Practical Jean

by Trevor Cole

  Jean and Adele had met during their first year of art college, back in 1975. For nearly a year they’d roomed together, and Jean had been rather enthralled with Adele’s offhand way with men and wine and money. Adele came from an established family, had gone to a private girls’ school, and told Jean at the time she had no intention of becoming an artist. She’d chosen photography as her major only because her financier father had given her a Leica for her seventeenth birthday, and she told Jean she wanted to “live the artist life” for a while. “To scratch around,” she purred. “To think and fuck and drink and get a bit dirty from it all.” After that first year she quit, made her teary goodbyes, and went on to economics at Cornell, but Jean had felt a need to keep the friendship going ever since.

  In the foyer, Milt jostled his glass and rattled some music from his ice cubes. “Mojito, Adele?”

  “No thank you, Milt,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek. “But a Fumé Blanc, or whatever you have that’s dry, dry, dry would be lovely.”

  Louise Draper was typically late to arrive. Jean saw her through the sheer drapes of the front window, coming up the walk with a bouquet of something in her hand. She was dressed in the same white blouse and tan skirt Jean had seen her wearing two days before. According to Milt she often wore the same outfit in class two or even three times a week, and it was only because she was such a good teacher that her students weren’t merciless. It always gave Jean an uneasy feeling on Louise’s behalf, to think that she was working with a strike against her because she was a tiny bit odd. People had no tolerance for difference, even in one’s own family. Maybe especially there.

  As Jean watched through the window, preparing to open the front door, Louise stopped suddenly on the walk and turned as if to go back to her car. But then she lifted her right arm and seemed startled by the purse dangling from her shoulder, and resumed her advance to the door.

  “Oh, jeez, I’m late, aren’t I?” she said, giggling as she entered. “D’you know what? I thought it was last night and I’d missed it. Really, seriously, I’m such a loser sometimes.” Looking off into the living room she slipped out of her pumps as if she were stepping off a log and then studied with apparent confusion the bouquet in her hand. “Right. So I saw this bouquet at that little shop on at the corner of Cumner. You know those two old gay men?”

  “Aren’t they lovely?” said Jean. “So personable.”

  “I know, I know, they’re great, they’re so great. And I saw this bouquet, and you can ignore all the flowers” – Louise made spattery gestures with her free hand at the many coloured blooms –“because they’re just, well I know you’re not into those. But I just thought, you know, the leaves were nice.” She giggled again.

  Taking the bouquet, Jean knew there was nothing interesting about the leaves. They were just more of the typical florist greenery – a few cuttings of leatherleaf fern and cocculus – and she’d long ago exhausted any artistic potential there. No, it was Louise thinking of leaves at all that touched her. “That’s so sweet,” she said.

  “Hey, Louise,” said Milt from the limits of the foyer. “Can I interest you in a Mojito?”

  “Oh, sure, that’d be great.”

  “Really?” said Jean. It was easy to believe that Louise might not be clear on the nature of Mojitos. “It’s sort of a resorty cocktail with sugar.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, actually,” she paused to wave at Natalie in the living room, “uh, Milt and I were both in the liquor store when they were giving out samples of this mix they had and it was pretty good.”

  Jean turned toward her husband. “Is that right, Milt?” she said. “Is that what gave you the idea for Mojitos?”

  Milt went somewhat still and nodded to Jean with a certain care. “Yes.”

  Jean glanced back at Louise, who was staring at the flowers in Jean’s hands. “Well, good!” she said to Milt with a light laugh. “At least you won’t be drinking that whole pitcher yourself.”

  ———

  For an hour or so, they just chatted, Jean and her friends, and Milt, of course, staying rather quiet now with his tall, tinkling glass. Seeing all of them seated in her living room, comfortable and well served with drinks and snacks, Jean let herself enjoy, for a while and to the degree that she was able, the fun of having everyone together. Dorothy quickly dropped the pretense of soda and moved to wine, which allowed her to talk about men she found attractive, and that was always fun. Louise did a masterful job of mining the woeful ignorance of her students for everyone’s entertainment. Natalie was her usual feisty self. On books: “You know what burns my ass? Novels that try to teach me something. I want a story, not a goddamn textbook.” On Hollywood: “Political movie stars make me puke. Hey, Bozo, your opinion on gun control is an assault on my pleasure.” On Adele: “Farbridge, where are those butter tarts you promised, warming on your manifold?” And Adele had to stop talking about foreign exchange risk and who got drunk at Davos and give her apologies. Apparently there’d been a line at the tart shop that would have delayed her arrival for thirty minutes. “That’s how marvellous their tarts are,” she insisted. So about the tarts, at least, everyone understood.

  But it wasn’t quite the usual gathering for Jean. She felt an urgency in the midst of her friends that had to do with more than making sure their glasses were filled, an urgency that seemed both familiar and new. Since the funeral she’d worked hard to keep thoughts about her mother and what her mother had endured at bay. But now, surrounded by the women she was closest to, those thoughts hovered behind everything she said and heard, colouring it all, darkening it like a bruise. She looked around the room at these women and saw how life had marked them. Their worries and misfortunes sat with them like shadows. To her left was Natalie and Natalie’s hypertension and sadly crumbled marriage. At the end of the couch sat Dorothy and the awful burden of her uncrumbled one. Beside her was Louise and … well, Louise was perfectly healthy and had no burdens as far as Jean knew. But she was slightly odd, and that was its own kind of trouble. And over in the mahogany armchair sat Adele and Adele’s mastectomy, which she had suffered five years before after finding a lump during her getaway to Antigua. And beyond those trials, all the things that Jean as a friend had been helpless to prevent, she knew there were more to come. Vicious, ruthless time was grinding away like a jackhammer, pulverizing bit by bit the foundations of their contentment. It was coming down, inevitably. In her urgency, Jean could see what her friends could not: the room was crowded with warning.

  She tried to keep up a cheery front, smiling and laughing and doing her best to participate, but it seemed that no one was fooled. Milt was the first to act, joining Jean in the kitchen when she went to get more cheese and asking if everything was all right. She assumed he was asking because she’d found out about the Mojito tasting with Louise and he was feeling guilty, so she told him it didn’t matter. She hoped never to get upset over something so insignificant, now or ever again.

  But after that, one by one, each of the women made an attempt to connect with her. Was she all right? Was anything bothering her? They did it subtly, with eye contact or a light touch on her arm, or more forcefully by other means. Natalie asked Jean at one point to show her where the bathroom was, although she knew perfectly well, and when they were alone she cornered her in the hallway.

  “Jean, I want you talk to me,” she said, staring into her eyes. “You’re upset. I can tell. I felt it earlier in the shop. It’s no good sitting on feelings, you know. That’s how things just explode.”

  Jean did what she usually did, which was to make a joke about it. The only problem, she laughed, was having to manage all the personalities in the room. Everyone was “so much work.” Getting drinks, getting snacks, attending to every little remark. “It reminds me of waiting on my mother.” And of course she wasn’t serious at all – she was glad everyone was there – and Natalie didn’t take it that way. But something about confessing to a friend, even in that small way, about the ordeal of
the last three months put a small chink in Jean’s wall of defence. It was the smallest of fissures, the merest hairline crack, and the emotion that leaked through it was barely a dribble compared to the vast lake still pressing against the dam. But it was enough to start her crying.

  She felt like such a child, blubbering in front of a friend. Natalie led her to the bathroom so as not to disturb the others, Jean apologizing the whole time. “I’m so sorry. This is so silly of me.” There seemed to be torrents inside of her trying to come out. But in the midst of her tears Jean glanced up and, seeing the worry in her friend’s face, she just put a clamp on things, just shut it down and composed herself. “That’s enough of that,” she said, blinking. She washed her face; the cool water against her cheeks felt calming, just like Natalie’s comforting words. And when she’d patted herself dry with a soft towel, and the two of them had come back into the living room, everyone appeared to believe that Jean had had a good cry. Jean knew better, of course; it hadn’t been good at all. Nothing had been assuaged or released. But still, the belief seemed to make it easier for everyone to talk a little more openly than before.

  With the light outside fading, and the living room settling into darkness, Milt switched on the iron standing lamp by his chair. The glow caught the wine in Adele’s hand as she swirled it and sent golden baubles scooting across the carpet.

  “Losing someone close,” said Adele, “it’s very hard. Can be.”

  “Oh,” said Natalie, finding a seat on the couch. “Can it?”

  “Mmmm,” said Adele.

  “But,” said Jean, and she cleared her throat, “it’s not losing my mother that was hard. I was saying this to Milt the day I got home, after the funeral. I was just happy she was out of pain. Do you remember, Milt?”

  “Yes,” said Milt. He was only saying yes.

  “There was no reason for her to suffer like that,” said Jean. “I mean, the pain she went through, the indignity of it, the cruelty … it was inhuman.” Jean put her hand to her forehead. She wasn’t about to cry again, that crisis had passed. But her heart was racing, and her thoughts were going smoky again, swirling in confusing ways, and it seemed comforting, somehow, to press her eye with the heel of her palm, even as she felt everyone watching her. She pressed and willed her heartbeat to slow.

  “I don’t think any of us can imagine,” said Natalie. She was concentrating on the fabric of her skirt, brushing at it softly with the tips of her fingers, the way she might brush flies from the sores of a starving child. “My only hope, when it comes time for me, is that something else takes me. Something fast.”

  “Maybe you’ll choke on a cupcake,” offered Adele.

  “Well, you know what?” Natalie leaned toward her. “It would be better than going through what Jean’s mother went through.”

  “I envy guys,” said Dorothy.

  Jean blew her nose with a tissue. “How so?” she said.

  “It just seems they go quick. Soldiers …” Dorothy made a shooting gesture with her thumb and forefinger. “Accidents. There was a guy Roy fought against once. Bill Powell. It wasn’t the next fight but the one after, he died in the ring. One punch.” She made a fist and held it to the back of her jaw, showing where the fatal blow had landed, as everyone took in a breath. “But if you’re talking about natural causes, usually it’s a heart attack, right? I mean, look at all the guys who go out shovelling snow and –” She snapped her fingers. Then she glanced at Jean. “Isn’t that what happened to your father?”

  Jean nodded. “It was something like that.” She didn’t actually know what had caused her father’s heart attack. One winter’s day her mother had simply announced that it had occurred.

  “Have you noticed,” said Adele, “only men seem to die in the act of sex?” Everyone seemed willing to wait for Adele to elaborate. “If they’re our age,” she continued in her low, vowelly tones, “they’ll go off to a hotel room to cheat on their wives with their secretaries, and then keel over as they orgasm.” In her chair, Adele pantomimed a man so violently thrusting his hips that her hair bounced, and then she suddenly grabbed her chest and collapsed with a choking sound. Everyone laughed. “Poetic justice, perhaps,” she said, “but not a bad way to go, I should think.”

  “Why can’t women have that?” demanded Natalie. “Fatally penetrated by a six-foot-four bricklayer.”

  Milt caught Jean’s eye and motioned to his empty glass, then eased out of his chair and began to edge toward the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you pour Louise another one of those,” said Jean, nodding toward the empty tumbler at Louise’s feet.

  “Oh, sure,” Louise giggled. “Thanks.”

  “And I’ll have one too,” Jean said. “Just to see what the attraction is.” She held out her wine glass and waited for Milt to take it.

  “You know what I think would be nice?” said Louise.

  Milt hesitated in the midst of retrieving glasses, sort of crouching on the carpet like prey hiding in the tall grass.

  “I’d like to die with someone reading poetry to me,” she said. “Maybe something by Elizabeth Bishop. Or that translation she did of that Manuel Bandeira poem.”

  Everyone waited, except for Milt, who resumed his flight to the kitchen.

  “Do you know it?” said Dorothy.

  “Well, the one I’m thinking of, it’s called ‘My Last Poem,’” said Louise. “It’s about a poet who wishes his last poem could be as beautiful as a scentless flower, as ardent as a tearless sob, and have the passion … What was it? … The passion of a suicide who kills himself without any explanation.”

  For a moment the only sound in the living room was that of Milt stirring Mojitos in the kitchen, his spoon knocking ice against glass.

  Jean, sitting in her chair by the window, wiped her eyes with the crumpled, snotty tissue she gripped hard in her hand. “Everyone should have a last poem,” she said. She said it more to herself than to anyone else. But then she looked to see if the others understood. “I mean, as a metaphor, not literally. I mean, everyone should have a last moment of beauty in their life. Because life can be so hard and dismal, why can’t we end with something absolutely pure and sweet? Something wonderful? We earn that, don’t we? I mean, that should be our right, as human beings.” All her friends nodded, watching her. “My mother deserved a last poem,” she said.

  “Sure she did,” said Natalie.

  Jean’s hand felt stiff, rusty; her muscles seized as she wiped her nose again with the old, balled-up tissue. She was alone now. She hardly noticed Milt setting a tall green glass on the little table beside her; he was merely a shape in the shadows. Sitting by the window, she was all alone when her mind filled with an image, sudden and unstoppable, like gas being pumped into a chamber. She could tell this was what she’d been waiting for, since the day of the funeral. This was how the best plans and most intricate designs came to her; they rushed in at her, fully formed. She’d been waiting for just such a revelation. She knew to let it come.

  She saw her mother lying in bed, head wrenched back, neck roped with pain, and the vision caught her breath in her throat. But then … then … as she watched her dying mother, she imagined something quite fantastic. Oh, it was quite wonderful, and terribly sad, too, as a truly artistic vision can often be. She imagined offering her mother a last … sweet … moment of beauty, a last poem, in exchange for the pain she’d been given. Who could resist such a trade? Oh, it was so tragic, Jean thought, to know it had been within her power to grant her mother that gift, if she’d only thought of it in time. Because she knew how it could be done now. She looked at her friends gathered about her in the room, her friends and their shadows, and she could picture it clearly. And how tragic it would be for her mother – though her mother was dead and beyond knowing – to see her daughter giving that gift to someone else. Someone else and not her. Yes, that would be tragic, in its way. But now that she knew, Jean thought, what kind of monster would she be, what kind of friend, to deny that gift to th
ese people she loved?

  Death didn’t have to be slow and agonizing and bleak. Suffering was not a given. A person could have a last poem. And it wasn’t something that had to come by chance. That was the revelation. It could be guaranteed. Jean breathed deeply, deeply, and felt her muscles relax. This always happened when she was sure of her vision, before she started work. She became calm.

  And it was an added joy for Jean to know that this vision she had, this gift, this plan, wasn’t ridiculous or scoff-able at all, but entirely practical. Exquisitely practical. Had she not been dead, had she not been buried and beginning to rot, Marjorie Horemarsh would have been so proud.

  Chapter 6

  Jean gave her mind over to thoughts of blood. It was the morning, and she sat drinking English Breakfast tea across from Milt in their bright dining area, with a daisy light from the bay window painting the far wall and the antiqued china cabinet. She watched him eat his crusty toast with marmalade – an oddly bitter taste with which to begin the day, she’d always thought – and knew that blood was not going to be a problem.

  This was the great benefit, the singular one, really, of having been raised by a veterinarian mother wholly oblivious to a young daughter’s sensitivities. Watching Marjorie in her white coat cut into tabbies and Labradors, even once a Great Dane – anaesthetized and splayed out larger than either of her little brothers on the kitchen table – had inured Jean very early on to the sloshy, lurid aspects of organs and vessels and bodily fluids.

  She was more accustomed to it, at the age of seven or eight, than the first-year veterinary students who were sometimes assigned to work with her mother, who would often observe Marjorie slicing open a pink, shaved belly and faint with a crash at the first scarlet trickle.

  “That was nice last night,” said Milt. “Everyone seemed to have a good time.”

  “Mmmm,” said Jean. Her eyes were set without seeing on the first done button of Milt’s Lacoste golf shirt, which had been purple when she’d bought it for him twenty or so years before and had since faded to a lavender-tinted grey. Milt wore this shirt when he had no substitute teaching assignments and planned to idle the day away in the house, reading how-to books he’d bought at the hardware store, as if reading about how to do something forgave never managing to do it.