to the airport where we waited several hours because of a delayed flight. Although we’ve sent notes back and forth from time to time, we haven’t kept in close touch. But I am happy to see him. We’ve been good friends in the past, and there is much to talk about and to share. Justin is also staying at the lodge and we make plans to sit at the same table in the dining room for the two weeks. He brings me up to date on the gossip and the activities of the city, which I have not missed until now.
In the morning, as I dress, I watch the surf rising under a gentle wind. I am in harmony here; everywhere I look, a rugged kind of beauty hovers on the rim of land and sea. Karla, too, is content. She begins her own classes today and will meet other children in the Daycare Room that is provided in the same building. We have a short walk along the beach to the centre each day.
Again, I work. Having painted under my own discipline for the last several years, I find that the classes demand more than I thought I could produce. There is a sense of extreme weariness at the end of each day, but the fatigue is combined with a sense of elation, exchange, of growth. I see things in my work that were not apparent to me when I was painting in isolation. Justin and I spend hours discussing technique and the work each of us is trying to do.
Sometimes, in the evenings, I sit in the big armchair by my easel and watch and listen to the sea. Karla sleeps in her own narrow bed under the sloping ceiling. There are times when I must be alone—when I feel so bombarded by the activities of the day that I cannot read or talk or meet with any of the others in the lodge. Sometimes Justin comes in and we have a glass of wine, talking softly so we won’t wake Karla. And when I think of Alan now, it is like thinking of a stranger: remote, foreign, unknown.
During the second week I wake one morning to know, at the instant of waking, that the north wind has come. The surf is high, the roar continuous. Throughout the day, I feel as if voices are shouting in my head, as if a new source of energy has been created. Karla and I wrap ourselves in thick sweaters and run outside, pushed and pulled by the wind.
Later, we walk with Justin on the beach; a light rain softly pelts the hoods of our jackets. Karla begins to behave petulantly. Justin tries to tease her out of her mood, but she becomes angry and shouts at him, “You’re not my father!” The three of us return under a gloomy sky.
At night, Karla wakes, crying. She calls to me and sits close, sobbing out her dream. She is looking for me, but I have hidden. She looks in the room, at the centre, in the lodge, in Justin’s room. Do I not love her? Then she sees that I have climbed into one of my paintings and am disguised. I wear large earrings and a funny hat. At first she is afraid that I do not love her, but then she thinks, “Yes, she loves me, but she doesn’t want me to follow her.”
I comfort Karla and she goes back to sleep, confused by her dependencies and longings—for love, for order. And how long since I have been loved, as a woman? It has been more than half a year since I have wakened each morning with the same sure knowledge: that every day of my life, I am loved. Is it so necessary, then? Will it be possible to renew my friendship with Alan when we come together again?
When I sleep, I, too, dream. Karla and I and Justin are on the beach. The sand is warm and soft and deep. We begin to dig a huge hole in which we can move about freely. The sand we remove from the hole is heaped up on the sides. Justin and I lean back against the edge while Karla plays. But then Kristina, my sister, is there—an accusing presence—and I see, clearly, that she has misunderstood my motives.
At the end of the week, I leave Karla in the care of the Daycare instructor, and Justin and I spend our last free day at the sea together. We share a deep close feeling. I rebound from his every thought, his every move. Our silences fit, perfectly. Could I realign myself in a total way again? But it is impossible, really. We have both experienced the joy, the vulnerability that go with the full, the total commitment. Yet there is something between us that is in such absolute harmony, we draw closer and closer. The confusion and the elation of love are there, without the selfcriticism for the behaviour. But no, we are both uncertain.
In the morning, Justin takes Karla and me to the station. And when the train comes, he holds me against him, and all of the moments we have desired together culminate under a clear sky, in a bitter sea-wind.
The train pulls away. Many things have changed; many things remain the same.
Miss Ellis is delighted to have us back. She sits before the fire in
our living room, still knitting her scarlet shrug. She listens as Karla tells of all the things she has learned at the sea and all the new things she can do.
Miss Ellis replies, “Oh, I was versatile, too, when I was young. But when you live as long as I have, you begin to shed your accomplishments. One by one, they fall away. But there are things you don’t forget, Karla—things you live with that you never do forget.” She smiles and looks down at her knitting.
Just before the end of summer, the ringing of the phone wakes me from an early morning dream. There is a hush. I hear Alan’s voice. He is in London, on his way home. He will be here in two days. There is little to say. Silently, I replace the receiver.
After painting steadily for a year, I am nearly ready for my own exhibition. Canvases are stacked in the hall and three deep against the walls of the spare room. Alan will be home in two days. Once more our lives will turn about. After living apart, we will have to learn to live together again. How Alan has changed, I will never ask. Much will be different; much will be the same.
An Evening in the Café
She stood at the bottom of the stairs behind the half-closed door, listening to the others. She would not be seen until she stepped into the dining room. Her place seemed to have become, by habit, the table at the rear of the café and from here she watched the changing light outside in the street. This night the sky was coal blue; even the walls of the Golden Lion across the street had a bluish tinge. Perhaps snow would fall; it was chilly enough. The Germans, as she expected, were dressed in thick cardigans. The two old women wore high crocheted collars bunched around their necks. She looked about as she sat down. Heads bobbed politely. In three months, the term would be over; in two months, she would advise the university that she would be flying home. Ruth Stephens, she would write, wishes to return at this time to her Canadian post in the Department of English. A replacement for the overseas branch will be needed in the fall.
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