“It’s okay, I am just being silly. Go to bed.”
“Okay.”
Jack kissed his mother’s forehead and then left, shutting the door behind him. He wondered if it was just moody woman-stuff or regrets. What could possibly make her, the woman who had always seemed so strong to him, cry herself to sleep? Was it that he was off to college the next September and suddenly she felt unneeded?
Jack opened the fridge, got himself a glass of juice, then sat at the kitchen table. There, stacked in front of him, were letters to be mailed. A few bills being sent off to be paid. And then the familiar pale blue of an airmail envelope. To Siegfried, no doubt. Jack pulled the envelope away from the others and held it up to the light, trying to see what was inside but having no luck. Then, somehow, he just knew. He looked inside with his unseeing glass eye and felt that, inside the envelope, there was sadness. The letter was the cause of sadness and the bringer of sadness. His mother was crying because she was ending her love affair with the ocularist.
Jack didn’t know why he acted the way he did. Why he made such a rash decision. All he knew was that his mother had cried too many tears. Here she had a chance at happiness and she was giving it up. He filled the kettle and waited for it to boil. He held the letter over the steam and loosened the grip the glue had on the seam where the body and the flap met and joined. He carefully pulled it away until it was open and took his mother’s letter from it. Hilda was from that generation who had, all over the world, been forced to spend hours practising the curls and dips of cursive. Without a line to guide her, each sentence was perfectly straight, every letter even, slanting slightly to the left. Every stem from a p or a q or a g hit the same spot. But the w’s looked like m’s and where there was a double s it looked like a capital B. Whatever missive was in the letter was as hard to crack as the Enigma code. He should have taken German in high school, but Jack was feeling too rebellious then. What he did know was that there were some ink smears, places where tears must have hit the thin, flimsy airmail paper, and the words became weakened by the water, one blurring slightly into the next. He saw the word genug, then untröstlich and knew that those words meant “enough” and “heartbroken.” Finally, there was a big smear of ink from what must have been a huge tear, beside her ending salutation, Meine Liebe, auf Wiedersehen, Hilda.
Jack put the letter into his pocket. He opened the mudroom door and unlocked his darkroom. His hand reached overhead and pulled the chain that illuminated the room in red light. He was on a mission and had to work quickly.
He opened his files of pictures, early photos of carefully placed things and found objects. Stolen objects. There, almost at the bottom of the drawer, it was. A small jewellery box and, inside, the glass eye he had stolen from Siegfried. Underneath the box was an envelope with a photo of the eye.
He put the photo into the airmail envelope, and added a little note:
“If you ever want to see your eye again, you’ll have to come here to get it.”
He resealed the envelope. It looked a little tampered with, but who would possibly be looking for that? No one would suspect a thing. Then he slipped it back between the phone bill and the electricity bill.
It had been good to see Jack, to catch up over dinner. He looked more and more like his mother who, God knows, looked like a German movie star with those cheekbones, full lips, and intelligent hazel-grey eyes. Why were Tristan’s imaginary muses all German? Marlene Dietrich, Romy Schneider, Hildegard Knef. But the one Hilda was most like, he decided, was Hanna Schygulla. Yes, same oval face, same unpredictable look, and that same voice. Jack’s mother could have been a movie star in another time, another place.
Tristan imagined a relationship like Hanna Schygulla and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The goddess and the most important filmmaker in Germany. What magic they made together. He remembered the night he lined up at the Carlton cinema to see The Marriage of Maria Braun. Two-dollar Tuesdays, it was. Every Tuesday he would take advantage, watching, making notes, studying. But on this Tuesday it was Hanna Schygulla who caught his imagination. She was his discovery that night, more than the director or the movie itself. He remembered squirming as the husband of Maria Braun entered the room where his wife, played by Schygulla, was undressing her African American lover. How tense, how sexy and suspenseful. And then when the fight broke out between the two men, and Maria was sure that her husband, her true love, would die, she smashed a bottle over her lover’s head, accidentally killing him.
Yes, Hilda could be capable of doing that. He had seen her dispatch a rabbit as easily as opening a can. She could easily smash a bottle over someone’s head, and still look sexy when she did it.
Tristan loved screen sirens, far more than their male costars. He loved their strength. He loved their glamour. They were all so much larger than life. Deities of the celluloid. So why didn’t they excite him?
SEVEN
HE HAD NOT HEARD from her for weeks. Three weeks and three days to be precise. Usually her letters came at a rate of two a week. Glimpses into her day, her thoughts, and her heart. Some were pages of descriptions, others no more than a few words. Words that encouraged him to believe that she might return soon, even though she no longer had the excuse of having to go to refit her son’s artificial eye.
Siegfried poured himself a beer, tilting the glass at the perfect angle so that there was no head at all, till the last second, when he uprighted the glass, allowing for a two-millimetre layer of foam. He sipped and a bit of the foam tickled his upper lip before the amber liquid slid past his mouth and down his throat. Why hadn’t she written?
He went to the fridge, found some leftover potato salad and some cold cuts, and he set out to make a simple meal. Shaved ham on rye, mustard, and the leftover salad. He placed it neatly on a plate, with nothing touching. Why hadn’t she written?
He bit into the sandwich and thought the bread was a bit on the stale side. Should have toasted it. A bit of extra butter, though, would make it edible. Or more mustard, perhaps. But after his attempt to fix it, he gave up and threw the sandwich away. He wasn’t hungry, anyhow. Why hadn’t she written?
It kept coming back to the same question no matter how many times he busied himself with normal activities. No matter how many times he got on with things, it all came back to the question of her, Hilda. He didn’t even realize how much he had depended on the letters, how much he looked forward to them, how they had, over the years, become the thing he most looked forward to. And now she was withholding his greatest joy with the same ease in which she had once given it.
He hated the question that kept coming back into his mind because it made him consider all the reasons. She may have had a rapprochement with her ex-husband. And why not? He could easily have seen the great mistake he had made. She may have met someone else. Someone younger, perhaps, with more hair and a little taller. She may have decided it was foolish, there were too many miles and too many differences. She may have had a change of heart and simply stopped wanting him. That was the hardest possibility for him to accept, and yet it was also the one he thought most plausible.
If he could only reach her by thinking of her. If every time he imagined her, she would also think of him, wherever she was, and remember their times together, then, maybe then, he might stand a chance.
He did write to her. Two letters, in fact, after she had stopped writing. One was quite romantic, recounting their intimacy and telling her how he missed kissing her mouth and that his arms ached for her. When he got no response he wrote a second, asking if everything was all right. Nothing. Silence.
Could she possibly be dead? Surely Jack would think of letting him know. Surely Jack would get a message to him if she were ill or in the hospital.
Siegfried changed his shirt, buttoning it to the neck and then undoing the top button. A periwinkle blue to enhance his eyes. He found his favourite sports jacket, tan suede, butter-soft and loose-fitting. He decided he would go and dance her out of his thoughts. His life couldn�
�t stop simply because she blinked or looked away. Just because he wasn’t in her sight, didn’t mean that he didn’t exist. He thought of Gisela and Antje and wondered if they might still be going to the dances, eager and willing to dive into the possibilities of romance or a relationship. Why should he wait for something so fragile as a long-distance affair? It was crazy. Wonderful when they were together, but the months and months apart were difficult and lonely. It wasn’t real. It was a fantasy. And fantasies were easy to walk away from. Easy to abandon when the substantial, the real, presented itself.
He smoothed the strands of his unruly, thinning hair, having sprayed a bit of hairspray into the palms of his hands first. He reached for some aftershave. Something earthy but spicy, he thought. Then he stepped back to evaluate the full effect.
“Who are you kidding?” he said to his reflection.
He took off his shirt, folded it, and put it onto his chair. Stepped out of his trousers and put himself to bed, snuggling down into his pillows, imagining that Hilda’s face was there, on the pillow next to his, looking at him. Smiling.
Hilda couldn’t remember where she had put the letters. Surely, she had left them on the kitchen table, but they weren’t there. On the desk perhaps? No. The letter was gone and, she feared, posted.
“Yeah, I mailed them on my way over to Gareth’s,” Jack told her.
Hilda sat down hard on her chair. Well, it was meant to be. This back and forth was just amusement, a fantasy, because neither of them would budge and make a move. They were both too rooted in their lives. Her with her family. Him with his business. It would be too much to ask after all the years they had both dedicated to carving out their separate lives.
But wasn’t sacrifice the currency of love? She had sacrificed for John, but that wasn’t enough. Eventually every sacrifice she made for love was spurned, mocked, rejected. It was as though everything she did to prove her love became the future instruments of resentment. Finally, there was no way to win. If she didn’t do things for the family, didn’t put them all first, they wondered what was wrong with her and resented her for letting them down, but when she did put them first, they resented her for not having her own dreams and desires. She would not allow herself to fall back into that rut. She would rather have a tearful but romantic ending than the slow death that came with familiarity. The old saying was right, familiarity did breed contempt. Hilda knew that contempt was a far worse fate than heartbreak.
She decided she would push it all from her mind. If the letter was sent, so be it. He would find someone else and when he became bored with her, his new woman, then he would think of Hilda with nostalgia and longing. How much better was that than him rolling over for a comfortable, easy fuck? The only problem was that she would never know if he longed for her. She would never have the satisfaction of knowing that she was still wanted. Desired.
Why was desire more important now than simple physical satisfaction? It had never been that way for her before. She loved sex, loved the smells and the touching. Loved the tired and spent sensation that came afterward. And the calm. Sex was like a vacation from real life. For those moments of sensation, the troubles of her world didn’t exist. So why would his longing for her mean more to her than any other man’s touch?
Because she longed for him. And she didn’t like it. Didn’t like how, on a perfectly fine day, as she walked the dog along the beach, he would penetrate her mind and suddenly the walk wasn’t as perfect as it had been. She didn’t like that when she made a cake she wondered if he would like it if he were to eat some. Or a joke she might hear, would he find it funny, too? She hated that her life was now measured by what he might think or how he might experience something she was doing if he were there. She hated that she no longer felt complete without him.
I must get on with my day. Accomplish those tasks that define me, she thought. And so, she decided on making Jack’s favourite dessert, Pflaumenkuchen, a plum cake with, perhaps, a runny custard to pour over it. Her daughters were coming for the weekend, too, so why not make it a celebration? Hilda counted the eggs and realized she needed a few more, so she went outside to see if there were any in the little coop at the back. How sweet the air felt this morning, with the aroma of lilacs wafting in the breeze. An early-morning rain had only encouraged the scent, made everything fresher. The grass was damp underfoot, so she slipped off her shoes and pressed her foot into the coolness. She could never have done that in Germany. Barefoot in the grass? Her mother would roll over in her grave! How could Hilda ever give up the feeling of cool grass on a hot summer’s day? There were freedoms here that were beyond her imagination. And so much open space. Elbow room, as she liked to say. Did Siegfried ever consider just how huge this land was? Here you didn’t have to drive to the Black Forest to experience nature, you just had to open your back door!
Hilda remembered one of the worst nights of her life since coming to Canada. The night John left her, declaring that he wanted a divorce. Once he had taken his suitcases, thrown them into the back of his pickup truck, and sped down the street, kicking up clouds of gravel dust, Hilda went onto her back deck, alone. She sat until late into the night, the chilled air wrapping around her. She didn’t care. She had a hot cocoa to warm her and steady her nerves. She sipped, so lost in her thoughts that, at first, she hadn’t realized that she had company. Slightly up the hill, but downwind, was a young coyote. No longer a pup, but not yet fully grown. He had the kind of curiosity only the young possess, where the desire to know is greater than one’s safety.
“Hello, little coyote,” she had said.
He cocked his head, as if listening closely. But made no move to run off.
“I am so very sad,” she had told him. “I feel like I haven’t a friend in the world.”
The coyote sat on his haunches and continued to watch the silly lady talking to him.
“They say you are magical. That you are a trickster like Loki or Mercury. Is that true?”
The coyote flicked his tail.
“I think it is true. I think that you have been sent here and that now you know what’s in my heart.”
The coyote walked toward her. So very close. Slowly, hesitantly. With curiosity. Then, when he was in touching distance, he ran past her, his fur brushing her bare leg.
Yes, she thought, this has become my home with all its clumsy beauty. I would take the wide skies over the cobblestone streets, the lake the size of a freshwater sea, over all the little lakes with sailboats, the unbelievable autumn leaves in their crimson, gold, and orange over the dull browning of a German fall. Even the extreme seasons had become a part of her psyche. How could she give all that up for better coffee and superior cake? How could she give that up for opera and architecture? How could she give that up for love?
There were three fresh eggs. Hilda put two in her pocket and the third she placed at the edge of the fence for her coyote friend.
It would be a great cake, because that was something she could do. She could keep the taste of her past and the beauty of the world she had run to. All she had to do was make a perfect batter, cut the plums evenly, and her world would be in order.
She went back into her kitchen, turned on the oven to preheat it, and decided to throw in a load of laundry while it warmed. She grabbed everything in the washroom hamper, then went into the bedrooms to gather the rest. Jack had left his shirt on the floor. She picked it up and sniffed the armpits to see if it needed a wash. It did. She emptied the chest pocket. The few dollars she placed onto his dresser. And then, two sheets of flimsy blue airmail paper. She unfolded them. Her goodbye letter to Siegfried.
Not in his plans! Yes, he had agreed to the marriage, it was the least he could do once it had become apparent to everyone that he and Jean were involved. How else could she keep her job? And what a great job it was for a free-and-easy modern couple. Good benefits and lots of time off. Entire summers just for them. Long Christmas vacations and a spring break. There could be travel and road trips. Afternoon sex. I
t was so much to hold on to.
John had to create an image of decency even if that wasn’t the thing that had attracted him to her in the first place. It was the dichotomy of it all. The double life. The appearance of one thing to the world and another reality for just them. That was the excitement of it. And so, the marriage was the get-out-of-jail-free card. He could pass Go and still collect his money. Keep his job, be the poor divorced man who had to put a life back together again while proving to be the more generous one for giving the house to his ex-wife. Nobody had to know that Hilda’s inheritance from her mother had paid off the large mortgage. By the time he married Jean, he was the man back on top with a new start and a new wife. A wife who shared his interests. A wife who understood him, not some foreign woman with an odd dress sense and rabbit hutches behind the house. No, now he could be a man about town, with a fresh, pretty wife whom everyone adored. Except that this go-around would be so different. This wife wouldn’t become too preoccupied with what was expected in the home to forget about what really mattered. Connection. Adventure. And fun in the bedroom!
Except now she was starting to change her tune. She was moving the goalposts and already John could feel the suffocating constriction of marital expectation.
“We agreed, Jean. I have already had my kids. Three of them. And they are pretty much grown up. It’s my time now. I don’t want all that mess and concern again.”
“Can’t we even discuss this, John?”
“It’s just not going to happen. You are surrounded by little kids all day, for fuck’s sake! You would think that that would be enough for you!”
“I just don’t think my life would be complete without the experience of motherhood.”
“Trust me, you have no idea. Of course, you love them more than anything or anyone you’ve ever known. I would kill for my kids. But they are dream-killers. Your life will never be the same.”
Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack Page 18