by Lynn Coady
“I am this town’s best-kept secret,” she said.
Whatever that was supposed to mean.
Ruth Dekker, it turns out, is a painter, and her paintings are all over the house. Each canvas takes up approximately one wall. For the most part, her work consists of a lot of different-coloured blobs—blobby like her furniture—although on the wall directly across from me is a rendition of a big orange toilet against a grey background.
“I like your toilet,” hollers Todd across the room to Ruth at one point. Todd has showed no aversion whatsoever to the mulled wine this evening.
Ruth turns her radiant smirk on Todd. “That toilet,” she calls back, “was in my apartment in Cape Town. It was the only thing in there that ever worked. It became kind of a god to me, eventually.”
No one knows what to say. All night Ruth has been making utterances that have the context and rhythm of jokes but are completely unfunny.
Jim and Schofield are curled up on their respective blobs of furniture in the far corner of the room—the farthest possible point they could be from me, it would seem. They lean toward each other, immersed in conversation. Jim is gesturing, explaining. Schofield is pursing and nodding. Todd sits on the floor about a foot away from them, craning and yearning and generally being pathetic.
Meanwhile, Claude, of all people, has somehow ended up sharing my blob. After several moments of sitting side by side in silence, he is the one to give in and toss out a conversational gambit. I’ve been content to loll and sip and languish thus far. “So how did you like the reading?” he wants to know.
“I thought it was okay,” I answer carefully. “How did you like it?”
“Schofield’s brilliant,” says Claude, sighing as though he hates to admit it.
I had assumed Claude would be too cool to just come out with it like that. Don’t care. Be bored. I look at him with my mouth open.
“You didn’t think so?” he asks, frowning.
“Of course,” I say. “It was the best reading I’ve ever heard. I just didn’t think it was your kind of thing.”
“Because it was good,” states Claude, lips forming a straight line.
The reading, in fact, was like nothing I’d ever seen. By the time we got everyone chairs, and ran back and forth between buildings a few times to make sure there were no confused souls lingering outside the Sociology seminar, the hour was closing in on eight. Janet showed up accompanied by the very same sweet-faced old woman who was so indulgent of my tea-drinking at Carl’s. This turned out to be her landlady, Mrs. Dacey. I shook Mrs. Dacey’s gloved hand and took a moment to compliment her on her raisin pie, because it has occurred to me again that Janet’s house is going to be available after she graduates this year. Then I led them to a couple of good seats close to the mantelpiece.
That was our crowd. The eight of us from Jim’s seminar, a couple of strangers, Janet, Mrs. Dacey, Bryant and Ruth Dekker, and Charles the-sore-thumb Slaughter. I kept waiting to see Doctor Sparrow come slinking around a corner to take in the show. But he never did.
Schofield just sat down in a chair by himself until Jim went up to him and told him he could start.
When Schofield stood and turned to face us, I thought he was sick. His eyes were squeezed shut behind his glasses, and his head was down. In his right mitt, he held an untidy clutch of paper that must have been shoved in his jacket or pants the whole time I was with him this evening.
“I would like to thank …,” he said.
Schofield’s face blossomed red the instant he started speaking. I had never seen anything like it except in grade 6 when Joey Cahill got so pissed off at the math teacher that he blurted she could kiss his ass. An instantaneous faceful of red, just like Schofield now. I nearly stood up and walked over to help him to a chair.
“I’d like to thank my good friend Jim Arsenault,” Schofield managed to finish, “for inviting me to be here today and for exerting such a profound and felicitous influence on myself and, I would have to say, Canadian poetry as a whole. We are all of us the better, for the likes of Jim Arsenault—I say that with all sincerity. He makes me proud to be a fellow practitioner. I would also like to thank the department of English, one Larry Campbell, who was kind enough to keep me company this stormy evening, and, as ever, the Heritage Arts Coalition, which made this and so many other wonderful events like it a reality. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to read to you today. I thank you all for being here.”
Schofield did not raise his head, shift his position, or open his eyes once during this entire speech.
He’s having a heart attack, I thought to myself, watching his face pulsate as he chewed out every syllable like a series of minuscule light bulbs.
And then Schofield raised his head, eyes open, looked directly out at us, and recited his poetry for twenty minutes. It was like he was possessed by gods. Or demons. It was wonderful. It was riveting. He started with the man-word/woman-word poem. He did not consult the twisted sheaf of paper in his right hand at any time during the recitation, although he did pause to shuffle the pages, for some reason, between each poem. He performed the poems, giving them exactly the right cadence, emphasizing precisely the words and phrases he wanted us to most notice. His reading voice was nothing like his speaking voice. It was an actor’s voice, and not the least bit reedy. He was a muted, less stagy Gregory Peck.
And yet, it wasn’t as if he was acting—there was no sense of remove, like how in a play everyone pretends the actors aren’t standing there in front of you but are somewhere else, oblivious to your presence. Schofield was by no means oblivious to our presence. He leaned toward us as he recited, he looked us in the eye, he harangued, he appealed, he explained. That was especially how the man/woman poem struck me—as a patient, meticulous explanation of something ineffable. It’s the same kind of feeling I sometimes have listening to classical music, or even staring at the lines in the palm of my hand, sometimes. The sense that there’s a language there, that something is being expressed, communicated. Something infinite, beyond words.
But Schofield did use words.
My cousin’s landlady raised her hand the moment Schofield finished his recitation, having dropped his head again and thanked us. She sat there with her entire arm in the air like a septuagenarian schoolgirl, while everybody else clapped hard and long.
“Hello,” said Schofield when he finally peeped through his scrunched eyes and noticed what Mrs. Dacey was doing.
“Hello,” she said back.
“Did you have a question?”
“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Dacey in a clear and rather youthful voice. “I would like to know,” she continued, “why is it people feel they have to concern themselves with matters of the bedroom so much lately.”
Schofield looked around as if not quite sure where he was.
“Do you mean people … in general?” he asked after a moment.
“I suppose I do,” said Mrs. Dacey. “I suppose it’s something you see quite a bit nowadays. But I thought you might be the man to ask, considering the nature of some of those poems you were reading.”
Schofield blinked a few times behind his glasses. “They were my poems.”
“Yes, I assumed that,” Mrs. Dacey snapped, sensing condescension. “You’re the man of the hour, so to speak.”
Jim interrupted at this point.
“I think,” he said, rearranging his limbs in his chair in a pertinent sort of way, “with the storm and people needing to get home and everything, we may have to keep the questions to a minimum this evening.”
Mrs. Dacey responded to Jim, but kept staring at Schofield. “Storms don’t bother me,” she told him. “I walked here from my house and I’ll walk back. I’m not bothered by any storm, never have been. I grew up on the Bay of Fundy with the wind coming straight off the Atlantic Ocean every winter. You’d never see me bat an eyelash in a storm.”
Schofield pursed his lips and nodded at this.
“All the same,” said Jim, and d
idn’t finish the sentence—as at a loss as I’ve ever seen him. No one came to his rescue.
“So let’s hear it,” said Mrs. Dacey to Schofield.
“Bedroom matters,” repeated Schofield.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dacey. “You tell me: What’s the story on that, now?”
“Well, I can’t speak for others,” Schofield began.
“I understand that,” Mrs. Dacey assured him.
“But I can say that love … and poetry, historically, have always gone hand and hand. Um. Shakespeare, for example—”
Mrs. Dacey was having none of it.
“Love is one thing,” she interrupted. “But I’m talking about things that go on, or should only go on, in the privacy of the bedroom. Bedroom … matters. Love is fine, and I think it’s just wonderful if a poet wants to write something about love, I have no problem with that at all. But here’s my question—”
We waited. Nobody could look at anything in the room except their own twiddling fingers in their laps.
“Why is it that people think there’s this need these days to discuss private and intimate things for entertainment? For the amusement of others? You see,” said Mrs. Dacey, shifting her weight forward, “what people don’t seem to understand is that that is basically the definition of pornography. Entertaining others, in the public arena, with private and intimate things. And I’m just afraid that people get so caught up in their art or selling their books or whatever that they don’t realize when they are crossing certain pornographic boundaries.”
Mrs. Dacey sat back and folded her hands, keeping her bright little eyes pinned on Schofield. Dermot’s own huge mitt was resting against his heart as if to quiet it down.
As the seconds passed and we all sat waiting for Dermot’s defence, the entire English Department began to vibrate with the noise of what can only be described as a guffaw—a guffaw in the truest sense of the word. In fact it onomatopoeically came close to sounding like the word guffaw.
“Hawg!” it went. “Hawg, hawg, hawg, hawg!”
It was the loudest, rudest laugh I’ve ever heard. It was coming, I noted, craning my neck along with everyone else, from Charles Slaughter, seated sprawl-legged in the back.
“Hawg, hawg, hawg, hawg, hawg, hawg, hawg!”
The furniture shook with it.
Mrs. Dacey straightened her delicate shoulders once Slaughter was finished. It took him a moment or two.
“I beg your pardon if I’ve said something funny,” she said, not fazed, not taking her hamster eyes off Schofield. By this time I was somewhat in awe of Mrs. Dacey.
Schofield, meanwhile, had used the eternity of Slaughter’s mirth to get himself together. He gazed straight back at Mrs. Dacey and assured her she had said nothing funny at all. Then he even managed to apologize for the laughter without being accusatory toward Slaughter—as if Schofield himself was somehow responsible. Then he answered her question.
He didn’t turn red. He seemed to be still, slightly, in the world of his reading. Not an awkward, blushing fat man who hadn’t taken a shower in the past twelve hours, but a humble sage, infinitely gracious and wise. I sat with my fists clenched, rooting for him.
“For many people,” spoke Schofield, “love and the act of love are inexorably entwined.”
“I know that,” huffed Mrs. Dacey, apparently ready to meet his argument point for point. Schofield held up a hand.
“If I may,” he said, and Mrs. Dacey sat back.
“Absolutely, the two can exist in exclusivity to one another. Filial love, fraternal love …”
“The love of a pet,” offered Mrs. Dacey, and I was afraid Slaughter might start up again.
“Of course,” agreed Schofield in haste. “And some of the most celebrated literary and historical examples of romantic love have been platonic, so to speak. Dante and Beatrice, to cite just one example.”
“Love that is pure,“ Mrs. Dacey insisted.
“Absolutely,” said Schofield. “But surely you’ll agree, there are far more examples of romantic love that are … erotic.” This time Schofield actually stopped and waited for Mrs. Dacey to interrupt. She just sat there for a moment.
“Well—I’m not so sure about that,” she said at last.
Schofield nodded. “Well, I’m afraid I have to insist on this point. Tristan and Isolde. Héloïse and Abelard. Romeo and Juliet.”
At this point Mrs. Dacey regained her vigour. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I believe you’re talking about Shakespeare again. But Shakespeare doesn’t talk about breasts and thighs and … sweat and what have you.”
Up went Schofield’s big mitt again. “You’ll forgive me, but he speaks of all that and more.”
There was a short pause.
“Well, I’m not a big fan of Shakespeare, frankly,” said Mrs. Dacey.
Schofield deflated a little at this.
“Well,” he mumbled, seeming to back down just when I felt he had scored some points off old lady Dacey, “what other writers do is beside the point, I suppose.”
“Exactly!” pounced Mrs. Dacey. “That’s exactly my point.”
“What you’re really asking is about me, about what I write, what I’ve read this evening.”
“Well, yes,” admitted Mrs. Dacey with a bit less certainty. “You as a representative, I suppose. Of all you types. You art people. Your generation.”
It occurred to me at this point to stare a few daggers across the room at Cousin Janet for hauling this battle-axe to the reading, the reading I had nearly killed myself over. But Janet had been in thumb-twiddling mode since the inquisition began.
Schofield took a breath, nodding and pursing at you types.
“You can’t answer, can you,” demanded Mrs. Dacey, sniffing blood, sensing victory.
“No, I can,” argued Schofield, “but surely you understand this is a difficult topic. It’s immensely—” (he looked around at the group of us as if in appeal) “—personal, of course.”
I nodded when Schofield’s gaze passed over. To help—to let him know he wasn’t alone. Mrs. Dacey folded her arms. “Once again, you’re just adding to my point. That’s what I’m saying: it’s personal, what you’re talking about. It’s too personal.”
“But the very act of writing poetry is personal,” said Schofield.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be writing it, then,” rejoined Dacey.
Holy crap, I thought. Is this what it’s like? When you’re a poet? Old dames who’ve spent the past sixty years reading nothing but Ladies Home Journal and The Farmers’ Almanac come forward and put you on the rack?
“All right,” said Jim, unfurling his limbs abruptly and standing to his full six-foot-something height. “It is getting very late, people have to drive home—”
“Jim,” said Schofield. Jim glanced over, opened then closed his mouth, and finally sat down again.
“I have been in love,” said Schofield.
Outside, the wind screamed, cracking the iced-over windowpanes. Everyone in the lounge seemed to gulp in unison.
“I am still in love,” added Schofield after surveying the room for a moment. “It was, and is, the most transcendent thing that could happen to a man like myself. I am a person who thought such an experience would always be beyond my reach.”
Schofield took a breath and glanced, briefly, down at himself in a gesture of disbelief, as if flowers had sprouted from his chest. Oh no, the gesture seemed to say, what’s happening now?
“What I’ve just said is a very bald statement—it has little art or poetry to it, but, I think you will agree, it has weight. It has strength. It’s a powerful thing to say: ‘I have love. I who thought I would never have love.’ ”
It was a powerful thing to say, all right. Behind me, I could hear Sherrie’s breath catch in her throat. My own tightened.
Schofield continued, pinkening only a bit. “Surely everyone has had occasion to doubt, has found themselves alone, asking of the universe: Will there be love for me? Ever? Anywh
ere? If no one here has had occasion to ask this question, I’d ask that you speak up, just so I know I’m not on the wrong track here. It’s the kind of thing you always assume about other people but rarely ask, isn’t it? It’s not the sort of thing we usually speak about.”
Not only did no one speak up, no one so much as breathed. It was awful but fascinating—Schofield up there, forced to say what no one ever said, like someone being made to dance at gunpoint.
He took another breath as if on our behalves, nodding without the pursing. “Okay,” he said, “I was pretty sure that would be the response. So you’ll notice some of you are very young, and already it would seem you’ve asked yourself this question. It goes to show, I think, how universal this experience is. It’s not a comfortable moment, is it, the moment that question arises? Your body feels like this huge, hollow cavern with your soul bouncing around inside, bashing against your ribs, trying to get out. Just trying to make contact with someone, any other living, thinking, commiserating being. Most of you, I’m sure, will recall this feeling, this misery of isolation, and I am hoping that for most of you, that feeling has passed. Even if it has, however, its memory resides within you somewhere—and it’s a cold spot, isn’t it? It can’t be warmed up. It’s a fear that can never be completely expelled. Yes?”
Schofield paused to look around the room. As the glint of his glasses shifted toward me, I felt my mouth close, my tongue gluing itself to the roof of my mouth. My jaw had been hanging open for who knew how long.
“All right,” sighed Schofield, now very much showing signs of fatigue from his hours on the bus, his battle with the elements, his time with me. The colour and consistency of his face reminded me of swollen bread dough, listing on the counter after the first deflating punch from my mother’s fist. Only then did it occur to me the poor guy didn’t even have a lectern to hide behind. That’s what was missing, why he came across as so vulnerable and alone up there. We should have found him a lectern from downstairs, he shouldn’t have had to stand here before us, naked but for a sheaf of paper he didn’t even look at.
“All I want you to know is,” he continued, “I have lived with this feeling I’ve been describing for approximately thirty or so years. I had almost given up hope of being loved. Please just imagine that for a moment, the desolation, the hollowness of it—day in and day out.”