by K. D. Miller
Jill treats herself to mint-scented salts in her bath, then pulls on jeans and the green, fleecy sweatshirt she bought with this trip in mind—something warm yet light enough for late October on the west coast. Once she’s finished the granola, fruit, yogurt, and coffee she checked off on the breakfast card the night before, she sets out into the cool mist to walk the Granville Island seawall.
There is a feeling of unreality to this place. The cupped and gentled ocean. The manicured path, its little lookouts and cul-de-sacs with their strategically planted rocks. Everything whispers of wealth. Jill guesses she could afford to live here for what—six months? Doesn’t matter. The day would come when, like Meredith, she would have nothing left.
Unless, of course, she wins.
She wishes she could do what Jaya and Jason seem to have done—accept the fact that Philip will likely take the prize. If she did that, she could just relax and enjoy her time here in Vancouver. But for once she can’t resign herself to being an also-ran. Something in her, something fierce and demanding, is insisting she win. One morning shortly into the tour—she thinks it might have been in Montreal—it was just there. Like a lump under her skin. Slipping about, dodging her probing fingertips. A sense of entitlement, of life owing her a debt she has every right to call in.
One afternoon two autumns ago, Eliot Somers walked into the frame shop. Abdul was off that day, so Jill waited on him herself.
He had just sold his house and moved into a condominium, he told her, and had decided to cover his kitchen walls with ancestral photographs. He had some formal portraits of his parents and grandparents, even a daguerreotype of his great-grandparents.
Jill spread the pictures out on the big work table. “No siblings?” she ventured to ask, looking them over.
He told her he was an only child. Like me, she found herself thinking. She guessed him to be about her age, too. A smallish, compact man in a rust-coloured sweater and charcoal jeans. Still-dark hair cut short, thinning on top. Immaculate fingernails, as if he had just scrubbed them with a brush.
Jill and Abdul sometimes joke about how the job allows them to tell a great deal about a person in a short period of time. As they bring mat and frame samples up close to the art, they and the customer bend toward the effect, almost sharing breath. They can catch a whiff of alcohol. Notice dandruff and sweater balls or cashmere and the scent of fresh shampoo. And of course, they can assess someone’s taste by what they choose and what they reject. Jill has learned to pick up on hesitation—an imaginary bill mounting in the customer’s mind—if she suggests a second mat overlaying the first in a slightly darker shade, or perhaps a line incised near the edge for texture. Or, as was the case with Eliot, she can sense an openness to suggestion, a willingness to pay for whatever is best for the work.
“I’ve just retired, and I’m going to be spending more time in the kitchen,” he told her. “I’ve always been a rather pedestrian cook, and I want to get a little more adventurous.” He did not babble on about himself the way some do, assuming interest on her part. He offered up details humbly, as if honoured that she would listen. She encouraged him, asking more questions than she normally did.
He had worked for the last thirty-five years for a major charity whose focus was education for disadvantaged girls. “I started out as a stockbroker. But then when my daughter was born, it occurred to me that there had to be more to life than making rich people richer.” He smiled—a bashful smile that reminded Jill of someone she couldn’t quite place.
She smiled back and handed him the invoice she had just made up. So, she thought. A daughter. No mention of a wife, but—Oh, he’ll just go now. A few weeks later, Abdul or I will leave a voicemail saying that his frame order is ready. He’ll drop into the shop, pay the balance of the bill, take his photographs, walk out the door, and disappear.
“I’m a widower.” He had closed his fingers over the edge of the invoice, but not taken it. They stood holding it together. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You must get people telling you all kinds of things. I don’t know why I—”
“No. It’s all right. Please don’t be sorry. How long has it been?”
“Three years now.” His voice was calm. She suspected it was a worked-on, achieved calm.
She held his gaze—pale grey eyes, she noticed—and said, “That’s a lot of changes. Losing your wife. Retiring. Now moving.” Then she surprised herself. She released her end of the invoice and put her hand out. “I’m Jill Macklin.”
He held her hand a second longer than was usual. “Macklin’s Frames. So the store is a family business?”
She told him about her father, about learning the job from him. Most people come in knowing exactly what they want, and usually it’s the worst thing for the art—a pink mat to match the drapes in the living room, a gold frame to pick out the gold of the chandelier. For years, she listened to her father gently, patiently, respectfully suggesting that it was better to frame to the art, rather than to its surroundings. Then, without a hint of reproach, offering a variety of pink mats, a selection of gold frame samples.
Did she really tell him all that? Yes, and more. About deciding half way through university to be a writer, with the frame shop as her day job. Keeping the business going all through her father’s last illness. Then—
Then Eliot Somers asked her if she had plans for dinner that evening.
Again the bashful smile. One week later, when she was tracing a fingertip round the shape his chest and belly hair made, like a capital H, she finally realized who he reminded her of. “Kevin Spacey!”
He chuckled and said he’d heard that before.
Heard it from whom? And how recently? A small, anxious voice in the back of her mind. She told it to be quiet. Began planting a trail of kisses from his nipple, down over his belly, into the springy bush where he was once more beginning to stir.
The sun has broken through the mist. The ferries have been going back and forth for some time. Jill sits down on a park bench to rest for a minute. Checks her messages one more time. Nothing. She can imagine Abdul frowning, telling her to trust him and stop worrying.
Though he never said anything, Jill could tell Abdul was aware of what was going on between her and Eliot. She caught a bemused look from him one morning when she spun around in her desk chair like a schoolgirl because, for the first time, Eliot had signed an email with the word love. And that day, months later, when she couldn’t help herself, could only sit at her desk with her hands clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking, trying not to make noise, she took comfort in his wide turned back, his deft handling of calls and customers.
She tucks her phone back into her purse and snaps it shut. She did tell people she would be away. There is no need for this small disappointment, like the pang of a single plucked hair. But every time she boots up her laptop or checks her phone, she still looks for a certain sender name. A subject line reading something like, Friends? Or, Sorry. Or, Could we possibly talk? And whenever she enters the lobby of her building, the sight of a narrow white edge peeking through the metal grille of her mailbox still puts her on alert. Will it be the envelope she self-addressed, stamped, folded, and tucked inside another envelope addressed to him? Will it hold a reply, finally, to the letter she toiled over for weeks?
She stands up. Brushes the back of her jeans and hooks the strap of her purse over her shoulder. The boutiques and galleries will be opening up. She has gifts to buy. She’s hoping to find something in ceramic for Abdul, who throws pots in his spare time. She has a set of mugs he made—thin handles and pedestal bases, glazed in dove grey. It intrigues her to think of his thick, brown fingers producing such delicacy. She wants to get something for her friend Harriet, too.
And she’s going to look for a gift for herself. Something special to have and to keep. A treat. No. A comfort. Still.
Jill has gone over and over what happened, reciting it to herself as s
he would a fable or myth. She was loved, then not loved. Eliot was there, then gone. The part of the story that eludes her is the moment just before the then.
Up until that moment, Eliot would pull her into a doorway as they walked down the street, needing to kiss and caress her in the middle of a sentence. He read all her books in a single week, practically reciting his favourite passages back to her. He complimented her tiny feet, her tilting, humorous eyes, the way her breasts exactly fit his cupped palm. Every Monday he sent her an email listing the times he would be free that week. She would tell herself not to agree to every suggestion, to hold some of herself back for friends and writing. But then she would capitulate, saying yes and yes and yes.
The sex had gotten so much better—as she joked to Harriet, it couldn’t possibly have gotten worse—with the help of an estrogen cream called Oasis. She would start to throb down there the second she opened the door and saw his smile, would stand close to catch a whiff of him as he took off his jacket in the hall. “My God,” he said early on. “You really need this, don’t you?”
Need. She decided it was a compliment. Once more told the small voice to be quiet.
She did a reading in a library with some other local authors. Eliot came and sat in the front row. “I was making love to you the whole time you read,” he told her afterwards. Then said that his daughter Mary would probably have enjoyed the event. Suggested that next time maybe Mary could come? And meet Jill? Also—he was thinking that the two of them should go to England, where his parents were from. He had cousins there he was still in touch with.
Yes, she said. Oh, yes. To be presented to his family. To be so acknowledged. Well, she deserved as much, surely. Why shouldn’t this good thing finally be happening? Why shouldn’t she be given exactly what she had almost stopped hoping for?
“It’s great that you were open to the experience.” Harriet, raising a glass of white wine after Jill first told her about Eliot, tumbling over her words and grinning like a girl. The small voice had warned her against telling anyone, for fear of jinxing things. But she had dismissed that as a silly superstition. And Harriet was right. She had indeed been open. Courageously so. Willing to take a chance on things being different this time.
She had had six previous lovers in her life, the first in university. Each time, being seen naked, being touched intimately, had wakened a craving for more and more touch, deeper and deeper intimacy. She would come to need her lover’s attention the way she needed air or water. In time, even when he was with her, holding her, she would get anxious, anticipating his letting go, getting up and leaving. And so of course he would leave. Permanently.
But that wasn’t going to happen this time. Not again. Not with Eliot.
She did another reading a few weeks later, in an art gallery. Waited for Eliot to suggest inviting his daughter, then suggested it herself. He looked away. Said something vague about Mary being busy.
She reminded him brightly of his idea of going to England. Maybe they could plan the trip for this summer? When business was slower? And she could safely leave the frame shop in Abdul’s hands for a few weeks? He smiled. Changed the subject.
“Just take a step back, Jill.” Harriet again. “Give him less importance. Less power. Get busy with your own good life.”
But that was just it. Eliot was her good life. Her best life. She had been content enough with work, writing, friends. Had made a point of counting her blessings, reminding herself of how much better off she was than many women her age. Then Eliot took her hand in his, and everything became secondary to his touch. Besides, it was easy for Harriet to talk. Her husband drowned years ago in the lake up at their cottage while she was in the kitchen getting their lunch. She was left with happy memories of a long marriage that ended through no fault of her own. It was one thing to be a widow. Another to be—
Dumped. Slowly.
Eliot was too busy (doing what?) to see her as often. He was too tired (from what?) to make love. He had once said he couldn’t wait to show her his new place. Now, each time she asked, he put her off, saying it was still too much of a mess from moving in. But hadn’t he been moved in for months now?
“I could help. I could flatten the boxes.” She hated the way her voice sounded, stretched thin, fake-hearty.
She did try, delicately, cleverly, to get him to talk about the growing distance between them. He ducked the subject, dismissed her worries, denied that anything had changed. And so, appalled at herself, telling herself for God’s sake not to do this, she fetched her diary. Showed him the date, weeks ago, of their last love-making. He grimaced. Pushed away the shaking book. Muttered something about pressure.
His daily emails had dwindled to one, and that only in reply to one of her own. Then he stopped even replying. Stopped returning the voicemails she composed in her mind and rehearsed aloud before picking up the phone.
“Are you prepared for how he might answer this?”
Harriet had just finished reading the four-page letter Jill had crafted to be warm but not clingy, upbeat but not flippant, exerting absolutely no pressure, presenting herself as wanting nothing at all save to know what place, if any, she occupied in his heart.
Yes, she said. She had prepared herself for any possible response. Now all she had to do was wait.
Over the next week, two weeks, three, she kept checking the duplicate invoice she had on file in the shop. Yes, she had addressed the envelope correctly. And in any event, she had put her return address on it, so it would have come back to her if it hadn’t reached him. A dozen times, she reminded herself of the little joke she had made in the first paragraph about including a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Surely that wouldn’t have irritated him. Surely it didn’t constitute pressure. Again and again, she convinced herself that a reply to a letter such as she had sent could not be dashed off. It would require thought. Take time. A month, even. Two months. Longer.
How long after she sent her letter did Dennis Little email her? She recalls numbly reading his message about having admired her work for years, considering her underappreciated and wondering if by any chance she had a manuscript on the go that she would consider sending to a tiny start-up in Stoney Creek. What she had was two pages of notes about an elderly woman named Meredith falling in love, having sex, and breaking her heart for the first and last time. With the recklessness that comes of not caring whether one lives or dies, she wrote back to say that yes, she was working on a novel.
She wrote Late Breaking in a kind of trance—an almost uninterrupted flow. Given the subject matter and the way she had just dashed it off, she expected Littlepress to reject it. Instead, she received a letter full of compliments and apologies—the latter for the enclosed cheque, whose amount made her smile.
When the reviews started to appear, she could hardly recognize the work they were praising, barely identify with this author Jill Macklin person. And when her nomination for the Olympia Featherstone Award For Fiction was announced, all she could think was, Will Eliot see this in the paper? Will he wonder how I am? Maybe finally answer my letter?
*
It’s the evening of the award ceremony. The whole time she’s getting ready in her hotel room, Jill fights an urge to just put on the jeans and sweatshirt she wore yesterday. But then, when she descends to the pre-dinner cocktail reception and sees Philip in his tux, Jaya in her yellow silk sari and even Jason for once in a jacket and tie, she’s glad of the filmy blue-green caftan and silver pants Harriet bullied her into buying weeks ago.
It’s a grudging, sulky gladness. She is in fact furious. With herself, with all this award nonsense, with everything. She spent most of yesterday roaming the Granville Island market, trying to persuade herself to buy the one thing she wanted—a white ceramic plate with a beautifully articulated raven on it, each black feather picked out in detail. She had no trouble spending money on Harriet, getting her a palette-shaped brooch in copper,
or on Abdul—a white bowl with a black feather motif by the same potter who made her plate.
No. Not her plate. Because she didn’t buy it after all. And now here she is, all dolled up for the sake of a prize she hasn’t a hope in hell of winning. Whenever she tries to work up a little excitement, something in her swats it like a fly and she’s left with nothing but pre-emptive jealousy of Philip Phelps.
And oh, the icing on the cake. Here comes one of the designated sparklers, who caught sight of her moping in a corner with her glass of wine, and has been trained to zero in on any author who appears to be even momentarily less than ecstatic.
“I’m fine by myself,” she assures the girl before she has a chance to ask how Jill is, or offer to refresh her drink or bring her some more hors d’oeuvres or do anything else that might make her stay on this planet more pleasant. “But poor old Philip over there looks like he could use some company.” So the sweet thing floats off in Philip’s direction, obviously happy to have a mission. And the old man’s face lifts at the sight of her. Soon the two of them are engaged in grinning, flirty conversation.
Later, Jill will wonder if she might have been some kind of accessory. Culpable in some way. But for now, she drains her glass of white wine, finishes off a tiny quiche, and wipes her fingers on a paper napkin. She has one more dinner to get through. Then the award ceremony, where she will smile the smile of the good loser. And waiting for her at the end of it all will be the one thing she can count on. Smooth and cool, then gradually warm and comforting, the fresh sheets on her wide, wonderful hotel-room bed.
*
The seatbelt sign has just come on. Jill stows her tray, tucks her purse under the seat in front of her and buckles up. She loves flying, and in the last month has done more of it than in her entire life. She especially enjoys take-off—the revving of the engine, the speeding down the runway, then the amazingly delicate lifting into the air. In five hours, she will be in Toronto. Abdul, bless his heart, is meeting her at the airport and driving her home.