by Mark Sampson
“Yeah, no, listen. I liked your first two books. I did. They were very interesting. But I just think it would be problematic to represent a husband and wife writing team. You know?”
I could tell that Grace’s smiling face wanted so much to cry, right then and there. I suppose if the conversation had gone the other way I would have been happy for her, would have glowed in a spouse’s mandatory mudita. But I’ll admit it: the sight of her getting shot down, of that brief moment of powerlessless, filled me with a wild and wholly inappropriate joy. It’s petty, I realize, but it felt like I had just captured a large swath of territory in the war we’d been waging all week.
The pancakes were done. I donned oven mitts and then pulled out the now mountainous cookie sheet. I carried it in two hands to the kitchen’s archway and, with my biggest shit-eating grin, declared to the house, “Brunch is served, everybody!”
Eight adults and Virginia’s youngest at the dining-room table — Grace at one end, me at the other — with the rest of the kiddies scattered hither and yon in the living room with their meals on their laps. I indulged in a brief toast, acknowledging the benison of “good friends in troubled times,” which caused everyone to stare awkwardly at their plates. Then we resumed the eating and gabbing. As I filled my Collins glass with more mimosa, I noticed with dismay that this brunch — like every other brunch we hosted — was not elevating to the drunken bacchanalia that I always imagined it would. Coffee-drinking Ian discussed the latest action movie — something involving racing cars and guns — with tea-sipping Ramon. Joel with his OJ was still talking about the ins and outs of his airport job in my general direction. Grace and Stacey had resumed their literary gossiping, while Virginia whipped out a breast and began nursing her baby right at the table. Children occasionally popped by to refill their plates or humour our incessant grown-ups’ questions.
“Simone, honey, your mum says you’re reading Life of Pi.”
“I am. I’m nearly done.”
“This pancake is burn-ed!”
“Well, Naomi, sweetie, don’t just put it back.”
“Stuart, Cole — coasters please!”
This was my life. I had a vision, then, of my long-dead father and what he would have made of all this. Little Frankie, during my harsh PEI upbringing, had no patience for idle, phatic chit-chat, especially during meals. Meals were a time for serious conversations about serious issues, an opportunity to be engaged citizens. He would have been mortified that we weren’t talking about the one thing that every adult around this table was dying to talk about — my indefensible rant on the CBC, and what an awful person I was. He’d be mortified that we didn’t just clear the air and get it out of the way.
“— make another sequel to it?”
“Well, $280 million at the box office. What do you think?”
I poured more mimosa into my Collins glass.
And forgive me here, reader, for our talk turned, as it inevitably does at every Toronto social gathering, to the most phantasmagorically dull topic of all phantasmagorically dull topics — real estate. I was ready to swallow my own tongue in boredom.
“And then they went and paid seven eighty — for that shoebox on Lansdowne.”
“I know! It’s just, it’s just incredible.”
Yes, yes. We all nodded at the incredibility of it. The inflationary nightmare and budgetary strangleholds, the spatial compromises, the bubble that just wouldn’t burst. Even cardiologist Ian (via massive student-loan debts and a wife who didn’t work) gestured in the affirmative at the recurrent term “house poor.” He then said as much. “And to think: my father, who managed a small pharmacy, had a house down here and a cottage in the Kawarthas.”
Oh gawd. The dreaded C-word. I watched Grace, at the other end of the table, perk up right away. This remained a long-standing division in our marriage, whether we (that is, I) could afford to buy us a small family cottage in the Kawarthas. Grace, who had grown up with cottage culture, now longed to return to it as an adult — bright, summery days of unstructured time, with her daughters diving joyously off a lakefront wharf or frolicking in a garden. Grace showed an almost Pavlovian response whenever she heard the C-word, and would make her case to me at least once a year. But the fancy math that “proved” our budget could handle it, the sly temptations over having more wall space for our books, the goading promises of how much work I could get done in the cottage-country quietude (as if I weren’t prolific enough here at 4 Metcalfe Street) failed to convince me. I obfuscated, delayed, changed the subject, put my foot down, et cetera, et cetera, each time the topic came up.
She was now, across this crowded table, giving me a look, a well-well-well tilt of her head.
Thankfully, the matter seemed to be sputtering out. “— could in no way swing it,” Ian was saying, “at least until all my loans are paid off.”
“Yeah, seriously,” Joel wheezed and gasped. “I mean, we can barely afford the house we have. A cottage is completely unrealistic.”
“Well, actually …”
We all turned, then, to look at Virginia. She gave a sort of bashful shoulder-bob as she moved the baby off her breast and tucked herself back in. She glanced at Ramon, and Ramon glanced at her, and they did that same self-conscious shrug, together.
“I was going to say something earlier,” she went on, “but yeah, no, Ramon and I just bought a cottage — up in Gravenhurst.”
“Oh?!” Grace said. Her throat went flush.
“Yeah, yeah. No. Ramon finally settled his parents’ estate and got his loans paid off this fall. So we looked at the numbers, and we can just swing it. Mind you, the place is tiny — the kids will have to double up — and it’s a bit of a hike to the water. But still. It’ll be so nice to have a place of our own to retreat to during the smoggy summer months in the city.”
“No, absolutely,” Grace said. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so happy for you.”
“Thanks,” Virginia replied, and Ramon gave a nod. “You guys will have to come up and see it. I mean, Grace, I know it’s been your dream for years to own something up there.”
Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up shutupshutupshutup.
“Oh, definitely,” Grace said, and then she gave me another of those looks — one that everybody at the table caught. “But we’re not convinced we could afford it.”
Great emphasis, Grace. We’re not convinced. I felt utterly defenceless, in my exhausted stupor, and totally incapable of building a case in front of these people, the case I often built against this absurd wish of Grace’s. I scoured for something, anything, I could say — a mercilessly succinct sentence — to put an end to this conversation.
I reached for the now-empty pitcher. What happened to all the mimosa?
“Of course, it would be great for the kids,” Grace went on, “and it’s a really good investment.”
“Yeah, it’s a great investment,” Ramon sighed with the tenor of a man forced to believe in magic crystals against his will.
“But we … well …” A hush dangled over the table. “We’re not sure our budget could take it. I mean, money would probably be tight.” Then Grace raised up a cunning, vicious chin to me. “Isn’t that right, Philip?” she called over. And once more everyone stared in my direction.
I sneered back at her. “Oh, I know, Grace,” I said. “I mean, God — you’d have to get a job.”
I’d like to say, dear reader, that what happened next did not follow that awful Hollywood cliché — the cliché of clinking silverware put on pause, followed by a bone-numbingly uncomfortable silence. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. All conversation vaporized in the mushroom cloud of my remark. Our guests lowered their heads, as if in prayer. Then Virginia ventured a glance at Grace’s gobsmacked face — she looked like she’d been whacked with a paddle — and took her hand in concern. Jane Elton continued staring into her syrup-sticky plate. Stacey Howard, usual
ly so insipidly pretty, now appeared hideous as she looked upon me with unmitigated hate. No one made a sound, save for the metronomic rasp of Joel’s breathing.
I gazed into Grace’s shocked face. Shocked, and immeasurably hurt. It felt as if an ominous chunk of our marriage’s polar ice cap had broken off, and our relationship’s very environment would never be the same again. Was I regretful? In that moment, no. I had been dying to say those exact words to Grace all day, all week, all marriage. And I felt leavened to have them off my chest now. I threw her a cruel, toothy grimace across the table.
The party broke up pretty quickly after that. We blew through the cantaloupe course and then people motioned to help clear the table.
“No, just leave it,” Grace said. “Just, just leave it.”
“Okay, we’re gonna … we’re gonna go.”
And then people went. As I stood at the dining-room table, stacking plates and gathering cutlery, I could see Grace give each family a quick, perfunctory goodbye at the front door. When it was Stacey and Ian’s turn, I watched as Ian leaned down to hug my wife, to rub the side of her arm lovingly, and whisper something in her ear. She nodded when he let her go, touching his sculpted chest with one hand while twining Stacey’s fingers with the other. I watched this and seethed.
When everyone was gone, Grace turned back to the house and immediately called over her children.
“Simone, I want you to take Naomi upstairs to your bedroom,” she said. “Take her to your bedroom, and close the door.”
When she did, Grace came back — ran in, really — to the dining room, and let me have it.
How much are you interested, dear reader, in what transpired next? In one sense, it was a fairly typical domestic row, a bile-spewing stichomythia that orated the inanities of our marriage. On the other hand, you should probably know that Grace and I once again ignored the true catalyst of our fissure — that abominable slip of mine from Monday. Once again we didn’t mention it, and ergo mentioned pretty much everything else.
Anyway. Here’s an abridged transcript to give you a taste.
… to humiliate me like that in front of my friends?!?
I humiliated you? You’re the one airing our money issues in front of company.
We don’t have money issues, Philip.
Why? Because I carry the bulk of the financial burden for this household, Grace, so you can stay home all day and play with the kids and hang out on Facebook …
Oh my God!
And it’s a lot of pressure, okay. It’s a lot of responsibility. And if we have money, it’s only because I pulled myself up from NOTHING. So show me some respect!
You don’t deserve respect. I work hard, Philip. I work damn hard to raise those girls right and keep this household running while you go off to be a “public figure.” So fuck off! You don’t deserve respect … the way you speak to me …
I only speak the truth, Grace. As I did at the table today. If you want a fucking cottage in the fucking Kawarthas, then you’d need to get a fucking job to help pay for it.
You want me to get a “job,” Philip? You want to give up all this free child care
You couldn’t get a job, Grace. You haven’t had a real job in years. In this economy, you couldn’t compete for a secretary’s position.
I only speak the truth.
Really? Do you say these things because they’re true or because you’re always drunk?
Oh, is that what we’re talking about now?
Yes, it is … yes, it is.
Well, Grace, before you open your trap about it, you should think long and hard about why I feel compelled to always drink.
Well then, why don’t you? You could move in with her and Ian. Then you guys could have the threesome you’ve always dreamed about.
What?!? Are you fucking insane??
I see the way you look at each other.
Philip, I can’t even begin to imagine how …
You said as much to me on Monday.
Okay, we really need to talk about your drinking. Because you wouldn’t even think these things if you weren’t
See? You don’t really care about this. It’s all sort of boring. But what you might care about is that after our row reached its expletive-rich crescendo, Grace went tearing up the stairs and, a few minutes later, came back down again clutching an inconsolable Naomi in one arm and an overnight bag in the other. Grace said she was fleeing with our daughter to her parents’ place because she couldn’t stand to be in the same house with me right now; and no, she didn’t know when she’d be back. Simone couldn’t come, because Simone had school in the morning, and I damn well better get her out the door on time. I would get a taste of solo child-rearing, if I thought it was so damn easy.
And then Grace and Naomi were gone, leaving me with the wreckage of our — Grace’s — brunch to clean up.
So how would it work, exactly?
I thought about this as I loaded and unloaded our dishwasher, and loaded it again, stacking the innumerable plates and cups and cutlery we used during the party. I thought about it as I scoured pans and pots and then dried them. I thought about it as I gathered garbage and wiped down counters and tables. I thought about it as I swept the floors. How would it work, exactly?
So I leave Grace. I leave Grace for Rani. Figure we should’ve just been together this whole time anyway, and I get on a plane in January and meet her in Mumbai. I quit my job at U of T and go full-time author, leaving everything back here in Toronto to Grace. She sells 4 Metcalfe Street, buys something cheaper, and lives off the difference until she can upgrade her skills and get a job-job. I send back a full half of whatever income my work generates in alimony and child-support payments. I make a couple trips home a year to spend time with Naomi, and when she’s old enough (how old would she have to be?) maybe she’d get on a plane and visit me sometimes. Meanwhile, I become Rani’s kept man: I write and read all day in the Indian heat while she works at the BBC, and then we spend our evenings discussing important World Issues and fucking like we used to, back at Oxford. And perhaps Grace will one day meet a man who wants to be the malleable Stepford husband she’s always wanted. Or maybe she can get into some kind of polyamorous arrangement with Stacey and Ian. He is a cardiologist, after all, albeit at the beginning of his career. He’ll soon be able to afford two wives. Everybody wins!
Except. Except birthdays. Except graduations. Except watching Naomi grow up. Except walking the girls down their wedding aisles. Except Simone — brainy, compassionate, whimsical, grown-up Simone — whom Grace would ban from my life forever. Except except except.
Also: What if Rani’s not the same? We haven’t actually seen each other in years. What if we’re not really attracted to one another anymore? Or what if she is the same, and whatever indifference kept us from committing to each other back at Oxford still lingers? What if that indifference comes roaring back once the novelty of being together has worn off?
And except — what if, despite everything, I still love Grace?
These thoughts made me pretty sad throughout the cleanup. Just as I was finishing, Simone came back downstairs with Life of Pi under her arm. She went to the living-room bookshelves, put the to
me back in its place, and then came nervously into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said, then nodded at the shelf from whence she came. “Finished?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
She rolled her eyes. “Silly cop-out, at the end,” she said. “All that — for that?”
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “It basically asks you to believe that two versions of a reality could exist simultaneously, or something. Pretty improbable, if you think about it.” A silence hung between us for a moment. “So,” I said, and shrugged. “You heard your mum and me fighting?”
She folded her arms over her chest and looked off, a defiant stance. Wow, she really was Grace’s little mini-me. “Yep.”
“Did Naomi?”
“Yep.”
“Was she scared?”
“She was,” Simone replied, and then looked up at me. “We both were.”
“Believe me, we didn’t want you to hear all that,” I said. “We really didn’t want to scare you.”
“I know.”
“It’s just — there are no words, Simone.” I tried to laugh; I tried to make light of it. “I mean, who knew that my off-colour comments about a bunch of corporate jerks would dredge up so much stuff between your mum and me.” I realized then that this was the first time I’d actually alluded aloud to the particulars of my slip in this house. It felt pretty good. It felt like getting something off my chest.
Simone raised an eyebrow in confusion. “I don’t know anything about that.”
But I plugged on. “I mean, I shouldn’t have said what I said about those executives, okay. I get that. But still. Everybody hates those guys, and yet because I said what I said about them, I think people are projecting their anger onto me. Everybody’s doing it — including your mother. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.”
Simone looked even more confused. “I don’t know anything about that,” she repeated. “All I know is that she wishes you’d just hurry up and apologize for threatening to rape that woman on TV.”