Enough of this mournfulness, I tell myself, and I get up.
I’m saddened by the sight of yesterday’s clothes, strewn across the guest bathroom vanity. I should’ve put them on hangers. I flush away the condom and put on everything but my stockings and my jacket. I look and feel shabby. I take my jacket to the closet beside the front door and hang it there.
Best to tackle breakfast—that might improve my mood. I go into the kitchen and find eggs and whole-wheat bread and margarine and a large frying pan. I run water into the pan and put it on one of the range elements and set the heat at 10, just under Hi.
I can’t hear the shower and I think she must be out of it. “Can I start them now?” I call.
She appears in the kitchen doorway, naked except for a towel wrapped like a turban around her head, and a pink bra she’s in the process of putting on.
“Wow, Mr. Executive Chef,” she says. “Sure, go ahead.”
I look at her. “Iris, you have a beautiful body.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
She hasn’t yet fastened the bra and I pull it down.
“I haven’t given these enough attention,” I say. I take a breast in each hand and I bend to kiss one nipple and then the other. “See you, gals. Have a nice day.”
“You’re funny,” she says, laughing, as she fits the bra into place again.
I watch her as she goes back down the hall. I still find it hard to believe that we’ve spent the night together.
I set the dining-room table and pour two glasses of cranberry juice. I sprinkle salt in the panful of water. I put four slices of bread in the toaster. I crack the eggs, one at a time, against the side of the pan and drop their innards into the water with a minimum of spill.
While the eggs cook and the bread toasts, I pour myself a glass of water and drink it as I look around. There are no pictures on the fridge and no sign of a calendar. I’m glad I don’t have to see “Jenkins” written in the Wednesday square and something like “Eddie Vanderbilt III” in Thursday.
I take down two dinner plates from the cupboard. I butter the toast and set two slices on each plate. I place an egg on each slice—the two I give her are classic in shape.
“Ready!” I call, as I carry the two plates to the dining room.
She appears in a form-fitting blue floral top and hip-hugging deep blue slacks. Her hair is sprayed into a tousled look.
“This looks delicious, Jenkins,” she says, sitting down.
“I couldn’t find any coffee.”
“I never touch the stuff. Makes me hyper. Sorry, you’d probably like some.”
I sit opposite her. “I don’t need it. This’ll do just fine.”
“Looks great. Some mornings, I get by on a mandarin orange. This is a treat.”
We eat. I love the domesticity of this scene. I wonder if Iris has a camera, one we could set up to take a picture of the two of us at the table. Her cell phone is likely one that takes pictures—but that is the last thing she’d want. If you live for the moment, you don’t reminisce.
“Do you have any travel plans in the next little while?” she asks.
“No. I have invitations to visit friends but nothing concrete yet.”
“You should go. What’s keeping you here?”
“Nothing, really.”
“You know where I’d like to go again sometime? Disney World.”
“I’m surprised. I would’ve thought you’d want to go somewhere more exotic.”
“I know. People think it’s an odd choice, but that’s just me. I’d like to see what new rides they have and just hang out on a few of them.”
I tell her I liked Epcot Center when I was there years ago. She tells me about the rides in the West Edmonton Mall. It seems weird to be sitting in her condo eating a breakfast I cooked an hour after we made love and talking about amusement parks.
And then it’s time to leave. We stack the dishes in her dishwasher and put things away and every minute I want to stop her in her tracks and hold her but I know she doesn’t want me to. At last, at the door, after I’ve put on my shoes, I do take her into my arms. I want to say I’ll cherish this date forever but of course I don’t say that.
“This has been marvellous,” I say.
“It has been fun.” She slips out of my grasp. “Come on. I don’t want to be late.”
I pull up to the Polo Park entrance she says is closest to The Lucky Elephant.
“I had a terrific time, Jenkins,” she says, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “And thanks for breakfast.”
“Thank you for dinner. And Iris, do start making notes.”
“Notes?”
“For your book.”
“Right! Jenkins, promise me you won’t get all hung up, okay? Don’t get into your head about us.”
“I promise.”
“Good. I’ll give you a call. I won’t say when, but I will.”
She gets out of the car. I watch her go; she looks magnificent. I hope and hope and hope that she’ll turn to look back at me. There are people headed for the same entrance and I worry that I won’t be able to see her if she does turn. She reaches the door and I think she’s already forgotten me. I see the door open and she lets a woman precede her into the mall and, at the last possible second, I see her turn and wave.
>
A Winter Night Long Ago
There is nothing worse than driving home in the morning after you’ve been awake for more than twenty-four hours. It’s Thursday, I think, and everybody is going to work, well rested, ready to give ’em hell. Driving south on Route 90 away from the city toward suburbia, I experience a peculiar mix of feelings. I shake with fatigue but also elation. I despair of being old yet I haven’t felt so young in years. I want to go over and over every minute with Iris and yet she encouraged me to believe that the experience itself—not the reliving of it—is all that matters. To dwell on this might plunge me into a gloomy void, something similar I suppose to the downer after a drug-induced high. It’s difficult for me to concentrate on driving and I feel some relief when I see my house ahead of me on the bend of the bay.
The relief lasts about two seconds. My neighbour Hildy is outside in her front yard, a few feet away from my driveway. She stops what she’s doing—pulling weeds or something—and watches my car approach. I’m going to be forced to speak with her. Feeling instantly more weary, I stop the car within a few feet of the garage and get out.
“Jenkins, there you are!” Hildy says, levelling an inquisitive stare at me. “We were worried. Are you all right?”
I’m sure I look awful. I’m too tired to come up with a brilliant story about where I’ve been, yet it seems like a bad time to tell the truth. I’m not even sure what the truth is. And even if I were sure, how would I describe it to Hildy? Dear, plump, curly-headed, heart-always-in-the-right-place Hildy?
“I’m—uh—fine,” I say, trying to be vague. “Why?”
“You know how early Mark gets up. He noticed there was no car in your garage.”
Ah, yes—they can see through the window on their side.
“I wondered if you’d had a chest pain or something in the night. You wouldn’t drive yourself to the hospital, would you, Jenkins? You’d call us, wouldn’t you? You know you can call us at any time.”
“Yes, I know that, Hildy. I would certainly call you.”
She keeps staring at me. The puzzled look on her face is asking the next question: If you weren’t at the hospital, where were you?
“I was at a friend’s,” I say. “Had one too many drinks and didn’t think I should drive … you know.”
“Mark said that might be the case.” One of her eyebrows shoots up. I swear she’s thinking, Here I’ve been worried sick about you and you’ve been out screwing around. “I was pretty concerned. Glad you’re home.”
“Thanks, Hildy.”
I turn to open the garage door. It feels ridiculously heavy. By the time I’ve driven into the garage and come out, Hildy is gone. S
he’s likely inside calling Mark: You were right, Mark. Jenkins had himself a one-night stand. The nerve of some people!
What I notice as soon as I enter my house is an appalling stillness. It doesn’t feel like the comfortable sanctuary it usually is. And, if facing Hildy was difficult, facing Barb is worse. I skulk past the dining room and head straight upstairs.
I’m desperate to shed my clothes, but, once I’m out of my sport jacket, I flop into my La-Z-Boy and lie back and stare. I think about Iris, the drug I was high on. I fix on the moments we had—in the bar, in the restaurant, in her bed. My god, I’m already reminiscing. Yes, here I am, wanting to hold onto the memory. Meanwhile, she’ll go on to new experiences, enjoy them and never cling to a recollection of any one of them. As far as I know, she has no desire to repeat an experience, and the very idea of my wanting to see her again seems to her to be possessive.
If it’s good for me to look at life the way she does, it’s going to take a radical change. I am the product of a generation that got to know a partner sexually through incremental steps. To have the whole enchilada in one grand feast is mind-boggling.
… But it was fun, wasn’t it? The whole fifteen hours with her was incredible, wasn’t it? That gorgeous body of hers, so much younger than mine, so fit, so female! Beside me, over me, under me! Even the goddam tug-of-war over the TV remote seems exotic!
I get up from the chair and jauntily go down to the dining room.
“I suppose you know what I’ve been up to,” I say to Barb. “I’m telling you, it was pretty wild and crazy. Can you believe, I didn’t even have any pyjamas with me? I didn’t even floss? I know, it’s pretty hard to believe. Why didn’t you and I ever do anything crazy like that?”
But we did do something crazy like that, something that wasn’t recorded in any of the photo albums we religiously kept.
It was back in the mid-1970s—a February, I think. I’d been away on a leave of absence at Toronto’s York University, working on my post-graduate degree. Barb regularly wrote to me, keeping me posted on how the kids were doing, how she was coping with the winter, the usual stuff of letters between spouses. We’d lived with her mother while I was launching my career in education, but, at the time I’m speaking of, we’d had our own place for a few years and, while I was away, Barb had the full responsibility of kids, house and yard. Her latest letter that February sounded an alarm:
… We are all a little ratty today. Brian is bored and Tracy can’t find some stupid little shoe for the doll she was playing with. I’ll survive I guess. I only wish I had some excitement to look forward to tonight.
Jenkins, I have an uncontrollable urge for excitement at night and if I know I’m going out for some fun, I’m terrific all day. Gloria and Zack took me to the Montcalm last night for a few beers. Twice inside of ½ hour, two guys tried to join us when they realized I was alone. It gave my ego a boost I guess although I guess this will annoy you to hear it. I’m really scared, Jenkins, as I seem to have a fire inside me, a fire for wild, devilish fun. What am I going to do? I never drink more than 2 beers as you know how I am after just one! I love to be in a crowd all the time and I love compliments. I’m trying so hard to figure out what’s wrong, Jenkins, we must talk about it more. I love these kids more than you’ll ever know and I could never sacrifice their happiness for mine. I like my house, the car, and my daily obligations, but I still seem to have a big cavern in my life.
Sorry to have thrown this at you. I feel better just writing out my problems.
Well, I must close now and do some ironing. The new washing machine works great.
I’m dieting like mad and I guess that’s why I feel so low.
I plan to go over to Gloria’s next week and Patsy’s as well, and before that you know there’s the bonspiel in Pine Falls. Mom will be staying with the kids.
God, Jenkins, sometimes I feel I can’t stand the sight of you, and then suddenly I can’t live without you. WHAT IS WRONG?
I phoned home as soon as I received this, but by then Barb had gone to the four-day curling competition. I talked to Mrs. Mason, didn’t mention Barb’s letter—just told her I was going to catch a plane in a day or so and surprise both the kids and Barb.
It happened that I managed to book a flight that got me into Winnipeg on Friday afternoon. The bonspiel wasn’t due to wind up until Saturday. Those were the days before cell phones, and I thought I’d wait until Barb made her nightly call to check on how her mother was doing with the kids.
The call came around nine o’clock.
“Jenkins!” Barb cried. “What are you doing there?”
“A little surprise,” I said.
“Jenkins, you weren’t supposed to be—oh, God, you didn’t come because of what I …”
“It was time I took a break.”
“Jenkins … Jenkins, listen. We’re out of the bonspiel. We lost tonight. Val wants us to drown our sorrows here but … Jenkins, could you come and get me?”
“Tonight?”
“Would you?”
“Your mother’s gone home … maybe I could get her back or—I’ll think of something.”
“Oh, thank you!” She gave me instructions on how to find the arena and said she’d watch for me at the front door.
I made a call to our regular babysitter, sixteen-year-old Debra across the street, and was lucky to find her willing to come over. That saved me bothering Mrs. Mason. I explained to Debra and her parents how late I might be.
I started out around 9:30 in our Dodge station wagon, figuring it’d take about two hours to reach Pine Falls, a paper-mill town north of the city. It was a cold night. At least a foot of snow blanketed the countryside, but luckily it wasn’t snowing that night and Highway 59 was mostly clear.
By then, Barb and I had been married for over fifteen years. Maybe it was good for a couple married that long to be apart for a few weeks, because I was anxious to see her. In other words, I wasn’t going out there only because of her letter or because she wanted me to. The drive seemed long and the night bleak, but good old anticipation carried me.
The road from 59 into the town of Pine Falls—number 11—wasn’t as clear or as easy to manage, so I slowed down. I had to watch out for wildlife and I had to be careful passing other vehicles. There was no moon and, except for a few lighted houses, both sides of the road were dark, and I focused on the path laid down by my headlights.
When I found the arena, there were still some people around—in fact, Val, Barb’s skip, was waiting with her inside the front door. Because of Val’s presence, our greeting was conservative—a quick kiss.
“That was awfully good of you to drive out,” Val said. “Wilf wouldn’t have done it, that’s for sure!”
I felt the cold crisp air in the minute it took me to throw Barb’s sports bag and broom into the back of the wagon. Barb jumped into the passenger side. Maybe she’d had more than one or two beers—I could sense something about her, something more than her gratefulness. Or maybe it was my excited view of her.
“Jenkins,” she said, as we started back the same long dark way I’d come. “I can’t believe you’re here! Did it cost you a pretty penny to get a flight on that short notice? I’ll bet it did.”
“I can’t wait to get you home.”
We drove along, I trying to concentrate on the road. We were both quiet for a few miles, maybe because we were both pent up, or maybe because it was winter and our surroundings were anything but hospitable.
“Jenkins?” said Barb, in kind of a breathless voice.
“Yes?”
“Do we have to go all the way home?”
“What do you mean?”
“Couldn’t we pull over and …”
“Sure we could!”
“Oh, God, really? Do you think—”
“Well, not here. Wait till we get to 59. We’ll pull off on the—you know, the road to Patricia Beach, or something.”
“We could go to Mother’s cottage.”
“A bit
out of our way. And the road might not be plowed.”
“And we don’t have a key.”
“Right!”
I drove on, now far too excited to be driving. I felt as if I was on a date. That was it. It felt just like a date. A date without restrictions—except maybe those imposed by the Highway Traffic Act.
We reached 59, turned south, and looked for a side road. The one we picked was plowed, and the surface under the snow cover was gravel. The road dropped off on either side; there wasn’t much of a shoulder and there was a danger of sliding down into the ditch. About half a mile in from 59, I pulled over as best I could and stopped and put the gear into Park and left the engine running.
“What if someone comes along?” I said.
“Who’d come by here at this time of night in the middle of winter?”
“I don’t know—cops, a farmer on his way home, teenagers …”
“We’ll tell them we’re married.”
“I don’t feel married.”
“Neither do I!” She got up on her knees and gave me a deep, thorough kiss, the kind we hadn’t indulged ourselves in for years. She unzipped her jacket and I went in under her sweater with both hands and undid her bra. “Oh! Your hands are cold!”
“Sorry—I need to warm them.”
“On me?” She shuddered. “It’s okay, leave them there.”
I thought I noticed something in front of the car—it startled me.
“Look, a deer!” I said.
Barb turned to look. “Aww … so pretty!”
The deer ran into the woods.
“What if a bear comes along?” I said.
“It wouldn’t come close, would it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your hands are warm now. Oh, that’s nice.” She kissed my face. “How are we going to do this?”
“I’ll have to get out from under this steering wheel.”
“And I’ll get on top.”
All this was said with gasping voices and me checking the road ahead and Barb checking the road behind, though the windows were fogging up. The threat of somebody coming along made this caper even more thrilling than it already was. Barb sat back on the seat to push off her boots and to wriggle out of her pants and her panties. With her jacket and sweater and the unfastened bra still on, she backed herself up against the door and the glove compartment to give me room to move to the passenger seat. I wondered how in blazes teenagers executed this—did they always move into the back seat?—maybe they were just younger and more flexible.
Dating Page 26