I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  He stopped. His eyes looked upward. Then he repeated the words just as fast. And stopped in the same place. The woman said something to him. The boy said quickly, “to do my duty to God to the Queen help other people and keep the Cub Scout law.”

  He laughed. And pushed himself back onto the seat, his feet dangling.

  She stood up and, from a small travelling bag in the rack above her, took out a book, a pencil, and some pieces of paper. And gave them to the boy.

  She was tall, on the thin side. She had blond, short hair close to her face and two wisps curled upwards beneath her ears. She wore a tight green sweater and a Scotch plaid skirt with a large safety pin on its side. She sat down and went back to her book. As she read her mouth twisted into a frown.

  I saw that the paperback was Doris Lessing’s The Story of a Non-Marrying Man.

  She caught me staring. She smiled. And her face changed. She looked beautiful.

  “Do you like the book?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I met Doris Lessing,” I said. “She wanted us to have her house one Christmas and New Year because she was going to be away in Scotland. Who else do you like?”

  “Graham Greene,” she said.

  “Have you read Henry Green?”

  “No. What has he written?”

  “Living. Loving. Caught. Back. Concluding. I hadn’t heard of him either until I went to England.”

  “Do you live there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was in London yesterday.”

  “How was London?” And she smiled again. Her face looked radiant.

  “It was raining when I left,” I said. “What’s his name?”

  “Justin,” she said.

  The next thing I knew I left my seat and came over and sat beside her. Justin’s large brown eyes stared at me.

  “Do you want to see a trick?”

  I took his pencil and held it in the middle by my thumb and first finger, and slowly began to move my hand up and down. The pencil appeared to be bending.

  “It’s in here,” Justin said. And opened his book, turned a few pages, and there it was illustrated.

  “He’s advanced for his age,” she said.

  “You know any other tricks?” Justin asked.

  I stared into space. Then I put my two hands together, fingers apart. I slid the middle finger between the opposite fingers, turned one hand right over, and wiggled the two middle fingers, that stuck out, on opposite sides.

  She was laughing.

  Justin said, “What do you call that?”

  “Milking the cow,” I said. “Why don’t you go over to my seat and see if you can see any animals from the window. I’ll give you a cent for every cow that you see, two cents for every horse, twenty-five cents for every goat. And a dollar if you see an elephant or a lion.”

  “Boy,” he said. And took his pencil and papers and went eagerly to the window on the other side.

  I looked at the large safety pin on her tartan skirt.

  “I think,” she said, “it’s the weight of the pin that keeps it down. I don’t usually talk to people on a train. Not for long. But you have an interesting face. What do you do?”

  I said I was a writer.

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  I told her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have not heard of you.”

  “No reason why you should,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Grace.”

  “What do you do?”

  “That’s my trouble,” she said. “I don’t do anything well.”

  This time I smiled. “The only other woman who said that to me turned out to have a very strong character.”

  “Oh, I’m a bitch,” she said. “I know it. I’m selfish. I’m difficult to live with. I lived for a year in England. I used to knock around with the jet set in Knightsbridge. They were a bunch of layabouts just preening themselves. I worked in Selfridge’s.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine,” she said. “I’ll soon be thirty. Are you married?”

  I said I was.

  “Is your wife in England?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m getting a divorce,” she said.

  We were coming towards Ottawa. I called to Justin: “How many animals did you see?”

  He came over, adding up pencil marks. “Ten cows,” he said slowly. “And six horses.”

  I gave him a dollar.

  “Wow,” he said to his mother. “I’ve now got a dollar and a quarter.”

  He carefully folded the dollar and put it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then went back to the window on the opposite side.

  “Besides England,” she said, “I’ve been to South and Central America.”

  “I’ve only been to England and Canada,” I said. “Wasn’t it a lucky accident for us to meet?”

  “I don’t think these things are accidents,” she said. “I think we were intended to meet. We have good vibrations,” she said quietly.

  “I’m coming here to give a reading—on Tuesday night,” I said. “I’ll be staying with my mother while in Ottawa. Let’s meet tomorrow.”

  “All right.”

  “How about in the morning? In the lobby of the Château Laurier. Ten o’clock. Is that too early?”

  “I’ll be there,” she said. “I’m here for the weekend to see my parents. It’s a kind of duty. They live just out of Ottawa. The last time I saw them was in August.”

  She took a piece of Justin’s paper and, in pencil, wrote her parents’ phone number, then her address and phone number in Toronto.

  We were coming towards the new Union Station. I took her case. We got out of the train and walked into the clean, all-glass station. It was quite empty.

  “Anyone meeting you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll have to phone my father at the office. He’ll come and get me.”

  “I’ll take a taxi outside. Will you be all right?”

  “Yes,” she said and smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The taxi went down Rideau to Cobourg and stopped by the small park with the gazebo, the poplars, the maples, and the yellow dead leaves on the grass.

  When my mother opened the apartment door I kissed her on the cheek.

  “I expected you yesterday,” she said. “You look tired. Why didn’t you phone when you got to Montreal?”

  “The plane was late,” I said. “There were no trains. I had to spend the night in a hotel.”

  “Which one?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard of it,” I said. “The big ones were full. The room I was in had no heating. I was so cold I couldn’t sleep. I put on a heavy sweater, socks, and my coat on the bed, and I was still cold.”

  “I have something that will warm you up,” she said.

  And brought out a third-full bottle of brandy from her fridge. She keeps everything she can in the fridge. And what she can’t she pushes in the cupboards. There were so many tins, jars, bottles, and plastic bags filled with food—it was like a siege.

  She poured herself a bit of brandy.

  “To life,” she said.

  The brandy was cold.

  “It will soon warm you up,” she said. “Watch.”

  “I’m not cold now.”

  “How is everyone?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you later. How are you?”

  “I’ve got high blood pressure, I’ve got to take pills every day. But why do we have to talk about unpleasant things?”

  Above her head, on the wall, was a photograph of how I looked when I was twenty.

  I brought out presents from my bags—English honey, English marmalade, packs of tea—and gave them to her.

  “You shouldn’t have bothered,�
� she said. “Come and sit down and have something to eat.”

  “How is Esther?”

  “Fine. She rings me every morning at eight to see if I’m still alive. There was an old lady here. She was dead four days before they found her. Since then Esther rings in the morning, after lunch, and at night. Anyway, I’ve got good neighbours. Mr. and Mrs. Budnoff—they are on one side—and someone from the Gatineau on the other. I don’t know him. In front there’s Mrs. Nadolny. We all wear the same suits.”

  It was only then I realized that she was talking about the cemetery on Metcalfe Road.

  She returned from the kitchen with a large banana. “I’ve bought some bananas for you,” she said. “If you have two or three a week, it’s good for the heart and protects you from high blood pressure.”

  That night I couldn’t sleep—and my mother’s apartment was warm. Perhaps it was jet lag. But I kept looking in the dark, at the electric digits telling the time in the bedside radio . . . watching the minutes, the hours, change . . . and thinking of Grace.

  Next morning I was in the lobby of the Château Laurier ten minutes early. She didn’t come through the doors until twenty past ten.

  “What an early hour.” She was out of breath. “My mother drove in.”

  “I nearly gave you up.”

  “I left word at home in case you telephoned.”

  She had on the same clothes as yesterday but wore, on top, a hand-knitted woollen jacket. She looked cold.

  “Let’s go,” I said, “and have some good hot coffee.”

  We crossed the War Memorial (I saw them putting this up, I told her) and walked down to the Lord Elgin and into Murray’s. We sat at a table by a window and had coffee. Outside it looked cold, blustery, deserted.

  “When I was seventeen,” I said, “I saw the Lord Elgin being built. I worked in a government building across the road. The Department of National Defence. It’s not there any more.”

  “I didn’t come to Ottawa until I was five,” she said. “I don’t like the place. It depresses me. I went around with the cocktail crowd at Rockcliffe. They liked me because I was pretty. I became a revolutionary at university. I met my husband there. He was a Che Guevara character. He wore a black beret and a black leather jacket. I was gun-running in South America. Some of my friends who were caught were tortured.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “I work in a lawyer’s office and go to school at night to learn Greek.” She smiled. “I’m learning Greek because of my Greek workman. But it’s so difficult. I’m seriously thinking of marrying him.”

  She must have seen an expression in my face for she quickly said, “He’s not a workman. He’s an architect.”

  As if that made any difference.

  I lit an Old Port cigarillo, drank some coffee, and remained silent.

  “Will you come back to live in Canada?”

  “I hope to—in the Spring,” I said. “I have to go back to England and sort things out.”

  “You don’t talk about your wife.”

  What could I say. “She’s pretty,” I said.

  “Is she English?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the first Canadian I have liked,” she said. “All the others have been Europeans. You must meet my friends in Toronto. George and Isabel. They’ve been very good to me. George was my lover for a while.”

  “While he was still with Isabel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lucky George,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Lucky George.”

  “Do you like sex?”

  “I like the power it gives me over a man,” she said.

  We came out of Murray’s, arm in arm, and went across to the National Gallery. It was enclosed in scaffolding. All the rooms were closed except for a small Matisse exhibition of drawings by the stairs. The best paintings were the picture postcards on sale downstairs. I got her a Francis Bacon Pope. She didn’t like it. She preferred Lawren Harris’s A Side Street, of old houses in winter.

  From there we walked up to the mail.

  She was shivering.

  “I didn’t bring enough warm clothes. I don’t like the cold. I have bad circulation.”

  She saw Fisher’s. She wanted a Scout cap for Justin and she was told she could get it there.

  I remembered Fisher’s. When I started university I bought a black winter coat from them. But they were on the other side of the street. I’m sure they were.

  After she paid I asked the young man who served her. “Wasn’t Fisher’s on the other side?”

  “That’s the old store,” he said, “before my time.”

  We came out.

  “Hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where shall we go?”

  “You choose.”

  “Let’s go to Albert Street,” I said. “There used to be a couple of Chinese restaurants.”

  We went into the first one. We were the only customers. We had soup to warm us up. Then sweet and sour.

  “You’re under-nourished,” I told her.

  “I don’t like eating by myself,” she said. “I’ve been living an isolated life these last few years in Toronto.”

  Halfway through the tea and cookies I leaned over the table and kissed her.

  “That’s the second time I’ve been kissed this visit,” she said. “My father had some people in last night for a drink. And this friend of my father’s said, ‘“Are you Grace? How you’ve grown.’” “And kissed me.”

  “Can you come to Montreal next weekend?”

  “I’ll see if I can. I have a friend in Montreal. I could come and stay with her. But I’ve got to think of the money.”

  By the time we came out of the Chinese restaurant it was twenty past four. The light was fading and it was colder. We walked along the empty street towards a bus stop. The wind lifted loose papers about.

  “Do you like Stephane Grappelli,” she said, “and Django Reinhardt?”

  “Yes. I have their record,” I said. I didn’t say it was a present from our eldest daughter for our twentieth wedding anniversary. “Le Jazz Hot.”

  “They’ve made a lot of records,” she said. “Do you like Alan Stivell?”

  “The Celtic Harp. Yes, I have the record.” Again I didn’t say it belonged to our youngest daughter.

  We walked about twenty yards along Queen Street.

  “I can take a bus from here,” she said.

  I put my hand in my raincoat pocket and saw that my mother had put in a bus ticket.

  “Here,” I said.

  “You are prepared for anything.”

  “When will I see you again?”

  “Tomorrow, I have to be with the family. And I’m going away early on Monday morning—”

  “I’ll ring you sometime tomorrow,” I said.

  She was shivering. I put both arms inside her woollen jacket and drew her closer. We kissed.

  “What would people in Ottawa say if they saw you behaving this way in the street?”

  “I couldn’t care less. Are you still cold?”

  “Not now,” she said. “I’ll see if I can arrange things for Montreal.”

  Then the bus came. We kissed, awkwardly, goodbye. But I was singing as I walked back to my mother’s place.

  Next morning, just after breakfast, I phoned her.

  “I was going to ring you tonight,” she said quietly.

  “Can you come to Montreal?”

  “I can’t talk freely,” she said, “the telephone is where my parents can hear every word.”

  “I’m the same way,” I said. “I have taken the phone into the bedroom—but I have to sit on the floor to talk.”

  “I won’t be coming to Montreal,” she said.

  “In that case I can fly to England
from Toronto,” I said. “I’ll come to Toronto—”

  “But I’m working during the day and going to school at night. I don’t think you’re thinking clearly. You are living a very isolated life while you are over here. I told you that I’m considering getting married again—”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Ring me before you fly,” she said. “And I’ll write to you in England. And when you come back I’ll see you.”

  Later, I thought, how silly. But for two days I felt excited and happy. As though I was experiencing something I thought I had lost.

  My mother finished another long telephone conversation. “That was Mr. Laroque,” she said. “He does memorial stones. He phones me every few months and asks: Anyone sick—anyone dying? Everybody here is trying to make a living. Have something to warm you up. The lecture isn’t until tonight and you’re already nervous.”

  She brought a bottle of Bristol Cream from the fridge and gave me a glass full.

  The reading went all right. Though at the start I was blinded by the lights and my mouth and lips became dry.

  When it was over around twenty people—mostly students—came down from their seats and asked me to sign copies of my books.

  As I was getting near the end I noticed a plump middle-aged woman, in a brown cloth coat, with glasses and grey hair, standing about ten feet away, and staring. A grey-haired man was beside her. The woman’s lips were pressed tight. She didn’t move, just stared. Then she said:

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  I thought—I have never seen this woman before.

  She said a name. It didn’t bring back anything.

  I felt awkward. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Behind her was a small thin woman. The first thing I noticed was her eyes—large, dark eyes set in a white face. Then how smartly she dressed. She had on a new camel-haired coat with black leather boots. And there was a nervous vitality about her. Although her shape belonged to that of a young girl, she was clearly in her late twenties or early thirties. She had high cheekbones, a wide mouth, very good teeth. And dark red hair cut close to her head.

  As soon as the grey-haired woman and her husband walked away, the small woman with the large eyes came up and said, “I’m Faigel Shore. I enjoyed this evening very much.”