Moondance

by Black, Karen M.

  Group D drank together and laughed. Their discussions were a communion of well-chosen stories on well-contemplated topics such as education, career experience, grades, GMAT scores, their previous jobs, idiot bosses, financial aspirations and overseas travels. Beneath it all, the low-level hum of competition lingered, with an unspoken understanding: they would work together, they would rely on each other, and their own objectives would remain paramount.

  As the night wore on, the alcohol took effect, and Kevin and Tori felt further and further away. Althea’s ambition and desire for success was taking root. As she talked, she re-envisioned her life: the career, the title, the success, the travel, all dedicated to building, growing, making money.

  Creating security.

  • • •

  JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, ALTHEA stepped outside to get some air. A man leaned against the wall, smoking, blending in with the brick. When her eyes adjusted, she could make out angular features, fair hair and rectangular glasses. He caught her looking at him and his eyes crinkled in a smile. He was older than he first appeared.

  “First year MBA?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “I saw you upstairs.” His eyes held hers, and his expression was unreadable. Althea flushed.

  “I’m George O’Sullivan,” the man said. “I teach advanced strategy in second year.” He extended his hand and she took it. He pulled away, puffing on his cigarette, nodding at a group of students walking by. She could feel herself getting warm and just as she was about to speak, he tossed his cigarette onto the street and walked away.

  chapter 10

  MICHAEL STOOD FIVE FEET eleven inches, or as he liked to joke, six foot one when he blow-dried his hair. He leaned sideways as he walked down the basement stairs of their new house, his hand on the ceiling for stability. The smell of simmering spaghetti sauce followed him. Lara would be home in about an hour. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, surveying a pile of boxes that was chest high and didn’t seem to be getting any smaller. He felt tired and slightly off balance.

  Which door will it be today?

  Michael had spent at least two hours a day over the last week going through the boxes that he’d stored in Lara’s parents place for the last fifteen years. Most of the boxes he had opened so far were filled with books, some from school, some from his high school science fiction obsession. In one, he found his mother’s salt and pepper shaker collection, in another, his father’s stamps. The rest he could only guess. Despite telling Lara he wanted to clear some of it out, the truth was that most of it would probably go back into the same boxes, though with an updated label. To her credit, Lara had never pressured him about that.

  His eyes were getting used to the murky light. On the side of a box to his right, he found what he was looking for: “Michael”, written in his mother’s handwriting. To his mother and to Lara, he had always been Michael. Everyone else called him Mike. Wincing slightly, he picked up the box, which was light, and opened the lid.

  On top lay five-year old Michael’s contribution to the art world: a collage, the edges of the faded blue construction paper curling up. Young Michael had signed it in person with a shaky hand. Further in, he found a hardened array of Playdough figures, a pair of bronzed baby shoes and various abstract finger-paint creations. He dug into the box, moving forward in time, revealing layer after layer of his mother’s treasures, proof of his own past. He was twelve now, the young artist depicting half of a woman’s face in pencil, the other half a magazine cut-out. He stared at the woman’s carved up face. Then he was thirteen, standing in the second row in a blue and gold basketball shirt numbered four. And there he was in the same year, in a newspaper clipping, receiving an award for public speaking.

  At the bottom of the box lay a bright yellow Hilroy notebook with wire binding. “This journal belongs to Michael Foster,” it said, printed precisely with blue magic marker. This was the journal he used to write in every day for English class.

  Michael tilted his head, listening. If Lara got home right now, he’d be able to go back upstairs and leave his past behind. He heard nothing, so he picked up the journal. Two-thirds of the pages were shrunken and dry with age and ink. The last entry was made on June 18 — three days before his fifteenth birthday. He could feel his chest tighten, his stomach sink, and beads of sweat forming on his nose and between his eyes. He massaged his temples as if he could rub the memory out.

  Finding the journal wouldn’t have been significant two years before. Two years before, he would have found it, read it with his wife and later, they would have made love. He would have felt nostalgic for a day and then moved on. But for the past year and a half, his subconscious had a habit of sneaking up on him. The images came to him in a variety of situations, in a variety of ways. He didn’t expect them to come, disguised as yellow Hilroy.

  This time, instead of them coming at him, it was as if everything was brighter. Look at me, the journal said, and Michael held the book in his hand, flipping randomly, then glancing at the last entry he made. The look of his own handwriting shifted his reality. It was more than a reminder, it was more than a vision: it was the past paying a visit, magnifying the present. If he read the journal, he knew that the visions inside him would be let loose like bitter spirits hungry for innocent souls, spirits once banished by shamans, then re-opened by the curious a thousand years later.

  His hands shook and perspiration dripped over the bridge of his nose onto the shiny yellow cover. This journal belongs to Michael Foster. He put the journal at the bottom of the box and put the other pieces on top of it, layer after layer, moving backward in time until once again he was five years old, playing with finger paints. He folded the top of the box shut, one flap at a time, just as his father had taught him to do, and placed the box back exactly where it had been.

  • • •

  MICHAEL WAS AN ACCOUNTANT for Exeter, a large publishing firm based in London, England. He had been there for five years and knew his career prospects were limited. He was paid much less than his counterparts in other industries and he had little support. When his assistant left and they refused to replace her, Michael applied to do his Masters of Business Administration.

  The night Michael and Lara drove back from her parents, Michael had asked for two weeks to think about it. Two days later, he told her that he would stay. Since that time, they worked and planned together as well as they ever had. The baby was due in May. They moved, found a bigger place, more suitable for a family. Michael deferred the MBA. That was the new plan.

  After the birth, Lara would take some time off. In the long term, since Lara made more money than he did, it might make sense for him to stay home. Or if he got a better paying job, they might be able to hire a nanny. That part of the plan was still being worked out.

  The day he found his Hilroy journal, he did not mention his discovery when Lara got home. Later he lay awake, his visions silent for now, sleep at a distance, looking at his wife’s sleeping face: fine freckles, straight blond hair, even breathing. She had a small crease between her brows which gave her a serious look, a look which made her appear years older when she was in school and a look that ensured that she was taken seriously today. Michael used to kiss the crease and make her laugh when she got too serious. And when she laughed, it didn’t disappear, it got deeper, which made her laugh more. He looked at her shoulder as it rose and fell with her even breathing. He thought about how often he had fallen asleep with his head nuzzled there.

  Except for a few times in the first two weeks following their reconciliation, he and Lara had stopped making love. This was rare for them. Even when she was having the affair, they had remained intimate. After they moved, he lost the desire. Lara, for reasons Michael could only suspect, chose not to mention it.

  • • •

  WHEN LARA GOT UP the next morning, she dressed in what she called fat classic black and sat down on their bed.

  “It’s seven thirty,” she said. “You feeling okay?”
<
br />   He pretended to wake up at her touch and smiled up at her through sleepy eyes. Her perfume, Opium, warmed the air around her wrist.

  “Don’t feel so hot. Didn’t sleep well,” he said and she nodded, the small crease between her eyes telling of her concern and understanding, and perhaps her curiosity.

  “Maybe you should take it easy today.”

  When he heard her car start, he got up and called in sick. Then he went downstairs to the basement. The box lay where he left it the day before, tucked into the corner. He stood on the landing watching it as though whatever was inside might jump out at him. He moved across the room and hit his head on a light that swung, circling the box, psychedelic. He put his hand on the light to stop it from moving and burned his finger. He swore, shook his hand and put his finger in his mouth to stop the sting.

  Inside the box, he removed each layer, until he found the yellow journal and a world he thought he had left behind.

  The day before his fifteenth birthday, Michael’s father committed suicide. His mother subsequently slipped into a depression, dying of pneumonia one year later. At age sixteen, he was accepted into Lara’s family and never looked back. Lara’s world and his childhood were so different that the door between them had slammed with a thud.

  Michael opened the journal carefully and felt a window between two worlds opening around him. He began to read.

  An hour later, he turned to the last page, the day before his father died. He remembered the day so clearly — the day that marked the end of his childhood. As he read his own words, scrawled in the haste of youth, he glimpsed that part of himself that he had left behind, the part that had trusted, the part that hadn’t been afraid to dream the biggest dream, the part that was innocent and open, with the expectation that the world was a friendly place: the kind of innocence that hadn’t even imagined pain as a way of living. His own innocence scared him, charmed him, drew him in. It was like visiting a long-forgotten love. He felt euphoric, light-headed.

  He took the journal upstairs to his study and sat at the computer. He ran his hands over the keyboard as if it was a new lover. He typed three words, slowly and precisely. He typed them again, his gaze just above the screen, experiencing his tenuous attempt at creation as an unsuspecting fifteen-year-old child would experience it, then as a man betrayed by his wife, then as a bemused adult plagued by visions and finally, as if a silent audience were watching him. He typed over and over as though, by typing these words, he could elicit information from an invisible source, the same one whom he knew would guide his actions if he allowed it.

  But I’m afraid, he typed on keys that were deaf to his words. But I’m afraid and like the message that he typed, but did not see, neither did he receive an answer.

  Some time later, he went for a bike ride until his lungs screamed, his legs burned, and the visions inside him dissipated. He returned, showered, and crawled into bed. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. The hours had slipped by like minutes.

  He curled up under the covers, his body a dead weight of exhaustion. He buried his face in Lara’s pillow, smelling her scent and wishing she was here with him. He thought how she looked at night while she slept, understanding that at some point she would leave him again. As he lay there, he fantasized about it, as he had done for years, imagining what it would feel like, picturing her face for the last time, before she walked away. He imagined his face tucked into her neck, and her body cradled into his, feeling so solid, so real, yet filled with smoke, the stuff pipe dreams are made of. He imagined their new family and finally, he envisioned what it would be like to be alone.

  He cried, imagining her softness as he held her, controlling his breathing as he imagined not wanting to wake her, the feel of her shoulder under his lips, her back pressed to his chest, their legs interlocked as they had been at night for so many years.

  He wept, not because of Lara, not because of his fear of being without her, but because he knew now that losing Lara was no longer his greatest fear.

  It was what was inside him that scared him most of all.

  chapter 11

  AT ROTMAN, MOST ASSIGNMENTS involved analyzing real-life business cases, a method originally established by Harvard business school. First year included core courses on organizational behavior, economics, marketing, accounting, finance, statistics, and operations. The pace was intense and students learned the discipline and efficiency to scan, absorb, interpret, analyze and produce recommendations, then move on.

  To manage the workload, groups organized in various ways. Some-times, two to three people agreed to take care of one assignment, and the balance of the group another. Or, if the assignment was a big one, they’d work together, dividing the project up into stages of research and writing. Then there what was known as “graph girls” or boys whose job it was to take data and present it in graphical form. A ten-page mba paper often meant ten pages of writing, with thirty pages of graphed appendices.

  Althea, Trisha, Hermann and Tony got to know each other during orientation. In the first week of full-time classes, they were joined by Celia Thom. Celia had a psychology degree, with a minor in fine arts and had just moved from London, England. She immediately embraced the role of devil’s advocate and Althea liked her.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Celia said, leaning forward, looking at Hermann who had been speaking. They were huddled in a meeting room around a small table, trying to come up with their approach to an organizational behavior project — a major assignment worth sixty per cent of their mark. It was eight thirty at night and they had been there since two in the afternoon.

  “You don’t think it makes sense because I’m suggesting we follow a process,” Hermann bristled. “It’s the only way we can get this done on time. This isn’t a piece of art, for fuck’s sake.”

  Hermann and Celia were like oil and water. Celia’s eyes flashed and her voice dropped.

  “It’s not the process I object to, Hermann. If you had been listening to me, you’d realize that I just don’t want to make a final decision on the approach before we do some of the basic research.”

  “But we have to decide now. There’s no time,” Hermann protested.

  “So we build the decision into the process,” Celia said.

  “I don’t think —” Trisha started, and Hermann got up from his seat and paced.

  “No, nobody here is thinking!” He looked around the group. “I can’t work like this! How the hell did you people even get into this program?” The silence was palpable. Trisha spoke.

  “Hermann, don’t make this personal,” said Trisha, who had taken on the role of peacemaker for Group D. Tony sat silent. Whenever conflict arose, Tony refused to engage. Hermann’s voice rose.

  “I’m so sick of this shit!”

  “Look,” Althea said. “We have to make this decision, but for tonight, let’s move on, okay? We’ve been at it for over five hours.”

  “You always take her side.” Hermann flicked his eyes angrily between the two women. “This is bullshit.”

  Althea sighed. “I’m seeing both sides, Hermann. Micro is due tomorrow. Can we agree to disagree on OB for now, and move on to micro or we’ll be here all night.”

  “I agree. Let’s move on,” Tony said. It was the first time he had spoken in the last hour.

  Hermann looked at Tony, his eyes blank.

  The group broke up just after midnight. Their microeconomics paper was due the next day. They decided that Tony would finish writing and Hermann would produce the graphs. Both would email their sections to Althea, who would edit the paper, proofread it, assemble it and hand it in.

  For all Hermann’s rigid attitude, he could be counted on to meet deadlines. Trisha, while a peacemaker, had also turned out to be the procrastinator in the group. As for herself, Althea discovered that she was a bit of a control-freak. It was difficult letting others do work that she’d get graded on, even when the ones doing the work had more experience in some areas than she had. She just wasn�
�t as vocal about it as Hermann.

  “See you guys,” Trisha said, heading with Tony toward the parking garage. Althea and Celia walked outside.

  “I’m too hyper to sleep,” Celia said. “Do you want to get a drink? I have really good scotch.”

  • • •

  ALTHEA AND CELIA SAT sprawled on pillows on Celia’s living room floor, sipping Lagavulin, a peaty single malt.

  “You do have good scotch. And on a student’s salary, no less.”

  “One of my indulgences.”

  Celia popped a CD into her stereo and the sounds of jazz filled the room. Althea listened for a moment, and couldn’t place it.

  “Who are we listening to?”

  “Michel Petrucciani. French pianist, died a few years back. A tragedy. I never got to see him play.” Althea looked at Celia more closely — long shiny black hair, creamy skin and walnut eyes. Her accent was what Althea would call international.

  “My step-father was a jazz musician, a pianist. Also cornet, when he was younger.”

  “Really? My mother was a classical pianist. I picked up my jazz habit from my boyfriend, Tomas.”

  “Paris? I thought you were from England.”

  “I went to school there. My mother was French. My father is Japanese, runs an export business.”

  “Where is Tomas from?”

  “He’s from exotic Mississauga, so he’s a Canadian suburban boy. We met while he was in London doing his masters in European art history a few years ago. He’s doing his doctorate now, and will move back to Europe eventually to finish school and probably to teach. He hasn’t made up his mind. He’s considering his options.”