by Ian Williams
It was clear, as well, that no provisions had been made in case Felicia refused his offer.
The telephone was moved to a table within Mutter’s reach along with a glass of water (overturned but no longer dripping on the floor), bread (room temperature although Edgar kept all his bread in the fridge), peanut butter, a knife (both unused).
Felicia dropped her school bag and went on double speed, a bolt of righteous indignation.
You can’t just leave her with a knife, Felicia said aloud. She took the knife into the kitchen. She had a good mind to call the number on his business card. (The police didn’t occur to her; they were only for violent crimes.) What kind of man? she thought.
Mutter, this is how they treat you? she asked. Monster.
On her unrecognized island, she always heard how white people could be cruel, how they put their old people in special prisons, had nurses, governesses, maids, nannies, and assorted women raising their children. Signs of wealth and signs of detachment in tandem. She should have been prepared.
Let’s try to get you up, she said. In your chair. Good girl. She wanted to air out the mattress.
She looked Mutter in the eye. What did she want? Tea. Felicia made her some tea, cooled it, and helped her with some sips. She didn’t know what to do about her medication. Had the woman taken all of her pills at the same time? Had Edgar dumped her morning pills or her entire day’s dosage on the side table? Was his mother overdosing?
She would have to wash the sheets, bleach them.
You can’t just live on bread and soup. Bread, bread, bread every meal, Felicia said.
Felicia put on a pair of yellow gloves. She had a basin, a sponge, some towels ready to clean the woman. Who only has one pair of gloves? Who uses the same gloves to wash dishes and clean the toilet?
Nothing to cook, Felicia said. Nothing to eat in this house. Just sleep and wake up and work. Was she supposed to cook out of the air? She marched into the kitchen and surveyed the fridge. No fruits, no vegetables except a quarter head of cabbage. Black along the cut sides. Some Styrofoam containers, a spoon, chopsticks in one container, scary looking cartons of eggs, milk and juice, three or four loaves of bread in various stages of completion, about as many types of cheese, sticky bottles of condiments, a lighter, packets of sauces, butter, some sandwich shaped things in foil. Only the quarter of cabbage was natural, though not fresh. She had a hard time throwing out food, but that afternoon she filled two shopping bags, tied them up and left them on the inner steps leading from the garage to the house so Edgar could stumble over them when he came in. Then she went back to Mutter.
XY
14.
Edgar returned early the following evening, by surprise because he talked his way onto an earlier flight, stomping snow as he always had on the mat near the garage entrance, but Felicia looked at him disapprovingly, then looked down. She had cleaned.
Welcome back, Edgar, he said to himself.
Welcome, she said with enough reluctance to get his attention.
How was your trip? he continued. Oh, it was delightful.
She was wearing yellow rubber gloves.
He saw that she had slept downstairs in the formal living room on the large couch with blankets she found in the linen closet upstairs. Great Expectations was turned down next to the blankets. She did not make herself at home. She did not change her clothes. There was no overnight bag. She was the type to squat over his toilet to avoid touching the seat, then to rip off the first few squares and use the untouched ones.
Mutter was sitting on the couch, dressed in peach, listening to the radio.
Look at you, he said to Mutter, pretty in peach. What did she think in her old age? She always seemed occupied.
Mutter smiled and held out her rock necklace for a compliment.
The house smelled like meat. Did he have meat?
He heard a pot boil over. Felicia hurried to the kitchen. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it. She stirred it.
What time did you get here yesterday? Edgar asked. He made a drink to hide behind.
She looked at him then went back to yellow-gloving.
I’m talking to you, he said.
Noon.
Surely, she couldn’t be touchy about— He’d try.
Did you meet Jazz? Edgar asked.
Did I meet Jazz? Felicia said. Did I meet Jazz?
Edgar frowned. He went back to the closet and hung up his coat. She must have left early.
Did I, Felicia, meet—
She didn’t show up?
Edgar! Felicia said. Stop it. You didn’t call no day nurse.
I did. The agency said—
She threw a sponge at him. It had no effect. Then she went to retrieve it.
You think I left Mutter alone.
Felicia put her gloved finger in his face. If it wasn’t for the fear of God in me, I’d leave right this minute. I know you leave your mother by sheself with not even something proper to eat so you can go and run down money. There’s a God in the sky, Edgar Gross. And I’m telling you that you will have had hell to pay if this woman did die. If you want to kill she, pick up a knife and do it like a man.
No one said anything for a long while.
I’ll make you out a cheque, he said, and you can be on your way. The indignity of being spoken to with such hostility after a day of would you sign here, Mr. Gross ruptured his pride. The flinging back of his confession. He had nothing to say to her. His face was wrapped up in a leather mask.
* * *
+
He came back with a cheque and set it on the table. Felicia kept her back to him, head bent into a canned soup and meat improvisation. Hopefully, she hadn’t had to spend her own money on the meat.
You cleared the ashtrays, he said.
You need to buy some food, Felicia said quietly.
There’s food.
You can’t eat from cans every day, she said.
He opened the fridge. What happened to—
I threw everything out.
Look, he said, for the record, I did call.
Felicia held up her hand, enduring him.
I shouldn’t have asked you. So soon.
Felicia braced her hands against the ledge of the sink. One minute you begging me. The next, you acting like a big shot, like you don’t want me here.
You should be reading whatever the hell it is you’re reading. He smiled and stepped close.
She wiped her nose with the back of a yellow glove. Don’t you have a kerchief? she said. Offer me a kerchief. What’s the matter with you?
He offered her the broad part of his tie. He had hit the right line. He had recognized her situation, even in the most external and obvious way, but to a girl from a small unrecognized island, that acknowledgement was enough.
We need food, she said. I made a list.
He took the list, left, and came back with his usual afterthought. He said, Food for thought, no pun intended: give up your place. Stay. Take care of Mutter.
I can’t do that.
It’s just a thought. He left again. They had only known each other two weeks. And he knew she was too Christian to live with a man. She’d need to explain it to everybody, to herself. She could say she was working, caregiving. He didn’t want to call her a domestic.
He went back a third time. He said, You’d make someone a good wife.
Then his leaving stuck.
XX
15.
The sex talk that Felicia received had two problems. First, it occurred after she had had sex. Second, it was delivered by the man with whom she had just had sex, had been having sex for six weeks. In its entirety, it went like this:
I don’t want to get pregnant.
Then don’t.
Felicia looked at the light fixture. Every time she thought of his vasectomy, t
he absolute certainty of the decision by a man who left a room two or three times before finally leaving, she was perplexed.
I mean not now.
Twin girls. I remember. Edgar reached over her to the side table for his lighter. The heel of his hand pressed her shoulder. His armpit hair was sandy, tan, golden, a lovelier colour than his hair.
But not not ever, she said.
Can’t help you, he said.
She didn’t have to have twins. Look, he already lopped off the boy from her future. She could be perfectly fine with Edgar, couldn’t she, kneading dough and flicking lint from his shoulder and washing his collars. She could spend her life emptying his filthy ashtrays without so much as a tiny lace christening outfit.
So never? she asked.
She settled herself on his chest. She didn’t mind this part, minus the smoke. She didn’t mind the density of him now with her ear over his ribs. She had seen body hair on men before, of course, but with Edgar she really considered it—how strange that it just grew out of the crook in his elbow and washed over him. All of that hair was hers somehow. She didn’t want her body doing it, but she was glad his did.
Come on, Felicia. I have to go. Edgar was trying to sit up.
He didn’t have anywhere to go as far as Felicia knew. She wanted to lie and think about his hair a while longer.
He flicked his eyes at her like a reptilian tongue. She felt it on her shoulder.
You know I was married before.
Silence. What do you mean, I know?
I don’t know. Edgar cleared his throat. It’s a saying.
You’re divorced?
Sort of.
Felicia pulled down her nightie and stood over him. His face was red, a burn from skiing not from shame.
When you was planning on telling me that?
I told you in the hospital.
You know full well you didn’t tell me nothing about no I’m married in no hospital. You married this whole time and have me operating under the assumption that you single.
Ancient history.
No. She rapped his kneecap. It is not ancient history. It is present history. It’s very present history because, because I’m here thinking about the future
I’m telling you it’s irrelevant.
and you come and drop this on me that he’s married. He’s married. What do you take me for, Edgar Gross?
She dragged the covers off his feet.
He was acting like she was overreacting. He said, I’m not married in any real sense—
Just legally, Felicia said. You’re just legally married.
As I was saying, it makes more sense for us to stay married than to get divorced for several reasons.
Name one.
He couldn’t find one.
Because you’s a good Lutheran boy? Because I here cooking for you like a slave when you have a wife somewhere [he’d said she’d make a good wife] who you don’t want to divorce.
You’re young, Felicia. He found his slippers and started walking to the bathroom. His flat, narrow bottom.
What she name?
Irrelevant.
You turn me into an adulteress in the sight of heaven and have the gall to tell me is irrelevant.
Why do you need to know?
Felicia needed to know everything. She hit him on the back of his shoulder with her fist as he walked past her. She have money?
So what?
Well, go back to having sex with your money.
That’s crude.
Go back to your wife and Irrelevant and whatever she name in Calgary.
See, you’re a child. You don’t understand anything.
I don’ understand how you could be married and have me living here for eons—eons, Edgar—Edgar tried to close the bathroom door but Felicia kicked it open—and be married from day one.
She was waiting for an explanation, an apology, something. She stood at the door of the bathroom door watching him urinate with a cigarette in his mouth. That’s what he meant by go.
XY
15.
Beginning that weekend, the house was frosty.
Before the present blizzard, sure, sometimes Edgar felt like he and Felicia were in an unhappy marriage. She wouldn’t talk to him. She moved swiftly around the house, building up charge for the static shock of her anger. He wasn’t as malignant as she. He conserved energy, hibernated from the conditions. Occasionally one or the other, him, usually it would be him, would reach out, meet the yipping teeth of an animal he only wanted to pet and retreat to the den to watch the Bulls or the Celtics.
Fair, his timing could have been better. But he wanted to tell her before the end of the year. Fresh start in January. Hence December 29, which made for a chilly New Year’s Eve where Felicia told him to take down the Christmas decorations and went to sleep before midnight. He hadn’t ever spent New Year’s Eve with his paper wife. In fact, the longest they spent together continuously was a drive across the continent and back: Toronto → L.A.→ Toronto. On their way back, they stopped in Vegas to eat and gamble a bit and get married, why not. Within a year of the wedding, she was cast in a soap opera in California. He found out from their weed dealer.
On New Year’s Day, Edgar was served a letter on the kitchen table, notifying him that Felicia would be leaving by the fifteenth of the month and that he should take steps now to procure adequate care for his mother. Lovely penmanship, as usual. He read the letter silently in Felicia’s presence over his morning coffee and let it drop to the kitchen table. That’s where it stayed during the frosty week until Felicia couldn’t stand it anymore. She placed it on his dresser under a bottle of Brut.
She wrote, leaving by, not leaving on. Knowing Felicia, knowing women, she would leave while he was gone to Vancouver in the middle of the month. Catch him off guard. Spite him. When he opened the door on his return, the house would have been converted into a freezer, chips of frost would greet him, he’d have to defrost the hallway to get to Mutter who’d be suspended, mouth open, in an ice cube.
Let her do her worst. If he could take on the vipers at Paperplane, he could take on Felicia Shaw. Move on out. He knew she had nowhere to go. Her former room at Christian Lady’s had been rented. Rock, meet hard place.
Edgar beat her to her own surprise.
The morning of his flight, he said, You can leave the key in the mailbox.
XX
16.
Felicia pretended that she didn’t hear him. But she was listening carefully through the stages of his departure: his footsteps, the jangling hangers, the crunch of the back door closing, the engine, the grind of the garage opening and closing.
From an upstairs window, she watched the car disappear down the street then she pulled her packed suitcase from under the bed and tucked her toothbrush into her handbag. She had made arrangements with Christian Lady who’d said, My door is always open, my dear, though I don’t know where I go put you. The only thing she hadn’t done was make arrangements for Mutter. She regretted not specifying an exact time in her resignation letter: 9:00 AM on the fifteenth of January.
Felicia convinced herself that Mutter was not her problem, poor Mutter. She carried her suitcase to the foyer and stood near the front door for a while, removing Edgar’s key from her keychain (she only had one key left, for the lock on her suitcase). When she glanced behind her, she beheld Mutter’s eyebrows flickering as if trying to get reception.
Her taxi arrived. She opened the door and waved for more time. No day nurse had arrived. If anything were to happen to his mother, Edgar would say that Felicia was the last person who saw her alive, that Felicia was the one who was responsible for her care, that it was her negligence that caused his mother to fall or choke or starve or however she was to die.
She called the day-nurse agency. There was no booking (monster, an absolute monster) and no one could come on such short notice.
The taxi honked outside.
This is how he was going to fight, was it, using his own m
other to manipulate her. Felicia put on her shoes. Mutter wasn’t Felicia’s problem. Mutter wasn’t her mother, her mother-in-law, her great aunt, her friend, her neighbour, her problem. Felicia would leave the key in the mailbox and a certain man fell among thieves and close the door and they left him for dead and walk down the path and a Levite approached and put on her CBC voice to give the cabdriver the address and a priest approached to the room her mother had rented and a good Samaritan approached and see if she could get her Ontario Secondary School Certificate and he bound up his wounds and get her own life and put him on his ass and leave Edgar to take care of his mother’s and which of these acted like a neighbour?
XY
16.
Edgar’s daybook should have read:
8:00: Handcuff Felicia. Throw the key in a river on the way to the airport.
8:30: Check-in
9:00:
9:30:
10:00:
10:30: Flight to Vancouver
11:00: Smoke, drink, pursue various in-flight diversions.
11:30:
12:00: Sleep
12:30: (PST) Expect Jazz at airport. (Grab girlie mag first from non-Paperplane franchise)
1:00:
1:30: (EST) Leave a business card on seat for stewardess
2:00:
2:30: (PST) Presentation from sales
3:00:
3:30: Merger presentation from finance
4:00:
4:30: Meeting CFO
5:00: (EST) Call home.
5:30:
6:00: (PST) Call home x 2. Mini bar. Girlie mag.
6:30:
7:00: Hotel Bingo? Find girl??
XX
17.
It bothered Felicia that she could not go an hour without a thought of a certain someone while she was sure he hadn’t ever—hadn’t ever—had a thought of her. Ever. She purposed in her heart not to think about that someone, not to let his name form in her mind, during the morning, then hopefully the afternoon and evening and onward until ever.