I took the dried-out coffee cup and put it to soak in the sink, cracked a cold one, and went in to the garage. I dug out two plastic bins, emptied out the camping gear inside them onto a shelf, and took the bins into Ally’s office. I started packing up her remaining books: mostly school stuff, paleontology, some Jung, and a few novels. Books on gardening, pottery, and beekeeping. She had wanted to keep bees one day, when we sold this place and bought something bigger, farther out of town, somewhere on a lake. We both had a thing about swimming in lakes. Ally had already taken all the cookbooks from the cupboard in the kitchen. She once told me when we first got together, before we even moved in, that she never went anywhere without her cookbooks. She had kept her word about that bit.
The books filled one bin to the top, and three-quarters of another. I took a breath and opened the top right drawer of her desk. I had never even sat down at Ally’s desk since I gave it to her, just like she would never have touched anything on my workbench in the garage, or opened mail with only my name on it. It was one of the things about Ally and me that I had always appreciated, that we still had private spaces and lives. No rules or hassles about it, we just fell into things that way. We were both just naturally private people. Not like some couples get. Until she popped the news to me about her and Kathleen Sawyer, of course. That was the first time that her privacy turned itself into a secret, right before my ears.
But my mom was right, Ally wasn’t coming home, and besides, she might need some of this stuff in Calgary. She had been pretty busy with school, kept saying she was going to come back for the rest of her belongings, but never seemed to be able to get away from the city. I hadn’t been able to bear the thought of this room being empty, and the house feeling definitely too big for one guy, plus I always felt like sending her stuff might seem to her like I didn’t want her back, if something didn’t work out for her and Kathleen and she ever wanted to come home.
Mitch Sawyer had sold Kathleen’s canoe and given her mountain bike away out of spite, to another teacher that Kathleen hated. He told me all this, not two weeks after they had left, like I would be proud of him. Like I said, I mostly try to avoid the guy, except for hockey, where I can’t help it. Can’t start kicking guys out of the league for being underhanded with their ex-wives, or there might not be enough bodies for a decent game.
The top right drawer contained only pens and pencils and what looked like the charger for her laptop. The bottom drawer was full of files, school stuff like old essays and quizzes, all stacked in no apparent order, just like most of Ally’s papers always were. At the very bottom of the drawer was a framed certificate. I wasn’t snooping, really, but when I was putting it in the bin I couldn’t help but notice that it was a Master’s degree, dated 2002, more than a year before Ally had left. Three years into our marriage. In her maiden name, not the hyphenated version Franco had always hassled me about. It was from the University of Alberta, in Edmonton.
I sat back on my heels and thought about the half-pack of stale Player’s Lights I kept in the junk drawer in the kitchen. I had been trying to quit, with limited success. But for some reason my wife had apparently spent at least a couple of years of our marriage going back to school and getting her Master’s degree in dinosaur bones without ever mentioning it to me, and I suddenly needed a smoke something terrible.
I packed up the rest of her stuff without really looking at anything, chain-smoking all the while. I dragged the bins out to the garage and heaved them onto the shelf next to the loose camping gear. Then I tripped over the snow shovel, cracked my shin, and cursed all the way back to the fridge for another beer. I parked my ass on the chair in the front room, and turned on the television.
It was just after nine o’clock. I flipped through a rerun of Law and Order, past channel after channel of the American election debate, and finally landed on a movie. It was about this woman who was dating two guys at the same time, the one guy was a nice, respectable blue-collar type that her mother wanted her to marry because he was from a good family in the neighbourhood, and the other was a red-wine-drinking writer, a rascal that nobody but the lady approved of. She stands up the nice guy, choosing instead to try and hook up with the drunken writer, because he is of course the guy she is hot for. And the nice guy, he’s moping around at home hoping she’ll eventually show up. She does, but only after the writer guy acts like a total prick and breaks her heart, and only so her mom won’t freak out on her about what was she supposed to tell the nice guy’s mother, who was a friend of the family and went to the same temple and all.
I was just about to grab the remote and change the channel, as the plot seemed unlikely to move towards a car chase or even any gunplay or explosions, which is mostly what I was in the mood for, when the nice guy asks the woman if she would dance with him in his kitchen, with the flowers on the table and the volume on the radio turned way up.
I remembered that Allyson used to tell the story of how she knew she loved me by the way she felt the first time she saw me dancing in a kitchen. She figured she could settle down with a kitchen dancer.
I put down the remote.
It happened at my little sister Sarah’s thirtieth birthday party, in her and her husband Jean-Paul’s kitchen. It was the year before Dad died, Ally and I had been dating for about six months, and this was her first full-on family experience. Jean-Paul had bought Sarah this fancy new CD player unit with detachable speakers, the tabletop kind of model. But it cranked up pretty good and Sarah put on Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train.” My niece Chelsea was about eight, I guess, and she grabbed my hands and stood on my feet for me to dance around the kitchen with her. Then I danced with Sarah and Chelsea both for a bit, until Chelsea’s two little buddies jumped on me, and I had to stop because I nearly threw my back out again.
So the nice guy and the woman are dancing in the kitchen together, and she’s having a fairly good time in spite of herself. But she keeps smelling vanilla, she thinks. Finally, she breaks down and asks the guy is that vanilla she smells, because he’s the kind of guy she can just talk to about any old thing, and the guy gets all embarrassed. He tells her the odor is coming from him, because his family owned a pickle factory, so his hands usually smelled of vinegar and pickling salts and garlic and whatnot, not very romantic stuff, and his dad had told him that when he had a date with a girl he really liked, he should soak his hands after work in warm milk and vanilla. It was the only thing that could kill the pickle smell, plus the milk would make your hands softer, his dad had told him, in the event you should be lucky enough that the girl lets you touch her.
The guy is explaining all this to the woman, and for some reason suddenly the tears are pouring over my bottom lids and streaming down my face, down my neck, into my collar. I don’t remember what happened in the movie after that, or how it ended.
What I remember is crying that night in my chair, even letting myself make noises out loud, outside of my body. Crying harder than I did when our first dog, Buck, had the run-in with the porcupine and we had to put him down the day after Boxing Day. Harder than I cried the morning Ally left town in the passenger seat of Mitch Sawyer’s new truck. They left Mitch with the minivan, for the kids. I cried harder and longer and louder than ever.
I woke up with what felt like sand in my eyes, still in the armchair, with the coloured bars on the TV glowing and humming in the dark. I lifted the lid on the cello to look at it, then latched it shut, and went straight to bed.
I dreamt of nothing, and woke up an hour before my alarm went off. I washed the lone coffee cup in the sink, noting that it meant I hadn’t eaten anything at all for dinner the that it meant I hadn’t eaten anything at all for dinner the night before, shaved three days off my face, and took Buck Buck for an extra long walk before we headed to the shop. I even managed to beat Franco there, which he hated. Franco could sit sometimes for an hour and a half in the office in the morning without lifting a finger to get anything actually accomplished, but as long as he got there before I
did, he figured he was still showing me what work looked like. I wouldn’t mind so much if he made better coffee.
I put on a pot of strong stuff, swept the floor, and read almost the entire paper before it was time to plug in the open sign. Franco showed up just before seven-thirty, clean-shaven and reeking of cologne still, a sure sign he had gone out to the bar last night after broomball and got drunk, or lucky, or maybe both.
He started in before the bells on the front door had even stopped jingling.
“You’re early. Hey, you know that substitute teacher from the French school? The one from Montreal? Ten minutes ago she was sitting in my lap, feeding me fruit with her fingers. What a night.”
I flipped the page on my newspaper. Said nothing.
He stared through his eyebrows at me, and made for the coffee pot. “You look tired. Hungover? Jesus, Joey, I could polish my boots with this. Look, there’s oil floating around on top of the coffee you made.”
“It just has some kick to it.”
“You look like you need it.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m just asking, Joey.”
“What, Franco? What are you asking me? You’re not even making sense.”
“Jesus, your mother was right. You are a miserable bastard. A guy can’t even ask how his coworker is feeling around here these days without you getting paranoid.”
“You were talking to my mom about me? She called me a bastard?”
“See what I mean?” Franco took a big gulp of his coffee. “Well, I’m going to work. Can’t sit around all day reading the newspaper.”
I lit a cigarette to keep my hands from tossing the phone book at him. The weird thing about Franco is, the only thing that bugs me more than his non-stop talking is when he stops.
I got two tune-ups, a timing chain, and a set of rear breaks done before I even thought about lunch. My mind couldn’t keep up with itself, and I needed something to do with my hands, so I could think.
I wasn’t one of those guys who would have had a problem with my wife going back to school, was I? Why would she keep something like that a secret? She must have actually hid it from me, too, the mail from the university, things like that. Where the fuck had I been? Sleeping with Kathleen was something I could see Ally neglecting to mention, but long-distance education?
I thought about calling her and asking, but that would unlock the other five thousand questions that had been banging on the insides of my eyelids for the last twelve months and thirteen days since she left.
I couldn’t ask her about school without asking her why she never told me about Kathleen. Without asking if she was lying when she dreamed about the bees and me and the farm just outside of town, or if she ever missed me. If they ever did it in our bed, under the quilt my mom gave me and that her mom gave her. Stuff like that. Stuff I didn’t know, couldn’t ask, couldn’t know but couldn’t help wondering about.
It looked to me like this question was going to have to join the rest of them and become just another one of Allyson’s secrets.
The thought of it all made me want to smoke.
Franco was in the office boiling water to make Cup-a-Soup and whispering into the phone to the French teacher, from the sounds of it.
“Give me a bit to go home and clean up. I’ll call you when I’m leaving my place, okay? I’ll bring the wine.” He hung up and eyed me while I lit a cigarette.
“You look like shit. Why don’t you take the afternoon off, get out of here for a while? You’ve already worked us right out of anything else to do today. I can close up.”
“I thought you had a date tonight?”
“Not till eight o’clock or so. I can’t get there too early. I have to pace myself, she’s half my age.”
Franco patted his gut and grinned. “Go home, Joey. Go play your new violin. Have a beer. Jerk off. Whatever you do.”
“It’s a cello, Franco.”
“Whatever. Go play it. You’re driving me nuts. Come back on Monday, when you’ve lightened the fuck up a bit.”
“Since when do you listen to my mother?”
“Since you’re about as fun to work with as a hot rash on my ass. Since your mother is right. Take three days. Take a drive. Take a load off. Get a haircut. Get laid. Get over yourself. Something.”
I sighed. “Thanks, Franco.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m doing this for myself. And for your mother. She thinks you need counselling. Or Prozac.”
“Prozac? Fuck me. My own mother said I need pills? What’d you say to that?”
“I said I’d see about talking you into taking a long weekend. I’ll call you if I need you.”
I took off my coveralls, hung them up, and called the dog.
It seemed weird to be at home during the day. Middle of the week. No leaf blowers, no kids playing ball hockey in the street. Nothing but Oprah on, and the bald guy.
I took a shower, scrubbed the grease from the cracks in my hands, under my nails. Engine oil probably wasn’t great for cellos. I removed the instrument from its case, taking care not to bang it on the coffee table. I ran my index finger up and down the strings which whistled, hollow and mellow. I sat one cheek on the edge of the big chair and pulled the little stand thing out of the bottom of the cello. I pressed the middle finger of my left hand onto a string, thinking of this rockabilly band I had seen once at the North County Fair, and plonked the string with my other thumb. The cello hummed alive between my legs. Buck Buck growl-barked once, then circled around a couple of times before laying down beside me.
It only took ten minutes or so before the tips of my fingers started throbbing. I needed to get up and cut the nail on my ring finger shorter so I could press the strings down with it properly. I leaned the cello up against my chair, but when I went to get up, Buck Buck wagged his tail at me and thumped the cello, which then started to slide down the arm of the chair. I snatched it by the neck and then carried it like a sleeping kid, safely placing it into its case. I would have to be more careful with the thing. It wasn’t an electric guitar.
On the way to the bathroom for the nail clippers, I caught a look at myself in the mirror. Franco was right. I did look tired. Blue bags under my eyes, and I needed a haircut. You could really see the grey. And the sink needed cleaning. The toilet, too, upon further inspection. The place was falling into disrepair. I didn’t want a bathroom like Franco’s, or Rick Davis’s since his wife Anna left. I dug around under the sink for some cleaner and a rag. I actually put a new roll of paper right onto the holder thing, and threw out two empty shampoo bottles. My wedding ring was sitting next to the sink. It was stuck there in a pool of dried soap leftovers, and when I picked it up and put it in the cabinet, it left a silvery green shadow where it had been sitting on the ceramic. I cut my nails, then collected up the dirty towels and went to go find the vacuum.
A couple of hours later I had cleaned the house, done three loads of laundry, and taken out the garbage and recycling. I took Buck Buck for a walk, heading down Eighth Avenue towards the Red Deer River. I could see a line of twenty or thirty sets of headlights on the highway, all going north out of downtown. I looked at my watch. Five o’clock, right on the nose.
I was hungry.
I ran into Marion Bradley, the librarian, in the cereal aisle at the Food Fair. She was wearing a dark red sweater and lipstick, so she looked a lot different than she did at work. I almost didn’t recognize her.
“Well, hello there, you,” she smiled. “I was just thinking I needed to call you about bringing my car in. Swap the snow tires on. Get a tune-up.”
I nodded, hoping she wasn’t looking into my cart. Cans of soup, cereal. Pathetic. I needed to cook more. “I was going to stop by the library this week, too.” I took a couple cans of kidney beans off the shelf and put them in my cart. Maybe I would make chili. I could make chili. “I need to see if you’ve got any books on how to play the cello.”
“Ally is taking up the cello? Is there anything your wife cannot do?”<
br />
I coughed, thought for a second.
“Uh, no. It’s for me. I’m learning. Well, teaching myself, at least I’m trying to, that’s why I need a book.”
“That’s totally great, Joey. Come by. I’ll find you a cello book, or we’ll order you one from Calgary. Do you and Ally jam together now? She plays the clarinet, right?”
“The oboe.”
“Right, the oboe. I’ve always thought it would be great to jam with people. I wish I played something. Do you do duets?”
“Ally moved to Calgary. I guess nobody told you. We split up. She doesn’t know I’m playing the cello.”
Marion’s face pinked up. “I’m so sorry, Joey, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
This was the part I hated. All the I’m-sorrys and the how-are-you-doings and the you-should-come-by-for-dinners. What do you say to them all?
“I’m sorry, too.”
Marion stared at her shoes, then at mine. “Come by the library, and we’ll find you your cello book. You take care of yourself.”
Oh, yeah, and the you-take-care-of-yourselfs. I didn’t like those much, either.
One thing I had definitely discovered since Ally had left was that there were two distinct kinds of heartbreak I had to deal with: there was the private kind, and I guess I could pretty much deal with that, and then there was the more public version, the kind of shared tragedy that I found could really kick a guy in the ribs, because it could just sneak up on you like that, right there in the supermarket, when you were occupied trying to think about what to get for dinner.
I was halfway through my soup and sandwich when someone knocked on the back door. Must be someone I knew. It was Rick Davis, holding five cold Canadians, still in their plastic rings, a slim black plastic case tucked under one arm.
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