“Well, I’m not really sure yet.”
“You’ve had some time to think about it.”
Ronnie paused for a moment, looked at him thoughtfully, her expression betraying little. She noticed that Charlie had managed to get mustard on his shirt. Again. “You’ve got some . . .”
“So, Ronnie, what will make you sure?”
“Your shirt . . .”
“Never mind that.”
“Finish your sandwich. It’s a little too early for that kind of talk.”
Charlie laughed. “Too early in the day, or too early in our relationship?”
“Now we have a relationship? I told you. Finish your sandwich.”
“Aaron didn’t make it, did he?”
“Of course Aaron didn’t make it. Aaron doesn’t make bologna sandwiches. And Aaron doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Take a guess.”
Ronnie paused for a moment, picking at her sandwich longingly, pulling pieces of the stale white bread bun apart with her fingers. “You’re provoking me, Charlie.”
“I figure given our circumstances, we might as well get everything out on the table, no?”
“I don’t know. I guess I can’t stop thinking about you. We spoke for five minutes but I can’t stop thinking about you,” she said. She returned to the Auden, if only to busy herself with something while tolerating his questions.
“Well, it seems you do have some willpower. It took you over a month to get here.”
“I was at the salon on a break. I saw your picture in the paper.”
“I’m always in the paper.”
“I’m always at the salon.”
“So you saw my picture in the paper.”
“And I decided it would be harmless.”
“So far, entirely harmless.”
“It doesn’t feel harmless.”
“Put down the book, Ronnie.”
“Because of your son.”
“My son’s name is Noah. He’s eight.”
“I was a sick child.”
“Again. He’s not that kind of sick, ” Charlie sighed, looking frustrated. “Put down the book, Ronnie.”
Despite the initial awkwardness, the shame in flirting shamelessly with a married man, a father, she felt a closeness to Charlie upon hearing about Noah. It seemed strange to want a married man more because he had a child, more attachments, more reasons to stay, but she felt an immediate closeness that warmed her completely. Because she had been sick herself she wanted to tell him that she had loved her youth, regardless of the constant trips to the doctor and the endless poking and prodding. Children adapt, she wanted to tell him. Children can find beauty in a hospital room, while the rest of us are compelled to suffer and complain over hangnails and disabled Internet connections. Children love things that love them back.
She wanted to ask Charlie what it was like to have that kind of love in his life, because she was quite sure she would never have it herself.
She finally obliged in returning the book to the desk. “I know, I just meant I was sick and I turned out okay.”
“More than okay, really.”
“Do you think we’re going to have an affair, Charlie?”
“Maybe we should go for a walk first.”
It was snowing movie-style snow as they walked through campus, big fat flakes that caught in Ronnie’s lashes and melted on her lips, and again she pulled her navy wool peacoat high around her neck, shivering.
“Cold?” Charlie asked, putting his arm around her, the first time he had touched her since his fingers met the inside of her thigh at the party weeks ago. Her stomach twisted and dipped, sending a shiver through her that she concealed with the cold. She was amazed a man so awkward came so easily to touching her. She leaned into him ever so slightly, testing the weight of his body, testing how much he could hold of her before things fell apart. With his free hand he pushed his glasses up his nose awkwardly.
“I’m really glad you came to my office, Ronnie.”
It had just begun to get dark, the red and green Christmas lights strung across campus bursting with a sudden blink of light. She welcomed the darkness, wary that someone might see them.
“So what do you do? At the salon.”
“What most people do at salons. I’m a hairdresser. I work on Yonge Street.”
“Do you like it?”
“Enough. It’s busy. What do you do? I mean, besides write poems, talk about the creative process, and tell writers they’re ready for publication soon.”
“I don’t do much of anything else, really. I write things and people buy them occasionally.”
“What does your wife do?”
“Why would you ask me that? Right away?”
“Well, you know that Aaron is a caterer, it only seems fair, really.”
“Yes. Fair. Tamara is an environmental consultant for one of those companies that destroy the environment.”
“Seems valiant.”
“More well-meaning than valiant. She makes most of our money, just in case you were wondering how a poet can be such a snappy dresser. And she travels a lot.”
Charlie was unsure why he added that last detail. Or maybe he knew exactly why he added it.
“Who takes care of your son when you’re both working?”
“We hired someone. Amanda. Someone who understands his—”
“Special needs.”
“I always hated that term. We all have special needs. To say it’s just people like my son who have them is ridiculous. His needs are easier than most.”
Ronnie nodded in agreement, as if she understood even though she probably didn’t. “Does Amanda live with you?”
“Sometimes. She has a room in our house but she’s at her boyfriend’s house a lot in the evenings. When we’re home.”
“Is Amanda pretty?”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to picture her.”
“Yes. She’s pretty. Blonde. Cheerful. Kind. But not particularly interesting.”
“I assume a lot of people don’t seem interesting to you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Does she read books?”
“I suppose, yes. She reads books. Most people read books.”
“Have you ever fantasized about her?”
“God. Why do you ask questions like that?” he said, pretending not to be pleased.
“You’re saying that like you know what kind of questions I ask.”
“I don’t know. You seem . . . reckless. Like you enjoy sticking your finger in a wound or putting your hand in a fire.”
Charlie saying this, out loud, seemed to solidify to the both of them that he didn’t mind that Ronnie seemed reckless. In fact, her recklessness was just what he wanted.
“I like to take some risks, yes. That’s true. Less now than I used to, of course,” Ronnie said, smiling.
“Not me.”
“I gathered that.”
“From what?”
“Beige shirt.”
“Shut up.” He pushed her, playfully, but she tripped on her own boot and fell clumsily sideways into the snow. He laughed while apologizing, extending his arm toward her. She looked at it and up at him with a serious expression, her cheeks flushed with pink from the cold.
“Oh Ronnie, I’m sorry,” Charlie said sincerely.
Ronnie took his hand tentatively and then suddenly, aggressively, pulled Charlie forward into the snow with her. He collapsed on top of her and then rolled sideways, laughing, until they were both lying on their backs, covered in snow. They turned their heads to face each other, a sudden moment of stillness overtaking them after a fit of laughter.
“Charlie, do you love your wife?”
A pause.
“Of course I do.”
“Really?”
“We met each other very young. We were in our twenties. Still in university. And then we had Noah and he was—”
“But Noah’s only eight?”
“Yes. He is.”
Ronnie did the math in her head.
“So you had him when the two of you weren’t happy?”
“Yeah. He was an . . .”
“Oh god. You don’t have to say it.”
“It’s okay. He was an accident. Things weren’t going so well between us at the time. But we were married and married people have children. They don’t have . . .”
“You don’t have to say that either. You had to have him. And you couldn’t leave each other.”
“I suppose the plan, however unspoken, had been to stay together until he was old enough. Until it was easier. But then he was diagnosed—”
“And it never got easier.”
“But I don’t regret it at all. He’s the only bright spot in my life.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. You seem to have a lot of bright spots.”
Charlie sat up and looked back at Ronnie in the snow, her expression soft as the flakes fell and then melted on her warm cheeks. He sighed quietly at the sight of her there, so calm, a place of solace in an otherwise anxious world.
“Ronnie—”
“No, Charlie. Not here. Not yet.”
Instead he offered his hand and together they rose to their feet and stepped back onto the path.
Charlie was carefully gauging Ronnie’s reaction to him divulging the precarious state of his marriage. Her face was relaxed, waiting on his next word without pressure.
Perhaps it was easier to tell things to strangers. Tell things to people who didn’t expect anything from him. “I love her, Ronnie. It’s just so—”
“—normal?”
“Yeah. That.”
“I get it. I live normal every day. I live the kind of normal life that all my friends are jealous of.”
“I’m enjoying the way you keep finishing my sentences.”
“Sorry. Nasty habit.”
“No, it makes me feel like we’re—the same in some ways.”
“I feel like in some ways I’m living your life.”
“I think you’re being generous. Or deluded.”
“Maybe I’m here so I can help you live your life better?”
“So serendipitous that we met then. Strangers taking a walk in the snow. Talking about affairs.”
“Hey. I never said anything about an affair.”
“I think you did, actually.”
Charlie’s arm found a place around her waist.
( CHAPTER TWELVE )
“Are you working on a new project?” Tamara asked Charlie over chicken cordon bleu one snowed-in evening in February.
Animals cooked within other animals were always something Charlie had a hard time accepting. He’d once heard of something called a “Turducken,” a high achievement of American gluttony in which a chicken is cooked inside a duck inside a turkey. The things that humans were capable of doing to themselves via food terrified him, but cooking was not his strong suit, and Tamara did the majority of it when Amanda wasn’t around, just like she did the majority of almost everything else, so he rarely complained.
Noah was noisily tapping his fork on his plate in a methodical way and humming to himself. After many years of this kind of behaviour they had mostly learned to tune him out when it was necessary.
“Why do you ask?” Charlie gently put his hand on Noah’s arm to cease the tapping. Noah let out a frustrated squeal, dropped his fork, and moved on to pounding the table with his fist.
“Just because you’ve been coming home late a lot. You seem to come home late only when you’re working on a new project.”
A new project, Charlie repeated in his head.
He was surprised by how liberally the lies suddenly flowed between bites.
“I’ve been taking notes for a new novel. A love story. About a girl. A really normal girl. A hairdresser. She’s nothing special.”
“Nothing special? Not to be rude, but why would anyone want to read a book about nothing special?” she said with her mouth full.
Tamara had always been Charlie’s first reader, so he had come to expect her to be ruthless with her commentary. He encouraged it, as she was always right and never had steered him wrong with an edit.
“That’s just it. She’s special in her not-specialness.”
“Not-specialness?” Tamara laughed and spooned more potatoes onto her plate. She was making fun of him, ever so slightly. He wanted to retaliate by telling her she should watch her second helpings, watch her waistline as it spread with each passing year. But of course he did not.
“Everything in our culture is about being special, unique, different and standing out. Maybe not special is the new special,” Charlie realized how ridiculous it sounded as soon as it came out of his mouth.
“So who is she in love with?”
“Sorry?” Charlie coughed suddenly as the word caught in his throat.
“You said it was a love story.”
“She’s in love with someone special. Someone that the world thinks is special.”
“Of course. A writer I assume?” She was grinning knowingly, almost mockingly, a small piece of spinach lodged between her teeth.
“It’s early yet. In the process. I’m just outlining.”
“You can be so predictable, Charlie.”
“So supportive.”
“I’m sorry. Really, that’s wonderful, sweetheart. You haven’t written a novel for a while.”
Noah suddenly flung his fork violently across the kitchen. Tamara trailed after it, not wavering from the conversation.
“Will it be written from her point of view?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah. I think it probably will be.”
Charlie considered this idea while Tamara returned to her seat and gave Noah back his fork.
What was Ronnie’s point of view?
What did she think about when she was folding Aaron’s laundry?
What do simple girls think about when they can’t think in poetry? When they don’t think in narratives?
Do they think about beaches and quiches and trips to the dentist?
Do they think about boys they meet on the subway and kiss in bars after a few too many rum and Cokes?
Do they think about something better?
Does a girl like Ronnie think about Charlie?
“When will it be ready for me to read?” Tamara asked.
Tamara was, above all things, a devoted reader, and he valued her reaction to his work above that of all others, handing her pages early in the process, while they were too naked for even Charlie to tolerate them. As a result she’d be thanked in countless acknowledgment pages since he began writing.
To Tamara I owe everything.
Tamara is the only reason I write.
Tamara, my first reader, my partner, my life.
Lies. Carefully constructed. Public persona. Profile.
He’d written so many variations on this sentiment that it had come to lose meaning. They were for all those middle-aged book club ladies, the ones who came to his readings, who asked him to sign their names in his books. Those women who felt safe because he was married but fantasized about him kissing them long and deep, his fingers creeping into the wetness between their thighs. A writer. A man who wrote love poems to blot out the monotony of their mediocre minivan lives.
The world had been told enough times that Charlie would be nothing without Tamara. In fact, he had made a point to publically emphasize his own pointlessness without her to lean on.
If he was honest, he didn’t think he wanted her to read this one.
“Well, I’m really proud of you, honey. It sounds like it will be a good one.”
( CHAPTER THIRTEEN )
Sunday morning Ronnie lay in bed and, while staring at the ceiling, pondered very seriously whether fidelity was in the mind, in the mouth, or in the heart.
She could hear Aaron wandering through the apartment, jangling keys and neatly packing his backpack, oblivious to her deep considerations on the nature of commitment.
“Hey, Rons. I’m going to the gym, you sure you don’t want to come with me?” he called from the kitchen.
Ronnie rolled her eyes dramatically in the dim morning light of their bedroom, Ramona curled up against her in a cocoon of blankets and pillows. She knew he had asked the question in full knowledge that she would never say yes, despite how he prodded her endlessly to get a membership. Ronnie hadn’t physically exerted herself in any way other than running to catch a bus in years.
“No. I’m good. Thanks. Have fun,” she responded, concealing her disdain.
“It might be good for you, considering.”
“Considering what?” she spat.
“Well, you’ve been . . .”
“I’ve been what?”
“I’m just saying the gym can be good for your mental health. That’s all.”
Ronnie knew he meant that she was distant. She felt a pang of concern that he had noted her withdrawing silence, her new habit of staring off into space when they were together.
When she didn’t respond he offered a question. “Are you planning to sleep all day?”
Aaron always asked these kinds of questions, and Ronnie loathed answering them. “What did you say? I can’t hear you from here,” she lied.
He came to the bedroom door with his coat and backpack on, not pressing on the issue of her ten previous hours in bed.
“When did you say your next doctor’s appointment was?” he asked.
The question caught her by surprise. “A few weeks. Why?”
“I want to come,” he said.
He looked awkward standing there, attempting to show his concern. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, of course, only that expressing sympathy didn’t come naturally to him. Ronnie often excused it via his stifled upbringing.
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