The Secrets Men Keep

by Mark Sampson

  Your wife comes in then, wearing a tasteful black dress, and you turn from the mirror. She sets her small sequined purse on the bed so she can come tie your tie. This after you struggled to get the top button on your dress shirt to close. You’re not sure whether your neck is this thick because you’re in shape or because you’re out of shape. At any rate, the button closes and your wife ties your tie, standing in front of you, forming the knot and tightening it around your neck. Strangling you like she secretly knows all your secrets.

  ~

  The first time you meet Liam is on your wedding day, a little gaffer in short pants and a tie, a rambunctious three-year-old who charms everyone within a fifteen-foot radius. The second time is a year later, when you run into Rainbow Belt at Costco and she tells you that TACLL has divorced her and returned to Ireland. You think about these two events and how one may have held clues to the other. How much did you see, how much did you detect, on the biggest day of your life? Answer: Not much. But who could blame you? At the reception you are a mingling machine, hopping from guest table to guest table. And so maybe you don’t spot how TACLL exudes a low-grade annoyance at every adorable thing his son does. Maybe you don’t see how Rainbow Belt—her red hair now chopped into a bob, her stomach undulant with the weight she’s put back on—sits at their table with her back like a yardstick, her hands folded in her lap.

  You are truly shocked, a year later, when she breaks the news to you over your oversized shopping carts in Aisle 16 at Costco, her hair long again and Liam propped on her hip. (His knobby knee jabs you in the ribs when Rainbow Belt hugs you, a hug that lasts a bit too long, you think.) Son of a bitch. Son. Of. A. Bitch. Really? She nods. He was never happy here, she says, never comfortable. And he really hated being a dad. You are aghast. You can’t believe there are men who still do this sort of thing. And you roll your mind back to your wedding day, to see if there were signs, if there were indicators. But if there were, you didn’t notice.

  Or maybe you did. Now that you think about it, maybe you did notice, but you were too caught up in the celebration, the once-in-a-lifetime decadence you’d waited so long for and felt you earned. Cake smeared in your beard and limo waiting outside and all that.

  ~

  So your future wife is now your wife.

  You decide to become homeowners. It seems like the reasonable thing to do. At the bank, you sit primly together in the loan manager’s office, a united front of fiscal responsibility. The loan manager is trying to explain the mortgage rate he’s offering you, but you’re just not getting it. As you watch your wife nod appreciatively, you realize then how much smarter she is than you.

  Okay wait, you say. This is, like, Prime?

  This is almost better than Prime, the loan manager tells you. It’s, like, Super Prime. It’s Optimal Prime.

  Optimus Prime? you quip, and your wife throws you a withering look.

  So the two of you leave the bank with your Optimus Prime mortgage. The house you buy is in the west-end suburb of Clayton Park, which is ideal because your job has recently moved to a building near the Armdale Rotary and your commute, according to Google Map, will only be 5.3 kilometres door-to-door. You don’t realize it at the time, but you will have virtually no reason to ever go downtown again.

  ~

  Following the run-in at Costco, you and Rainbow Belt exchange a lot of emails. She and Liam are moving into a new place, a tiny clapboard house in the north end of the city. She promises to have you and your wife over for a meal just as soon as she’s settled. It takes a year—renovations and all that. The one weekend she’s free, your wife is not. Your wife has a huge wedding to shoot down in the Valley; she’ll be there overnight. So you go alone. You bring a bottle of wine. Seems like the polite thing to do.

  You find Rainbow Belt’s house in a state of delightful chaos: Liam’s toys strewn everywhere, unfolded laundry piled on the couch, and the boy running around like a maniac. When he sees you come in his mother’s doorway, he halts on the hardwood, plants both feet and looks up at you with unrestrained charm, even though he may not remember precisely who you are. You tousle his hair and hand Rainbow Belt the wine. She hugs you. You notice she’s lost weight since you’ve seen her last.

  The two of you demolish the bottle of wine before she even gets dinner on the table. Thankfully, she has a second bottle handy to serve with the salmon steaks and asparagus she’s prepared. You watch as Liam dutifully eats everything on his plate without being told to. You watch as the second bottle of wine comes and goes.

  Soon it’s Liam’s bedtime. So what will tonight’s filibuster be? Rainbow Belt asks him. But it’s only a single glass of water and two stories. She invites you into his little-boy bedroom—Power Ranger posters on the walls and a bureau covered in dinkies—and suggests that you read the stories to him. You demur but she insists. So the three of you cuddle in together, there on his bed, like a family, and read Doctor Seuss. It feels weird. But also not weird.

  Afterwards, the two of you retire to the couch, throwing the laundry into a nearby chair. When it’s clear Liam’s down for good, she breaks out the whiskey with an ‘e’.

  Three shots later, you’re barely coherent. You try to engage Rainbow Belt about anything else—the weather, the recent war in Lebanon, your Optimus Prime mortgage—but she will have none of it. You’re back to where so much of this started, with her talking about Gord, Gord, Gord. He’s nothing, she tells you. He’s a fucking child support payment. He doesn’t even write Liam a letter when he sends the bank draft from Dublin. I can’t believe my marriage ended up exactly like my mother’s.

  Do you say what you’re thinking? Of course you do. You’ve had the equivalent of an entire bottle of wine and three shots of whiskey with an ‘e’. The words just sort of slip through your teeth before you can stop them. How could you marry that apple-cheeked little leprechaun? You expect shock, perhaps rage. Perhaps a slap across the face. It’s what you deserve. But instead, she places her forehead on your chest—the pec muscles there still firm, surprisingly firm, from all the hours you’ve spent on them in the gym—and lets out a weepy, frustrated I don’t know.

  Okay. So. You black out there for a while. The planet rotates, it’s now 4AM, and you come back to find yourself lying on the edge of Rainbow Belt’s queen-size bed. On, not in. You open your eyes and a grimy dread creeps into your stomach as you realize where you are. You pat your body frantically. Yes, thank God—you’re fully clothed. You hear Rainbow Belt breathing along the other side of the bed. You look over. She’s there, the covers pulled up to her armpits, her back to you. Her shoulders are narrow, her hips wide and forming a tall mound in the duvet. She’s wearing her PJs, thankfully. You scour your brain for what happened over the last several hours. You don’t know. Anything could have happened. An infinite number of possibilities, of circles in the Venn Diagram. But what matters most is what you do right now, the versions of your future you’ll unleash with your actions, actions that could tear down everything you’ve built up for yourself, the life you’ve come to love. One stroke of her red hair would do it. One comforting caress of her cheek.

  You get up. You find your shoes. You pray you’ve sobered up enough to drive home.

  ~

  On the trip downtown, you and your wife discuss the last thing Rainbow Belt posted to Facebook before Liam got really sick and she disappeared completely. It was the simplest of status updates: . . . will not cope. It hung on her page like an admonishment before the condolences started pouring in. I wouldn’t cope either, says your wife, now, turning off North Street and onto Brunswick. I wouldn’t. I don’t know how she’s doing it.

  Will not cope. It spoke of such decisiveness, the closing off of all other possibilities. And then you think of Liam, forever frozen in his one little circle. Liam, who got leukemia.

  Who the hell’s kid gets leukemia?

  You haven’t spoken to Rainbow Belt since t
hat night. You couldn’t face the awkwardness. Then, a year later, Liam got sick, and it was even more awkward to call her. Even in the two years during which Liam was diagnosed, died, you did not call her. You did not call her. Not once. And you’re ashamed of that.

  You and your wife pull into the parking lot of a stone church downtown. You haven’t been downtown in ages, and you’re a little ashamed of that, too. Ashamed of the decadent routines that have kept you in Clayton Park, that have softened you, that have tenderized you like meat. Olive by preprandial olive.

  You get out of the car and your wife takes your hand. Let’s go be strong for your friend, she says. The wind picks up as you head into the church. It liberates a leaf from one of the trees near the door. You watch as the leaf twists and twists in the air, making random loops, but never see it touch the ground.

  THE ROCK GARDEN

  I knew my rock garden was horning in on her side of the property even before I knew that a “her” existed. The other side of my two-storey duplex had been vacant for months, so I didn’t think twice about widening out my garden a little, moving cobbles where I pleased, placing statues wherever I wanted. It was probably naïve of me to think that the dark, oily windows next door would always remain in blackness. That no one would come to deal with the unsightly weeds and exploding crab grass that festered on the other side of the back lawn. But I thought it better to dress the area up a bit—with a handful of my lesser works and a smattering of shale and boulder—rather than leave the thatch to its own savage devices.

  “Your rock garden is horning in on my end of the property,” was the first thing she ever said to me, standing in cotton shorts and a tank top on the concrete slab of my front stoop.

  “Are you sure?” I feigned. “Where is the property line, I wonder?”

  She sucked her teeth at me. “Well it certainly doesn’t run down the north third of the backyard. You’ll have to move those statues and rocks back over to your side.”

  I had come to the door without first removing my monocle—an indispensible accessory for my daily rituals—and I caught her staring at it with a mix of curiosity and disgust. “Do you not like my statues?” I asked, eyeing her through its glassy circle. “I carved them myself.”

  “Well, I, I don’t dislike them,” she answered, tucking strands of brown hair behind her tiny ears, “although clearly you have some kind of obsession with the female form.”

  “Yes, “ I said, and took my monocle for a walk. “I certainly do.”

  ~

  Afterwards, we lay in bed smoking cigarillos and passing a glass of Chivas Regal between us. She was talking (nice measured words, almost eloquent, as if they had been rehearsed in advance) and didn’t notice at all that I was entranced. My monocle rested on the pine nightstand on her side of the bed, tempting me with its flatness.

  “. . . And the best part is I’ll have my own space for once, you know. Nothing shared, no remnant of that asshole. For the first time in my life a set a keys or a candle holder won’t move until I move them; a bathroom won’t get messy until I mess it. I get giddy at the idea of not having to look after anyone but me for a change. . . .” I rolled over and traced my fingernail around the perimeter of her breast, watching the nipple to see if it might harden with excitement. “Oh shit, I have to run,” she said after glancing at the Dali watch strapped to her thin wrist. She threw off the blankets, swung her feet onto the floor, and wriggled into her underwear. “I’m starting my new job tonight.”

  “What kind of job?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Waitressing,” she replied. “I did it years ago. You get in at the right bar and the tips can be amazing.”

  “I bet. Guys would pay top dollar to have a pretty girl like you fetch them beer.”

  She looked at me, incredulous.

  “So what’s your name, anyway?” I asked.

  She dithered for a moment, perhaps debating whether retaliation was in order. “Natalie,” she finally said. “And yours?”

  “Marlyn.”

  After she was gone, I lay there, missing her profoundly, and practiced saying her name over and over in my head—Natalie, Nat-a-lie, Naaaataaaalieee. I wondered if I’d be able to holler it loud enough for her to hear on the other side of the duplex wall, should the need arise.

  ~

  Natalie did not believe in metaphors. She thought it unnecessary to draw comparisons between two or more discordant qualities, since true beauty existed in the discordance itself and not the correlation one could make with it. At least, that’s what she thought about while on her walks along the waterfront, taking in the differentiating hues and spaces before her. She loved the mossy green shape of McNab’s Island at the mouth of the harbour, the way it would contrast with the rigid angles of the buildings inland, especially the matching blue and white towers at Purdy’s Wharf. She loved how the container ships, gliding by like floating skyscrapers, always bullied the little tugboats out of their way. She loved wood and water and glass and steel. She loved music and silence and bars and churches.

  She often came late in the day to visit me, after her walks but before she started her shift at the tavern. I would be in my studio chiseling or buffing away at my latest masterpiece. I always left the back door open for her, and loved the way she’d come upstairs and sneak in behind me to throw her arms around my shoulders.

  “Don’t you ever leave this house?” she asked one day, biting my ear hard enough to hurt.

  “Ow. Fuck off. Now why would I leave? I love it here, working all day and smelling my own farts.”

  “Seriously, Marlyn. Where are all your friends? Don’t you ever socialize?”

  “Not if I can avoid it.”

  That made her frown. She placed her hand over mine and together we moved in silent concert, wiping away residue from a pair of eyes frozen in a moment. “Well I want you to do something for me. Work is throwing a staff party. I want you to be my date.”

  I turned around. Flashed my monocle at her in defiance. “Absolutely not.”

  “Yes, Marlyn. It will be good for you. You’ll meet some new people, get away from all this—” and she ran her other hand between the breasts of the statue in a cold, clinical swipe “—from all this stone. What do you say?”

  “I say you should take your panties off.”

  “You know what? I envy you. You’ve lived here all your life, so that sound you hear drifting out of the bars at night—the fiddles, the Celtic drums—it’s like white noise to you. But God, Marlyn. You have no idea how lucky you are to have such music here. I mean, the sound is just . . .” She stopped. “You should try losing yourself in it. You’d be a changed man.”

  My eyebrow and cheek gripped my monocle like a closing mouth as I turned to look at her. “Just hang them there, over the desk. Now lie down and touch yourself.”

  “I’ve already made a lot of friends at the tavern, Marlyn, and I’ve told them about you. They want to see what all the fuss is about. I think it would be best if you came.”

  “I think it would be best if you came.”

  I set my chisel aside and for the next seven minutes watched through my monocle as Natalie worked herself up to an adroitly achieved orgasm. When she finished, I picked up a wet rag and, turning back to the cold slab, began polishing it in tight little circles. “When’s your next day off?”

  She sat up, breathless. “Sunday. Why?”

  “We’ll start moving the rock garden then. You can help me.”

  “Fine,” she said. “If . . . if that’s what you want.”

  ~

  I do go out. Sometimes. I’ll walk the streets at night. I’ll drive up to Chocolate Lake to swim in moonlit waters. I’ll take in a movie, shop in a tacky strip mall. Sometimes I see women around wearing tight halter tops and club pants and I’ll want to take them home so I can turn them into stone. Sometimes I do. But I find more comfort,
more control in my rock garden, away from the noise of the streets. There is always a vivacity in the dead faces of these stones, a lively reserve in those etched expressions that stare with diffidence as I move among them.

  “So who are they?” Natalie said. She was carrying one of my smaller works from her end of the property to mine.

  “Who are who?”

  “Don’t be a dick. Who are these women?”

  “Who do you think they are?”

  She set the one she was carrying upright and gave it a dispassionate glance. “I’m not sure. I mean, they’re brilliant, Marlyn. You’re brilliant. But sometimes I see real people there, like you’re carving some model sprawled out in front of you. Other times I think these women are pure fictions, you know—women you’ve never seen and will never see.”

  “I’m brilliant,” I echoed. I liked the sound of that coming off her lips.

  “But you know, I do sense a lot of anger and resentment in their faces. It’s almost like you carved them against their will, and they’re standing up to and denying the very passion that created them.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said. “Is that what you really think? No wonder you’re only a waitress.”

  “Hey, that’s just the meaning I’m making as I look at them.”

  “The meaning you’re making? I carved the fucking things. Since when do you get to make the meaning? For your information, these are all the women I’ve fucked over the years.”