Adam's Peak

by Heather Burt

  What would I say to them?

  Emma became exasperated. That you’re sorry to hear about Adam’s accident. You want to know how he’s doing. Is there anything you can do to help?

  It just sounds so phony.

  It only—Look, Clare, what makes you think the Vantwests are going to be paying special attention to what you say anyway? You’re not that important to them.

  For a long time she stared at the house across the street.

  I’ll go tomorrow, she promised at last.

  Eyeing the clock, she swore under her breath then flew to the closet. She imagined her next pay statement: docked for lateness resulting from long, inexplicable conversations with self. The real Emma would send her to a shrink.

  DOWNSTAIRS, THE HOUSE WAS A SHAMBLES. The living room furniture had disappeared—given away to the Skinners’ niece, to make way for the Ikea things—and everything else had been shifted into the kitchen. Since their arrival, the installers had torn up the dining room carpet, and one of them was now tramping across the Wedgwood blue living room in muddy work boots with lolling tongues. The other man was chatting with Isobel in the hall, thoughtfully smoothing his wavy grey hair with one hand, while Isobel touched his other arm, just below the elbow, and laughed.

  A complete shambles.

  Clare slipped quietly out the front door. Hurrying to the station, she rehearsed her resignation speech, defying the terrors and uncertainties that Adam’s accident had spawned. Listen, Markus, she would say. I’m going to be moving to Vancouver. I’ve really enjoyed working here, but ... She considered this and started again. I wanted to give you enough notice, but I’ve decided I’m moving to Vancouver. I know some people there, and ... What had Adam said? It’s such a great city. Again she paused. She’d never be able to muster up Adam’s enthusiasm for the place. But he’d said something else as well, something about making a life for himself there. An appealing idea: making a life. Like making a casserole, or composing a song. In Vancouver I think I could really ... I need a change and I think maybe I could ... She marched past brown lawns patched with dirty snow and scraps of rubbish newly exposed by the thaw. The thing is, Markus, I’d like to go somewhere different and see what happens. Hardly convincing, but it would do.

  At work, though, she was paralyzed by what-ifs. From behind the front counter, she concentrated on Markus’s dull, sandy hair and grey pinstriped shirt, trying to push herself over the edge, but the paths that branched away from Markus and his music shop promised only plane crashes and botched job interviews and regret. When her boss joined her behind the counter and set about changing the paper roll in the calculator, Clare sighed quietly and resigned herself to another day in the pattern.

  “So, I guess that band teacher decided to do her ordering through us,” Markus said in his slow, meandering way.

  “Really? That’s great.”

  “So ... would you mind being her contact person?”

  “No. Sure. That’s fine.”

  “Good. I mean, you know, that would be great if you could.” He fed the new paper roll through the machine and tore off the end. He kept the crumpled scrap in his hand, as if unsure what to do with it. “So ...” He cleared his throat. “We should catch up some time.”

  Clare dusted the glass counter with her sleeve and watched Peter tidy the rack of songbooks.

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe some day after work ... or ... whenever you’re free.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  She thought of Adam’s invitation, so different from Markus’s. Adam hadn’t messed around with vague propositions. He hadn’t said they should go for a ride some day. No—he’d looked her in the eye and asked her to go with him right that moment.

  She stared out the front window at the passersby in sunglasses and unbuttoned coats and considered the fact that Adam Vantwest could not possibly be among them. He’d wanted to go to Sri Lanka, Clare recalled, and with a sudden recklessness she imagined going there for him. A ridiculous idea, of course, but for a moment she pictured herself walking along a tropical village road, absorbing exotic sights and sounds, which she would bring back to Adam. Then she turned to Markus.

  “What are you doing this evening?”

  “Tonight? I’m not sure. Why?”

  “You were saying we should catch up. I thought we could go for dinner—tonight.”

  Markus raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Sure. That would be great.”

  THE AMBIANCE OF THE RESTAURANT was too intimate—small candles on the tables, a haze of smoke from the bar, and, from hidden speakers, an adolescent voice moaning about love—but Markus seemed unaffected. Clare watched him unbutton his cuffs and neatly roll up his sleeves, exposing delicate, finely haired forearms. Twirling a carrot stick between her fingers, she met his bespectacled eyes.

  “Have you ever heard of the Gay Games?” she said.

  Markus raised his eyebrows and chuckled awkwardly. “Uh, I think so. Why do you ask?”

  The truth was silly: to see if she could say it—Gay Games—like Adam had, so nonchalantly.

  “I was just wondering what you thought of the idea.”

  “Of games for gay people? Oh, I don’t know. I guess they’re fine ... but ...”

  “But ...”

  “Well ... you know ... there’s nothing really stopping them from entering the real Olympics, is there?”

  Clare frowned. “There’s nothing stopping them, but they could-n’t really be themselves.”

  The idea sounded hokey and hippyish. At the same time it was unsettling. It conjured up a world in which having a self meant having sex. She bit her carrot stick with feigned conviction, while Markus picked the onions off his burger.

  “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he said at length. “I guess that makes sense.”

  There was more that could have been said, of course. If Emma had been there she’d have had plenty to say about the Gay Games. Certainly Adam would. But Clare turned to the small television set behind the bar, tuned to hockey, and gave up. Across the table, Markus floundered.

  “So, uh ... what made you think of ...”

  On the TV, a red-jerseyed player flew into the boards amid a great spraying of ice. The glass shook, the player lurched, then he skated off, back into the fray. She turned back to Markus. “My neighbour went to them. The Games.”

  “Oh. Is he ...”

  “He was in a motorcycle accident on Friday.”

  “Whoa. Really? Is he okay?”

  “Not exactly.” She took a breath. “Apparently he’s in a coma.”

  Markus winced. “Scheisse. Do they ... Do you know him very well?”

  “Sort of.” She paused long enough to catch the widening of Markus’s eyes, the hint of astonishment that she should be connected with someone who rode a motorcycle and took part in Gay Games. Partly to shock him further, partly to release the pressure of her secret, she continued. “I went on the motorcycle with him that day. He dropped me off right before the accident.”

  Markus swallowed. “Good lord, Clare. Why would you—What made you go on a motorcycle?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  She looked straight at him, daring him to say that people like her don’t do such things, hoping even that he would say it, so she could dispute the claim out loud.

  “Well ... it’s just that it’s dangerous. And the roads are still quite bad.” He took off his glasses and looked suddenly vulnerable and unfamiliar. “It could have been you who ...” He tugged agitatedly at his shirt and used the fabric to wipe his lenses.

  She reached across the table and took one of his fries.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t think it’s something I’ll be doing regularly.”

  Markus nodded slowly, and for a moment the silence between them, usually a dead space into which any background noise could seep, took on a meaning of its own. Clare brushed her hair from her face and noticed that her cheeks were hot. She pressed her lips together. In an awkward, outrageous fl
ash, she imagined Markus naked, standing before her—his slender torso (would it have hair?), his penis (what shape? what size?), the overwhelming strangeness of so much skin, all of it so close. Then Markus put on his glasses, and they turned to their food, and the conversation stumbled from the details of Adam’s accident to Vancouver weather to the school music program for which Clare was to act as shop liaison.

  After dinner, he offered to drive her home, and though she knew it would be best to refuse, she accepted. They drove in silence—the meaningless, moribund kind. Clare stared out the window, brooding, as the nighttime sights became increasingly, inexorably familiar. When they passed the Red Rose tea building on Côte de Liesse, its sign a fixture of the landscape for as long as she could remember, she leaned back and pretended to sleep until Markus’s ancient Volkswagen pulled into her driveway.

  “So ... which house is Adam’s?” he said, shutting off the engine.

  “Right there.”

  Clare unzipped her bag and hunted for her keys. Markus hung his hands over the crossbar of the steering wheel and hummed. This was the nature of his courtship: making it clear that he was available, in no hurry to rush off. Willing to sit, and maybe chat, indefinitely. The radio was on low, and Bill Evans was playing—of all things—“A Time for Love.” Clare stole a glance at Markus’s hands. His fingers were moving up and down in the air, playing along with the music. If he was suffering at all, if the awkward potential of the moment was weighing on him, it was impossible to tell. Silently she prodded him.

  How long would it take you, Markus? If I stayed here—just sat here with you in your car—would you ever get up the nerve? Would you ever take your hand off the steering wheel and put it on my leg?

  Though the awkwardness of such a thing would be excruciating, she wanted him to try. She wanted it to be possible. But Markus’s fine-boned hands remained where they were, floating in time to the music. Clare pulled her keys from her bag.

  “I haven’t visited his family yet,” she said. “Do you think I should?”

  Markus shrugged. “I guess it sort of depends how well you know them.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Hmm. A card might be best.”

  “Yeah.” She zipped her bag. “I should go in. Thanks a lot for the ride.”

  “Any time.”

  Inside, the synthetic smell of the new carpeting was potent. Clare left the lights off and went directly upstairs, where she heard the eleven o’clock news from behind her mother’s bedroom door. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, then she locked herself in her room. Neatly and methodically, she undressed. She deposited her underwear, her tights, and her sweater in the laundry hamper, then she crossed the room to hang up her skirt. From the top shelf of the closet she took down Emma’s gift and weighed it in her hand, examining its size and shape.

  She crossed the room again and took a navy blue towel from the laundry hamper. There would be blood, she imagined. She kept the bedside lamp on and the stereo off. With the towel in place, she lay on her back, her legs arranged as if for a pelvic exam. The vibrator rubbed and chafed, but as she nudged it around cautiously, the surprising wetness returned. Eventually, confident she could accomplish her task efficiently, she took a breath and plunged the thing in. The pain was searing, horrible, but she wanted to be thorough. She manoeuvred the device back and forth a few times, until, unable to stand it any longer, she pulled it out and fell back on her pillow, flushed and a little queasy. When she’d recovered enough, she sat up and reached for the box of tissues on the bedside table. She was bleeding—not as much as she’d expected, but enough to suggest that her rite had been accomplished.

  JUNE 1964

  “Have you ever read Ecclesiastes?” Margaret said. She was flopped on her bed, listening to a Bob Dylan record.

  Isobel, sideways in Margaret’s charity shop armchair, knees curled up to her chest, turned from the window. “No. Why?”

  “It’s really brilliant. I don’t think my father has preached from it once, but I’m going to write all my sermons from it. It’s about not being greedy or vain and just letting nature—” Margaret spun around to face the record player. “God! Isn’t he brilliant?! He’s a poet!”

  Isobel felt a pang of jealousy. She didn’t really care for Bob Dylan, but he was an American, which meant that she should fancy him. “I like his other record better,” she said vaguely.

  Margaret eyed her intently. “Is anything wrong, Isobel? You’re sounding glum.”

  “I’m getting the curse again.” She let her head fall backward and stared at the ceiling.

  “It’s not a curse,” Margaret said gently. “It’s natural.”

  “You’d call it a curse if you got pains like I do. And, it’s only been three weeks since the last one. Three weeks. That’s cursed.”

  “Maybe it’s just mid-cycle pains. That happens sometimes.”

  Isobel scowled. “I’d rather be early.”

  “Are you bleeding?”

  “Not yet. It takes a while to get started.”

  They listened to Bob Dylan till the song came to an end, then Margaret sat up. “Should we take Roddy out to the pond? They say walking helps.”

  Isobel slid her legs down to the floor and reached for her trainers. She knew nothing would alter the inevitable course of her torture, but a few hours outdoors would make the time in bed more bearable.

  THE POND—a glorified puddle, really—was out of town, at the crest of a gentle rise. They walked to it along a dirt path, the Biggars’ spaniel zigzagging back and forth ahead of them, plunging his snout into clumps of vegetation. Margaret held the leather lead in her hand, slapping it against her thigh as she marched in front of Isobel. Although the air was cool, Margaret hadn’t bothered with a jumper, and her blouse was knotted just above her navel, revealing a pale roll of midriff. She wasn’t exactly fat, but with the exception of her enviably round breasts, her best features were above her neck—a head of dark curls, cheeks that dimpled deeply when she smiled, sparkling grey eyes. She was what Isobel’s mother called an intense girl. Nothing was ever frivolous with Margaret. Her ideas, her conversations, her friendships—her one friendship, actually, with Isobel—were potent with meaning. It could be exhausting at times.

  At the end of the path she stopped to catch her breath and smiled in a way that indicated a certain type of question was about to be asked.

  “Yes?” Isobel prompted warily, and Margaret narrowed her eyes.

  “So have you and Alastair kissed yet?”

  Isobel looked off at the pond. She hadn’t told Margaret about Patrick Locke and wished now that she’d kept quiet about Alastair. For Margaret’s intense stare forced her suddenly to acknowledge the awkwardness of having seen the man four or five times without kissing him, or holding his hand, or even considering the possibility of either. During their outings, Alastair had talked about the knitwear factory mostly, and walked with his hands in his pockets. Occasionally he mentioned his plans to go to Montreal—not exactly America, but it was all the same to Isobel—and she’d listened, and fantasized, and gradually she began to notice tiny, invisible threads connecting her life to his. Yet the idea of actually touching Alastair Fraser was ludicrous—which provoked in her a vague irritation with Margaret for forcing the realization.

  “Not really,” she finally said. “No.”

  Margaret seemed relieved, which made sense. After all, she herself had never had a boyfriend. “I suppose it won’t be long, though,” she said.

  Isobel headed for the tree next to the pond. “I suppose not.”

  They sat on the grass, backs against the broad trunk, while Roddy zigzagged and sniffed. The pond’s surface was as blank and beckoning as a fresh sheet of paper. Margaret lobbed a stone.

  “It seems strange—kissing.”

  Isobel thought of Patrick’s tongue and the confusion of strange feelings it had provoked.

  “Why?” she said, her tone indifferent.

  Margaret lobbed anot
her stone into the water. “It doesn’t mean anything. Not like talking does. And why should it be lips? Why not noses, or chins, or something else?” She giggled. “All right, it can be something else, but at least that has a special purpose.”

  “It’s not just lips,” Isobel said testily, weighing a heavy stone in her hand. “I mean, they’re connected to how you feel inside. It’s all connected.” She hoped Margaret would understand, for she could explain no further. She tossed the stone and watched the buckling of its ripples to the edge of the pond.

  “I know. It’s still strange though,” Margaret said. “How are the cramps?”

  “Still there.”

  “They say it’s better after you have a baby.”

  “I don’t want a baby,” Isobel sighed.

  Margaret plucked at the long grass. “I know a kind of massage that works. My cousin had me do it to her when she had bad pains.”

  “What do you mean massage?”

  “With my fingers. I can make your uterus relax.”

  Isobel cringed at the word. “How?”

  “It’s easy. I just press on your middle in a certain way.”

  There was something not right about the proposition, but the idea that her friend might somehow be capable of taming the beast in her belly made Isobel eye Margaret’s small, dirt-smudged hands with guarded optimism.

  “It really works, what you do?”

  “It worked for Pam. Go on—lie down and undo your trousers.”

  “Can’t you do it through my trousers?”

  Margaret rolled her eyes. “No, don’t be daft. It’s much better the other way. Anyway, it’s only you and me.”

  Isobel chewed her bottom lip. She wished at times like this that Margaret would be more reserved, or that her openness would extend to more people. This privileged access imposed a kind of obligation that Isobel neither welcomed nor wished to impose in return. Still, the promise of relief made her comply. Awkwardly, as if she were walking backwards, she unzipped her blue jeans—real American ones—and lay down in the long grass. Roddy trotted up and hung his droopy ears and freckled muzzle over her face. Margaret shooed him away then knelt beside her and folded back the two flaps of denim. The tip of her tongue protruding in concentration, she pressed down with her fingers and began kneading small circles in Isobel’s flesh through the thin blue cotton of her knickers.