by Famous Last Meals (Candidates; Famouse Last Meals; The Woman in the Vineyard) (v5. 0) (epub)
Looking across at the leaning house, his destination, he saw a figure briefly part the curtains drawn across the large front window on the ground floor. An elderly woman, he could make out, before the drapes closed again. He wondered if she could tell who he was. Calling on her now, without an election sign to leave, might well be futile. She didn’t seem the sort who changed her mind, and she had certainly expressed no love for Don Feeney, the Party and politicians in general.
The curtain parted again and this time a dark-skinned face peered out: his rooftop joker.
The front door opened and out came the man, holding a clipboard and a lawn sign, a duplicate of the one that had sprouted in front of the co-op residence. Everything was suddenly clear. Adam crossed the street.
“Mr. Bliss, I presume?”
“I’ll be with you shortly, young sir,” he said, driving the sharp end of the stake forcefully into the beating heart of Mrs. Fallingbrooke’s crabgrass. He adjusted the tilt of the sign to match that of the house.
“Nice touch.”
“It be the touches that nudge we starward.”
“What were you doing up there, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“‘My’ asking. Where you acquire you mother tongue, fool?” said Lexington Bramwell Bliss, now more Mr. T than Oxonian.
“You saw me coming with my signs.”
“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign!”
“You can’t just—”
“What you say? Can’t just? Can’t what? Yes I surely just can. And did. Ha!”
Adam looked past the man, whose tight-fitting white suit and red silk tie made him look theatrical and not at all like the typical candidate from his leftist party. Left-leaning party, left-leaning house. Bliss himself stood canted parallel to the angle of the newly planted sign.
The homeowner came out to stand, humpbacked, on her top step. She wore a simple black dress and a string of pearls with matching earrings. She looked to be ninety-nine and three quarter years old.
“As soon as I rang off from talking to you, I called LB, thinking, ‘Oh, let’s make this interesting, shall we?’ Well?”
“Pardon?”
“You’re coming in. It’s your turn to persuade me.”
“I thought all you wanted was someone to drive you to the grocery store.”
“LB is coming back to do just that after he has completed his work on this street. Aren’t you, LB?”
“That I am, my empress, that I most surely am!”
“I’m sorry, thank you for the invitation, but really. You got your laugh at my expense. What’s the use?”
“Usefulness is a highly overrated quality. We quickly outlive our usefulness. Style trumps substance in all but the rarest case worth mentioning these days, and certainly always in the political arena. Isn’t that right, LB?”
Bliss laughed heartily in agreement as he rang the next doorbell.
“I have to get back to the phones.”
“Phones, drones. Waste of time, your intrusive cold call. Or are you targeting the potentially vulnerable, lonely widows like me with too much money and not enough sense? What they can do these days with a SIN, a postal code and GIS software. Don’t look so surprised; I keep abreast. As for electioneering, now your push call, that’s a tool of a different temper. The self-proclaimed independent survey. The subtly skewed question set. ‘Given that the incumbent has been generally incompetent, how would you rate his chances in this election? Given Party X’s colossal botch of the offshore oil and gas deal—oh, I forget, that was your party, wasn’t it? Silly me.”
She looked and sounded so delighted that Adam would not have been surprised if she and not Bliss were the candidate. It struck him then just how ill prepared he had been in joining the team, making calls, telling people about Feeney without knowing anything about his opponents.
All right, he thought, everything seems to be pointing inside this Leaning House of Pisa. Let’s see what we have.
What he found was a room with walls painted a lemony wash and hung with paintings all of the same style, white on white, textured, arrogantly colourless. Thick dabs of oil paint applied with a trowel, it seemed, gave each work of art turbulence and depth. Looking closer he saw that the surfaces were particleboard, their angled wood chips adding to the appearance of frozen movement, to the patchy skin, the surface of a frothy sea caught and held. He noticed little else, not the texture of the chair she bade him sit upon, not the colour or pattern of the drapes, not the flooring, which he knew was more or less level but which could have been sponge toffee or slate, so intent was he on these slabs of ice and snow that seemed to pulsate and throw inexplicable dancing shadows.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot allow this to continue. You are simply too young.”
Was she was referring protectively to something subliminal in the artwork, an image of Eros or terror or hard cynical adult reality that he had not lived long enough to see? He stopped staring and turned to her.
“I won’t ask how you became enmeshed with that mob. Suffice it to say that you are here now, that it is never too late, and that LB certainly could use the help.”
Still thinking that she was referring to the paintings, Adam shook his head. He wondered if this LB she referred to was the artist, having forgotten momentarily about the trickster candidate.
“I don’t...”
“That’s right. That’s why you’re here! My stars, think about it. What would the world be like if we all sleepwalked through our vigorous years?”
Not following, Adam reverted to received wisdom. “Don Feeney...”
“You can’t work for them, you never did. Believe me. You think you do. You think that because they let you pick up the telephone and say the name of the office, it makes you important and what you’re doing legitimate. I don’t care how handsome that man is, how many times he jumps out of an airplane, how many movies he has acted in. He could be Mahatma Gandhi and I would say the same thing: he’s the government and the government has no right co-opting the young. Don’t you think it’s time you made up your own mind?”
He didn’t know what to say. He felt a rogue smile invade each side of his face.
“Don’t just sit there like a naughty monkey. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No I’m not and you know it. When my husband and I were your age we were card-carrying members of the Communist Party. You couldn’t be a freethinking, conscientious, sentient being and not be. Why? Because the young know. They know intuitively that greed ravishes and destroys all that is good. But as we age we grow cowardly and acquisitive, and our armoured shells grow thick. We stop caring about beauty and searching for truth.”
Adam felt hurt and indignant because he thought she knew just how little he did care about what he was doing for the PMO. Was he that transparent? All that work he had done already and for no pay! And when it came time to go knocking on doors on the Hill, who would take a second glance at his resumé?
She saw his eyes stray again to the artwork.
“My husband painted them whenever we would be posted to some hot country. India, Sri Lanka, Egypt. He’d have Beaver Lumber ship the boards from home. Said that creating Arctic storms helped him stay cool. There are hundreds more, many of them stacked in the attic. I’ve given some away. Would you care for one? They’re quite worthless, I would think, there being so many. You might get the National Gallery interested, if they deemed it different enough from those of his they have in their permanent collection. They’ve been pestering me for years to let them come and see what Cecil was doing when he wasn’t promoting our national interests abroad.”
“I don’t even like politics.”
“My dear boy, that’s because you think politics is something that happens beyond the reach of people like you and me. Tell me your name.” He did. “Adam. Adam What?” He told
her. “Lerner, a name suggestive of opportunity, privilege. Of course you would gain access to the marble halls of power with such a name. Do you know what LB’s name was before he changed it? Shadrach Achebe Kundule. Try getting past the velvet tourist rope with a name like that. Try getting elected. Concessions must be made. Certain adjustments. Nevertheless, Adam Lerner, what if I were to tell you that you, an individual citizen working alone, have the ability to bring down a government?”
He pictured toppled statuary, armed troops storming a legislature, women dressed in black holding keening vigil outside locked gates, the photographs of their husbands and sons curling in the wet oppressive heat.
“I’m trying to get people to vote for my candidate, that’s all. It’s what I signed on to do, I guess. It’s like a game. We’re on one side, they’re on the other. It doesn’t really mean anything.”
She bristled, straightening as best she could in her chair. “If you say anything so thoughtlessly barbaric in my presence again, young man, I will have you thrown out. Take it back. I demand you take those insipid words back and swallow them. Do it immediately!”
“I take it back. I’m sorry.”
“Good. We understand each other. I’m somewhat fatigued now. Our interview is concluded. Come tomorrow morning at ten sharp and LB will have your orders.”
After returning from his strange encounter with Mrs. Fallingbrooke and LB, Adam spent a slow, unproductive afternoon on the phone, much to the delight of Eugène, who was keeping a tally of their respective positive responses. Monica, Don and the canvassing teams came back in the dreamy, hot, distracting time when they had to shut the curtains against the sinking sun, and all they could think about was supper. They went out, a sibling gaggle now comfortable enough with each other to tease and roughhouse on the sidewalks or pretend to listen while daydreaming or to hang back in intimate pairs to talk in a way they didn’t when they were talking about politics. The city opened to them, spilling onto wooden patios that narrowed the summer streets, which were humid after brief rain. Florescent Halifax waved to them, unexpectedly, like the girl or boy you thought hated you in school calling to invite you to a party.
They went into a dark bar-and-grill on a street that ran parallel to the waterfront. A man was reading from manuscript pages into a microphone when they trooped in. He gripped the microphone stand with his free hand. He was slim, with grey hair cropped close to the skull, a white collarless shirt and black jeans. A delicate golden leaf dangled from one ear. He wore rimless round-lens glasses and his face was rough with a two-day mat of white and grey bristle.
The waiters kept moving while he read his story. Plates and glasses clacked together in the nearby kitchen. Adam heard the whoosh of a gas flame turned high. People at a table tucked into a nook beside the reader’s little stage kept talking. Perched atop a tall stool, his feet tucked between the rungs, the spotlight cutting him off from his audience, beads of sweat decorating his forehead, the man read as if he didn’t hear them.
The interns settled at two round tables. No one wanted to be that close to the speaker, but this was what was available. They ordered pizza and draft-beer in jugs and smiled at each other as if to say, “Now we’ll uncover the real you, the genuine me.” In Ottawa they had been cordial colleagues, easy with the by-the-way, thought-you-should-know rhythms of the office. Those bands of habit now severed, their surroundings unfamiliar, they felt as giddy as children on a midnight orchard raid.
In the story, a man lived his whole life with his mother. Approaching fifty and unemployable, he was a sad, lonely, marginal sort, overweight though not bad looking. A sensitive loner, he became anxious in crowds to the point where he could no longer function outside his home.
He and his mother lived frugally on her pension and that of his father, who had died when the boy was a teen. His mother had taken out a second mortgage when she thought that she might turn her large Victorian house into a bed-and-breakfast inn. Stronger then, she had had the energy to dream such a dream and act on it, purchasing the necessary linens and towels, outfitting each guest room with a bath, upgrading the kitchen to code, buying expensive china and copper cookware.
He had never seen his mother happier than during the preparatory stages leading to the launching of her business. The last position she had held before retiring had been that of an event planner for the large manufacturing company she had worked for since graduating from high school. She had moved up from the assembly line to the head office, where she worked first as a secretary and then as the executive assistant to the vice president in charge of research and development. She had loved most of all the eight years she worked as an events coordinator, planning conferences, retreats and dinners, and now she had a chance to relive that happy time with the company but as her own boss. She knew that on his own her son was a defenceless lamb, though he was honest and obedient and cheerful when closely supervised. And so she dreamed not only her own dream of being a fine and gentle hostess, but a dream for her son, one in which he learned how to run the house as a business. She never spoke her dream aloud to him for fear of upsetting him and setting him against her project. Perhaps she should have told him. Perhaps it would have been better to tell him what she was planning. Then the Fates might have been kinder.
As it turned out, said the writer in a voice that was lulling and magnetic and unsettling, two days before the B&B was due to open, having passed its safety and health inspections, a thick brown oily sulphurous crud topped with a rust-coloured bloom of mould began to bubble up through the soil to pool on the front and back lawns, seeping into the basement, killing their flowers, shrubs and trees. The company, the same that had employed the mother, was found to be responsible for the contamination, which originated at one of its tailing ponds. Mother and son fell into each other’s arms. He wept because she did, but he was also relieved, because he had been able to guess what she had been planning for him, and the thought of having to learn the business had been making him secretly sick. But that sickness was replaced by another and they could no longer live safely in the house. The company paid a few thousand dollars compensation, although nothing, no insurance policy, compensation, miraculous cleanser or prayer could reverse the damage.
They moved into a tent in a thickly wooded ravine. The son, who thought they were on a camping trip, did not realize until too late that he and his mother were destitute, subsisting on community and church welfare. Declining rapidly in health, unable to get warm, her appetite and her will having ebbed away, the mother died with the advent of winter.
The writer ended his reading there. They sat quietly, occupied with eating the last of the pizza, after contributing to a polite ripple of applause. Isaac said that after hearing the story he could no longer complain about anything. Eugène asked to have the last part explained: What had happened to the house? What was the substance on the grass? Pookie gave him a synopsis. They discussed the message of the story. Was nothing positive to be taken away? What happened to the son? Would he have to go into a home for those who couldn’t take care of themselves? He didn’t seem completely helpless. Perhaps necessity would bring out his instinct for survival. Jean-Marc invited the author to have a drink with them and explain what he was getting at in his “history.” Was this not a perfect illustration of Marx’s theory of capital?
“I wasn’t trying to get at anything. That’s the way it played out in my head.”
“So bleak,” said Emma. “Are all your stories this depressing?”
The writer leaned over to one side, dipped his hand into a leather satchel sitting on the floor, and straightened holding a thin paperback book. “What’s your name?” When she told him, he wrote something in the front of the book and handed it to her. “Here. Find out for yourself.”
“How much is it?” She opened her purse. “You have to let me pay you.”
He refused. They were students, even if they were from “Uppity Canada” and wo
rking for the “Pernicious Mendicant’s Office,” even if they were “in league with Satan.” They laughed.
“What happens to the son?” said Isaac.
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t finished writing it.”
At Emma’s invitation the writer tagged along when they filed out. The group moved like a spastic centipede down the hill to a pub closer to the water. Here a band was playing Gaelic music and the atmosphere was louder and more festive. The large front windows of the establishment had been removed, giving it a carnival-tent feeling.
Emma and the writer sat for a long time smoking at the bar. He leaned his ear down close to hear what she was saying. As Adam watched from across the room, he grew jealous of the man. Emma rested her hand on his forearm as she listened. He was telling her things Adam would never know. He would never be that old, that experienced, that attractive. Emma looked as worldly as the writer, the same age. Adam despised him and his little volume of stories, longed to be someone who had accomplished such a thing. That man knew who he was. Everything about him spoke identity. The years had done their sculpting, abrading, honing and polishing. Here were weary eyes, the exposed cheekbones of wisdom, the deep timbre of an immortal.
She picked her purse off the bar, got off her stool and walked toward the rear of the bar, where there were signs for the washrooms and telephone. Isaac was telling Adam something about the town where he had grown up, something about a lake monster. The band finished its set with a mournful ballad. Gilles and Pookie returned from where they had been dancing slowly in front of the stage. Adam thought he heard Jean-Marc say to Eugène that they—the interns from Quebec—were no better than wartime collaborators. Eugène shook his head and began whistling the tune to “My Way.” They pooled their money for two more jugs of beer. When Adam looked at the bar again, the writer was gone. Emma didn’t emerge from the washroom. Adam let a glassful of draft slip down his throat, inside and out, the froth overflowing. Someone yelled, “Shet the feck up, yuh friggin’ frogs. Cornwallis shoulda finished the job and sunk all them ships yer ancestors was on before they got out of the Bay of Fundy,” and Gilles gave the owner of the insult the finger and a haughty up-yours look. They finished their drinks and agreed it was time to go.