Luck

by Joan Barfoot

  She was startled, driving back to the city with Max, to see how far the city had continued to extend in her absence; how unaccustomed she’d become in, really, such a short time to wide streets and bright lights and, most of all, so many people. People everywhere. It was alarming how easy it would be to be lost here; to disappear.

  That was before she realized the value and challenge of invisibility.

  She also hadn’t realized, setting out with Max, that at the other end of their trip, having given destinations no precise thought, she would have no place to go. But, “You can let me out here,” she told him at one random downtown corner, because why not? One purposeless place was as good as another.

  “Are you sure? Where will you go?”

  She was still beautiful then. She could smile enigmatically and say, “I’ll be fine, thanks for the ride,” and be off with a wave.

  The night grew darker, and still the streets were busy. She wandered for a while, waiting for something to make itself known, her two suitcases, even on wheels, an impediment. Maybe, she thought, a temptation as well. She grew furtive, moving close to storefronts to keep at least one side protected. People even slept on these streets. Where could be safe in a city where ill fortune might lead to sleeping on sidewalks?

  When she phoned her father, she had no idea if the number still worked, if he would still be living in that house, if he would speak to her or hang up. In the event he answered, but seemed unclear who he was talking to. “It’s Beth,” she repeated. It made sense he might not know her voice because it was a long time since he’d heard it, but obviously he ought to recognize her name.

  “Yes,” he said. “Hello.” She was surprised he stopped there, when he should be saying, “Where are you?” or “Are you out?” or “What have you been doing?” or even “Why are you calling me?” and “How dare you?” For that matter, “It’s good to hear your voice. Come home, Bethy, all is forgiven.” Any of that. Not, “Yes. Hello.”

  “Daddy.” She sounded like the toddler who actually did call him Daddy. “Can I come home?”

  “Home. Yes.” Still in that vague tone; she couldn’t tell if he was giving her permission or not. He didn’t sound wildly welcoming, but he wasn’t refusing her either.

  In those days he still knew who she was. When she arrived, he opened the door cautiously. He said, “Beth.” He didn’t prevent her from walking past him. The house looked foreign, but also familiarly similar, except messy. There was the same floral wallpaper in the dining room, the same beige sofa and easy chair in the living room, even the same sun-faded gold drapes. Maybe that’s what was strange. She would have thought, if she’d thought, that he’d have redecorated, bought new furniture, rearranged the rooms. If it gave her a jolt to see the kitchen floor, how could he have borne walking across it, living with it, all this awful time?

  There were no photographs in the living room or anywhere else. That was different. Missing were all manner and sizes of framed family photographs—the three of them blowing out birthday cake candles, sitting before Christmas trees, those festivities when families are together, however remote they are in day-to-day life. Neither were there signs of Beth’s triumphs. The shrines to her successes were gone, replaced by jumble, bric-à-brac, junk.

  Signs of a man on his own. Throughout the house, things were just set down and not picked up: ancient Reader’sDigests, silted coffee cups, a pair of pliers. She would clean and tidy, first thing. He would feel better and look better if his household was neat. He seemed to her smaller and greyer-skinned than she remembered. He was watching her. She said, “Shall I get us some tea?” and his eyes widened. Well, she’d forgotten; or hadn’t thought. “It’s okay, I just thought we might like something to drink. How about,” seeing his further alarm, “coffee, if you’d rather? Or a beer?”

  They’ve both had adjustments to make. He wasn’t used to being so constantly cared for. She wasn’t yet accustomed to caring for him. They didn’t have much of a background together either, not much in the way of old habits, easy references and jokes to fall into, just the two of them. She thought at first that might be a good thing; although perhaps not. At any rate there she was with a man she wasn’t very familiar with, whose life she didn’t know at all clearly, even in bare outline. What did he think, how did he feel, marrying a beautiful woman who so soon began fretting over her lost opportunities? What were his feelings when Beth was born? Did he actually like hunting ducks? Did he enjoy his work or was it only a job? Did he have friends where he worked, buddies he joked with, the rough humour of men on their own? Did he like salads, did he prefer beef over fish or vice versa? She had no clue. It appeared he didn’t either. She didn’t realize right away that even if they’d had days, weeks and years worth of moments, just the two of them, he might well not recall them.

  She wouldn’t say she hasn’t been tested right to the limits. It is very, very hard to hold to high purposes, to renunciation really, when their object moves further and further away into some mysterious, distant landscape of his own. It’s only in those occasional head-knocking moments that she minds that he no longer knows her name. She does mind that he watches her constantly and, it seems, warily. There is someone in there behind those dark eyes, but there’s no telling who.

  Cleaning up his messes is disgusting. Wiping him, dressing him, stripping him down, washing—even seeing—his skin in the shower, is more distressing than she could have imagined. It’s the wrong way round, caring for a full-grown older man, a father, especially in those ways. Making sure he doesn’t wander takes a lot of foresight and energy. Before she understood what was happening to him, he got away a few times, out the door, down the street, around corners until he was thoroughly lost and upset, weeping when he was found and the police brought him home. A few times, too, he has struck at her, launching out with his fists, still powerful and now dangerous.

  All that alertness and worry and drudgery, in addition to keeping an orderly house—he’s not old, and Alzheimer’s, his doctor says, doesn’t kill by itself. “You need to take breaks, nobody can do this all on their own, there are resources to get you some help. Frankly, it’s a mistake for anyone to give up their own life in these cases.”

  He is not many years older than Beth, he is not the family doctor she used to know, he has no history with them. He doesn’t realize this isn’t a matter of cases. He imagines intense daughterly duty, but has no notion of its qualities and components. “I know,” Beth tells him. “I won’t. I’m all right for now.”

  It’s amazing what she’s found herself capable of, but the doctor’s right about one thing, it does get exhausting. She can tell her father over and over where they’re going and what they’ll be doing—for a walk around the block, to the supermarket, to the opening of a show of her former patron Nora’s new work—and he retains none of it. He is always anxious about destinations, permanently uncertain, frequently angry. She hopes he’ll behave himself here, but even if he makes a scene, she’s glad that they came. She looks at self-satisfied Nora, at flagrant Sophie, at that plain older fellow, the undertaker who is Sophie’s new husband, and feels pretty much what she hoped to: a sort of comparative shini-ness, a relative purity. A tiara sort of triumph.

  Because none of them knows what she knows: the grandeur of dogged, hard, invisible sacrifice. Not even Sophie, taking this easy way out after a couple of years of trying halfheartedly and mainly failing to help distant strangers, now caving in to marriage, motherhood, life in, of all places, a funeral home—what a defeat, what a waste. And certainly not Nora, with her scratching of paint and scraps of materials, glued-on bits of this and that mistaken for meaning. Nora looks like a different woman from the one Beth recalls saying she loved, however mistakenly. Now Nora looks just like most of the other smooth people in this big room: more attractive in a worldly sort of way but toughened and, for this evening at least, thoroughly masked.

  Imagine her talking to Beth as if Beth were an idiot child! “Do you still make tho
se teas?” in that phony voice—as if Beth and her interests and passions were negligible, merely quirks. Beth may have changed focus, but the study and practice of teas not only saved the raggedy bits of her soul for a time, they prepared and strengthened her for the vital project in which she is now engaged.

  She rests her hands on her father’s shoulders, leaning into them only slightly. He gets especially upset if he feels forced. Some people would probably think it’s strange that her father’s is the only flesh Beth has ever been intimate with. She must be missing something—as with love, or care—that’s built right into other people. Desire, she supposes. Even her desire for Nora had nothing to do with flesh. That wasn’t, as she tried to make clear to Nora, what she was talking about. She was talking about protection and purpose at a passionate level. Anyway, even if disinterest is highly unusual, that’s nobody’s business, is it? Just as her history, her great, capacious, disastrous, tragic, blundering impulse, is nobody’s business.

  Her father’s doctor says—warns—“He might well live for years,” but he doesn’t know that’s all right. Beth still has a lot to do, drilling the severe practices of care right into her bones.

  And then? Well, the world suffers no shortage of helpless people, does it?

  People who need help, she probably means.

  Now look, here comes Max, making his way through the crowd towards them. Prying Max, who drove Beth back to her destiny, trying every way he could to find out what she thought she would do, as if she’d be fooled into confiding even if she had known. She is strong in so many ways, which people like Nora and Sophie, and certainly not Philip or Max, ever bothered to notice.

  Still, she was pleased to hear Max’s voice last week, inviting her here. Her father’s phone doesn’t ring very often. “Do come. It would feel right, I think, to have everyone together again, even for only an evening.” Beth didn’t know what he could possibly mean by feel right, but yes, it sounded like something to do.

  Then again, if he found her, did that mean he first had to hunt down her history? If so, did he tell Nora and Sophie? They don’t look as if they’ve learned something bad. They look uneasy, but not horrified. People hide things, though. Certainly Beth does.

  Max looks different—shrunken and a little unsteady. His accent has thickened. He looks quite old now. Who looks after him?

  “There,” he is saying, “this is what I wanted, all of you here together for a few moments.”

  Really? Why?

  Max, who observed Sophie and Phil’s secret and kept it; Max, who has been Nora’s supporter, cheerleader, butt-kicker; Max, who took the trouble, and it must have been considerable, to track Beth down; and Max, who has had little strokes that very occasionally manifest themselves in unaccountable consequences, says, “I hope you all agree this is fitting to the occasion?”

  Who knows? “Sure,” Nora says dubiously. “It’s nice to see everybody again.”

  “Ah, all right, you indulge me. Put it down to my weakness for circles, and this completes one. Nora. Sophie. Beth. You look splendid. You gentlemen also, of course.” He stands back, smiling—what does he see? Really, what did he ever see, what does he want?

  His view of their former household must have included elements—of family or just a version of benign collegiality—that none of them dreamed of, or thought to enquire about. With these results. Which are minor, really, not at all catastrophic. As it is, they are an intent knot within a larger, noisier, more festive group; two women in black, one in red, with the men in their lives. A year ago, two of these men were not part of their lives. Another, not among them tonight, was vital, but being vital, it seems, does not count. Vital is unexpectedly and haphazardly destructible.

  This is not exactly a circle of happy nostalgia, if that’s what Max had in mind. Still, they smile back at him, except for Beth’s father, whose smiling capacities may be among those many things lost to him. They look posed for a group photograph, like graduates of some difficult course of study. “Very nice,” Max says. “Very nice, how you all look together.”

  Yes, perhaps; but it soon becomes awkward, since all together they have little to say. Well, Beth always was something of a conversation-stopper; and now she’s this hot-eyed unglamorous person making them jumpy, unsure.

  So this clumsy moment is her fault? That’s hardly fair.

  “Now,” Max continues at last, presumably having seen what he aimed to, or his fill. “Now I have something just for you people. Soon I will open the third room to everyone, but first a preview only for you of the other work of Nora’s we are showing. If,” he offers his arm to Nora, “you will indulge me a little more? Shall we?”

  All right. If it’s important to him. For sure it won’t mean anything special to any party-goers except them. Some of them. The women.

  This time Nora and Max lead the way through the crowd, which continues to bend for him. Beth pushes her father’s wheelchair. Sophie and Hendrik follow behind. Max takes a key from his trouser pocket, turns to others pressed near. “In a few moments,” he tells them. “For now, however, if you don’t mind, the artist and her group only.” Once unlocked, the double doors slide apart from each other on tracks. Max keeps them open just wide enough for first Nora, then the wheelchair and Beth, then Sophie and finally Hendrik to enter. The room is high and bright and smaller than the two outer galleries, and, when Max pulls the doors back together and relocks them, the noise suddenly diminishes so radically it seems almost like silence.

  Sweet Jesus, thinks Sophie. Heavens, thinks Beth. She leans forward into the wheelchair. Sophie leans back into Hendrik.

  Nora turned in bed, she leaped up, she screamed. Beth arrived from one direction, her nightgown awry, and Sophie ran, grappling with her robe but otherwise buck naked, to find fortunate and unfortunate Philip, lucky and unlucky Phil, cooling in his bed. Now here he is again. There’s no end to the man.

  A little white card says the piece is untitled and NFS—not for sale. Max feels, and Nora agrees, there’s no need to say more.

  Is it art? Reviewers and critics will no doubt generously, or gratuitously, render their judgments, but meanwhile Sophie, Hendrik, Beth and for sure Beth’s father don’t have any idea. They’re not experts. They do know it’s not something any of them would hang over a sofa or fireplace. Nora, the only one besides Max who has seen it before, believes that, whatever else it is, the piece is beautiful, and if it is complicated and even ambiguous, well, so are affections and fates; not least her own. When the show is over, it will hang on the largest unbroken wall of her studio where, by and large, she thinks she will be able to live with it, although admittedly would not care for it in her living room.

  This is how love bends and modifies and reshapes itself over time and new circumstance. This is how it ends up:

  Philip hangs in a frame two-plus metres high and a metre and a half wide. Not everything is contained within the frame, which itself is roughly cobbled together from strips of walnut left behind in his workshop. There are actually three Philips, which some may judge a mistake, unnecessarily confusing. That would most likely be Philip’s impression, as a matter of fact, as a passionate advocate of simplification in his own work.

  Oh well.

  Touching the outer edges of the frame is his middle-aged, final figure, hands on thickened hips, spare flesh on his torso, stocky legs leading to feet set firmly on the base of the frame. A tiny navy-blue-ink inscription on his left hip says, “Climb aboard, matey.”

  He is evidently naked, but his full-canvas depiction is blocked by a smaller Philip, this one sunny and pink and holding a glued-on photograph of himself raising a fish, toasting the camera with it. In the photograph he is grinning. The painted figure wears the same grin, and its other hand holds a length of narrow glued-on wood with fishing line running off it and out of the frame, a green whirligig lure knotted on to its end. From the lure dangles a tiny, lacquered newspaper headshot of Nora herself. This might leave an impression that she regards her
self as having been cruelly and possibly unfairly caught, but that is not her intention. Her intention is to suggest the taut line between them. The fishing line and lure come from his tackle box. The figure itself falls between youth and middle age. It, too, is presumably naked, with a defined waist and muscled thighs, and feet that slip into the feet of its older counterpart as if they were slippers. It is the form of a man finding his feet. Also it is still the man to whom Nora could say, “Want to go fuck in the woods?” and he would drop tools and off they would go, although by then more often to soft bed than adventurous forest.

  It is the centre, third, smallest Philip, though, on whom the eye is intended to begin, and also end up. This is Philip as Nora first saw him: slim and young, empty-handed and naked, staring out boldly, his eyes a real challenge. Within those eyes, darkening them deeper than they were in life, is a mixture of ash.

  Ash also streaks across his limbs and shades his jawline and cheeks. It tints his uptilting, rosy, wavering penis.

  Ash hints that in the perfection of this moment, its radiant randomness and several glorious outcomes, there are other, shadowing factors to consider as well. These suggestions also darken the background.

  Ash adds a predictably gritty texture, tempering but not too much toning down the bold, hopeful goldenness of his youth.

  Nora’s youth, too.

  It wasn’t as awkward to work with as she’d feared, finer and different but really not much more challenging than sand, which she has used in the past. It was not sand, though. She couldn’t say it was exactly Philip either, but it was unsettling, at best, to sprinkle portions of it into paint, mixing it in until the desired shade and density and consistency were created, then drawing her brushes through it, applying it. That Philip could disappear, then reappear in this diminished, foreign form—that took some getting used to. Some moments of real revulsion, to be honest, at the beginning.