One morning at first light I woke to hear him pacing to and fro in the next room, and at last I faced the truth. We’d been like a couple of kids dressed up in their parents’ shoes, playing a silly game that would have to stop at once. Hastily I pulled on some clothes and opened the door. Ross stood at the window and did not turn when I spoke.
“Listen,” I said desperately. “I know how you feel.”
His back went very still. He was listening with acute attention for something he wanted badly to hear.
“Ross, it’s insane for us to get married, isn’t it.”
There was a silence. Then he said almost inaudibly, “It’s nothing to do with how I feel about you.”
“No, I know that. But it’s not just all this chat about ushers that’s getting you down, either.”
“No.”
It had to be said, and because I knew myself to be the tougher of us two by far, I was the one who had to say it.
“Well, then, for God’s sake don’t let’s do it. We’ve been crazy to let ourselves get pushed this far. But nobody can make us go through with it.”
“Yes, but all these goddam arrangements –”
“We cancel them. That’s all.”
“Yes, but Anne, there’s this – there’s your –”
“All right. That’s strictly my problem, not yours. It’s maybe not too late for me to do some thinking again about that, too. It could just be that everybody’s right and I’m wrong about … Anyhow, that’s my responsibility. Nothing to do with you, basically.”
Ross turned away again. His shoulder bones stood out in two sharp blades.
“The thing is,” he said in a low voice, “you and I are too … I mean it just wouldn’t work. We both know it wouldn’t. I’m cross in the morning when you’re bursting with energy. I’m neat and you’re sloppy. I’m a worrier, always analysing and hairsplitting; you just live by some kind of primitive radar. And without being bossy, you’re so … anyhow, you know we’d started to fight even before we knew about your …” Another miserable pause. Then he burst out, “No, I just can’t go through with it, that’s all. What’s the point, when it will all just end in some lousy divorce?”
“Right. Then it’s finally settled. No wedding.” All of a sudden I felt a crazy sort of relief; my voice sounded almost gay. But his was soft, sad, and final.
“It’s no good; you see, I’m just not ready for it. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“Don’t apologize. I know we’re not compatible. It would be lunacy for us to go through with the whole thing just for a lot of relatives. You’d better tell your mother right away. I’ll cope with my parents. The caterers and all that jazz – they’ll be too busy cancelling everything to work up a big scene.”
“My mother will be plenty upset. I’d better go home for the weekend.”
“Yes, do that. But she’ll soon get used to the idea. The thought of you married to me appalled her anyhow, deep down.”
“That is not fair, Anne. She’s behaved damn well, and you know it.”
A light shock of delicious anger tingled through me. “Of course she has. That’s her speciality. But let’s not kid ourselves; your mother loathes me.”
“Please Anne, don’t let’s –”
“Why not?” I shouted. “What’s wrong with a good loud row? What’s there to lose now? You’re out of it, whack, and so am I. We can afford a good brawl – maybe we even owe it to each other.”
But Ross had darted into the other room, where he snatched up a few clothes and stuffed them into his briefcase. He was white in the face with anger and other kinds of distress.
“I’m off,” he said in a breathless voice. “I can’t take any more. I’m sorry, if that’s any use to you. Sorry, but this is it. I’ll be in touch some time later.” And he crowded himself through the door without dignity and fumbled it shut between us.
Once he was gone, a superb sort of calm spread through me. Everything now seemed perfectly clear and simple. Some kind of pressure or constriction – maybe it was the bonds of holy matrimony – had dropped away, leaving me light and free. Free to do anything. There was no possibility any more it was impossible to confront. Dr. Miller’s offer to schedule me for a hospital abortion was no doubt still open. This procedure no longer seemed like an unthinkable atrocity, but simply a matter of common sense. The alternative was twenty-odd years of single-parent responsibility for a being still just a cluster of cells. Almost light-headed with relief, I dialled Miller’s answering service and was promised a call from his secretary at noon.
In the interval, I set about a fanatic clean-up of the apartment’s two and a quarter rooms. Ross’s drawers in the bureau we shared were models of neatness; mine were a snake’s nest of belts, bras, Aspirin, deodorant spray, keys, cologne bottles, pantyhose, ballpoint pens, loose change; even, inexplicably, a tennis shoe. I reduced all this to impeccable order before going on to vacuum under the bed, excavating in the process an air-letter, an apple core, and two overdue library books … all on my side. He was right about my sloppiness. And about everything else, too. We were socially, psychologically, every way incompatible. What a pity that in spite of this we’d become so horribly intertwined that his toothache made my molar stab; my thoughts printed out in his mind; there were no definable boundaries anywhere between us.
Fiercely I scoured the tiny kitchen and bathroom, it being a matter of pride to leave the entire place in a state of inhuman neatness. Finally I packed a small case to take with me to Don Mills, and filled cartons with all the rest of my clothes and books. By the time Miller’s nurse called, I was breathless with all this activity and glad to sit down.
“You called, Miss Forrest?”
“Yes. I need an appointment with Dr. Miller right away.”
“Is it an emergency?” she wanted to know.
“Yes, you could call it that.”
There must have been something convincing in my voice, because after a short pause she said, “Right. Why don’t you come in a bit before two, and I’ll sneak you in before he sees anyone else.”
“Thanks very much.”
That gave me time to make up the bed with clean linen, leaving that arena also perfectly, primly pure. After a last look around to make sure no litter remained, I locked the door behind me and set out.
On Yonge Street the tall city towers were paralysed in a thick heat-haze. Car exhaust, dust, and hot-tar fumes hung in the heavy air. The sun was like a brass gong overhead. On the subway platform it was a little cooler, but the invading gusts of hot, gritty air reeked of scorched metal. “A perfect day for this trip,” I thought grimly. “Couldn’t be better.” On the bench waiting was an old woman with an orthopaedic collar and swollen legs. Looking at her kept my desperation in mint condition. Life wasn’t such a glittering prize, after all. Who was I to force it on anybody else?
At last a train came rumbling out of the tiled tube, bringing its own gush of hot air to boil around the platform. I walked back to the last car, which was not crowded like the rest. Inside, though it was stiflingly hot, my hands felt cold.
I flopped down on the nearest empty seat. The two benches running lengthwise down the car close to me each contained the recumbent figure of a teen-aged girl. Their bare and filthy feet confronted me at disagreeably close range. The girl on my right might have been thirteen. Her greasy hair hung to the floor in long strands. She had something in her hands which she silently held up to show me. With an involuntary little start, I saw that it was a large black-and-white rat. Before I could check the gesture, one of my hands jerked open instinctively to cover my belly. The girl smiled at me.
“You like rats?” she asked.
“Not all that much.”
“Well, but this one is special. He’s specially trained. I give him the signal and he goes straight for your throat. You don’t believe it?”
“Frankly, no.” The train at this point slowed to a crawl. It swayed and creaked by inches through an apparently endless t
unnel. Finally it stopped altogether with a discouraged hiss, and all the lights blinked out. I stood up with sweat pouring down my back. In the dark the girls giggled.
“Okay,” the one nearest me said. “Okay, George. Get her.”
The lights flicked on again to reveal George crouched on her knee, his pink and indecisive nose quivering as if in apology. I smiled weakly and moved over to stand at the doors. A woman across the aisle abruptly changed her seat for one at the other end of the car.
“Chi – i – cken!” both girls chanted in delight.
“Perhaps you know some nice little girl,” Edwina’s voice repeated fatuously. Poor fool, she hadn’t realized yet they were an extinct species. When would this infernal train get to a station – any station?
“Here,” the girl nearest me said to her friend as the train began to sway forward at last. “Catch!”
She tossed her rat across the aisle and the friend caught it, not very neatly. They threw the creature to and fro several times, eyeing me to enjoy the effect. The other passengers resolutely ignored the whole performance. I stood at the doors with one hand pressed over my belly. My heart was banging with fear, anger, life. I’d forgotten why I was making this trip. All I could contain was a keen and sweating anxiety to get myself and my own personal passenger out of this underworld.
When at last the train doors slid open, I crossed to the opposite platform and rode back to my starting-point, climbing the stairs minutes later with a euphoric sense of triumph. The blaze of heat rising from the sidewalk felt superb. My back hurt; my eyes dazzled – everything ached; thoughts, feelings, everything – the existence of evil was a real and frightening thing. But I was alive and so was my embryo; nothing else mattered. Later I would call and cancel my appointment with death. At the moment it seemed overwhelmingly important to get back to the apartment. I hurried toward it as if pursued by something dangerous.
As I groped for my keys in the dark lobby, I almost fell over something blocking the lowest step of our walk-up – a hunched-over man who was evidently half asleep – Ross.
“Forgot my key,” he mumbled. “Been here for ages. Well, an hour. Where were you?”
“Oh,” I said, “nowhere much.” We climbed the stairs, each with his bit of hand luggage, and on the landing swayed clumsily together. Drunkenly our faces and bodies blundered into contact, and we clutched each other. The delicate knuckles of his spine felt sharp under my hand.
“I am going to cook you a truly enormous dinner,” I said.
“Give me the key so I can open up. What’s the suitcase for?”
“I forget.”
As we struggled in together, he said, “I mean, what’s wrong with City Hall? It’s just as legal. To hell with the veil and the ushers.”
“Yes, to hell with them.”
“And the maid of honour.”
“Right. Oh, Ross, look at how bloody neat everything is. Even the drawers. You won’t believe the drawers.”
“I’m a fussy old maid. You’ll just have to forgive.”
“Get your clothes off,” I advised him.
I went into the bathroom briefly to wash my face, which was richly flushed and slobbered with tears. My eyes met the judge’s eyes in the mirror without apology. I knew that if I really loved Ross, I would let him go, whatever the cost to myself. But I couldn’t afford this kind of generosity. My need was too big. I could keep him safe – but who would protect him from me? That was a question too hard to answer then, or perhaps ever.
“… on the other hand,” he was saying from the bedroom, “my Uncle Hugh is a real gas. This wedding might even turn out to be fun. After all, you could call it an experience, I guess, to hear Catriona belt out ‘O Perfect Love.’ ”
This time the phone rang for real, but by the time I struggled out of bed and picked it up, there was nothing at the other end but an empty, electronic hum. While I still stood there stupidly listening to it, the sound of a key in the front door made me jump. Was that Ross at last? Occasionally he used to drop in on his way to the office, and certainly there were things we had to settle very soon about the week when I’d be in hospital. The arrangement was that he’d sleep here while Margaret coped in the daytime; but the details still had to be worked out. It wasn’t like Ross to neglect details, I thought gratefully … but the head that emerged into the hall below was wearing a Leafs hockey tuque. At once I waddled swiftly back to bed and pulled the blankets high around my head.
Jeff’s feet took the stairs two at a time. Hot face pushed deep into the pillow, I pretended to be asleep.
“Anne dear, I took the key off the bureau last night – didn’t scare you, did I? Thought I’d come round and help get breakfast before I do rounds at Sick Kids. I want a look at Hugh, too. You don’t mind, do you? I’ll get the kids up and make coffee – you stay right there.” He patted the large mound of my hip and went next door, calling “Wakey wakey” to the kids in a loud and cheerful voice. In a kind of dream I lay there listening to Mao yowling like ten cats to inform the world he expected to be fed before any insignificant brats of children. They, for their part, piercingly filled Jeff in, as he herded them downstairs, all about what they would and would not eat; and the poor devil actually seemed to be enjoying the whole experience.
With some urgency I tried to use this interlude to think of any way of escaping the consequences of my last-night’s idiocy. But all I could think of was what would happen if Ross, by any unlikely chance, actually did drop in on us at this point. That confrontation would be so rich in various kinds of irony that picturing it made me shake with laughter under the bedclothes.
“All right now, that’s enough,” I had to say to myself at last with some severity. “Straighten up, you daft bitch, and make up your mind quickish how you’re going to cope with this. Because it is a very ominous sign that Jeff is back here. As you well know.” Hoping it might aid thought, I heaved into a sitting position and reached for a hairbrush. Getting the witch’s tangles out of my long hair was a business as painful as penance. My arms and back ached cruelly as I tugged away, and by the time I got the whole mass braided again into its thick rope, I had to lie back against the pillows, feeling sick and exhausted. After a minute I put some perfume from Billie’s bottle on my forehead, and the cool sting made me feel a bit better in body if not in mind. I still had not the remotest idea what I could say to Jeff to defuse the situation. The odd thing was that except for a sincere wish that he would just go away, I had no feelings about him now that I hadn’t had for the last two years. But how to explain this to the poor sod?
When he came in with the coffee tray, I looked at him sombrely, and was touched to observe that he felt shy with me. If only there were some painless way to speed him off without damage. But none occurred to me. Meanwhile, he put his arms around me and nuzzled his face into my neck.
“Hugh’s in good shape,” he said. “Oh, you do smell so lovely.”
“Don’t be silly, I couldn’t possibly.” My voice sounded so ludicrously cross I nearly started to laugh again, and a big answering smile spread across his face.
“Anne, I haven’t slept a wink, and I feel sort of unreal; but listen to me, love – I’ve never been so goddam happy in my life.”
“Jeff, let me explain about last night –”
“Say you are too.”
“No, I’m not. Far from it. I’m about to apologize to you in six different positions for the whole –”
He was kissing my neck and didn’t appear to be listening.
“I couldn’t wait to get back here and see you again. Crazy to feel like this, isn’t it? But look, I want us to get things straight right away. After all, I’ve known Ross a long time. If he hadn’t taken off, the whole thing would be impossible; but as it is – well, it simplifies everything. And, as you know, Lynne and I were calling it quits anyway; so that’s all right too. It’s just a question of –”
“Jeff, wait a minute.”
“Now, I want you to relax, love.
Your job right now is just to get a good baby here. Everything else you can leave to me. I’ll try to get hold of Ross this morning and tell him how it is. Lynne’s already in the picture. There’s no reason why we can’t start the legal side of it right away.”
“Wait!” I said desperately.
“Eh?” He looked at me, startled.
“I mean, hold on. You mean divorces all round? No, no, Jeff. That would be … I mean, look – last night I was quite simply bombed out of my mind. I know I – but it was just one of those crazy impulses. I really am most humbly sorry.”
His pleasant, snub-nosed face had gone very still. “What you mean is, you just want me to forget last night entirely?”
I put my hand on his back gently. “That’s it.”
“And what if I can’t do that?”
“Of course you can. You will. I tell you it was just –”
“No, I won’t, Anne. I never will.”
“But I tried to explain to you how it is with Ross and me. I know how it looks, but we’re not really apart. Not really.”
“You’re just not thinking straight, sweetheart, and no wonder, the way things have been with you. But you need me. And for the rest of it – you don’t know how long I’ve wanted you. It’s been years.”
“Please. I’m getting along all right. Or was, until last night. That was my fault entirely, and I –”
“Anne, you don’t understand.” He took me by the shoulders just as Martha bustled into the room clasping a box of Cheerios half as big as herself. She had evidently conned Jeff into letting her wear her blue dress with its embroidered pinafore, but the skirt was kilted up at the back to reveal that he had not insisted on any underwear. “Here’s some cereal for you, Mum,” she announced. After an armpit-deep plunge into the box, she deposited a fistful of cereal on my tray.
“Lovely,” said Jeff. “Now go down and help Hugh with his breakfast, okay?”
“No,” said Martha.
“There’s a good girl.”
The Marriage Bed Page 15