“Of course. I promise.”
Tony threw on his clothes and hurried downstairs. Fifteen minutes later Susan arrived, looking haggard and red-eyed from weeping.
“Susan …” he began.
She went right by him, in a headlong rush for the elevator. “Not here,” she snapped over her shoulder.
The desk clerk was doing his best not to look like an eavesdropper.
When they got to his room Susan flung herself down on the bed and said to the ceiling, “Crack me something from the minibar. Cognac if there’s any.”
Tony found two Hennessys in the fridge. Susan sat up, took the glass he proffered.
“What happened?” said Tony.
“Bad fight with my husband.”
“Husband?”
Susan ignored that. “It was terrible. Eddy’s a very abusive guy.”
“Abusive? Don’t tell me he hit you.”
“Verbally abusive.” Susan paused. “Somebody he works with saw the two of us in that Italian restaurant. The schmuck said something to Eddy, likely something totally innocuous and innocent, but it set Eddy off. He gave me the third degree all night. Because I wouldn’t give him your name or explain who you are, he practically threw me out of the condo. I needed somewhere to go.”
“If he felt that way, he’s the one that should have gone.”
“Tell that to Eddy.”
There was a pause in which Tony thought a thought he would sooner have avoided thinking. “You said you were unattached.”
“What I said was that I wasn’t attached at the hip. I’m not attached in any way that matters. There hasn’t been any real feeling between Eddy and me for years. When it comes to me, all he has is a sense of ownership. ‘Nobody gets what’s Eddy’s’ is the way he thinks. That is, not until he decides to get rid of it. Which I guess is what he wants to do now. Well, I’m ready to go. I’ve had twenty-five years of his horseshit.”
Soon Tony joined her on the bed.
Susan insisted on going back to the condo right after breakfast. Tony wanted to accompany her, but she assured him that everything would be fine. She’d have the condo to herself because Eddy had a six o’clock flight that morning to Toronto. He was enrolled in a week-long course of some sort or other, something he wouldn’t be able to duck out of or postpone. Eddy was a chartered accountant and his firm insisted that he attend seminars that would keep him up-to-date on the government’s latest tax code changes.
Susan said she needed to get a move on, to clear her personal possessions out before he returned, to find someplace to live. It seemed to Tony that the prospect of ditching Eddy filled her with elation.
Tony helped Susan find new quarters in an apartment building that rented furnished executive suites by the week. She said that would give her some “breathing space” while she hired a lawyer and tracked down some more suitable, permanent accommodations. But after an initial burst of activity, neither of these things seemed to be pressing concerns for her. She said there was no need for them to sneak around any longer so most days they took long walks on the riverbank trails. One afternoon they went to a matinee in a multiplex in a suburban mall. A half an hour before the film finished, Susan took Tony’s hand, slid it under her light summer dress, and as she eased his fingers into her, whispered in his ear, “That’s what I like about you, Tonio. You’re such an old-world, sophisticated type. You never take liberties.”
When they weren’t together Tony couldn’t stop mentally doodling plans for a new life, a new future that might include Susan. Maybe he should move to Saskatoon so he could be closer to her. There was nothing stopping him from selling the property and buying a condo or renting an apartment here. Susan and he could spend winters in Mexico. She was crazy about Mexico; she’d likely leap at the chance.
But before any of that could happen he knew he would have to come clean about who and what he really was. The old-world gentleman façade couldn’t be maintained forever. It was a dumb prank that had got out of hand. If he explained it to Susan that way, she’d understand, see that his reasons for doing what he had done were essentially innocent. Just a case of an old trouper getting carried away. He had never had any intention of deceiving anyone, not long-term.
After days spent working up as self-deprecating and humorous a confession as he could devise, Tony decided that the bistro where Susan and he had met was the place to deliver it. Its romantic associations might help her receive his apology in the proper spirit. He made a date to meet her there for lunch.
Susan was already in the bistro, seated at the table where they had had their first encounter. Tony had specifically requested it when he made the reservation. He wore what he thought of as normal, honest clothes, corduroys and a commando sweater, a commitment to straight-shooting in the future. He kissed Susan, sat down, and ordered a gin martini; he needed bracing. Susan asked for a crème de cassis. As soon as their drinks arrived, Tony leaned across the table and touched Susan’s forearm, to bring her attention back to him, from the street outside where it had wandered.
“Susan,” he said, “I have something to tell you.” And he began. He had left the accent back at the hotel and he wondered what she made of his new voice, this wardrobe straight out of the L.L. Bean catalogue.
Tony had carefully rehearsed what he was going to say, but in no time he lost his way in the maze of the last eighteen months. He jumped from one thing to another without making the connections clear: his renunciation of acting, exile in Chernobyl, poor Betty, a ghost in a grey suit, the strain the endless winter had put on his nerves, the dying deer.
As confused as this leapfrogging monologue was, part of his mind remained clear, still, and focused on whether or not Susan was piecing together this patchy story. She seemed to be stitching it up, seemed to be grasping what he was telling her. She didn’t look angry. Or shocked. Or hurt.
He staggered to an anticlimactic end. “I never intended any harm by it. You see that, don’t you? What is it they say – sportscasters? No harm, no foul.” He gave her a weak smile and waited.
Susan glanced at the window and studied the passersby for a moment. Then she turned back to him and said, “Jesus, Tony, did you think I didn’t recognize you the second I spotted you? From that old show Aid? I used to make a point of watching it just to piss Eddy off. It drove him nuts. Bleeding-heart liberal crap, he used to say, and my taxes are paying for it. So when I came in here and saw you in that weird outfit, the first thing I thought was, Where are the cameras? I thought maybe I’d walked onto a location shoot. Location shoot, that’s what you call it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Tony, “location shoot.” His lips felt numb. He felt numb.
“But no cameras. And I notice that you’re reading that Bernanos book, and I ask myself, What’s that about? So I speak to you. And you answer in that accent – what was it supposed to be? From the Balkans or something?”
“Actually, Austrian … I think.”
“And then I wonder if maybe this guy thinks he’s so famous that he has to wear a disguise. To protect himself from the public. But you used your name. So I figured it might be some sort of male sexual fantasy. Like pretending you were the Marlborough cowboy or something when you went on the prowl for women.”
“Shit,” said Tony despairingly.
“And, hey, that was fine with me, Tonio. We had fun, didn’t we? We’re all adults here. And you’ve cleared the decks for me to tell you what I have to say. I appreciate your honesty and maturity. Truly.” She smiled brightly, confidently. “And now I guess it’s my turn to return the favour.”
“Your turn?”
“It’s just that Eddy and I have been talking,” said Susan. “In fact, he’s been phoning me every night. Whining. Apologizing. And I’ve been asking myself, Do you walk away from twenty-five years of marriage over an adventure? I’ve had them before and Eddy got past them. He’s willing to do it again. That says something, doesn’t it? And divorce is a big step at any age, let alone mine
and Eddy’s. A person has to consider.” Her tone became earnest and confiding. “What I think really pissed him off was that his co-worker saw us together. Eddy’s touchy when it comes to losing face. Take Mexico. He has a pretty good idea that I get up to things down there, but there are no embarrassing repercussions for him. So he doesn’t think about it. You come right down to it, he’s a sensible man.”
He was expected to draw an implication from that last judgment on her husband. Be sensible like him, Tonio.
Slowly, he got to his feet. “Yes, I see.” He left her there, stuck with the bill.
Tony set out from Saskatoon very early. Usually, he was a poster boy for defensive driving, but not that morning. He motored flat-out, pedal to the metal, 1960s rock on the sound system as loud as he could crank it, hand drumming the dashboard in time to the beat, head bobbing maniacally, eyes wildly flicking from side to side as if he expected to be blindsided any moment. None of it worked, none of it drowned out the monotonous whisper in his ear, the thought cycling and recycling in his brain, which relentlessly whined one question. Are you real? Are you real, Tony?
Shortly before ten o’clock he pulled up to the cottage, lurched out of the car to find a message taped to the window of his back door: Clean up your goddamn mess. Other people live here or haven’t you noticed.
It was unsigned, but Tony knew that it had to come from his next-door neighbour, Fred Martin. Betty had had trouble with him when she was renovating the cottage: protests about the noise, about the building materials that a careless contractor had once let overflow over the property line and onto Martin’s yard; a never-ending series of complaints that accelerated to threats of legal action.
Tony had no idea what might have set the guy off now and he didn’t intend to investigate. Given his own sour mood, things would only escalate if he got sucked into listening to Martin piss and moan about some minor problem that anybody in his right mind wouldn’t give a second thought to.
He took his suitcase into the house and left it sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. The recent spell of warm weather had turned the air in the cottage unpleasantly stuffy. Tony cracked the window above the kitchen sink, filled the kettle, and put it on the stove to boil water for a cup of instant coffee. While he waited, he wandered into the front room to take a look at the lake. The ice was almost gone. How many days had he been away? Ten, maybe. But it felt like a lifetime. And all the while the sun had been hard at work, dissolving all memory of winter. The kettle whistled for his attention.
In the kitchen, he walked into a wall of stench so thick somebody could be excused for thinking it was solid. It was as if Death Himself had taken a shit in there. The sickening smell was invading the cottage through the window he had just opened. Tony rushed over, slammed it shut.
Standing there he identified the source of the disgusting odour.
He rang up Bits Bodnarski. Furious, he yelled, “Tony Japp here. That deer is still laying out in my yard. Stinking to high heaven. Why the fuck didn’t you haul it to the dump!”
“I come by,” said Bits. “Nobody was there.”
“I thought we had an understanding.”
“My understanding is cash on the barrelhead. I don’t see cash upfront, I don’t do the job. I been stiffed often enough by you summer people. All of a sudden you’ve packed up and gone. Money owing.”
“Well, come and do it now,” said Tony. “I’ll have a cheque for you.”
“That carcass will be falling apart by now. I try and load it in my half-ton, it’ll fall apart. Besides, I’m not having my truck reeking to high heaven for the rest of the summer. I ain’t breathing that every day. That deer’ll have to go in the ground, but I ain’t burying it. I got a buddy who’s got a Bobcat, maybe he might do it. I know his number if you want to try him.”
Tony took the number. He was in luck. Bits’s friend said he had just finished a trenching job. He could come by some time that afternoon.
The man with the Bobcat showed up a little after lunch and went to work digging a pit for the deer. Tony stood at the kitchen window watching the machine roar and buck and chew earth like a thing possessed. Its frenzy, its urgency swept into him.
Just as the operator began to scrape the remains of the deer into the hole, Tony burst out of the house, his arms full of clothes, yelling frantically at the operator to stop. The man halted, stared in disbelief as Tony flung everything he had bought in Saskatoon down onto the bloated, maggot-seething deer: the Italian shoes, the top coat, the homburg, the suit, the shirts, even the cufflinks. All that committed to the grave, he turned and went back into the cottage.
Tony was lucky, he got through to his agent without delay. In fact, Probert answered the phone himself. Tony didn’t beat around the bush; he said he was ready to go back to work.
“Jesus, Tony,” Probert said, “I’d hate for you to go to all the trouble and expense of moving back to Toronto without some firm offers on the table.” Tony hadn’t heard that cautious, guarded tone from Probert before. Was that reluctance?
“Then get me some firm offers.”
“Easier said than done. For one thing, when it comes to movies it’s all blockbusters now. The Americans aren’t coming up here to shoot those small indie films so much anymore. Which was your bread and butter. And theatre – half of next season is musicals.”
“Okay, I know at sixty it won’t be easy. But don’t forget, I’ve got a record in television. And I’m the right age for certain bit parts. A judge. A coroner. Somebody’s father. A chief of police. Five or six lines, I don’t care. I’ve always been a character actor. So now maybe the characters I have to play are smaller than they used to be. I can accept that.”
“Tony, Tony …”
“Listen to me,” said Tony, voice teetering. “The layoff has been good for me. I’m rejuvenated. I feel I’m at the top of my game. I know I’m at the top of my game. The juices are flowing, Probert. Haven’t I always been able to play anything? You know it. Everybody knows it. It’s my calling card. My door opener. I’ve proved it time and time again. Let me repeat. I can do it. You have to believe in me, Probert. I’m the man who can play anything.”
The roar of the Bobcat going past his window, exiting the scene, made it impossible for him to hear Probert’s response.
“Anything,” he reiterated in a whisper, voice bled white of conviction. “Believe me. Tony’s the man who can play anything.”
Counsellor Sally Brings Me to the Tunnel
NEVER ONCE, NOT ONCE, did Ma ever talk about her brother, Ted, without sticking a little yellow Post-it note to her anecdote, without adding, “That man is a holy terror.” And that bewildered the living beejeebers out of me when I was a little kid because what could I make of that? Holy terror? How could terror be holy? And Uncle Teddy? Was he a terror? Not in my books. Back when I was six, seven, eight, nine years old, I thought he was more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Live and learn.
My shiny new therapist, Counsellor Sally, is very big on living and learning. According to her, my present behaviour is a response to what happened to me in my childhood. Sorry, conditioned responses. And since your perceptions of things when you are a child are frequently unreliable, I must learn to get past all that.
I have been ordered to see Counsellor Sally because I got caught telling certain little white lies to my high school students. A busybody father who looked into my claim to have been an Associated Press war photographer in Vietnam reported this harmless fib of mine to Principal Drogan after his son brought the news home to his war-crazy dad that his history teacher, Mr. Molson, had been in the midst of the fray during the Battle of Hue. It seems that the guy who squealed on me is one of those military history buffs, a nut who had recently bought some encyclopedic book on the subject of AP photographers in Vietnam. Finding no reference there to yours truly, he undertook further research on the Internet, which yielded no record of a Bert Molson snapping carnage in Southeast Asia. So in a fit of outrage
he hightailed it to Mr. Drogan with this news, and because Drogan hates my guts he proceeded to accuse me of being a pathological liar and immediately initiated proceedings to have me arm-twisted into retirement. No, let me get the sequence correct. It was only after Drogan found out that I had once told the kids in my class that in his youth their principal had been lead singer in a punk rock band called Pitchforking Dead Babies that steps to have me unceremoniously ushered out the door commenced.
But a compromise has been worked out between the Teachers’ Federation and the administration, one of the conditions of which is that I have to take a six-month medical leave of absence and undergo psychological treatment, and then, well, it seems, we’ll see.
Now Counsellor Sally, who has oodles of compassion but not much imagination, refuses to accept my explanation that I told a few untruths simply to make history live for my students. She believes my claims to having had combat experience have something to do with Uncle Ted, who, she points out, was a veteran of the Second World War. Haven’t I mentioned that several times? And that my refusal to contemplate retirement is rooted in my abandonment issues.
Yadda, yadda. Everything circles back to how my father walking out on Ma and me when I was an infant naturally has had repercussions on my psychological health. But how can you feel abandoned by someone you never knew? That makes no sense. And second, I don’t blame my never-laid-eyes-on Pops for making tracks, given that living with Ma would have meant a lifetime shackled to her family, that whole tribe of feckless screwballs. Because Ma would never have dreamed of abandoning them, even if my father had happened to invite us to tag along with him when he headed for the hills. You can take that to the bank.
Counsellor Sally actually said, “Have you never considered that your stubborn attempt to hang on to your teaching job might be related to feeling abandoned, all alone in the world now that most of your family is dead?”
“Not really. Not so much,” I told her. “Ma’s still kicking.”
Daddy Lenin and Other Stories Page 16