by John Metcalf
Peter cradled the globe of cognac.
Snapshots of Jeremy.
Half-frightened laughter into the sky as the chains of the swing groaned in the park. Magic Markers. Counting his popsicle-stick collection. Fear of spiderwebs. Tiny feet swinging under the kitchen table, the flannelette pyjamas, the pyjamas with elephants. Snapshots already fading, fading like the yellowed snapshots found in albums gathering dust in a thousand junk shops, the last unwanted effects of auctioned families.
Clinging to his refrigerator door were Jeremy’s magnetic letters. He had saved them from that other apartment.
Reliques.
He used them to hold notes to himself, shopping lists, bills. Sometimes late at night, taking out another beer, he used the letters to compose messages.
Four of them presently held a sheet of paper from CompuMate which bore five names. The evening at Alan’s had ended like so many evenings, vague memories the next day of snow, a taxi, swallowing down four aspirins with milk from the carton against the morning. He had been surprised and irritated with Alan when the list arrived.
He had ignored it for several days. The very idea was ludicrous. He knew himself to be incapable of phoning strange women.
Marjorie Kirkland
Stella Bluth
Nadja Chayefski
Elspeth McLeod
Anna Stevens
As the days had gone by he found the names wandering his mind. He wondered if Marjorie was once Margery; what nationality Bluth might be; if Nadja’s hair was of raven lustre; if Elspeth were elfin and wandered lonely as a cloud, mist, rock, and heather.
But even more vividly he had imagined the conversations, the receiver glistening with sweat, silences, fingers clenched, armpits wet. That, most likely that, or fevered Woody Allen performances, fumbling blather ending with his accidentally garrotting himself with the telephone cord.
How, he had wondered, did one open? And, possibly worse, how did one close? And what could conceivably come between?
Marjorie Kirkland.
Marjorie Kirkland had been quite understanding. Marjorie it turned out, had been married for two years. She had reserved her asperity for CompuMate which, despite several registered letters, had not removed her name from the active list.
Stella Bluth.
Six generous cognacs followed by three Molson Export to prevent dehydration, he had phoned Stella Bluth. After he had diffidently presented his credentials, Stella Bluth had assumed command. It was best, she always found, for each to describe each other to the other and then, if they liked the sound of each other, he could call her again.
It’s a good thing you can’t see over the phone.
Why?
Because.
Because what?
just because.
Silence.
Well, if you must know, my hair’s all wet and I’m not completely dressed.
Stella Bluth was sobering; it took Peter only a few moments to form the impression that she was possibly unhinged. He would have liked to close the conversation at its start but was incapable of replacing the receiver.
She frankly held out little hope; she was a Cancer and he was an Aries and she was sure he knew what that meant.
Upon command, he described himself. He was thirty-five and six feet tall. He was divorced. He was of medium build. His hair was brownish. He worked as an appraiser for a firm of auctioneers. Appraiser meant he had to estimate the value of antiques and objets d’art. No, it wasn’t a French company. He was interested in music and animals.
Are you sure you’re not coloured?
Quite.
You sound like you’re coloured. Because I’m Catholic.
Stella was twenty-seven years old. Why lie about it? It was nothing to be ashamed of. She wasn’t married and she hadn’t been. She wasn’t fat and she wasn’t thin. They said she had a good figure. Her hair was brunette. She was at Alcan and did seventy-three a minute. She wasn’t in the pool; she usually worked personally for Mr. Edwards. Who was quite nice though she didn’t want him to get the wrong impression and sometimes he took her to the Golden Hinde in the Queen Elizabeth where they gave you triple martinis. Did he know the Golden Hinde? But she was only a social drinker. That and if she went to a party. She liked hockey and animals.
In the silence, Peter had heard the magnified sound of his breathing.
And she was interested in the environment.
The advent of the two middle-aged ladies caused an eddy in the flow of restaurant movement as they were seated, the table pulled out, lifted back, chairs settled. They spoke loudly in American voices; one asked Ilse in English if she spoke English. They were a parody of affluent American middle-aged womanhood; white and rinsed hair tended, fingers bedizened with diamond rings. They were explaining to Ilse that they were on a Winter Tour; that the other girls were eating in the hotel; but they had read about Chez Jean-Guy in Gourmet magazine. And what did the menu mean?
Rejecting with increasing amazement kidney, cod, sausage blood and sausage garlic, quail and rabbit, they settled on poached salmon.
Peter signalled for his bill.
Three or four people were standing near the door waiting for a table.
Two full weeks had passed before curiosity and imaginings had nudged him into calling Nadja Chayefski. She had seemed abrupt and said she couldn’t talk to him but had asked for his address.
A few days later in the mail he received an envelope from Sun Life.
It contained a poem on Sun Life letterhead.
Hey You!
I love you—please, it’s not “dirty”!
I love trees and grass and plants and anything that lives.
Do you believe me?
It’s not an intended, on-purpose thing,
it’s just here, in me,
and I want you to know it.
Please, it’s not “dirty.”
Quite likely you won’t need it
or want it.
But that’s O.K.
I just wanted you to know.
“The flavour’s very different from canned,” said one of the American ladies.
Peter smiled as he scanned his bill.
One of the ladies clattered her fork on the plate.
“Your joints swell up,” she said, looking at the back of her hand.
They were silent.
“One of the girls was taken sick last night,” said the other, the one who had spoken first, the one who was wearing tinted spectacles.
Peter regarded her.
“Carrie told me. The Director had a doctor come,” she went on.
She paused.
“It was in the middle of the night.”
They were silent again.
The other said suddenly, “It’s all different since Herb’s gone.”
* * *
Peter had fortified himself for the encounter by drinking a severe vodka during his bath and another while dressing. He had then re-cleaned his teeth with Close-up: Super-Whitening Toothpaste and Mouthwash in One. Elspeth Mcleod lived in a recent apartment building called the Michelangelo, which boasted a commissionaire and live foliage in the foyer. On the fence surrounding the hole next door, a large sign proclaimed the imminent construction of the El Greco.
The yellow light tacked its way up the indicator panel above which was a plaque that said Otis Elevator. He imagined Otis as the given name of the company’s owner, a fat, cigar-smoking, Midwestern American; rotund Otis; Rotarian; orotund.
He realized that he was not entirely sober.
“Peter Thornton!” she said, opening wide the door.
His impression was of colour. Her hair was blond, her dress white, but her face was tanned a stark and startling bronze. She ushered him into a white, Danish living room, angles, glass tables, teak wall
unit, striped grey couch.
“First things first,” she said. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Well, whatever . . .”
“I’ve made some martinis if you’d . . .”
She went away. In the brighter light of the living room the tan was even more unlikely. It looked as if she’d been enthusiastically made-up for some theatricals; the Chief’s Daughter who falls in love with the Captured White Scout. Obviously, she’d been a little naughty on her CompuSheet. She was, he guessed, about forty. A year or two older possibly. Attractive in a carefully arranged kind of way. On the glass table in front of the couch lay a gigantic soapstone seal with a bulbous Eskimo trying to do something to it. He stared. Kitchen sounds, glasses, the slam of the fridge door. He wondered what he was doing here.
“Well,” she said, raising her glass, “what’s the new word that they’re trying to make the Canadian word for ‘Cheers!?’”
“Ookpic?” said Peter.
“Or ‘Inuit’ or something?” she said. “Is that how you say it?”
“Well,” said Peter, “cheers!”
The martini stopped his breath and hit his empty stomach like a well-aimed brick.
“So,” she said, nodding her head and smiling, “you’re Peter Thornton.”
He smiled.
With her every movement the massive silver charm-bracelet jingled.
“Your tan . . .”
“Florida. I’ve just come back. Three glorious weeks in the sun.”
“So you missed the big storm,” he said. “An eleven-inch fall, I think they said.”
They made faces.
“Are you starving?”
“No, no, not at all.”
“Because if you don’t mind I’ll start dinner now and it’ll be ready in about an hour, if you’ll excuse me.”
The skirt was one of those skirts with lots of pleats in it. Fine legs. Her shoes were white too. He wondered if her legs, under the brownness of the stockings, were as intensely brown as her face and wrists.
He wandered over and looked at the things in the compartments of the wall unit. A stereo set. A photograph of a girl. A photograph of a boy. A few recent bestsellers held upright by the polished halves of a geode—Yoga, Possession, Diet, Herbal Secrets, Yogurt. Some miniature bottles of liquor and a clustering of tiny animals in pink glass. The bowl caught his professional eye. Flower decoration, vigorous in the Kakiemon style. Opaque glaze. It felt right. He checked the hunting-horn mark. The Chantilly factory before 1750. He wondered what it was doing there, where it had come from, if she knew what it was. It contained a squashy peach.
He followed the sounds to the kitchen.
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Would you like another?” she said, setting down her glass. “This one’s cook’s privilege.”
The kitchen gleamed. Appliances. The table was littered with chrome bar implements; salt and pepper were contained in two large wooden blocks, each four inches square. He hefted one.
“Teak,” she said, as she filled his glass.
“There’s really nothing to do,” she continued. “I bought a gorgeous cut of salmon.”
As Peter watched, she enclosed the fish in two layers of aluminum foil, pinching and securing the seams. She then opened the dishwasher, placed the foil package on the upper rack, slammed and locked the door, and switched it on.
Peter stared.
She looked up and caught something of his expression.
“I calculate by weight, you see,” she said.
“By weight,” repeated Peter.
“That’ll need two full cycles,” she said.
Peter nodded.
“Anything heavier,” she said, “and I’d add two Rinse Holds.”
“Ah,” said Peter.
He carried the pitcher of martinis and a chrome ice-bucket thing and she brought the glasses, closing the kitchen door behind them to muffle the throb of the dishwasher. She put on some kind of Latin-Americany music and joined him on the grey-striped couch.
“Well,” she said, “you must tell me all about appraising. What does an antique appraiser do?”
“Well,” said Peter, “furniture’s the bread-and-butter side of . . .”
“That’s a dip I make myself,” she said, lifting a white limp leather handbag from the floor by the end of the couch and rummaging.
“But porcelain and silver,” said Peter, “are my . . .”
‘’And I’m sorry about the chips—I was rushed and picked up those awful ones that taste of vinegar by mistake—but the dip’s very good. It’s very easy in a blender—sour cream and Danish Blue, chives, and a teaspoon of lemon juice.”
She found cigarettes at the bottom of the bag.
“Delicious,” said Peter. “Absolutely delicious.”
And listened to himself crunching.
“Tell me,” she said, snapping and snapping the mechanism of the slim gold lighter, “we didn’t seem to talk about this, did we? Or did we? I was rather flustered—well, you know, and my memory’s awful but did you say you weren’t married? My memory! Sometimes I can’t even seem . . .”
“No,” said Peter, leaning across and lighting her cigarette with a match. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re lucky,” she said.
He smiled and then sipped.
“Peter,” she said, “you listen to me. You pay attention. You’re a very lucky man.”
“I don’t know if I’d agree with that,” he said with a smile.
She turned towards him.
“And just how,” she said, “did an attractive man like you escape so long?”
“I’m divorced,” he said.
“Aha!” she said.
“What about you?”
“I will be soon,” she said. “Divorced. It’s on the rolls for March.”
He nodded.
“And it can’t be soon enough,” she said. “Let me tell you.”
“It’s a strange business,” he said.
She filled her glass, holding the pitcher with both hands.
“Peter,” she said. “Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to phone my friend.”
“Your friend?”
“We girls have to stick together,” she said. “Right? So I’ll tell her not to come at nine. Because you’re not ughy and—you know what they say?”
“What?”
“Three’s a crowd.”
She got up and smoothed her dress, straightening pleats with her fingertips, running them down the pleats at her thigh.
“And I don’t think you’re likely to molest me,” she said. She smiled down at him. “Are you?”
She started from the room.
“You have some more dip,” she called back.
He was beginning to feel satisfactorily sloshed. He leaned back on the uncomfortable Danish couch and looked at his watch. He felt relaxed and the pitcher of martinis was still half-full. He sucked his olive. He then initiated some exploratory dental work with the cocktail-stick thing.
He had phoned Elspeth McLeod a week earlier on his return from dinner at Chez Jean-Guy. When he had entered his apartment, he had taken off his rubbers and put them on the sheet of newspaper inside the front door. The paper was scratchy with grit and sand; he had been meaning to change it for weeks.
He had tried to read but the conversation of the American ladies had echoed in his mind. Doors slammed. The TV in the next apartment was switched off. In the deepening silence, the refrigerator started and stopped.
Magnetic letters on the fridge door still held his CompuSheet. As he had stood over the toilet, he had seen into the empty room he maintained for Jeremy. Light from the bathroom glinted on the rims and spokes of the two-wheeler propped against the bedroom wall, last summer’s birthday prese
nt. The bicycle had come in a large cardboard carton and he had skinned his knuckles working with an unaccustomed wrench to attach handlebars and pedals. Jeremy had been frightened of the bicycle and had hysterically resisted Peter’s efforts, but had loved the carton, playing with it every day until it was forgotten overnight on the balcony and the rain rendered it limp and soggy.
Peter struggled to sit upright on the sloping couch. He dropped the olive into the crystal ashtray.
The toilet flushed and he heard water running.
The bicycle and the carton seemed as if they ought to be symbolic of something but of what, exactly, he was unable to grasp.
“Hello, again!” she said.
“I’ve been admiring your bowl,” he said.
“Bowl? Oh. That belonged to my Drex. Well, he isn’t but he will be. I’ve got a red ring around it.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” she said, “it’s just my way, the way I am. It’s what my girlfriend calls hers. She’s a riot. My Drex did this, my Drex did that, she says. It stands for Dreadful Ex.”
“What,” said Peter, “have you got a red ring around?”
“March 17th,” she said. “I was looking at it when I was on the phone. On the calendar,” she added, in answer to his puzzled look. “Of course, I should have done it years ago. Everyone says so. So in a way I blame myself.”
She fumbled at the lighter again.
She gestured encompassing the living room.
“We used to live in the Town of Mount Royal. Do you know the Town? We lived in a very big house in the most expensive part, the most exclusive part. And we had three cars.”
She eased off her shoes and let them fall on the carpet.
“Good old TMR!” she said.
She raised her glass.
“And what else,” she said, “what else did we have?”
She started to tally.
“A large garden. And an Italian gardener who came twice a week. And a swimming pool. Fieldstone fireplaces. A woman came four times a week to clean and . . .”
“Sounds very pleasant,” said Peter.
“Oh, yes. Very pleasant. Very, very pleasant. I can assure you it was certainly very pleasant.”