SATURDAY, JULY 2, 2005
Rose phoned Victor and tried to get him to deny Environment Canada’s forecast. She had gone to the theater early with the intention of screening DVDs ahead of the storm, but when she arrived and checked the Weather Network, the radar showed the storm tracking north. And now Victor was saying that it would miss downtown altogether.
“I can see the anvil,” Rose said.
“Does Fiona have to go somewhere?”
“No. It’s just so crazy, all these storms.”
“You haven’t had any more migraine symptoms, have you?”
“It’s not that, I’m not worried. Well, I’m a bit worried about the theater roof.”
“We’re in the clear until tomorrow mid- to late afternoon.”
“There’s always the chance of a pop-up later today, right?”
“I’m not calling for a pop-up, no.”
Rose got off the phone and spent the next several minutes swallowing convulsively. Being told she would have to wait another day to be with Harriet was like being told she would have to wait another day for a heart transplant.
She considered the hanger, still there on her desk. At some point between Thursday night and this morning she had endowed it with supernatural clout. She took it in both hands and rubbed the silk padding over her skin and prayed for Harriet to be strong and safe and to want the baby. She prayed for the storm to drift south, she motioned the hanger like a hook to snag it near. And then she realized that she could put herself near the storm.
A quarter of an hour later she was racing up the Don Valley Parkway. She wished she had thought of this sooner. On the radio they were reporting power lines and trees down in the Caledon area. Ahead of her and to the west she could see the yellowish-white anvil spreading out from its lid. At the first sound of thunder, she would pull over. An episode in a parked car would be as safe as one in her office. Safer, really, with the risk of discovery all but eliminated.
South of Highway 407 she met a band of rain. There was no lightning, though, no thunder. For several miles the rain blew sideways, and she followed the barely visible taillights of an SUV. Who were these other drivers? What missions could they possibly be on that they were entrusting their lives to the eyesight and reflexes of the strangers in front of them?
The rain stopped, but the traffic still crawled. Meanwhile, the storm was farther away than it had been fifteen minutes ago. She took the next exit and turned west in hopes of finding a secondary north-south route. She drove well over the limit. There were few other cars, and the road had been widened to accommodate the four-car garages of half-built houses, ranks and ranks abutting the property lines of abandoned fields with their bulky gray barns that for Rose, even in glimpses, were awful.
A red light suspended from wires caught her unawares, and she almost sideswiped a truck. In her mirror she saw blue sky. More alarmed by this than by the near collision, she continued racing until she was slowed again by traffic. The clouds pushed northward. She would never catch them.
She pulled over.
She was next to a field of grazing horses. She lit a cigarette and watched them despondently. Ever since the farm Rose preferred not to look at ponies or horses, but she looked at this herd. Six mares and a foal. What depressed her was their imprisonment, which they themselves might not have minded.
Her thoughts turned to Marsh, who, she remembered, taught a two-thirty yoga class. What was the time? Ten to twelve. If she couldn’t have an episode, and she couldn’t see Harriet out in the world, maybe she could see Marsh and get him to talk about Harriet. At the very least she could reconfirm her miracle.
The front door was unlocked, the reception desk vacant. She went to the changing room and searched in her purse for a quarter so that she could open locker number eight. She couldn’t find one. What she did find was the card from the cab driver who had offered to make love to her all night long: Aldo Gatti. Bodybuilder, Women’s Companion. She pinned it to the bulletin board among business cards offering mindfulness therapy and pet sitting. You never knew.
Back in the hall she walked past a number of narrow offices and treatment rooms and came to the larger space where Marsh had held his class. An ancient woman in a coral-colored leotard and tights stood alone by the window and slowly rotated her bottom. Rose felt a pang to think of her mother doing the twist when there was this other, more decorous way for an old woman to swivel her lower body, should she be so inclined. She asked if Marsh was around.
The woman continued her rotations. “Try the kitchen,” she said. She pointed a bent finger. “End of the hall.”
He was hunkered over an enormous pot, a big man in a little apron. Rose felt faint. That he should exist! That he should still exist! And that his attitude of intense absorption should be familiar to her, and lovable. Only now did she think he might not welcome the woman who had pestered him for Harriet’s address. But he looked up, and in a tone of warm recognition said, “Oh, hello.”
She gestured. “You’re cooking.”
“My work here is done.” He hefted the pot onto another burner. “Spicy turnip-seaweed soup. Would you like some?”
“No, thank you.”
“It’s not as foul as it sounds.” He removed his apron and draped it over one of the many mismatched wooden chairs surrounding an old farmhouse table. She stepped in, light on her feet, ghostly with secret intelligence. Her plan until this moment had been to say she wanted to register for classes, but it was occurring to her that this might involve a deposit or other complications. I think I left my wallet here, she rehearsed. No, too dire.
“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name,” Marsh said.
“Rose.”
“Rose, yes. Of course.”
“I think I might have left my scarf here.”
“I haven’t heard of a scarf. But we can check the office.”
She followed him out a different door and along a corridor. It was all she could do not to lay a hand on his broad, round-shouldered back. A yoga teacher with round shoulders, you didn’t expect it. To Rose it implied a history of heartache and disappointment: an earlier failed career in England, or a divorce, children he’d lost custody of. She wondered if Harriet had told him about being pregnant.
“Did you drop off that manuscript at Goldfinch?” he asked.
“No,” she said, startled. “No, not yet. I’m trying to arrange a meeting with Harriet.”
“She’s a busy woman.”
“It’s getting past the receptionist. It’s like Fort Knox there.”
They turned down a second corridor whose low ceiling was scrolled with pipes. He reached up to touch them. “This used to be a glass factory.”
She waited for him to address her dilemma, but it seemed he had mentioned the manuscript only for the sake of being polite. “Really,” she said.
“I studied glassblowing in my wayward youth. All I remember is the cardinal rule—don’t inhale.” He took a key from his pocket. “Here we are.”
It was a narrow room with windows flanking one side. From a shelf above the desk he lifted a cardboard box and set it down and began rummaging through the contents: single gloves and mittens, a hairbrush, a folded umbrella that disarmed Rose for being the same blue-and-green plaid as the one David’s wife had brought to Harriet’s.
Marsh tugged out a wool scarf. “Is this it?”
“No.”
“The cleaners were here last night. If it isn’t here . . .”
He looked at her over his glasses. How could somebody who had described her eyes as soulful not see the fraudulence they must be beaming? She craned her neck as if to search for her scarf in the immediate vicinity. “I must have left it somewhere else.”
“Would you settle for this? It’s been here longer than I have.” He was holding the umbrella.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind some soup after all.”
Back down the corridor they went, the umbrella staying with them as a subject of conversation. He sa
id he had left his umbrella at a yoga retreat and might take this one. She recommended he visit the subway lost and found. “All you have to do is say you’ve lost a black umbrella, and they show you about a hundred, and you pick the nicest.”
He laughed. “Isn’t that stealing?”
“Isn’t taking an umbrella from here stealing?”
“Good point.”
They were in the kitchen now, and she sat at the table as he ladled out a single bowl. Because of her diet she declined the bread, although it smelled wonderful.
“How is it?” Marsh asked, sitting across from her.
“Good,” she said. In fact, it tasted like dirt. He folded his arms and watched her with such keen interest that she had to look down. She swallowed another spoonful, and a vision came to her of being naked and stretched out on the table, and the yoga people—that ancient woman from down the hall, the woman at the party with the buzz cut, the guy who’d made the flower-show joke—all of them chanting like the devil worshippers in Rosemary’s Baby. In the real world Marsh was saying that every day one of the staff threw together a vegan soup or stew for anybody who wanted it. “I eat here two, three times a week,” he said, standing to get a bowl of soup for himself. Rose’s vision evaporated. Oh, she was paranoid! Ridiculous!
They ate in silence, but he kept glancing at her and smiling, trying to place her outside of Thursday’s encounter, she guessed, and she wondered if there were things about her that reminded him of Harriet: her jumpy nerves, and the cigarette smoke she herself could smell in her hair, but also imperceptible things connected to her brief sharing of Harriet’s body and emotions. Hadn’t she surprised even herself with her sympathy for the horses?
Horses. She stopped eating and got her purse from the chair next to her. “Do you know the Regal Theater?” she asked.
“The rep place? Up on Mount Pleasant?”
“I own it,” she said, unzipping her purse. “My mother and I do.”
“So that’s who you are!”
“You’ve been, then.”
“Recently. I saw The Hustler, when was it? Three, four weeks ago. The marvelous woman behind the concession, is she your mother?”
“That’s her.” Rose withdrew a pair of tickets.
“She asked me if I was Burt Reynolds. She pretended not to believe me when I said I wasn’t. I was quite flattered.”
“I’m sure she thought you were Burt Reynolds. She has dementia.”
“Oh.” He put his spoon down. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“You couldn’t know. It’s not the first time she’s done it is all. One of our regulars has a thyroid condition, and she keeps asking her if she’s Shelley Duvall.”
Why was she telling him this? To gain his sympathy and trust, that’s why. To meet Harriet. “She goes in and out of delusions,” she said and handed him the tickets. “Mostly in. So far.”
“Regal Theater,” he read. “Admit one adult.”
“For the soup,” she said.
“There’s no fee!” He tried giving them back.
“Please take them.”
“I couldn’t possibly.”
“You could. Please.”
“I’ll take one, then.”
“Take them both. Bring a friend.”
“Well, thank you. That’s very generous.”
“We’re showing Hidalgo and The Misfits tonight. So if you’re into horses . . .” She almost added, or if you have a friend who’s into horses. But from the way he blinked, she got the feeling that Harriet had entered his mind anyway.
“Actually, I’m very much into horses,” he said. He placed the tickets on the table near her hand. “But I have something on tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Would you like more soup?”
“Pardon? No.” She slid the tickets back. “Keep them. They’re good anytime.” It was possible that he might bring Harriet another night. It was just that tonight, when the connection between the features was one of Harriet’s favorite animals, the odds of him bringing her were far better. Why had Rose seen the horses in the field if the universe wasn’t conspiring on her behalf?
“You’ve worn me down,” he said and put the tickets in his shirt pocket.
He walked her as far as the front door. Even now she was scrambling for the lie that would get him to the theater tonight. All she came up with was, “My mother loves Burt Reynolds. She’ll be so happy to see you again.”
“I’ll work on my American accent,” he said.
She drove south to the Lake Shore. At Dufferin she went north and started crisscrossing uptown. She stuck to side streets, since in Harriet’s apartment she hadn’t heard much traffic. She kept the radio tuned to 680 News for the weather report every ten minutes.
Following a grid turned out to be impossible, however, with most of the streets one-way, and the thoroughfares dead-ended by concrete traffic barriers. Out of frustration she tried convincing herself that a clearly wrong redbrick low-rise was the building she’d seen from Harriet’s kitchen window. She stopped in front of the house next door and peered at the top floor. She was like a spurned lover. But this is love, she thought. How can I not love someone who reminds me of Ava? How can I not love someone I’ve been inside?
It was late by the time she returned to the theater. She was entering the kitchen when a delivery man from Tasty Thai appeared at the back door. “How much?” she asked.
Fiona got up from the table, where she and Lloyd had been playing cards. “I’ll pay,” she said, as if she and Rose didn’t draw money from the same source. She stepped in front of Rose and grabbed the toaster.
“Mom, that’s the toaster,” Rose said.
Fiona clutched it. She dug her fingers into the slots and said to the scared delivery man, “What’s the damage?”
Over supper Rose and Lloyd did their best to pass the incident off as an understandable mistake: toaster, purse—both white and a certain size, both next to each other on the counter. Fiona said, “Nice try.” Her closed expression signaled to Rose that lapses of this nature were more common than she let on. Rose grew apprehensive. She didn’t have time for her mother to take a downward turn.
She declined coffee and slipped into the alley for a smoke. The homeless guys, the brothers, weren’t there. She watched the clouds. They were like fast-forward movie clouds, rolling and blue gray. She stubbed out her cigarette on a telephone pole and went upstairs to consult the forecasts. Everybody was calling for clear conditions until tomorrow.
She opened her window. From here she could see how localized the clouds were. She wanted to phone Victor, but she had to stop acting so uncharacteristically interested in the forecast. Anyway, he’d be phoning her soon. She stood over her computer and read comments on the website: “Gable holds his binoculars upside down in The Misfits and Soldier of Fortune.” “Speaking of gaffes, has anyone noticed that the stallion in The Misfits is a mare?”
When Victor did call, Rose refrained from asking about the weather and asked about his day. He told her that he had steam-cleaned his carpets to kill the dust mites. Dust mites didn’t bite you, he said, they were after your dead skin. Under magnification a dust mite looked like an elephant.
There was an eerie green pooling between the clouds. “I think we’re in for some rain here,” she finally allowed herself to say.
“Yeah, you might see a pop-up.”
Her stomach cinched.
“Over here it’s all altocumulus.” He heard the thunderclap at her end. “There it is.”
“I should go see how they’re doing downstairs,” she said and crossed to the door and turned the lock.
“Guess whose birthday it is tomorrow? I’ll give you two hints.”
At the best of times she despised this game. “Just tell me.”
“He overcame dyslexia.”
Rose’s vision began to sharpen. “Victor, I’ve really got to go. Sorry. We’ll talk later.” She turned the phone off and grabbed a handful of Kleenex.
> The preliminaries sped by: the flecks, the fortresses, the nausea, the feeling of her skin cooling and tightening.
She was in an old, wide-bodied taxi, bumping down a section of chewed-up city street narrowed by construction cones the same orange as the setting sun reflected in office windows up ahead. She had on peach-colored capris and clutched a mauve shoulder bag. Her feet, as always, were cold.
The cab stopped for a red light. It was beginning to rain, and the driver turned on his wipers. “Cha-cha-cha,” he said, nodding toward a vacant storefront.
A man wearing a poncho and sombrero stood strumming a guitar. Beside him a Chihuahua in a miniature version of the same outfit danced on its hind legs.
“It’s female,” said the driver.
So it was. A pair of distended teats poked out from the bottom of the poncho.
“A transvestite dog,” said the driver.
The sight upset Harriet, and she looked away. The light changed, the cab lurched forward, and Rose was back in her body.
She had been gone all of two minutes. She went through the ritual of crying and wiping her bloody nose, and then she moved to the sofa and curled up.
Rain pummeled the roof. She thought of her mother saying that when you’re pregnant, all you see are babies. All Harriet saw were nursing dogs, first the hound from the redbrick apartment building, and now this cross-dresser. Why was it, Rose wondered, that whenever she entered Harriet, something odd or emotional or coincidental was about to happen? Maybe the episodes needed the prospect of a stimulating event before they could launch. Maybe the phone had to be about to ring, or Marsh had to be about to describe Rose as Rose listened in, or David had to be on his way over with Lesley not far behind. Maybe a man had to be putting a poncho and sombrero on his little dog.
She runs into Ava at the PetSmart on Eglinton Avenue. It seems that she, Rose, owns a cat. Ava is standing on a stepladder and counting litter boxes. “I’ve been working here for years,” she says.
“Nobody told me,” Rose sobs. She clings to her sister’s ankles.
“Answer the door,” Ava says.
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