Exit Lines

by Joan Barfoot

  In any case, if what’s done is done, equally what’s not done remains undone forever.

  By the end, Jackson’s hands in hers were so birdlike that they caused no distress at all to her swollen ones. He drifted away but it was no peaceful push-off from shore, and if he was waving, it was a frantic semaphore and she only waved back, didn’t offer even a rope.

  People don’t offer ropes and rescue. Who would dare?

  Ruth would.

  At his funeral Sylvia kept her grief to herself. It was nobody’s business. Anyway, Nancy made enough of a fool of herself for two people; might as well have been naked, with all the wailing and weeping. For the wrong father, of course.

  Or not.

  “Aren’t you sorry at all?” Nancy demanded.

  “Of course I am. He was a very good man.” Sylvia could have said the word love, more than true, but did not. Like tears, that was private. Nancy considers her mother unsentimental and cold, and how would she know otherwise? No wonder she chose a career as a trainer, working with bodies, when she can have so little knowledge of hearts.

  But how arrogant. What Sylvia really knows about her daughter, a middle-aged woman conducting a life all her own, is pathetically limited. And look at Ruth, for heaven’s sake—even someone seen daily, never mind Nancy, still contains deep, unrecognizable pockets of mystery.

  Sylvia herself does. Everyone must.

  What might Jackson’s have been? There are moments when Sylvia is furious with Ruth. She would prefer not having these thoughts.

  Still. Since she is having them, she’s dying to chew them over, hear what outsiders might have to say. Why not bring up over bridge Ruth’s history, and her desire? Without Ruth’s name, of course. Bridge is a smart game, and Sylvia’s bridge friends are not dim-witted, so they might not have stupid reactions.

  Or they might. Just as likely as an interesting discussion of rights and duties when it comes to staying alive would be a round of tightened lips to do not with cards, or even the subject at hand, but with Sylvia having put herself in a place where such a dismal form of madness can arise.

  Sylvia still heads out doggedly to her long-standing weekly bridge games with her long-standing bridge friends, mostly widows like herself now, with their own sedately tucked away tales. They are no longer the wives-of they once were: wife of doctor, wife of high school principal; an exception soft plump Mabel, whose parents owned the land and buildings of a good many downtown businesses, and raised her to a kind of creative idleness that kept her at home gardening and doing watercolours and reading and, yes, bridge-playing until they died and she kept right on the same way because, she told Sylvia happily, “It’s such a nice life and I thoroughly enjoy it, so why should I go out and try to make it hard for myself?” A relaxed and somewhat enviable point of view.

  Many friendships, it appears, are surprisingly circumstantial. No doubt the ones here are, too. Now that Sylvia has ensconced herself at the Idyll Inn, former connections stretch like elastic, like taffy, and even Mabel, previously so pleasingly impressed and easily amused, has taken on a thin air of superiority. Sylvia’s own fault—she shouldn’t have told the buttery story of Amy Perry and her arthritis cure, which, instead of being an entertaining anecdote about a retired librarian they all used to know, was heard as a downhill-skidding reflection of Sylvia’s own alien circumstance. She knew better, then, than to mention Art Fletcher and his two knives. So of course she can’t now talk about Ruth, even unnamed. Anyway, if she blabbed, so would whoever she blabbed to, and so on and so forth, until word inevitably returned to the Idyll Inn, to Annabel Walker, to trouble.

  Well, bugger them. It seems that sometimes she doesn’t especially like her old friends any more. Causing the diverting question to arise: can people still reasonably be called friends if a person no longer much likes them?

  Loyalties shift, nothing new about that. And if she can keep her own gravest secret, she’ll keep Ruth’s if it kills her.

  Funny, that. Ha ha ha, as George would bitterly say.

  Greta too is thinking not only of Ruth but of George. What she thinks is that what followed him was so shameful that anyone, not least her Idyll Inn friends, would think worse of her than they ever could about Ruth: either what Ruth has done or what she wants done.

  That it’s funny, meaning strange, what is respectable—respectable: honest and decent, having the qualities of fair social standing—and what is irredeemable—irredeemable: hopeless, absolute, even if nothing is fatal.

  That there is something very large about Ruth, and nothing like that at all about the fact that for Greta, when George ended, the ABC Motel did not.

  She still even has a few pieces of jewellery from those days, although they are not real jewels except for that silver bracelet engraved with vines that meet at the intersection of two tiny diamonds. That was from an actual jeweller, which accounts for its semblance of quality.

  The ABC with its musty carpetings and dusty pink walls and cheap blankets and the mildew around its windows, and the linens about which it was best not to think, its seediness—for much too long the damp, faintly rotting smell of ABC rooms signified to Greta pleasure and comfort. She finds it hard to picture Sylvia in that place, but she too knows it; even once, in the absence of George, made a joke: “It should be more widely understood that going to a substandard place means you’re very likely with a substandard man.” Although adding, “Sorry, Greta, I’m not saying George was substandard.” And then laughing. “Necessarily.”

  But even Sylvia, who already makes now and then a sharp remark about Ruth’s situation, would not be able, Greta believes, to make any joke about what followed George.

  Those years, they are like walking downstairs in the dark: from luscious—luscious: richly sweet in taste or smell—golden, hard-working Dolph to handsome, tender, weak George; then losing her footing and taking a tumble-tumble-tumble all the way to the crash and shock of the bottom.

  Sometimes memory is blinding, like looking at the sun—best to keep moving, the head down, the eyes shaded. Greta supposes that this is why Sylvia speaks as she sometimes does, as her way of protecting the eyes. Greta too has practised this method and gift, but it must be that sometimes the unshaded eye, all on its own, turns toward light.

  She had never, before the after-George time, lived with no other human around. There were mother and father, sisters and brothers, all that left-behind, out-of-mind noise and need of a household trying to be careful, safe and alive in turmoil and war. Then came the beauty of Dolph, and the over-the-ocean journey out of history toward the new and promising and not dangerous, and there were the girls, and all the noise and need of that household.

  And then there was George.

  And then there was not. All was finished, and it was scarcely bearable to go home after work, with the girls gone and no prospect of George again dropping in and out, coming and going. No matter that he was not, after all, any true measure of what they had called, for want of a better word, love. Skin was the object; skin and sound. In her apartment in the evenings, absent the very breathing of others, there were only her own sounds, specific and solitary, and what was she to do with her empty arms for the empty years of the empty rest of her life?

  If she was angry with George for anything, it was for silence.

  What people say about hearts being broken sounds like something romantic, but it is true: it is possible to have a heart that finally cannot be restored, and what is that if not broken?

  Mourn and function at the same time, grieve and cope; she learned that from Dolph. Crack-hearted or not, a person must go about in the world, one hard step, then another. Only Ruth could think otherwise.

  The first time Greta stepped into the Ritz restaurant on the main street after work was as brave as her first Idyll Inn foray—foray: attack, raid or incursion—beginning her way, once again, into the friendly or unfriendly unknown.

  Many people went to the Ritz as businesses and offices shut for the day and for
a few hours it became a community of downtowners. In the big bright restaurant room at the front, people gathered in red-cushioned booths for coffee, and teenagers, on their way to and from school and dances and movies, for fries, burgers and pop, as Sally, Emily and Patricia had each done, in the growing-up years before they left home.

  And the Ritz had also a darker room at the back, with round wooden tables and wooden armchairs and brown panelling and a more becoming, dim light, which some people moved to for an hour or two or an evening of recovering from their days. A legal secretary who had consulted Greta at Alf Stryker’s drugstore over blush and mascara invited Greta to join her in that room for a cocktail. The lawyer who employed the secretary arrived later for an after-work drink, the manager of the hardware store had business with the lawyer, a plumber had a question for the hardware store manager, a florist took advantage of the plumber’s presence to ask about new methods of keeping his stock of domestic and foreign flowers refreshed—there at the Ritz, in its back room, it unfolded, were many men, those casually betraying creatures, who would buy Greta drinks, treat and compliment her.

  Later they would stroke her like a rare cat.

  Much in life can be explained. There are always reasons, recent or distant. In the end, however, it is unimportant whatever are the causes of mistakes and regrets. What remain are the mistakes and regrets, just themselves.

  Lawyers—there were several, could one have been Sylvia’s husband, another her lover? Surely not—a lawyer might be gifted with words, a plumber with hands, the jeweller with a secret desperate sentiment of his own; and was Greta not a woman still in her forties, with muscular legs, and luxurious hair when unpinned, and a body that was all lavish breasts and broad hips? Was her skin not still firm, were her eyes not clear blue and, most to the point, was her painful desire to be touched, and to touch, not profound?

  Were there not more men than George, than even Dolph, who might love her?

  Yes, yes, yes; but no.

  In discreet, whispered moments plans were made, encounters plotted. Out at the grubby ABC Motel, Greta’s hips proved capable of remarkable feats, her breasts demonstrated minds of their own, her legs shaped themselves into forms of amazement. All of this thrilling, all delicious.

  These men, too, for these moments, helpless with wanting.

  Not every man lived up to his promise, not all were appealing unclothed, not all were sufficiently sober or tender. A disheartening number were overcome by sorrow or guilt once they were done. They were all warm, though, and some were grateful. Thus a number of trinkets, including the silvery bracelet with its two tiny diamonds.

  How many were there? A haze and a blur of chests, mouths, thrashing limbs. A kind of madness and fever, a time of profligacy—profligacy: given up to dissipation and licentiousness; not a kind, admirable word, but better than promiscuity: miscellaneous mingling, casual, cheapened, a word aimed, weapon-like, only at women. At her and her frantic longing to be not alone. Touch, sweat, voice, contact—all that was solace of sorts.

  At the ABC, with its pleasures and awkwardnesses and shufflings and low-voiced dexterities, she was no one’s mother or widow or clerk or, for that matter, true lover.

  Still, eventually she had to go home every night. These were not men without obligations.

  At home, there was no longer so much silence; instead a nervous buzzing of fear, a sizzle of wonderment: why was she doing what, once done, felt so anxious, why was she risking, what was the pleasure? Also, what if she was found out and talked about, and women, wives, spat at her in the street, or refused any more to shop at Alf Stryker’s drugstore? There is more than one way to be a foreigner in a town. And if the girls heard—this too could happen, during one of their weekends visiting home. Many times Greta woke before dawn, eyes wide, sure she could not have been doing what she had been doing, determined she would not again—and then, like an addict drawn to needle or pipe, there she would be once more, twice more, many times more, falling into a soft ABC bed, a not entirely strange man’s desiring hands anywhere that he pleased.

  Hers too.

  Nothing like Ruth, using her honourable, unashamed hands on one man.

  A lawyer, plumber, real estate agent, electrician, hardware store owner—someone—rose from an ABC bed late one evening, and like an addict stopped cold by an unexpected, illuminating view of needle or pipe, Greta saw abruptly and with perfect clarity, even in the pink-shaded light of the bedside lamp, a crumpled-skinned man with small eyes and loose shanks and a pot-belly, a man of no consequence or beauty whatever. A man now in a hurry to shower—they all showered before going wherever they went, to their wives and their children and houses. And she turned cold. Her skin rose in goosebumps.

  Home, she turned on every light. Now she was hot, and understood the words burning with shame. Patricia chose that moment to phone. “What’s new, Mum?” she asked brightly. Greta scrubbed herself in the shower, then in a bath, lying in the tub feeling the water change around her from scalding to cool. So: the fever was broken.

  Although she hopes he does not, George may know anyway. Men say things to each other; they are boastful. No doubt it is unkind to wish that if he ever heard rumours and stories, they were exploded from his mind by his stroke. Probably they were. He would have said some words by now if he knew, if he remembered. He does not often hesitate any more to be hurtful, or truthful. He would, she imagines, speak to her, if he spoke to her at all, as if in some way she had betrayed him, instead of the other way around.

  Ruth and Sylvia too, they are women, they were married, and even Sylvia had only one lover. They would despise not a portion of Greta’s long life, but Greta herself. So she supposes. But Sylvia is right that histories are well buried under decrepitudes—decrepit: weakened or worn out by age and infirmity; perhaps for Greta also under the knitting of scarves. In many ways, which may be good ways, they are not visible to even each other. Ruth and Sylvia, possibly George too, may think her placid, a good mother, and kind. As she is. But these are qualities that might cause them to think she is not very smart, and has not done more than she has already told.

  Is it like that for them?

  Not for Ruth; Ruth cannot have done more or worse than she has already told.

  Companions gained late in life have not been present. They must take each other only on grounds of what is recounted, and then how they feel the balance and fit. Here at the Idyll Inn people see each other, as best they can without ghosts.

  Without too many ghosts.

  There is…Ruth calls it serendipity. There is also knowledge of what matters and what does not. Flagrant use of the body, Greta believes, that would still matter. That is why it is shameful.

  Is it sin, also? Do sins not have to be shameful? Is what Ruth did a sin if she is not ashamed? Is what Ruth wants a sin if she is not ashamed, but Greta, George and Sylvia could be if they did as she asks?

  Would they be ashamed? A secret is not always the same as a sin; shame, even a secret one, might not be sin either. It is a confusing language, this one, with too many delicate, difficult shadings. This is why Greta is sometimes awkward with words, which she understands is another reason she might be mistaken for someone not smart.

  It is why, also, she prefers knitting in bold, clear colours, even if they are not always so pretty together. Something must be plain and straightforward. Warming, too. As if shame and sin can be tucked beneath a bright, plain, straightforward blanket of forgiveness and mercy, which, if Greta were a god and had such powers, like any good mother, she would make it be so.

  22

  GOD CROPS UP…

  GOD CROPS UP.

  Well, in the circumstances he has to, although ordinarily they’d be skittish about talk of religion. Political discussions aren’t terribly difficult despite relatively minor ideological differences—at least nobody favours brutal dictatorships and everyone more or less favours freedom—and a couple of sexual revelations have come readily enough, albeit within strict priv
ate limits, but there’s nothing like religion for revealing unnecessary, undesirable schisms. So generally speaking, it’s a subject best skipped over in the cosy interests of calm.

  It’s not as if any of them has been among those regularly, and possibly fervently, climbing aboard the Idyll Inn van to head to various places of worship around town, which must be an unspoken sign of something right there. Now, though, skittish or not, matters of faith and belief have a direct bearing. There are certain prohibitions and punishments to consider, and as far as they know, no equivalent promised rewards, for fatally helping a friend.

  Since Ruth’s basically to blame, she feels responsible for finally raising the subject. This is made easier by the newspapers at hand in George’s room on this September Wednesday morning, with Greta and Sylvia poised to launch themselves at George’s limbs. Ruth never has a problem finding two usefully unpleasant stories to read them each day, and it’s not much harder narrowing the unhappy field to this specific one. God may, as usual, be technically absent from the news, but religion is not.

  “Okay,” Ruth says, “listen to this.” Three truckers have just blown themselves up in a village, wiping out dozens of people, mutilating hundreds of others. The villagers’ obscure faith is evidently different from their country’s main religion, some of whose members have taken radical offence. “Among other things,” Ruth recounts, “the people in the little sect that got blown up don’t believe in evil or hell. Or at least they didn’t until yesterday. Now maybe they do.”

  She finds further potential in the business pages. “Here’s a company that only hires what the owner thinks of as Christians. They all sing hymns at the start of each workday, and pray at the end. He says it’s important to him that everybody believes the same way he does, so everybody has the same goals. God hears more clearly when prayers come from a whole bunch of people, and he says God is pleased by their faith and rewards him with profits. Apparently there are more and more companies operating that way, on those grounds.”