by Alix Ohlin
Tonight it was light opera. She’d joined a local company and was appearing in their performance of The Mikado, as one of the three little maids from school. When she told her father about the casting, he’d said, “Aren’t you a little old for that part?” and she hung up on him. Then she immediately called to bemoan his insensitivity to Ruth, who agreed, though she had thought the same thing. You just couldn’t say things like that to Jennie. People who never had children thought that parents were responsible for their kids’ personalities. But Jennie had been exactly the same since the day she was born: she had to be pulled from the womb with forceps, hysterical with protest, and her mood hadn’t shifted since. Whereas Matthew, who shared her genes and upbringing, was so remote and placid, so totally imperturbable, that Ruth at times wondered if he was paying attention to anything at all.
George and Ruth had to attend all of Jennie’s events, or there’d be hell to pay in the form of recriminating phone calls and gifted self-help books about truly loving families. When George first remarried, his second wife, Marlena, used to come as well, but she and Jennie didn’t get along and she soon begged off. Ruth envied her. Now it was just the two of them, and after a while they’d started carpooling, because why not? They’d been divorced for fifteen years; they still hated each other, but at this point they were resigned to it.
When they arrived—the auditorium was in a high school, and she had a sudden flashback to seeing the kids, as teenagers, in The Pajama Game and Guys and Dolls—Jennie was standing in the freezing-cold parking lot, smoking a cigarette and watching for them anxiously. She was wearing her stage makeup, white powder and thick eyeliner meant to make her look Japanese. A black wig was perched on her dirty blond hair like an ugly hat. Her arms were crossed and her shoulders slouched inside an enormous blue parka, beneath which peeked a red kimono. When she saw them she looked at once vexed, relieved, and somehow starved. Had she honestly doubted they were coming? Where had she gotten this eternal hunger for their attention? It was a hole they could never fill, year after year though they tried.
“I thought you might not make it,” Jennie said.
“I thought you didn’t smoke anymore,” George said severely.
“I don’t, really. This is just nerves.”
“You look great, honey,” Ruth said. “Can’t wait to see you up there.”
Jennie grimaced. “Well, it might suck, to be honest with you,” she said. She always had enough distance from her various endeavors to know they weren’t worthy of her time—just not enough to avoid getting involved in the first place. She took a final drag, dropped the cigarette, and poked a sandaled foot from beneath her kimono to crush it out.
“Break a leg, kiddo,” George said.
“I probably will, in this getup,” she said, then gave a little wave and tottered back into the building, taking tiny steps across the snow-covered ground.
Inside, people were filing slowly down the aisles, and Ruth wondered if any of them were here for the joy of Gilbert and Sullivan as opposed to supporting their children or spouses or cousins. It was hard to tell from their expressions whether or not they actually expected to be entertained. She and George took seats toward the back. A small orchestra was warming up by the stage, the instruments rising in a jumble of trills and squawks. In the row in front of them a young child sat weeping silently, holding a melted chocolate bar, the chocolate smeared all over his face. His mother took a Kleenex from her bag and wiped his face roughly, without asking why he was crying.
As she looked at the program, George grimaced and started rubbing his arm.
“What’s wrong?”
“Racquetball injury,” he said. “I’m still playing with Kenny twice a week.”
Ruth sighed and returned to the program, realizing she should’ve known better than to ask. He’d probably only rubbed his arm so he could then brag about racquetball, as if she cared. He’d always been proudest of things she considered trivial (Reason #465). Someone flicked the lights off, then on again, twice. A baby squealed, a resigned hush fell over the audience, and music began to play. Nanki-Poo was looking for Yum-Yum, his true love, but Yum-Yum was already taken, engaged to Ko-Ko. The situation looked bad for Nanki-Poo. The company was having some trouble hitting the high notes, the man playing Pish-Tush had a stutter that repeatedly made him lag behind the music, and the conductor sweated heavily as he fought to bring the musicians and singers into line. The actors’ makeup shone under the bright lights. Her memory stretched farther back to when her children were little, dressed up for Christmas pageants and spring festivals, their cherubic cuteness making every missed line and off-key note all the more endearing.
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” she muttered. George shushed her, but also nodded.
Jennie and another woman joined Yum-Yum onstage and began to sing. Glancing down at her program in the dark, Ruth tried to remember whether Jennie was Pitti-Sing or Peep-Bo.
“Three little maids who all unwary come from a ladies’ seminary!” they sang, each a quarter-tone off from the others. They were filled to the brim with girlish glee, they informed the audience, fake smiles splitting their faces. Not a one was under thirty, Ruth thought, and they all looked burdened with concentration, arching their necks as they strained for the high notes. Jennie gestured wildly with her hands and sang louder, though no better, than the other two. Finally the song ended, and her parents, loudly, clapped.
At intermission they split up to visit the restrooms, and by the time she came out George had returned to his seat. She would’ve liked to people-watch in the lobby, maybe buy a cookie from the bake-sale table, but didn’t want to stand there alone, so she went back in. The unhappy child in front of them had disappeared, though another baby farther down was crying full throttle. When she pushed past George, he ignored her. The lights were blinking on and off again.
“What do you think?” she said.
He didn’t answer, which was typical. When Jennie was a teenager—fighting with them constantly over curfews, boyfriends, grades—George tried for the first few minutes to reason with her as if she were one of his colleagues and they were negotiating labor costs or shipping charges; but then he’d check out of the conversation and sit stonily at the dinner table, his hand curled around his water glass. Ruth was the one who’d kept soldiering on, while he sat waiting mutely for the war to be over. She’d fight with Jennie and then, once they were in bed, harangue George for not helping. “I can’t do this all by myself,” she’d say.
“But you are,” he’d say in return.
And years later, when he was moving out, she asked what, precisely, he thought he’d find elsewhere that was better.
“Peace and quiet,” he told her.
So now she gave him his peace and quiet. She didn’t care anymore. She arranged her purse on the seat next to her and watched the curtain rise on act 2, which provided a wealth of further complications: deaths and marriages, both real and fake; old people pitted against young; and the Mikado himself, whatever he was. All this was conveyed through trills and patter and high-pitched chortling. During one song she glanced sideways at George, and the look of pain on his face mirrored exactly how she felt inside. She almost laughed, knowing at least they agreed on one basic fact: this show was terrible.
But then, while the Mikado was presiding over some major disagreement, George turned to her in the dark and whispered, “I have to go to the hospital.”
“What?”
“I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“For God’s sake, why didn’t you say something earlier?” She bolted out of her seat and people all around them turned their heads to watch. George stood up shakily and she offered him her hand, but he ignored her and limped, as if cramping, up the aisle. The expression she’d thought was a frown had deepened into actual pain. She followed him uselessly out of the building.
Once they were in the parking lot, she said, “Give me the keys.”
“I can drive
.”
“Over my dead body,” she said, and he closed his eyes and handed them over.
In his unfamiliar Subaru she spent a moment adjusting the mirrors and seats before shifting into gear; it had been a while since she’d driven a standard, and the car stalled when she pressed on the gas.
“God, Ruth,” he said.
“Don’t talk,” she said sharply, and turned the key again. She switched on the heat as he lay back in his seat and closed his eyes. His taut skin now looked haggard and deathly. “Hold on,” she said.
Under the streetlights, the avenues glowed palely with salt. They’d come to the city together in the late sixties as graduate students, she in history and George in engineering. After Kingston, Montreal had seemed exotic and glamorous, and the times were glamorous too, everything in tumult, the world remaking itself. She’d thought that their lives here would lift them into some entirely different sphere. Now she knew that not even Montreal could have that effect. They’d moved to the suburbs and started a family and then dissolved it, as they probably would’ve done in Kingston or Halifax or anywhere else.
In the passenger seat George moaned slightly, involuntarily.
At the hospital she filled out the paperwork while he was rolled into an observation room. Then she went to a pay phone and called Marlena, explaining as briefly as possible what had happened and where they were. Finally she called Jennie’s cell phone and left a message. She decided to wait to call Matthew until she knew how serious it was. After all this had been accomplished there was nothing left for her to do, so she sat in the waiting room, reading a knitting magazine she’d found in a stack on a table. She’d always meant to take up knitting. Now would have been a good time for it.
A green-robed doctor walked in and spoke her name, her married name, in accented English. “I am Dr. Vasanji,” he said. “Your husband will be having emergency bypass surgery. We won’t know anything for the next few hours.”
He nodded and left even before she could think of what she was supposed to ask.
Twenty minutes later, Marlena came rushing down the hallway, her eyes wide with anxiety and her scarf trailing behind her. Marlena was what Ruth called an artsy-fartsy. She wore jewel colors and long skirts and dyed her hair dark red. “Where is he?” she demanded.
Ruth stood up. “In surgery,” she said, and then explained everything. But Marlena kept asking questions she couldn’t answer—What room was he in? How long would the surgery take, exactly? How bad had the pain been?—and Ruth brusquely told her to speak to a nurse, which she finally did, engaging one in a conversation Ruth couldn’t hear.
When she came back, her face was pale beneath her red hair. “They won’t tell me anything, either,” she said, sitting down next to Ruth. She took off her coat and ran her hands through her hair, then she looked at her. “Thank you for calling me,” she said stiffly. “It’s late, and they won’t tell us anything for a long time. You can go home.”
Ruth closed her eyes for a second, not wanting to leave. George was in surgery, and she needed to know what was happening. She could feel the other woman staring at her, willing her to clear out of the waiting room. Too bad, she thought. “I called Jennie,” she said.
“Oh, dear,” Marlena said.
Ruth knew that Marlena would not want to be alone with Jennie. “I left her a message, and I’m sure she’ll be right over, after her performance.”
“Oh, God, The Mikado,” Marlena said. “I bet that’s what did him in.” Her lip curled in a smile, and she looked at Ruth, as if expecting her to go along.
Ruth looked at her coldly. “It was really very good,” she said.
Marlena nodded, her expression knowing and ironic. “I’m sure it was.”
They sat together watching the news, and the nurses chattered and ran around. Marlena asked them more questions, her voice louder and more confident now, carrying back to where Ruth sat. Her French was far better than Ruth’s would ever be—she’d grown up in Montreal—and she wrangled with the staff fearlessly, pressing them with yet another question every time they shook their heads and tried to walk away. As Anglophones, George and Ruth had always found it somewhat difficult to deal with hospitals, government officials, even store clerks; no matter how many years they lived here, they’d never lost their self-consciousness. Not Marlena, though. At times Ruth wondered if this was what George liked about her, that she was at home in Montreal in a way he’d never been.
“What did they say?” she asked when Marlena finally came back.
Marlena shrugged. “No news,” she said, although she’d talked with one nurse for at least five minutes. Ruth shifted in her seat, annoyed. Just then Jennie came walking down the hallway, still in her stage makeup, though it was smeared and thin and patches of her skin showed beneath the white.
“What’s going on?” she said, and burst into tears. She sat down next to her mother, who held her in her arms as she cried a couple of dry sobs, her blond head shaking.
“It’s going to be fine, honey,” Ruth said. “We just have to wait, that’s all. He’ll be okay.” Marlena was looking at her with an expression of doubt, clearly displeased by these reassurances. Marlena had raised her own children with rational argument, talking to each as one adult to another; she never offered bribes or made false promises or exaggerated claims. (Ruth had heard about all of this from Jennie.) One worked for Stats Canada, another was an elementary-school principal, and the third was in jail for mail fraud. Ruth pitied them, these adults who’d never had a mother tell them everything was going to be okay, who’d never had the comfort of lies.
Jennie nestled her head onto her mother’s shoulder and sighed. “I thought he didn’t look good earlier,” she said. “He was rubbing his arm when he was talking to me before the show.”
“Really?” Ruth said.
“He was.”
“He said it was a racquetball injury,” Ruth said.
Marlena sighed. “He hasn’t played racquetball in months,” she said.
Ruth didn’t know if she was pleased or displeased that George would still bother to lie to her. The most explicit expressions of his love had always been the least palatable: getting jealous of another man at a party, or complaining that she never dressed up for him anymore. But the fact that he’d lied about his fitness—what could this mean, to either of them, after four decades? She turned it over in her mind for a few minutes, then gave up. She’d known the marriage was truly over when she stopped trying to figure things out; this was Reason #466 why they’d gotten divorced. Although if she weren’t still trying, then why was she still counting the reasons?
A doctor came over, not Vasanji but an impossibly young man with wide-set, gentle brown eyes that made her think of a deer. Holding a clipboard, he pulled up a chair opposite the three of them. “I am Dr. Thanh,” he said. “I need to ask which if you is the next of kin,” he said.
Ruth was relieved to hear English. At least it wouldn’t be a French conversation she’d have trouble following.
Marlena held out her hand to him, like a queen, Ruth thought. Her mannerisms were absurd. “I’m his wife,” she said.
“There are forms here,” he said. “Unfortunately, we must fill them out.” His eyes refused to look down at his clipboard, as if the facts there were too impolite to acknowledge. “Regarding your husband’s future. In case”—he paused delicately—“the operation is not a success.”
“Oh,” Jennie said softly.
“I’ll take them,” Marlena said, and again extended her hand with that ridiculous regal air. The doctor gave her the clipboard and murmured something about returning it to the nurses’ station when she was done. Marlena walked across the room and sat down in a chair next to a table.
“Wait a minute,” Jennie said loudly. Other people who were waiting looked up and stared at her bizarre appearance. “What are you doing?”
“Filling out the forms, dear,” Marlena said sweetly. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
Her voice broadcast unadulterated anger, and Ruth was surprised at the surge of satisfaction she felt at hearing that permanent, unbreakable us. For a moment she saw how it must have been for Marlena for all these years, knowing her every action would be scrutinized, that she would forever find herself on the other side of us.
“Jennie,” she said.
Her daughter ignored her, and Marlena didn’t even look up from the clipboard. Pen in hand, she filled out the form. Jennie began to moan, rocking back and forth.
Ruth put her arm around her. “He won’t die,” she said quietly. “Nothing bad is going to happen. Don’t worry.”
Jennie wasn’t crying but she was shaking, and she held her mother’s hand and pressed her body against hers, side to side. She was warm and smelled of sweat and hairspray. As Ruth told her, over and over, that there was nothing to worry about, that this surgery was done all the time, that her father would be okay, she listened and nodded to each statement as if thinking it over very carefully. “Yes,” she said quietly to every sentence. Finally she stood up. “I’m going to take off my makeup,” she said. “I look stupid.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Marlena said from the other side of the room. She meant to be encouraging but it sounded sarcastic, and Jennie’s eyes rolled in annoyance as she left. Ruth saw that Marlena, having put down the pen, looked exhausted, with blue veins showing beneath her rouge.
“He’s seemed so run-down lately,” Marlena said. “I should’ve noticed.”
“George is a grown man. He should know enough to go to the doctor if he isn’t feeling well.”
“He can’t take care of himself,” Marlena said. “He needs me.”