I moved my hand to the right breast, pretending to examine it with the objectivity of a scientist.
A nurse walked in. “Aren’t they something?” she said.
Her own breasts were high and prominent and I thought her next comment might be Want to try these now? My face turned red—I’d been caught with my hand where it’d normally be only in private.
“I know you’re not feeling good about this,” the nurse said to Barbara, “but if he doesn’t find a way when we try again, we’ll express the milk and feed it to him. Can’t let you keep all that good stuff to yourself.”
“Aren’t my nipples too small?” Barb said.
“They’ll be fine,” said the nurse. “The main thing is, try not to be upset. He’ll feel your anxiety and that makes it tougher. Just remember that, with some mothers, it takes a couple of days.”
“I’m a nurse and I can’t nurse!” Barb said, weeping again.
“It might be best if we express a little anyway. But, in the long run, you’re going to be fine.”
“There, you see?” I said. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Oh, what do you know,” said Barb.
Three years later, we were still in Saskatoon and now there was a new baby, Tracy. “You’re so lucky to have one of each,” Barb’s mother told us. “A millionaire’s family.” She came up from Winnipeg to help out. By then, Barb’s father had died, suddenly, one fall afternoon at the Winter Club. He’d been having chest pains and he’d been told to take it easy, but he wasn’t the kind of man who knew how to take it easy.
Mrs. Mason—Eleanor—stayed on, making meals, playing with Brian, cleaning the house. One beautiful day, we went for a drive to talk about the possibility of my going back to university to take Education. Eleanor loved the idea, saying if we moved back to Winnipeg we could move in with her, save some money while I wasn’t earning any.
She sat in the back seat of our Plymouth station wagon with three-year-old Brian on one side and Tracy in a car bed on the other. She read to Brian and taught him games like I spy with my little eye. At the least sound from the baby, Barb turned and knelt on the seat—still no seat belts then—and leaned over to adjust Tracy’s blanket or to move the teddy bear to where Tracy could see it. As we drove out on the highway, Tracy whimpered and Barb lifted her into the front seat. Figuring Tracy wanted to be fed, she undid the front of her blouse and unsnapped the flap of her nursing bra. Where Brian had had difficulty, Tracy had taken hold right from the start.
I liked to believe I’d helped the nursing situation by doing some suckling of my own. I’d become quite fond of suckling Barb’s breasts. I had told Barb more than once that there were times—like on a Monday before getting up to go to work—when I would be quite content to suckle for a minute or two and it didn’t have to lead to intercourse. (She never believed me.) As we drove along, I smiled at the happy sound of Tracy slurping away. I thought about how welcome the nursing bra would’ve been, with its easy-opening flaps, if she’d worn one back in the days when we were dating.
And so I left Radisson’s and we moved back to Winnipeg and I took Education and became a teacher and eventually a principal. I was busy with job and family and made no attempt to find out where Danielle was, though I heard all Radisson’s advertising departments had been consolidated into one big one in Toronto. I never thought of her again until one day years later I received in the mail a literary magazine called Blatz. The envelope bore no return address and I assumed the publisher had sent it to me as a promotional gesture. But then I saw in the Table of Contents Danielle Lacosse’s name. I happened to be in my office at home and I turned to the story. I read it quickly and found it, to say the least, unnerving. It was about a woman much like Danielle who goes to Paris and buys Henry Miller’s Tropics for her boss, at his request. Written as a confession to a priest, the story tells how, on a rainy day in her Montmartre hotel, the woman reads a few pages of Tropic of Cancer:
… I have to say that, they were straightforward sexual passages, I have to admit, and I thought about my boss—yes, I have thought about him in that way—not in a bad way, but in the way that Henry Miller was describing, and I had the book in my left hand, Father, and I had no intention of reading, but I imagined I was with my boss, who can be so very nice, Father, I have often wished that he would forget he is married—oh, I am sorry, Father, it is not right, I know, to have these thoughts about a married man, but I do not think it is harmful to anyone if I think these things and, anyway, I held the book in my left hand and, before I realized what I was doing, Father, my right hand was—well, I did not ever plan to do such a thing, but you must understand the effect that Mr. Miller’s prose and my thoughts of my boss were having on me, and I cannot remember ever doing this kind of thing before, perhaps once when I was an adolescent experimenting, but, Father, there was my right hand down there, I do not want to say where, and I hope you will forgive me, Father, down there between my legs, touching myself, Father, and it felt so good, Father, you have no idea, Father, and I guess that is why I am here today, Father, because it felt so good.
>
At Gwen and Charlie’s
Gwen and Charlie Foster live in a newish development in South Winnipeg. Gwen’s good-natured mother, now ninety-two, helped with the 2004 purchase on the condition that she have a room there. Within the last few months, she’d made her own decision to move into a nearby old folks’ home. Charlie, who is ten years younger than I and retired at age sixty just prior to moving into the new house, loves living among upwardly mobile young families. In summer, he potters around in his back yard, chatting up a young mother over the back fence and ogling shapely teenaged girls who sun themselves on raised decks nearby. Both Gwen and he rhapsodize about the camaraderie of the folks in their street. Charlie told me about one young couple who had a reputation for being swingers and, at a party at their place, while showing folks around, the host pointed out a shower stall that was big enough for six. The young husband across the street walks his dog at seven in the morning every day and then rides a bike to work. This admirable routine affected Charlie, who gets up early most mornings, not to emulate the fellow but to give him a thumbs-up from the living-room window. Gwen, no slouch herself when it comes to outdoor activity—she plays tennis and golf—often takes up a post at the end of the driveway to offer Gatorade to passing early-morning joggers.
I turn into Charlie’s driveway and park my Pontiac G6 alongside Hans Kruger’s Audi SUV. Charlie and I, both former English teachers, get a kick out of Hans’s refusal to read books. Hans’s wife Kathy is a faithful member of Gwen’s book club, and Hans tends to view reading books as a women’s thing. He claims he had to do enough reading in his work as an insurance executive, he’s damned if he’s going to read for pleasure. Kathy is his second wife; they met over the back fence years ago in another suburb and carried on an affair for a year before leaving their spouses. Though Gwen and Charlie are happily married, I can’t help but think that Charlie has the Hans-Kathy model in mind whenever he tends his geraniums and waits for the yummy mummy to appear at his back fence.
I wave to Rudy, the guy next door, who is, on this August night, playing goal with a regulation-size net while drilling his five-year-old son in the fine art of slapping shots with a tennis ball. Motivated by visions of multi-million-dollar NHL contracts, Rudy put a hockey stick in his son’s hands before the little fella could walk.
I lock my car. As congenial as the neighbourhood is, Charlie had a vehicle stolen right off his driveway the first year he lived here.
There’s a new Welcome mat on the front step. I ring the bell and the door opens.
“Sorry, we don’t want any,” says Charlie, and he slams the door.
Every time I arrive at Charlie’s house, he slams the door on me. He’s been doing it for over thirty years. I open the door and there is Gwen.
“Poor Jenkins,” she says, and she gives me the one-armed hug that so many women seem to favour in social situations
these days. “I don’t know why Charles still thinks that’s so hilarious. How are you?”
She looks outside and closes the door behind me. Gwen is dressed in a lime-green sweater and skirt, with a beigy silk scarf arranged in what I consider a retro look—it’s pinned to one side with a massive gold brooch. Her dyed brunette hair is cut short in the no-nonsense way of most busy wives.
“I’m great,” I say. “Don’t tell Charlie I gave you this.” I hand her the bottle of Wolf Blass.
“Oh, Jenkins, thank you! You know it’s my favourite.”
“Tell me, Gwen, how is your mother?”
“Jenkins, thank you for asking. She is fine, absolutely fine. The old darling—she didn’t have to go into that home, you know. Charles and I told her countless times that we loved having her here, she was no bother at all, but she insisted it was the right time for her, and, Jenkins, I have to say the place she’s in is wonderful. One of those new assisted-living complexes.”
“Well, guess what? You know my old friend Claude—he and his wife think it’s time I went into one of those places. I could keep your mother company.”
“Jenkins, love, that’s preposterous! You’re in your prime! A condo, maybe, but you’re so comfortable in the house—no need at all for you to move. Look, come on in—the Krugers are here—and where did Charles get to? He should have your drink poured by now.”
I go ahead of her down the hall to a point where the kitchen is on my right and what is now called the great room (formerly the family room) on my left. Hans and Kathy stand near the great-room fireplace, holding drinks in front of their matching bellies.
“Good evening, Mr. Jenkins,” Hans says, raising his glass as if in a toast.
“Who let him in?” Charlie cries from the kitchen, where he has his bar set up on the centre island. He’s wearing a grey sweatshirt that commemorates his favourite TV comedy series, As Time Goes By.
“Jenkins, how are you doing?” Kathy says in that tone people reserve for addressing the bereaved. Kathy has spoken this way to me, her eyebrows arching, every time I’ve seen her since Barb died.
“I’m doing okay, Kath,” I say, “but I’d be doing a whole lot better if I could get a drink around here.”
“Did I hear you telling Gwenny you’re moving into an old folks’ home?” Charlie says in his loud, bantering voice. “About time, I’d say.”
“Aww, Jenkins, you’re no-ot!” Kathy says in her same tone.
“Kath, for God’s sake, Charlie’s kidding,” says Hans. “But, Jenkins, the way the financial institutions are screwing up to the south of us, I hope you have a good pension.”
Hans is wearing a powder-blue cardigan that might’ve once belonged to Perry Como, though on Hans, worn over a dark blue sport shirt and slacks, it looks stylish. He’s retired but claims he still does consulting work for Great West Life.
“They say Bush is going to bomb somebody before he leaves office,” says Hans. “His ratings are at an all-time low anyway, so he might as well do it to take people’s mind off the lousy mortgage situation.”
Kathy, whose dark brown turtleneck and brown, calf-length slacks strain to contain her, says, “Obama and McCain won’t let Bush bomb anybody, will they?”
It’s common in gatherings of this type across Canada for American politics to be a hot topic, especially with the 2008 presidential election approaching. A Canadian election is approaching, too, but nobody cares.
I turn to the host. “Do you have that Scotch and soda poured yet?”
“Scotch and soda?” Charlie says, feigning astonishment. “What happened to Planter’s Punch and Lime Diet Coke? You mean I went to all the trouble to—”
“All right, Planter’s Punch and Lime Diet Coke!”
Charlie opens the fridge. “Oops, sorry, no Lime Diet Coke. I could’ve sworn … okay, Scotch and tonic, you said?”
All this kibitzing is Charlie’s way of setting the mood. He loves the fact that Kathy Kruger never knows when he’s joking. He used to talk about a son who’d been kidnapped before Gwen finally made him confess to Kathy that the three daughters whose photos were on the mantel were the Fosters’ only children. “Our Foster-children,” Charlie called them, leaving Kathy bamboozled.
“Hans, Kathy, do sit down and make yourselves comfortable,” Gwen says, coming into the great room.
“Where’ve you been?” Charlie asks her.
“I was watching for Iris,” Gwen says. “It’s not like her to be late.”
“Did you try her cell?” says Charlie. “She’s bound to have her cell with her.”
“Oh, of course!” says Gwen. “Oh, Charles, why didn’t I think of that? But first—Jenkins. Hasn’t Charles poured you a drink yet?”
“Right here, right here!” Charlie says, handing me a drink. “The perfect rye and ginger.”
“Charles, you know—”
I take a sip. It’s good old Johnny Walker Red and soda. I pretend it isn’t, grimacing, and Hans roars with laughter.
And so the Krugers and I settle into the upholstered furniture, while Gwen fusses with dinner preparation and Charlie circulates with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Kathy gets talking to me about books—her book club is reading Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air and she wonders what I think of it—and that sends Hans into the kitchen to look at the floor and the cupboards Charlie had the developer replace. After I’ve spoken about Hay’s novel, Kathy admits she’s read only a few pages and what she really wants is a quick summary.
The doorbell rings.
“Oh!” Gwen says from the kitchen. “That’ll be Iris.”
“Good of them to make all these adjustments,” Hans is saying, opening cupboards and inspecting the woodwork and the hinges. “What, at no cost to you?”
“You’re damned right, no cost to me,” says Charlie. “Not a penny. Well, you saw how everything was. Did the company want me to advertise the kind of shoddy work they do? No bloody way.”
“Sorry I’m late,” comes a new voice. “The guy I told you about? We had this long phone conversation yesterday and I thought that was the end of it. So, five minutes before I wanted to leave tonight, he shows up at my condo. Of course, I don’t buzz him in. So he keeps talking on the intercom. I finally say I have to go, he’s made me late, and I hang up. Well, when I’m driving out of the underground garage, he’s there! On the ramp just outside the door. Talk about creepy! I almost ran over him. I mean, come on, get over it, already!”
“Did you speak with him again?” says Gwen.
“No way,” is the answer. “Well, I did open my window and tell him to stop stalking me, and I drove off.”
“Iris, poor you! Come in and meet everybody.”
I stand up and so does Kathy, and Charlie and Hans come out from behind the island. Into our midst walks a shapely woman, younger than all of us, perhaps late forties, in a black long-sleeved top, black jeans and black pumps. Her hair is shoulder-length, brownish blond in colour, a lock covering the left side of her forehead and her left eyebrow—a style similar to one popularized by Hollywood actress Veronica Lake in the 1940s and called a peekaboo bang. Iris’s attractive face seems flushed—perhaps from her recent ordeal, or from telling about it, or perhaps it’s her reaction to strangers whose attention is focused on her. There is no sign of any makeup; the colour in her full lips seems natural. A turquoise pendant at her V-neck tastefully draws your gaze to a hint of cleavage.
“Iris, you remember Charles … and this is Hans Kruger, and over there is his wife Kathy, and that’s our old friend Bob Jenkins. Everybody, Iris Barstow.”
“Just call me Jenkins,” I say, reaching to shake her hand.
“Or anything you damn well please,” says Charlie. “You know, Iris, I used to teach for this guy, and as my colleagues always said, ‘It’s not the kids in Yarwood High that are the problem, it’s the principal of the thing.’”
Everybody groans. Charlie can be relentless in trying to emphasize that God damn it, this is a party!
<
br /> “What can we get you to drink, Iris?” says Gwen.
“Do you have a martini of some sort?”
“Specialty of the house,” says Charlie. “The classic dry martini, with lemon rind instead of an olive, as prescribed by Kingsley Amis. That sound all right?”
“Sounds lovely. Who’s Kingsley Amis?”
“That’s what I said, Iris,” says Hans. “I thought maybe he was the bartender at Rae and Jerry’s.”
“He’s one of Charles’s favourite writers,” says Gwen. “And I warn you—this martini is nearly all gin.”
“It’s excellent,” says Hans. “It’s what I’m drinking.”
Charlie takes a pitcher out of the fridge and a glass out of the freezer. The martini really is one of his specialties.
Iris sits on a hassock next to Kathy.
“Tell me, Iris, what do you do?” says Kathy.
“Well.” Iris seems unready for interrogation. “I co-manage a children’s clothing store—The Lucky Elephant in Polo Park.”
“Do you have children of your own?” Kathy asks.
“No, thank God. Oops, there’s my bias showing. I never wanted to be a mother. I was in the birthing room when my sister had her daughter—that was fascinating—but I’m happy if I don’t see kids till they’re at least ten years old. My co-manager at the store, Margot, does the buying. I do most of the computer work and keep the books. We hire people to do the selling.”
“Excuse me, everyone,” says Gwen, standing at the great-room entrance, “dinner is just about ready. So, when Charles rings the bell, you’ll please come and help yourselves in the kitchen and then go into the dining room and find your place card.”
Charlie brings in Iris’s martini. “Iris,” he says, “why don’t you tell them about your sky-diving?”
“You jumped out of a plane?” I say.
“Oh, that was a long time ago,” says Iris, as the colour returns to her face. She takes a sip of martini. “That’s very good, Charlie, thanks. Well, what can I say? I like to try everything and you know, in the free-fall part, you get an adrenaline rush like no other. But hey, that was years ago. I couldn’t do it now.”
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