by Alix Ohlin
Though it was only early afternoon, it already felt like evening; not having slept the night before, she could feel dryness and exhaustion creasing her face, and regretted having come. Her nerves were jangled, raw. She blamed the director for not giving her enough time and guidance, and Elizabeth, that snake, for rattling her even before the first show. She’d done them a favor by stepping in at the last minute, and in return she was getting absolutely no gratitude whatsoever.
Working up this anger comforted her and helped her concentration, but she was still upset. She needed to calm down before the performance. She walked through the crowded streets looking for a day spa or a yoga center, but couldn’t find either one and settled for her third choice, a bar. She sat down and ordered a Scotch, on the when-in-Rome principle. The bartender asked her what kind she wanted, and she shrugged helplessly. “You tell me,” she said.
He smiled and poured her a glass. She took a dark, smoky sip. At the far end of the bar, a bunch of young Americans was tossing back pints and taking no notice of her. Anne sighed and took another sip as a man slid onto the stool next to her and ordered a drink. A few more people filtered in, and when she went to the bathroom and came back, she saw a few heads turning to watch her.
“Buy you another?” the man next to her said. He was slender and dark-haired, wearing a lot of rings. His accent sounded Spanish or Portuguese.
“Okay,” she said. “Just one.”
When it came, she raised it in a gesture of thanks, and he smiled and pointed at his chest. “Sergio.”
“Millicent,” she said.
“Milly? What a sweet name.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. Already, she was close to having what she wanted and needed—a fleeting moment of attention, her presence in the world affirmed. She slid off the stool and stood.
Sergio touched her hand gently. “I’m sorry if I have offended you,” he said, knitting his eyebrows together charmingly. “I am a goofball at times.”
“A goofball?” It was such an unexpected word that she laughed, and he did too, showing large, white teeth. There was a mole on the side of his mouth, light brown and slightly raised, like a bread crumb stuck there.
“This is what my friends tell me, yes.”
“And where are these friends of yours? Spain?”
“I am from Lisbon originally, but right now I live in London. I work in telecommunications. I am here on business for a few days. Now you know everything about me. And you, Millicent?”
“I’m a teacher,” she said. “Taking some drama students on a field trip.”
“And where are your students now, Millicent?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t say I was a good teacher,” she said.
He laughed, shaking his head. “You are very intriguing.”
“No, I’m not, but thank you anyway. I should go. Thank you for the drink.” She turned away, only to feel his hand on her wrist, more forcefully this time.
“Can I persuade you to stay a little longer? I am sure your students are having a good time, wherever they are.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”
She grabbed her bag and walked out with a surge of adrenaline that was buoyant, clarifying. When he caught up with her outside and tugged on her arm, she wasn’t surprised; she just sped up to try to evade him. He kept alongside her, edging her to the left, and within a few steps they were in a cobblestoned alley, her back against the wall, his weight pressed against her shoulder. Though the streets were crowded, the alley was narrow and shaded and the tourists too distracted, she knew, to glance sideways. His hand was under her sweater, his rings cold against her skin. His mouth was on her neck. She let him lean close, tilting back her neck and nudging his legs open with her knee, then slammed it against his crotch, hard.
“Fucking bitch,” he said, staggering backward, with a certain admiration in his rage. They faced each other and there was a moment when she could have run but didn’t want to. She was ready. When she reached out as if to brush that crumb off his face, he slapped her hard across the cheek and her ears rang and blood poured hot and thin from her nose. The taste of warm metal. He came up to her again and she hooked her ankle around his, tripping him onto the cobblestones, then pulled pepper spray out of her pocket and gave him a dose in the eyes. As he moaned and writhed on the ground, she ran away.
Back at the hotel she took a long, hot shower and studied the redness on her right cheek. Toweling off, she threw up her drinks. There were scratches on her neck and back.
When she got to the pub everybody stared, and Elizabeth immediately cornered her in the restroom. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
That evening she was brilliant. She could feel the group’s energy shifting as everyone responded to this new Anne, completely different from the stiff, insecure outsider at the dress rehearsal. During those two weeks in Edinburgh, she never once faltered. The other actors praised her, befriended her, and bought her drinks. Every once in a while someone would ask her to explain what had happened that afternoon—especially once the bruises started showing—but she just shook her head.
What fueled her wasn’t the injury but the ownership of a story that was a mystery to everyone else. The refusal to explain. The secret high that came from thinking none of them knew her at all.
SIX
Montreal, 2006
MITCH HAD BEEN back in Montreal for two weeks when he saw his ex-wife for the first time in years. It was September, and fall was coming on strong. The Labor Day weekend passed stormy and breezy, warning everyone to put the follies of summer behind them. Kids walked the streets with their heads down, bent under backpacks, listless in their new school clothes. September had always been Martine’s favorite time of year: she said it felt like promises. Whenever the phone rang, he thought it might be her. Even knowing it wasn’t, he’d pick up on the first ring, alert and vulnerable to the telemarketers on the other end or his brother calling from Mississauga.
He didn’t call her himself, because he didn’t know what to say.
He was crossing the hospital parking lot late one afternoon when a middle-aged woman called his name. He stared at her blankly, a half smile frozen on his face. She put her hand on her chest and said, “Azra.”
“My God,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and gave her a hug. She was Grace’s best friend, or had been back when they were married. She had gained weight and her hair was different—now sleek and straight, with a red tint, not long and black and curly—but her eyes were still wry and kind, reflecting the same surprise at how he had aged as his must have about her. She had always been vibrant and wiry, a churn of energy fired by some personal electricity. She and Grace used to talk in the kitchen for hours, exchanging confidences about their futures, husbands, jobs, sex lives, problems with their parents. It always amazed him how quickly they would plunge into the depths of conversation, as if the surface held no tension at all.
“How are you?” he said now.
“Oh, you know,” she said, and they both laughed. She held on to his elbows briefly—they’d always liked each other—before letting go. “Have you seen her?”
He followed her quick glance at the building behind him. “Is Grace here?” he said. “What happened?”
Azra grimaced, as if weighing whether or not to tell him whatever it was, but surely there was no reason not to. He and Grace had worked hard to forgive each other, and if the process was necessarily incomplete, it had been undertaken in what they both acknowledged was good faith. They’d kept in touch for the first years after the divorce, then gradually moved on with their lives.
“She was in a car accident last week,” Azra said. “I thought maybe you’d heard. She was stopped at a light on Jean-Talon when a car rammed straight into her. She has a broken leg and a broken pelvis and I don’t even know what else.”
“That’s awful,” Mitch said. “Are you heading in now? I’ll go
with you.”
She hesitated for a second, then shrugged and nodded, and they walked inside together, catching up on each other’s news. Azra and Mike had two children, and Mitch heard their names and ages with the usual small pang of having let a stage of life pass him by. Outside Grace’s room, he stopped and touched Azra’s arm. “Why don’t you go in first and make sure she doesn’t mind if I say hi?”
He waited in the hallway after Azra disappeared inside. He worked on a different floor and knew few of the doctors here; it occurred to him now how circumscribed his routine really was. Then the door opened, and Azra gestured him in.
“Grace,” he said.
Nobody could look their best when lying in a hospital bed after a car accident, and Grace was no exception. Her face was etched with wrinkles, her skin weathered. Threads of silver shot through her limp brown hair. Her broken leg, on top of the covers, was frozen in its white trunk. Below it, a fuzzy red sock seemed the only brightness in the room. Surrounded by machines and hooked up to an IV drip, she seemed fractured and frail. Mitch couldn’t help thinking about Gloria and Thomasie Reeves, about Mathieu’s shoulder and Martine’s ankle. Feeling like the world had broken everyone he knew, he took one of Grace’s small, dry palms in his. “You look like you got hit by a truck.”
“It was a Honda, actually,” she said. Her facial expression held the dreamy vagueness of sedation. Behind him, Azra cleared her throat. She had taken off her coat and was setting things on a counter by the window: books, a pillow, a stuffed animal. Watching her friend’s movements, Grace seemed to have trouble turning her head.
“Sarah thought you should have the bear,” Azra said, waving it at Grace. “She said he’d keep you company.”
Grace licked her lips, which were chapped and feathery. “How is she?” Her voice cracked, and Mitch poured her a cup of water from a bedside pitcher and handed it to her.
“She’s doing great. She really wanted to come today, but I told her you wouldn’t want her to miss her swimming lesson. I’ll bring her tomorrow.”
“I don’t even know how to thank you.”
“Oh, shut up,” Azra said fondly.
“Who’s Sarah?” Mitch said.
Grace’s eyes met his. “My daughter.”
Mitch swallowed, surprised he hadn’t heard that she’d gotten married and started a family. On the other hand, after the divorce they’d migrated into separate social circles and never ran into each other. He’d been the one who stopped seeing their mutual friends, who’d switched neighborhoods and haunts. It was easier that way.
“She’s staying with Azra and Mike while I’m here,” Grace went on. “It sounds like she’s having a great time. I don’t think she’ll want to come home.”
“It’s fun for all of us, having her,” Azra said lightly.
“She’s always hated being an only child,” Grace said. Though her words were wistful, her voice was calm.
There was no mention of the father; Mitch guessed he was out of the picture. He realized that both women were looking at him expectantly. “Is there anything I can do?” he said, more to Azra than to Grace.
“You know, there is,” Azra said. “Maybe it’s weird to ask, but Mike and I are both working, and with the kids and all their activities … Well, is there any way you could go over to Grace’s and do the mail and the plants?”
“Of course. You don’t mind, Grace?”
When she looked at him, her expression was dazed. She couldn’t be bothered to mind right now, that much was clear.
“She lives on Monkland, I’ll write down the address,” Azra said. “Here, I have an extra set of keys. This really helps, Mitch. Thanks.”
He felt dismissed. He squeezed Grace’s hand again—cold against his own—then walked down the green hallway with her keys in his pocket.
He drove west along Sherbrooke, past the dark red turrets of the Westmount Library, the setting sun piercing the windshield. All along the street people were hurrying home from work, leaning forward against the wind that was whipping leaves off trees and whirling them around. He knew a lot of people who lived in this part of town but rarely socialized here, having peeled away this layer of his life a long time ago.
Outside Grace’s building the trees were a riot of green and early, creeping yellow. He walked up the steps, remembering the apartment they had moved into as a young married couple so long ago. They had been so thrilled to buy their first things together, furniture and dishes, all of domestic life a novelty. It was hard to believe they’d ever been so young. He left the mail on a table in the hallway and went into the kitchen, looking for a watering can. There were dirty plates in the sink, and cereal boxes and granola bars and fruit scattered across the counter. But it was a homey kitchen, a child’s smeared finger paintings tacked on the fridge. On the counter was a school photo of a blond girl with a gapped smile and clear, wide-set green eyes. She didn’t look much like Grace, who had had dark hair even as a child.
He couldn’t find anything to water with until, rummaging through the cupboards, he found a teapot that he recognized, queasily, as his mother’s. God knows when she’d given it to them. She’d been dead for seven years.
He filled the teapot with water and wandered from plant to plant. Toward the back of the apartment was Grace’s bedroom, and he peered in for a second and then, seeing no plants, stepped back with a feeling of relief. The other bedroom was a riot of pink sheets and stuffed animals and books and toys. No plants there, either.
Five minutes later he was done, and he put the teapot back exactly where he’d found it, which seemed stupid given how messy the kitchen was, but still. It felt like the right thing to do.
Back at his own apartment, he thought about Grace as he made dinner. When they met, he was halfway through his PhD program, the teaching assistant for a course Grace took called Personality. Later in their relationship, she confessed to having an encyclopedic memory of that time—what they’d said, where they’d been, what each of them had been wearing. He smiled and nodded, but truthfully he remembered little of those early encounters. What stuck in his mind was Grace’s work, her professional, detailed lab reports, so superior to those of her peers that halfway through the term he stopped reading them and gave her an automatic A. The sophistication of her performance was in dire contrast to the handwriting on her quizzes, which was round and bubbly. She didn’t dot her i’s with hearts or flowers, but she seemed like the kind of girl who had, and not that long ago. She pressed down so hard that sometimes the pen broke through the paper. It was the penmanship of a very young, very determined person.
Although he’d thought then that he was depressed, in retrospect his time as a grad student was, in fact, the happiest of his life. The worries that had so nagged at him now seemed like luxuries. Was psychology important? Was it effective? Did it matter? He stayed up at night chewing over its various intellectual and emotional bankruptcies, and these anxieties functioned as ballast, distracting him from his suspicion that it was himself, not the profession, that was unworthy. Eventually, as he started working, the worries dissipated, and at night he thought about the people he worked with and their problems, not his own.
After that class was finished, he started seeing Grace around the department, meeting with her professors, working in a lab. They would run into each other late at night at the vending machine, or reach for the same milk container at the coffee shop at eight in the morning. Neither of them had a life, so they made one together.
He couldn’t recall a single thing Grace had said to them when they were dating. What he did remember was how he felt, things he’d said that made her laugh or nod at his wisdom. Over candlelit dinners she sometimes looked like she wished she had a notebook handy. At first this was great; then it was uncomfortable. He wanted her to figure out that he wasn’t all that wonderful.
But after he really got to know her, he understood that this was just her nature. She brought the full force of her attention to bear on you, made you d
runk with that and with yourself. She wasn’t being manipulative; she was genuinely interested. Once he realized this, though, he began to resent her for not thinking he was uniquely gifted. It was unfair, but he couldn’t help it. He stopped calling, stopped inviting her out. In response, she asked him over, cooked dinner, and started telling him all about herself, her family, stories from her childhood. Then she calmly engineered him into bed, and there, without exactly being the aggressor, she let him know that he had been ignoring her, that it was his turn to pay attention. And he did.
A year later they were married. They were in their early twenties, and the only married people they knew were their parents’ age. Everyone seemed to think it was cute—or reckless. “You’ll be divorced before you’re thirty-five,” his mother muttered darkly when he gave her the news. And she was right, as she was about most things. She had loved Grace, though. He wondered if she still thought they’d get divorced when she handed over the teapot. She was a materialist, his mother, stroking her favorite blanket and cardigan sweater in her last days at the hospital, long after she’d forgotten his name.
He had never wanted to admit it, but he mourned the loss of Grace the student, the adoring undergrad. When she got her own degree and they became peers, the tectonic plates beneath them shifted, resettled. They stopped having sex. They were buddies. What this said about him, his loss of desire, his need to dominate, was so profoundly unflattering—and so unutterably, unchangeably true—that he couldn’t even think about it.
Grace was perfect for him. She was trustworthy, caring, loyal, and smart; she understood both him and his work. So their divorce was, for a time, the great failure of his life—until he went on to other failures.