I wait outside on the steps. She comes out, locks the door and looks at me in the porch light as if verifying who I am, or as if she can’t quite believe we’re doing this.
“Jenkins,” she says. “It’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you, Bet—I mean, Liz. Did you have a good visit with your daughter?”
“My daughter? Oh, yes, yes, I did.”
“Where does she live?”
“Oh, Jenkins, is that your car? Do you want to—no, it’s all right, I can get in okay.”
We cross the snowy boulevard and I open the passenger door for her. She sits down bum-first and shifts her legs into the car and I close the door. The night is pleasant—very little wind. Still, I’m on edge. I hurry around to the other side. No cars are coming from either direction. I get in, start the car and fasten my seat belt.
“Oakville,” Liz says.
“Sorry?”
“My daughter lives in Oakville. You know—near Toronto?”
We talk about Oakville, I telling her about an old friend who lives there and is an accomplished singer and hiker; I often think of him striding out along the Bruce Trail belting out hymns to the wildlife. Liz tells me about her daughter’s husband, who’s an instructor of Animation at Sheridan College. Her story of students who’d worked on some well-known animated Hollywood films makes the drive through River Heights and over the St. James Bridge go quickly. We’re soon parked and headed into the noisy, glittery arcade atmosphere of Silver City. Despite the youthful surroundings, Liz makes sure I pay senior rates.
“I’ll buy the popcorn and the drinks,” she says. “What kind of drink do you want?”
I don’t want popcorn because I’m watching my daily sodium intake—and besides, popcorn dries out my throat and makes me cough—and I don’t want a drink because I’m already worried that I’m going to have to urinate halfway through the movie, and a drink will bring it on even sooner. Yet, because this is a first outing with a woman I don’t know that well, politeness and wanting to seem like a nice guy who understands the contemporary woman’s desire to share expenses wins out over pragmatism, and I let her buy me as big a Diet Coke and bag of popcorn as she buys for herself. I tell myself that maybe the popcorn will sop up the drink. And I do manage to manoeuvre us into seats on an aisle without having to say that I might have to make a dash for the can midway through Juno.
Each seat has a receptacle for a drink and we take turns holding the bags of popcorn while we shed our jackets. We have to stand up a few times to let people into our row. Liz eats and drinks and I pretend to as the lights dim. I worry about having to cough or pee or both and, sure enough, the urge to do one alternates with the urge to do the other by the second preview. I’m about to excuse myself or—better—slink out so unobtrusively that Liz might not notice that I’m gone, when I realize that I have nowhere to put my popcorn. I think, What the hell, I’ll take it with me and I’ll chuck it out in the men’s room, but on comes the announcement of the feature presentation. I tell myself I can hack it, at least for a reel or two.
Suddenly there’s a teenaged girl’s bare legs and her panties dropping down and there’s a boy’s knobby knees—he’s sitting in a large easy chair—and she’s climbing into his naked lap.
It’s all tastefully done, but it seems as graphic as a porn flick. I’m embarrassed. I hope the boy isn’t going to start moaning, the girl squealing or crying out. There’s none of that, thank goodness. The scene does go on longer than I wish it would. I’m relieved when it ends, but I’m worried about how explicit this movie is going to be, and only a minute or so elapses before Juno is in a drugstore washroom, peeing onto a pregnancy stick … and that brings my previous urge back as forcefully as a running faucet would—or a sudden downpour of rain.
“Be back in a sec,” I whisper.
“What?” Liz whispers back, but I’m already headed out.
Common as such fare might be in these explicitly enlightened times, I hadn’t expected an opening sequence like that in Juno. Friends who’d seen the movie called it “cute” and “hilarious.” Of course, my discomfort has little to do with what I’ve been watching and everything to do with who’s watching it with me. Not because I think Liz is straitlaced but because I don’t know what she thinks of movies like this. Or because I know she doesn’t know what I think about movies like this. Maybe she thinks I expected to see what we saw in the opening sequence, that I get off on shots of teenaged girls peeing and having sex in easy chairs.
I finish, wash my hands, throw away my popcorn, take a deep breath, and return to my seat. Liz takes the first opportunity to fill me in on the bit I’ve missed, and she doesn’t question what happened to my popcorn.
When the movie ends, we do what people do only occasionally in a cinema: we applaud. Other people join in.
“Nice uplifting movie, wasn’t it?” the woman on the other side of Liz says.
“Yes, it was,” Liz says. “Nice to see a movie without violence.”
I’m glad to hear her say that. “And none of those frantic cuts and crazy car chases,” I say.
“You really believed Jennifer Garner—Vanessa—was going to be a perfect mother for the baby, didn’t you?” the woman says.
“If not perfect, at least loving,” says Liz.
Outside, on the way to the car, Liz says, “I liked Juno’s line, ‘We should let it get a little cuter.’ That cracked me up.”
Liz laughs as she gets into the car. We’re getting along well.
“Want to go somewhere for a drink?” I ask, as I get in and buckle up.
“Oh. I suppose we could … or why don’t we go to my place? I think I can find something—I know I have beer.”
This is unexpected. I tell myself I’m not the gangly boy from the movie and Liz isn’t Juno. And yet my mind is leaping ahead to a tastefully lighted scene in Liz’s sitting room and she’s making it obvious that she wants to be kissed. Or …
As we talk more about the movie, we head for her place. I’m feeling nervous now, wondering what Liz expects. But it’s a good feeling. I like her looks, I like the fragrance she’s wearing, and we agree on how we feel about the movie. It was after all a feel good movie, the perfect prelude to a compatible tête-à-tête. There is no need to rush anything; simply enjoy the conversation, enjoy the drink, enjoy the first embrace …
I do have qualms. I don’t want to spoil the evening in any way, either by expecting too much or making an unwanted move or being oafish because I’m so out of practice. And I’m feeling some guilt—this might after all be too soon … I look forward to the drink. That will relax me.
I park in front of her house and we go inside. I take off my leather jacket while she de-activates the alarm, turns on lamps and scoops up errant magazines. She comes back to take my jacket.
“Thanks,” I say. “Um—my shoes. I should …” I wiped them at the door but I think I should take them off. I dislike being shoeless, especially when I’m unsure whether or not one of my big toes is poking through a sock. I lean against the wall and lift one foot.
“Oh, you don’t have to,” she says, “or you can if—oh, would you?” She stands there, watching me put my foot down then raise it again.
“Sure, why don’t I,” I say, undoing a lace.
She turns away as if not wanting to see what I uncover—no, she’s going on with the business of hanging up my jacket. My shoes off and set to one side, I enter the living room, relieved that both my socks are intact but wishing they were a better match for my olive trousers, not that insipid grey.
There’s a silence and I realize that Juno has been the sole topic of conversation for the past half hour or so. I look at a bookshelf, hoping to see a title that might trigger a comment or an anecdote.
“Sit where you like,” she says, waving at the sofa. “I’ll get that beer. Does it matter what kind?”
“Not at all.”
She goes out to what I assume is the kitchen. I hear a refrigerator door close. I hear a cupboa
rd door squeak shut. I look around at the furnishings. They seem rather old-fashioned, or traditional, but they aren’t worn-looking. Perhaps they had belonged to someone else. Perhaps Liz can’t afford new things—I have no idea how financially well-fixed her husbands left her. It’s a big enough house. Of course, I don’t have new furniture. You reach an age when you make do.
She brings in two Bud Lights with glass tumblers perched on them. She sits beside me on the sofa and we both pour beer into our glasses.
“Jenkins, it’s good to see you,” she says. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
I take a sip. She takes a swig, and another.
“Ahhh,” she says.
“That hits the spot,” I say.
There’s a lull. She takes a third swig.
“Your place is very nice,” I say.
“Oh, no, it isn’t. Needs new drapes, new carpet, new furniture, new interior paint job. But I’m procrastinating. I might sell the place in the spring.”
“And go into a condo?”
“Move to Australia.”
“Really?”
“Or Arizona. I don’t know. Give me a better idea.” She downs another mouthful as if she’s parched.
“I thought you liked it in Winnipeg. But I guess if there’s nothing keeping you here …”
“Is there something keeping you here?”
“My daughter—and my granddaughter.”
“Jenkins, it’s really good to see you.” She leans forward and, just like that, there’s her face coming closer, her eyelids fluttering, her lips pursing—
The telephone rings.
“Shit,” she says.
She surprised me by making a move and she surprises me again by letting a ringing phone interfere. She sets down her glass on an end table and goes to an alcove just off the dining room. She faces me as she picks up a walk-about receiver.
“Hello,” she says in a cool voice, as if she wants to convey annoyance. But then: “Oh. Hello.” Her voice softens. She turns away from me. She goes somewhere where I can’t see her. She might’ve closed a door, too, because I can’t hear her. Or maybe the caller is doing all the talking.
I curse the phone call. Everything was happening too fast but, at the moment of the ring, there was nothing I wanted to do more than kiss Liz Oliver. It’s so long since I kissed a woman the way she seemed to want to be kissed. And there she was—so ready. Surely she’ll deal with the call and come back and want to get right back at it. But what if the call is bad news? What if she still has a parent alive somewhere and that parent has taken a bad turn? What if her daughter has been in an accident? Or her daughter’s in a bad marriage—the guy has threatened her, or hit her, or walked out on her? Doe she have any other kids? Does her daughter have kids? I know almost nothing about Liz. Is she still on speaking terms with her ex-husbands? Does one of them call every so often to give her a hard time? To stop her from getting up-close and personal with her new friend?
I drink more of my beer. I fidget. The longer she’s gone from the room, the more I worry. How can she keep me waiting so long?
At last, she reappears. She stands in the archway between the dining room and the living room. She looks agitated, her face flushed. She smiles, and then she doesn’t smile.
“Is everything all right?” I say. I stand up.
“No, no, sit, please,” she says, “I mean, yes—oh, please sit and let me … let me explain.”
I sit on the edge of the sofa. She comes in a few steps and sits, not on the sofa beside me but on a chair facing me.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I—I’ve been misleading you. What I told you earlier …”
“That wasn’t your brother.”
She gives a nervous chuckle. “Oh, yes, of course it was my brother—the man you saw leaving here—he was my brother. I meant … about visiting my daughter. I did visit my daughter, in Oakville, but I was in Toronto, too, meeting someone … someone you know. Oh, this is so difficult …”
“There’s another man in your life.”
“Darcy Jephson.”
“I see. And Amy doesn’t know.”
“Let me finish. This thing with Darcy is on and off. I didn’t want it to go on, this sneaking around. I told him that in Toronto. I looked forward to going out with you. Everything out in the open, everything above board.”
“And now … ?”
“Well, now—I—I’m sorry, this is so awkward—that was him on the phone. He’s told Amy. About me. And he’s told her he’s leaving her.”
“I see. Wow. And … and you’re happy about this.”
“I think so—Jenkins, I don’t know! I never thought he’d—he was always saying he was going to, but …”
“Do you … do you want to talk about it?”
“Oh, Jenkins, I can’t. I mean, you can’t! You can’t stay, I mean.”
“What—”
“Jenkins, I’m so sorry. I had a nice time with you, really I did—but I have to ask you to leave. He—he doesn’t know you’re here. And he’s coming over here right now!”
>
Serene Doreen
Disappointment is no stranger to me. Especially where getting to know girls and women is concerned. As I leave Liz’s house, I glance back at her and think she looks more attractive than ever. Hearing the door close behind me takes me way way back to another evening, another closing door.
It was my very first date. I think about it until I reach my house, where I pour myself a Scotch and soda and sit down and think about it some more.
It was morning, maybe twenty minutes before I had to line up with the rest of the junior-high kids. I was watching for Sylvia.
Sylvia had been in my class from Grade One and I noticed changes in her body before I noticed them in any other girl’s. Sylvia had breasts in Grade Six.
I was fourteen, the age when boys today start stealing cars and smoking dope. The year was 1949 and I was in Grade Nine. It was June, near the end of my last year of junior high.
I was about to graduate from Johnstone School, where I’d spent nine years—the first nine years of my education—no kindergarten or pre-school or nursery school back then. Because you had to move to Yarwood High School for Grade Ten, they had a graduation ceremony at the end of Grade Nine. There was a party planned for after the ceremony, a kind of dinner party at a restaurant called The Chocolate Shop. Some of the boys had decided they’d take dates.
Sylvia and I were good friends. We’d competed for top marks in most grades but it was good-natured competition. She was kind of like an older sister; she had a confidence that enabled her to be sociable with anybody, including the teachers. She had an aura of sophistication that told you she possessed worldly knowledge. I could talk on the same level with her about homework and world news, but we never talked about what she liked in boys or whether she was going out with anyone. My friend Claude said he’d seen her downtown with an older guy who drove a car. It was out of the question, then, that I would ask her for a date, but I felt comfortable asking her who she thought might be available.
There she was, coming down Blenheim Avenue—still a long way off but I could tell it was her because the sun was glinting off her long blonde hair. I dodged a couple of grappling second-graders and moved closer to the steel-bar fence, close to the spot where Sharky Stevens got his tongue stuck on the steel one winter. Sylvia carried a three-ring binder and maybe a couple of books in front of her chest—in those days there were no back-breaking backpacks.
“Hi, Sylvia!” I called, waving as she drew closer.
“Jenkins, you’re never here this early. What’s up?”
That was the year the kids started calling me Jenkins. I didn’t like it at first, being called by my surname. My full name is Robert Henry Jenkins and my parents called me Bobby but, as Claude said, that was too “sucky.” Claude hated his own real name, Reginald, and managed to get kids to call him by his uncle’s. I’m left-handed and my friend Bud tried to get Lefty goi
ng, but nobody bit. Claude was the one who started Jenkins and it stuck, which disappointed me at first, but I soon saw I was getting off easy. Consider Donny, who was called Bamboo because he was so thin. Or Louise, whose large behind got her Tremendous Bum—TB for short. And then there was Bert, whose parents couldn’t afford to install hot water—he was called One Tap. Kids could be cruel.
“I was thinking I’d like to take a date to graduation,” I said.
“Jenkins, if you’re asking me, I’m flattered, but you know I—”
I blushed. “Yes, I know you have a boyfriend—I just thought you might know who in our class doesn’t have a date.”
“You are a bit late. Some girls were asked weeks ago … but, listen. I know a girl who would be happy to go with you. Do you know Doreen Holden?”
For a moment I’d thought Sylvia was either going to tell me I was out of luck or suggest one of the plain girls in our class. The mention of Doreen Holden astounded me. She was in Grade Eight and she was beautiful. You know the kind of thirteen-year-old girl who has a grown-up face? Who already has a grown-up shape? Whose way of walking delivers a clear message that I am not a boy? That was Doreen. A lot like Sylvia herself, you could say, except brunette, and maybe not as outgoing.
I tried to keep my composure. “We—we sort of walk the same way to school every day,” I said.
In those days, there was no cafeteria in the school, no vending machines. I think there was a room you could go to at noon if you took your lunch, but most of the kids went home. I always went home for lunch and so did Doreen, so I saw her four times each day. I kept my distance. The way she walked so regally and the way her friends walked on either side of her, looking at her, deferring to her, she looked as if she were being escorted. You had the feeling that, if you wanted to speak with Doreen, you’d have to go through her guards. The walk from my street, Vivian Avenue, to the school took me four blocks along Rue Des Meurons. I walked past Essex, Ellesmere and Harrowby Avenues before cutting through the infamous Frog Pond to get to Johnstone School. For much of the year, the Frog Pond was impossible to navigate. It was mostly ditches and bushes, and in spring the ditches filled with murky water; in summer the bushes were a mass of leafy branches and ugly thorns. Some kids were afraid to cut through the Frog Pond at the best of times, believing that evil creatures—or at least bullies—were waiting there ready to pounce. Doreen lived on Ellesmere. If I timed leaving home right, I could arrive at Ellesmere just after she and her acolytes had turned onto Des Meurons. I could walk behind them and watch her, appreciate how lovely and feminine her shoulder-length brown hair was, how serenely she floated over the tarmac road. Serene Doreen. They never ventured into Frog Pond territory, they went around it. Some days when I found myself ahead of them, I’d plunge into the Frog Pond thicket, trying to appear nonchalant. It was an attempt to show Doreen and company that I was fearless. I’d get badly scratched by thorns, or I’d leap and land just short of the other side of a ditch and get wet feet or stained trousers. And Doreen would never even know.
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