What is Going to Happen Next

by Karen Hofmann

  And there’s Ben, suddenly, his hand on Cliff’s shoulder, his arm around the girl with the tuque. Hey, man, Ben says. His voice is not slurred but relaxed, a bit slow. Hey, man, where did you get to? I was just looking for you. Think we’re going to split now.

  Cliff tries to get up but his foot is somehow pinned. No need, Ben says. No need. We’ll hang out later this weekend, hey? He’s a bit unfocussed, or focussed on something else. The girl seems to be holding him upright, at one point. Cliff can see the situation: He will only be in the way now. Ben has another trajectory now. He can see that; he isn’t stupid. He knows what he has to do.

  Yeah, catch you later, man, he says. Ben makes the telephone sign with his hand, taps Cliff’s shoulder, and kind of lurches away, a three-step as he leans on the girl.

  Cliff wonders what time the buses stop running. It’s a good ten kilometres from the campus to his building off Main. The woman is smiling at him again, her eyebrows raised, her head slightly tilted. Her skin is very smooth and opaque; it seems to lack capillaries or pores. Her cheeks are perfect half-globes. She seems to be waiting for an answer to a question.

  My brother, Cliff says. The woman leans close, smiles again, shows her teeth, which are small and not very white. Do you need a ride? she asks.

  IN HER BED she sucks him over and over. She straddles him and her breasts swing above him like fruit. Each as big as his head. She invites him to put his head between them, and his dick. She invites him to mount her from behind, but attempting this, he is reminded of a program he once saw where a very small dog, a toy poodle maybe, was standing on a little stool mounting a much larger one. Making the point about dogs being all one species. Thinking of this makes him laugh and lose his erection. She splays herself out on the bed and he thrusts happily but she is soon bored with that; he can see it on her face. He knows he is supposed to be doing things with his tongue but he isn’t sure. He wants to but she says: You can pay me back later. Which scares the part of his brain that is still working but he can ignore it.

  He stays through Saturday and Saturday night, and Sunday and Sunday night. There is no question of his leaving, it seems. He thinks that he has had more sex than in his lifetime up to this weekend. On Monday morning she says, I have to go to work and you have to go to work. But we’ll have tonight. She covers his face with little kisses, mwa mwa mwa. He thinks now with guilt of Sophie. He’s left extra food out, thinking he might stay at Ben’s, but he’s never left her this long. He doesn’t have time to check on her before work though.

  After he gets to work his thoughts come back to him like a photograph developing, and he thinks: I won’t go back to Loretta’s. I’ll call and tell her not tonight. He does this. He goes back to his place and feeds and strokes Sophie, and calls Loretta from the pay phone.

  Her voice is so strange. There’s something in it of a small boat that’s been cut loose but he can’t tell after a while if the boat drifting toward the edge is her or himself. He hears in her voice that if he does not go over to her place tonight he will not be allowed to go over again. He rides over. She won’t look at him or smile at first and then she says a lot of things about using her. He says he’s sorry over and over and then goes to leave, but she lies on the floor between him and the door and holds his ankles, and then pulls him down on top of her. He bangs his elbow painfully, trying not to land with his full weight on her. When he sees she’s laughing, he’s so relieved that his view of everything changes: goes bright, shadowless. He stays.

  Letdown

  CLEO SAYS TO MANDALAY: I love this house.

  You always say that.

  She does, though. She always feels a rush of pleasure in and longing for the house Mandalay lives in, its elegant architecture, its views of English Bay, of the city and the mountains rising to the north of the city: swashes of changing blues. It looks like it was built in the first decade of the century, and is probably worth half a million dollars or more, because of its location.

  The house been cut into many suites, but Cleo imagines the original architectural beauty: the wide French doors between the former dining room and the living room (which are bedrooms, now), the hardwood floors, which, though scarred and yellowed, are warm and authentic, the high ceilings, the wide mouldings, the beautiful windows. She fantasizes about owning it, fixing it up. If it were hers! She sometimes walks through each room, in her imagination, sanding, re-papering, re-painting, putting in period tile and fixtures and handles and faucets ordered from period hardware catalogues, creating something out of this house, as some of Trent’s colleagues have.

  When she tells Mandalay what could be done to fix up the apartment, what it could look like, though, Mandalay is annoyed. She says, It’s beautiful as it is. And it is, sort of, with the shabby assortment of things Mandalay has, the little wicker tables from second-hand stores, the armchairs layered with shawls and scarves. But it could be so much better.

  She had thought that she would have a house like this, when she married and started working. After she had paid off her student loans.

  Her own house, a basic suburban builder’s house, lacks distinction. It gives her no scope. Even the furniture is bland, monolithic: pale oak and puffy pine-green leather, furniture that was already out of fashion, likely, when she and Trent went to the store on the outskirts of the city and bought (thanks to a gift from Trent’s parents) what they needed to furnish the house.

  I just wish my house had some more character, she says.

  Mandalay says: You could get slipcovers for the sofas and chairs. You could paint the furniture white. You could have the wall-to-wall taken out, and put in colourful patterned rugs.

  Trent would never let me, Cleo says.

  She’s in town for her birthday trip — it’s actually a couple of weeks past her birthday, but this was the first day Trent was free to watch the children. She had asked for a weekend off, a weekend to go into town, stay in town, visit Mandalay, do some shopping. Trent hadn’t wanted her to. He had tried to dislodge her plan by first saying, Why don’t we have Mandalay come here for the weekend? That would be easier. And then: Why don’t we all go into town for the day? Maybe Mandalay could watch the kids so we could go out for dinner. She’d almost been defeated, almost given up. But Trent had to do it as her birthday present, all she had asked for.

  And she had told his mother, on the phone, that it was happening, and Trent knew that.

  She might have discovered a new strategy. She’ll have to see if it works.

  But here she is, having caught an early-morning bus — Trent didn’t want to be left looking after the kids without the car for the day — here she is, with almost a whole day to herself. It is true that they have just decided to go clothes shopping for Mandalay, but she does not mind that. It will be at least a change.

  Mandalay says: Why don’t you try on some things, too?

  I don’t need anything, she says. Really, I’m at home with the kids all day. I never go anywhere.

  But seeing the displays in the shops, she wants new things. Clothes have changed in the last year or so, she sees, and not just subtly, but radically: The baggy jeans and comfortable T-shirts, the flannel and the flowing dresses that she has been wearing the last decade have suddenly disappeared, and been replaced by snug-fitting jeans and tiny tops and short, ultra-feminine, little girls’ dresses. And everywhere, snug black pants, yoga pants, she thinks they’re called, but worn for every occasion. Snug in the bum and thighs, flaring out slightly at the hem.

  Nothing she owns looks like anything in the shops. Of course, she has been pregnant or post-natal for the last five years. But still. She feels aggrieved, as if something has been kept from her.

  Why don’t you try something on too? Mandalay calls through the change room door.

  If she starts, she won’t be able to stop. Better to stay on the outside, just looking.

  I thought you only shopped vintage, she says.

  Styles have changed too much, Mandalay says. Or not enoug
h. I can’t find what I need.

  In the past, Mandalay would have said what I want, not what I need.

  It’s kind of like stuff from the seventies, Cleo says. The tight flared pants and little shirts. You should just ransack Crystal’s cellar.

  It would be just different enough not to work, Mandalay says. Anyway, I don’t think this stuff is going to end up in thrift stores. It’s pretty cheap.

  She can see that. The knits are flimsy, not well sewn.

  I guess it’s the new thing, Mandalay says. Disposable clothes.

  Isn’t that environmentally wrong? Who is buying this? Cleo wonders.

  I don’t think any of it would fit me, she says. The shoulders and upper arms and busts are so small, and nothing covers the middle. Nobody who has given birth could ever wear these things.

  You have to work out, Mandalay says, her voice muffled now as if she’s pulled something tight over her head. The waist is the new erogenous zone.

  Anyway, I don’t have any money, Cleo says. This is not quite true: She doesn’t have any income herself, but Trent says she should buy what she needs. She’s pretty sure he’d grumble, though, say that she should get a job, if she said she needed new clothes.

  When am I going to meet your new man? she asks, when they finally leave the shop and are back out on the sidewalk.

  He’s not really into that, Mandalay says.

  Into what?

  Family things. Meeting the relations.

  So you have a lot of mutual friends?

  No.

  So what do you do, then? Socially?

  We go out for dinner. Good restaurants. Symphony, gallery openings, benefit parties.

  Are you sleeping with him?

  Well, duh.

  So you’re like, his mistress.

  No. Why would you even say that?

  I assume, the things you do, he’s for paying all of it.

  Mandalay doesn’t answer: gives Cleo the silent treatment for the next two blocks. Cleo has perhaps gone too far. She has just wanted to understand the arrangement. She says this to Mandalay.

  Why? Mandalay asks.

  Why what?

  Why would you want to understand my arrangement? You might want to know that your conventional house and two kids in the suburbs isn’t everyone’s dream.

  Did I say it was? Cleo asks.

  Her first day off, her first day to herself in months, and this is how she’s spending it: trailing through shops watching Mandalay preen and listening to her put her down. Why does she always get sucked into this? She ought to have her head examined. Trent always says: The definition of madness is repeating actions and expecting different results.

  And Bodhi hasn’t called her. He has apparently called Cliff, but not her. She has to wonder if Mandalay even gave him the right number.

  They are both silent. They walk shoulder to shoulder; they allow themselves to be separated by other walkers; they rejoin.

  Why don’t you call him? Mandalay asks.

  Cleo says: He has to call me first. He has my number. I have to let him call.

  That’s weird. I know you think about him all the time, Mandalay says.

  MANDALAY SAYS: His adoptive mother is trying to poison him against us.

  Really? She knows to take some of Mandalay’s claims with a good teaspoon of salt. I can imagine that would be a natural impulse, though, can’t you?

  She’s feeling better, less anxious. They’ve stopped to have lunch, are eating at a North Indian restaurant, a cuisine Cleo hasn’t tried before. This is what she loves to do. It’s so good to have interesting food, an uninterrupted meal.

  Mandalay says: She showed him the social worker’s report. From when he was — taken. It said that Bodhi was neglected, mother mentally ill, father ill and sporadically employed and not coping with older children. Garbage on the floor, no food in the house.

  That’s not true, Cleo says. There was peanut butter and bread. The garbage was in a bucket.

  Mandalay says, I’m just telling you. He had a copy of it. I saw it. It said that Bodhi had chronic diaper rash, probably impetigo. He had ringworm.

  No he didn’t, Cleo says. He must have picked that up in foster care. Pinworms, maybe. Everyone had pinworms sometimes, in Butterfly Lake.

  Listen, though, Mandalay says. It said he had scurf. What’s that? Like scurvy?

  A kind of crust on his scalp, Cleo says. It’s common. It’s not a sign of neglect. She feels confident, a little angry, but at least united with Mandalay in this. Shared indignation. The basis for a lot of social connection, if she thinks about it.

  He had not had any vaccinations and was Vitamin D and niacin deficient. He had baby-bottle mouth, whatever that is.

  It means his baby teeth were already decaying, from falling asleep with milk pooled in his mouth, Cleo says.

  It said that he did not appear to have any burns, bruises, or broken bones, Mandalay says, and that he was a bit developmentally delayed.

  How does Mandalay remember such detail? But she’s always been good at repeating conversations, even from long ago, verbatim. He was not, Cleo says. He was walking. He could pick up objects and say words.

  I’m just telling you what he said it said, Mandalay responds.

  A kind of dread going through her now. Poison, yes: That’s what it feels like. Something curdling the actual blood in her veins. She feels cold, a little sick. I don’t know if I want to meet him, she says. It sounds like he’s getting a lot of pressure. He’s going to feel divided loyalties. Maybe it’s not the right time.

  He’s not a child, Mandalay says.

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, walking back toward Mandalay’s apartment — Cleo must catch the city bus to the terminal, then the Greyhound home — Mandalay says, why don’t you stay another day, why don’t you stay longer? We never see each other anymore. We’ll go out for dinner; we’ll see a movie or something.

  On the phone Trent says: But what will I feed Sam? And she remembers only then that he’s still breastfeeding three times a day, at night and in the morning and before his nap, to fall asleep. She says, not convinced herself, He’ll take a bottle; just rock him and sing to him. He’ll be okay.

  Trent says he’ll drive in and pick her up. No, she says. The kids need to go to bed.

  She won’t be that late if he picks her up now, he says. Nine, nine-thirty at the latest. He says it with such authority that she herself is almost swayed, but she thinks, sensibly, that it could well be later. She remembers that he is always curtailing her time; he is always second-guessing, modifying her plans. No, she says. I don’t want to have a time limit. I will stay overnight at Mandalay’s. I’ll bus home in the morning.

  After she hangs up she feels a terrible longing for Sam, and for Olivia too: a desperate nostalgia for them, a panicky regret at her decision.

  You shouldn’t have to ask his permission, Mandalay says.

  She hadn’t asked Trent’s permission, had she? She was just asking politely.

  You’re totally apologetic, Mandalay says. You don’t take any initiative. You should assert yourself more.

  But then Trent gets angry, and there’s always conflict. She doesn’t like to argue in front of the children. She doesn’t want always to be fighting.

  It is too difficult to explain this to Mandalay. But she feels, now, the separation pangs subside and a kind of exhilaration run through her, in spite of Mandalay’s lecture. She feels free. She feels the next fifteen or so hours of freedom ahead of her, a wide meadow of time.

  Mandalay loans her a dress (You can keep it, she says; It’s a little short for me) and tights. Cleo will have to wear her own ankle boots. (Your feet are so tiny, Mandalay says). Cleo thinks, taking off her jeans and sweater, that she never wants to see them again. She will buy some new things, she thinks.

  On their way to a restaurant, they pause at an intersection, wait on the corner for the light to change, and then suddenly Cleo sees Cliff, on his bike, and so they all stop and talk, Cliff
shy and a bit awkward, as usual, herself trying to draw him out. (He has a cut and some bruising on the side of his face, on his left cheekbone, she notices when he takes his helmet off.) They try to get Cliff to go with them to dinner, but Cliff demurs: He has to get home, he says.

  And then the really incredible thing happens, the thing that Trent will not believe when she tells him the next day.

  Mandalay says, Oh my god. That’s him.

  Who? Cleo can see, on the facing corner, only a small group of young people. Three young guys, almost boys still, and a girl. They’re carrying bags, they’ve been to the liquor store.

  Mandalay waves, calls: Ben!

  One of the boys looks up, looks directly at Mandalay, grins and waves back.

  In Cleo’s chest everything seems to seize up: lungs and heart and diaphragm.

  The boy says something to his companions and they all glance at Cleo and Mandalay without much interest, and then the light changes, and Cleo sees that he isn’t moving with his friends, but hanging back on the opposite curb, as his friends surge forward. And Cleo herself can’t move, she is frozen in place, but Mandalay pulls her by the elbow. They cross. It’s like walking through mud, through thick cement. Something slows her progress. The pavement stretches before her, a continent wide, and the very air is thick. The sounds of the cars and the other pedestrians and the seagulls are slowed as well, each note taking on a kind of physical weight.

  She feels that Mandalay is dragging her across the intersection, up onto the curb. She could not have made it on her own volition.

  And there he is, waiting for them a little back from the corner, out of the foot traffic. He’s much taller than she is, quite a bit taller even then Mandalay, and she has to look up at him, and at first the sun is in her eyes: He’s backlit, only a halo of sunlit hair around his head.

  There are a few dozen seconds, maybe a couple of minutes, Cleo thinks, when one meets someone one hasn’t seen for a long time, when they appear as strangers, and their faces must be read objectively. And then there is a switch thrown in the mind, and the physiognomy suddenly becomes familiar again, recognized, seen now subjectively as a whole, rather than the sum of its parts. And more significantly, this new face is superimposed in the visual memory over the old, so that it disappears, and only the new now exists in that catalogue or whatever it is of known faces.