“Hey, Dads!” said Tracy.
She was lying in bed looking relieved. Beside her was the infant—Mason—resembling Mr. Magoo more than anyone. Yet she seemed magnificent and unique, a fresh new link in the chain of life, carrying my blood into the future, if not my name.
“She’s a doll,” Hank said. “And why wouldn’t she be, with parents like the two of you?” He kissed Tracy on the cheek.
“Good for you, Trace,” I said. “She’s a keeper.” I kissed Tracy on the clear forehead I’d always thought was her best feature.
“We’ve been doing what you recommended in your book, you know, Daddy,” said Tracy. “We’ve been, like, reading to her since the second trimester.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t come out reciting Shakespeare,” said Hank, and he gave a loud hoot.
Sometimes you just have to go for it, my daughter told me. Well, maybe I should take her advice.
Around 11:30 on Monday morning, I call Iris’s cell.
“Hello?” Her voice sounds annoyed. And there seems to be a rush of wind at her end, as if she’s driving somewhere in a convertible.
“Hello, Iris.” I find myself yelling because of the wind noise. “It’s Jenkins.”
“Oh, Jenkins,” she says, loudly. “I can’t talk right now. Let’s meet Wednesday at six. The bar at Earls Polo Park?”
“Well—yes—”
“See you then.”
>
Passing a Test
Hey, Dad. Want to come for dinner tonight? Just vegetarian pizza, and then we thought we’d take you by the business we’re close to taking over.”
“Oh, Tracy … I can’t. I—I have a date.”
“You’re seeing her again.”
“Well, no. I’m going out for drinks with a woman I met at the Fosters’. A friend of Gwen.”
“God, aren’t you the gadabout.”
“Just playing the field, passing the time, you know. Beats sitting at home moping.”
“I guess.”
“Can I have a raincheck? Maybe see you tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I think Clay’s busy. But, Dad. You said you’re going out for drinks. So don’t drive.”
I park the car at Earls. I’m anxious to get my hand around a Corona. One of the things that bugs me about dating as an older man is, your kids become your goddam parents. Janie has Jason and I have Tracy, and, since talking to her, all I want to do is rebel. Don’t drive, my ass.
The fact is, I had a manhattan before I left the house. Shortly after my little book Never Too Early came out, I was invited to teach an evening course in creative writing at the university. I got into the habit of having a manhattan before dinner on the nights I taught, telling Barb, “I need a drink to face these people.” I had the idea that the liquor made me more scintillating in the classroom. Tonight, I don’t have the supporting cast of Gwen, Charlie, Kathy and Hans to keep Iris entertained. But, as I step into Earls and see groups of sophisticated young men and women, I feel one manhattan isn’t enough.
“Hi,” says a young female host. “Going into the bar or …?”
“Uh—meeting someone and then going into the bar. Okay if I wait here?”
“Sure.”
The young people I see inside are dressed more casually than I expected. There are men in T-shirts, khaki shorts and flip-flops, women in tank tops, cut-off jeans and sandals. Because I had worn my favourite sport jacket on my ill-fated date with Janie, I went out and bought a new dark blue blazer that has a subtle yellow check in it, and I’m wearing that with a yellow shirt, matching tie and grey trousers. I felt good about the outfit when I left home, but now I feel overdressed.
In comes Iris. She’s wearing a smashing scarlet outfit—a top with kind of a scoop neckline that shows a little more cleavage than before, and flared pants. She’s carrying one of those handbags with a short strap that goes over one shoulder, the bag under the arm about breast-high. I remember reading that these kinds of bags are made from recycled automobile fenders. This one has a martini design with the word COSMOPOLITAN emblazoned across it. Iris is in high-heeled black shoes and she has one side of her hair pinned back to show off a zany earring that matches her pendant. Before she sees me, a female host effusively compliments her on the handbag, and I wonder what in hell I’m doing meeting this gorgeous woman for drinks. At least I no longer feel overdressed.
“Hi!” she says. “How are you doing?”
As she leans into me and touches cheeks with me, I say, “Great! I love your outfit—it really suits you.” I don’t tell her that scarlet is my favourite colour.
“Thank you,” she says. “I like your shirt. Yellow goes well with your jacket.”
Just like that, in two seconds, she makes me feel like the king of Earls, and all the jocks around us are mere plebes.
We go into the bar and sit on bar stools with backs at one of the high tables. She orders a crantini and I make an instant decision: instead of a Corona, I’ll really rebel and have a manhattan, straight up.
“That was fun the other night at Gwen and Charlie’s,” I say.
“It was. Gwen’s a terrific cook. I’ve been there before and every time it’s something different and always scrumptious.”
“Have you known Gwen long?”
“About three years. I think she told you we met at tennis—a group that plays every Tuesday afternoon.”
“No work that day?”
“I usually work every Saturday, so I take Tuesday afternoons off.”
Our drinks arrive.
“Here’s to your book,” I say.
“Cheers—yes.”
“All ages, this tennis group you’re in?”
“Well, I’m the youngest, by about ten years, I’d say.”
“Ah—so you must win a lot.”
“It’s doubles—you get different partners. But no, some of the women are terrific. I like associating with people older than myself. I find I learn a lot—about all sorts of things.”
Yes, and I’m the mentor du jour. I suppose we should get into the topic we’re here to discuss. I think I can predict what she wants to write about: the new breed of women, so confident, so independent, so competent in so many ways, women who don’t need to give birth to feel fulfilled. There are lots of books like that, but she’ll put her own spin on hers, and anyway, she doesn’t intend to have it published.
“What kind of book do you want to write?” I ask.
“Ah, you want to get right to it. No nonsense.”
Although the room is full of young people, many of them good-looking men, I notice that at no time since we sat down has she looked around. She looks straight at me, taking her eyes off me only to look occasionally at her drink. She seems to have the confidence of someone who’s used to being looked at without affecting any kind of pose. There is no doubt that she has the looks and the demeanour—to say nothing of the red clothes—to attract attention. It strikes me as curious that people used to refer to an attractive woman like her as a looker when surely such a woman is a lookee.
“I thought perhaps we didn’t have much time,” I say.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You know, I should level with you. I don’t have a college education. I never thought it was important—I just wanted to get out there and work after high school.” She goes on to tell me about teaching herself a lot of things, like computer technology—she isn’t afraid to take a computer apart to rescue the motherboard. “So do you think it’s okay for somebody without a university background to try writing a book?”
“Lots of people have,” I say. I tell her some of the benefits of not being influenced by professors—as long as you know the basics of grammar and have some familiarity with books through having read widely.
She orders another crantini. I, feeling a nudge from my responsible side, nurse my original manhattan. There’s a lull. I think she might ask me about myself—my wife,
perhaps, or my previous career, or my credentials. She doesn’t. So I tell her what I’ve been thinking she might want to write about.
“The new woman?” she says. “No, far from it. I live that every day; I have no desire to write about it.” She takes a sip of her new drink. A rosy hue appears on her neck and on the exposed skin beneath her pendant. “No, what I have in mind is quite personal. I haven’t really talked about this with anyone before.”
“I’m flattered.” Gwen told me Iris was divorced. Perhaps she wants to write about that: what a hell her marriage was, how it fell apart, how difficult the divorce was, threats from her ex.
She says, “I was raised by my grandparents in Nova Scotia.”
“You want to write about the effects of a broken home on—”
“No, no. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was little. I had some very happy times with my grandfather. I want to write about that. Being a little girl in Port Hawkesbury. My grandfather taught me how to row, how to catch white perch and steelhead trout, how to gut them. We’d have this boatload and we’d love to … But I don’t want to write nostalgia, you know? I don’t like to dwell on the past. What I want to do is a kids’ book that shows the different kinds of things kids can do. It might be partly made-up—you know, fiction—but it’ll be based on the fun times my grandfather and I had. If it’s any good, maybe I could sell it in the shop.”
She finishes her second drink.
“Sounds like you could have a lot of fun writing it,” I say. As inquisitive as I might be about her ex-husband, I’m grateful not to have to deal with him. “Say, since you said you’re in no hurry, would you like to have dinner?”
“Jenkins, I’d love that. You mean here?”
“I don’t know … maybe somewhere else? Rae and Jerry’s is close by.”
“I knew you were a meat-and-potatoes man.”
“Well, I know you liked the ham at Gwen’s, so you’re not a vegetarian.”
“But I’ll clash with the red upholstery at Rae and Jerry’s.”
“You name a place then.”
“Could we go somewhere Japanese? I’m dying for sashimi.”
We both have sashimi platters—salmon, tuna, hamachi, hokkigai, tako—with side orders of kimchi and large bottles of Sapporo beer. I can’t believe what I’m eating. I’ve never had anything resembling raw fish in my life before. Maybe the booze is helping me tolerate it, but I’m happy to try something different; just being with Iris seems to have put me in that frame of mind. She’s so companionable, so much with me. And I’m enjoying the sashimi, though I stopped short of eating with chopsticks. The accommodating server supplied me with a knife and fork.
We drove to the Yugiro Japanese Restaurant in my car, leaving hers, which she said was thief-proof, in her spot at Polo Park. She said we could worry about it later.
“You passed a test tonight, you know,” Iris says.
“I didn’t know I was being tested, but I’m glad I passed.”
“The last guy I dated—met him on the Internet—invited me to meet him at a bar after work. He was interesting, told me a bunch of things about computers I didn’t know. After a few drinks, I gave him a big hint that I was pretty hungry—in fact, I was feeling faint. I finally said I was off to get something to eat, and he let me go! Didn’t clue in that maybe we could have dinner together. Who knows—maybe he didn’t want to have dinner with me. That was the last I saw of him.”
“Well, as I say, I’m glad I passed.”
“And I didn’t have to give you a hint.”
The Sapporo is going down well—each of us is into a second giant-size bottle—and I’m beginning to believe that I do have experience with children’s literature. I spent many hours reading to Mason from her crib years on and, even after she could read herself, she liked me to read her books that had a vocabulary beyond hers. From the little Iris has told me, I figure she needs to find her niche somewhere between the Ramona Quimby books and Anne of Green Gables. I’m about to say this when Iris says:
“Do you like dogs, Jenkins?”
“Very much. I had a golden retriever in the 1990s. Called him Dave. He lived to be thirteen.”
“That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You train them, they become wonderful companions, and too quickly they grow old. I had a chow chow called Ginger.”
“I’ve heard chows are independent, sort of like cats that way.”
“Yes, but that’s what I liked about her. Such a personality! She’d tolerate my hugs most of the time. She could be a little prima donna, expect you to wait on her, but it was fascinating to see what interested her and what didn’t. We were the best of buds. After she was gone, I thought I couldn’t handle another—the sadness of watching her grow old and having her put down. That’s one reason I went into a condo, so I wouldn’t be tempted to get another dog.”
“Were you with your husband when you had a house and Ginger?”
“Let’s not go there. I just thought you might be a dog person.”
“Have I passed another test?”
She laughs. It’s nice to hear her laugh. She turned pensive when she talked about her dog, and I haven’t helped her mood by mentioning the husband. I talk about Dave: how, on our nightly walk, he’d wait till we got to one particular park bench before he sat down and expected a cookie—the same park bench every time; how he’d know when it was Saturday, the day I sat in the living room to read—he’d go to the love seat before I did and get up on it and lie down and wait for me to join him, and he’d only go there on Saturdays; how he never barked unless I got him excited by playing with him. Iris counters with a story of her walking her chow chow, off the leash, along the Red River, Ginger taking off down the steep bank, Iris going after her, losing her footing and ending up with one leg in the river, sinking in the muck, having to grab hold of a branch to pull herself back, and all the while the dog standing, safe and dry on a little ledge, watching Iris with a look as if she thought her momma had gone nuts. We both laugh—more heartily now. We’ve veered away from her book and it doesn’t seem to matter.
She’s finished her dinner well before me, yet I barely noticed her eating. I’m struck by how much food she can consume and how quickly she can eat in such a—it’s probably an archaic term—such a ladylike manner. She dabs at the corners of her mouth, breathes a sigh and says, “That sure hit the spot.”
“Sorry I’m so slow.”
“No, no, it’s okay. You’ve been talking more than I have.”
While I finish up, Iris asks our server a question or two. I hope we’re going to linger over green tea or a liqueur.
“I’d like to get out of here, wouldn’t you?” Iris says. “It’s kind of stuffy—or maybe I need fresh air.”
I’m enjoying the surroundings—subdued, quiet, the serving staff unobtrusive—and I thought we were having a good time. “All right,” I say, “I’ll get the bill.”
“It’s my treat,” she says, as we both stand up.
My instinct is to object, to insist it’s my duty as a man to pick up the tab, but I know that’s a throwback to the old days, so all I say is “Why?”
“It was my idea to meet tonight and my idea to have sashimi, and you bought the drinks at Earls. Besides, I’m expecting you to help me.”
Outside the restaurant, I say, “That was marvellous—you’ve conquered my fear of sushi or I should say, sashimi. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. See, you need to try more things. I’ll bet there are all kinds of taste sensations you’ve been missing.”
I open the passenger door of my G6—an old courtesy that still seems to be acceptable—and she gets in. When I’m behind the wheel, I say, “Shall we go and fetch your car?”
“You know, my condo’s only five minutes from here. Why don’t we go there?”
She says this so naturally that I sense she wants to prolong the evening as much as I do. I’m grateful too that I won’t have to drive far after all that beer. At the same time, I won
der if I am simply going to drop her off at her condo or … ? I feel a twinge of nervousness, what I used to feel on dates in my teens—wondering where the evening is headed and whether I’m going to be elated or devastated.
“Sounds good,” I say, and I start the car.
“Could we put the windows down?” she says. “It’s a gorgeous night.”
I put all the windows down. She gives me directions and takes deep breaths of the air that blows in as we drive. I feel young again. I reach over and squeeze her hand. She looks at me and smiles. There’s no need to say anything. She takes her hand away from mine and quickly opens her handbag and pulls out a tissue in time to catch a sneeze.
“Bless you,” I say.
As we approach her condominium complex in South Tuxedo, she says, “Jenkins, instead of parking in Visitors’, why don’t you take my spot underground? Here’s the key.”
That answers one question—we’re going in. I drive onto the downward ramp and insert the key and the garage door instantly opens. I drive down, feeling as if I might be descending into Hell—not the pain-and-suffering kind but maybe, just maybe, debauchery. Most of the tenants’ cars are home for the night. Iris directs me to her space and I turn off the car.
“Windows,” she says.
“Oh, yes.” I hope she doesn’t think I’m nervous. I probably look nervous. I turn on the electricity and put up the windows.
We both get out and I lock the car. Iris leads the way to an elevator. I can’t think of a thing to say as we both watch the numbers illuminate on our way up to 4. We step out into a vestibule, a seating area complete with two sofas and a table. On the table are a few magazines, three or four books and a low-lit lamp.
“Very nice,” I say.
“The halls are a little stark,” she says.
I follow her down the hall and, at the third door on the left, she unlocks the door and leans inside to turn on a light. She kicks off her heels and I take off my shoes, leaving them at the door. She scoops up a towel, which seems to be the only thing out of place.
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