The Ravine

by Paul Quarrington

  All the better for your asking, my lovely.

  MCQUIGGE

  More beer. More beer, and another one of these, um, double Laphroaigs.

  BECKETT

  I myself am fine. Perhaps a glass of water.

  AMY

  Sure.

  The waitress leaves. McQUIGGE stares after her.

  MCQUIGGE

  She’s good-looking.

  BECKETT

  Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

  MCQUIGGE

  So … how are things in teevee land?

  BECKETT

  A bit quiet since your abrupt departure. Our greatest source of gossip has dried up. There are fuck-ups aplenty, but none with your panache. I miss you. And you tell me you’ve been holed up in your squalid bed sit, composing deathless prose?

  MCQUIGGE

  I’m trying to write a novel.

  BECKETT

  About …?

  MCQUIGGE

  About, um, me.

  BECKETT

  Ah! Then I shall read it with great interest.

  MCQUIGGE

  I always wanted to be an author. I don’t know what happened. I started writing for the theatre, probably because there were girls involved, and then you came along …

  BECKETT

  Yesssss! Notice the manner in which I hiss, very like a serpent.

  MCQUIGGE

  It wasn’t your fault.

  BECKETT

  No, indeed. No harm, no foul. The leper has no control over his contagion.

  MCQUIGGE

  I guess not.

  AMY

  Okay. One water, one draft, one of those double Laphroaigs. Forthems as want to get drunk as quick as possible.

  MCQUIGGE

  Hmm?

  AMY

  Hey, are you still violating the sacred form of the novel?

  MCQUIGGE

  Yep.

  AMY

  Good on you.

  BECKETT

  At least there’s no issue with violation in the land of the big eye. It’s hard to violate television.

  MCQUIGGE

  There is that.

  BECKETT

  That strange young man playing the piano …

  MCQUIGGE

  What?

  BECKETT

  He seems to be playing a fugue, improvising upon the melody of, if my ears don’t betray me, “A Foggy Day in London Town.”

  AMY

  He’s good, huh?

  MCQUIGGE

  He’s my brother.

  AMY

  No kidding?

  BECKETT

  I didn’t know there were other McQuigge offspring.

  AMY How come he never talks to you?

  MCQUIGGE

  He’s mad at me. He’s mad because I, well, I’ve made certain poor life choices.

  AMY

  Such as?

  MCQUIGGE

  They are innumerable.

  AMY

  Give me a for-instance.

  MCQUIGGE

  Well, I, I kind of, um, you see, I was married … still am, technically … and I got involved with … say, I need another double Laphroaig.

  BECKETT

  Currently Phil is attempting to kick his own arse-end for get ting into the television bidna.

  AMY

  That’s your name, Phil? My name’s Amy.

  MCQUIGGE

  Yes, I know. It says so on your, um, name tag.

  AMY

  Right. Well, I’ll get you more hooch.

  MCQUIGGE

  No, that’s all right. I’m okay for now. Thanks.

  AMY

  Any time, Phil. That’s what we’re here for.

  AMY leaves. McQUIGGE stares after her.

  BECKETT

  You are imagining Amy naked with such intensity that I find myself blushing on her behalf.

  MCQUIGGE

  Actually, I wasn’t imagining her naked. I was imagining her with clothes on. Not many. And somewhat diaphanous.

  BECKETT

  I shall imagine this with you. I was always very taken with the force and power of your imagination. I cite as an exam ple your script for Episode 215 of Sneaks.

  MCQUIGGE

  Hmmm.

  BECKETT

  Mind you, the episode itself was unmitigated shite. But not your fault. Say. That strange young man—your brother—appears to be shedding tears.

  MCQUIGGE

  You know what? I’m working on this novel—

  BECKETT

  Yes! I shall read it at the first available opportunity. When it hits the bookstores, I shall say, Give me the master-work of Philly McQ. I shall hold it in my hands and my bosom shall fair burst with pride.

  MCQUIGGE

  There’s this thing I want to write about—this incident—but I get a little sidetracked from time to time, and I write down other memories. And you know what occurred to me? Padre wasn’t my idea. I’ve always known that, of course, but was never really willing to admit it to myself.

  BECKETT

  I shall thumb through the pages, looking for references to myself. And if I find any, I’ll sue your ass off.

  MCQUIGGE

  Huh?

  BECKETT

  My pride shall be diminished not a whit.

  MCQUIGGE

  Why would you want to sue me?

  BECKETT

  Want to? Not a bit of it. But I would sue you, if only to prove the point that people, human beings, are not mere fodder for your pages. Say what you will about hour-long television drama, it’s got this going for it, it is made up. It’s invention. Besides, it’s clear how you intend to paint me in your novel.

  MCQUIGGE

  “Television is a river of money, into which we must jump.”

  BECKETT

  I may have said that television is a river of money. I never said you had to jump into it. Why would I? You would end up like me.

  MCQUIGGE

  What about “I take great pride in turning one of Canada’s most promising dramatists into a hack”?

  BECKETT

  I’ve said that, yes. I’ve said that to entertainment journal ists. And when were they ever given, when did they ever expect, the truth?

  MCQUIGGE

  Hmmm. This novelizing is not the liberating lark I had hith er to imagined.

  BECKETT

  Ah! There! You’ve proven my point. You’ve begun to speak like me.

  MCQUIGGE

  Everyone seems to be mad at me.

  BECKETT

  I suppose you have to question your motivation, then.

  MCQUIGGE

  I just want to tell the truth.

  BECKETT

  Then why choose a vehicle designed to transport lies and fabrication? More to the point, what makes you think you know the truth?

  MCQUIGGE

  Hmmm. It’s true, I’m discovering that my memory is not all it could be.

  BECKETT

  Come back into the light of the big eye, Phil. Come and write for Mr. Eldritch. It’s an anthology show, not unlike The Twilight Zone. I thought Rod Serling was your hero.

  MCQUIGGE

  No. No, I don’t think so.

  BECKETT

  I’ll give you co-pro.

  MCQUIGGE

  You see? You are the Great Seducer.

  BECKETT

  I don’t mean to be cruel, Philip, but it’s not as though you are a vestal virgin. One doesn’t seduce trollops; one sets out terms.

  MCQUIGGE

  Thanks very much.

  BECKETT

  Besides—and I really don’t care to mention this, but I suppose I must—I’m the only one in the industry who would even consider hiring you, given what happened.

  MCQUIGGE

  If I ever decide to get back into the industry, Mr. Beckett, you’re my man.

  BECKETT

  Promise me you won’t put me in your novel.

  MCQUIGGE
>
  I promise.

  10 | VAN DER GLICK

  PEOPLE ARE NOT MERE FODDER FOR MY PAGES.

  Rainie van der Glick, racing around her kitchen, said, “Hey, I don’t mind. You want fodder, feel free.”

  I nodded and said, “Thanks,” but I wasn’t sure what particular beast in the barnyard of my memory could use the stuffing. It’s not that Rainie hasn’t been important in my life, but she has been a constant, and there were few significant incidents. At least, that was the case until Sunday evening, a version of which I am now setting down on paper.

  I will start by describing Rainie, who had made yet another of what I have called her heartbreaking stabs at femininity. She wore a tight red skirt that fell well below her knees and forced her to wheel about the kitchen with hobbled wobbles. Her blouse was white and sheer, and beneath it she wore a black brassiere. Her hair was piled up and pinned, although tufts and sprigs exploded everywhere. She had lightened it; she had gone from very blonde, as a youngster, to dirty blonde, and now she was back to very blonde, except that her eyebrows had darkened over the years and the combination gave her a vaguely sinister mien. She had forsaken her spectacles for contact lenses, although the optometrists could not make them strong enough, and her eyes were usually watery and pressed together in a squint.

  “So did you have any trouble getting here?”

  “No. Just took the subway to Eglinton, walked over.”

  “Subway? How the mighty have fallen.”

  I do not drive, something I have, perhaps unconsciously, been keeping from you. I know that earlier in these pages I used the phrase “dropped them [the girls] off at their schools,” and you likely pictured me rolling up in front in some sort of SUV or sleek Volvo tank, which is what all the parents drive. But I walked with the kids, toting both their schoolbags because I am not good at negotiation. When we got to the grammar school (grades one through six) I kissed Ellis and sent her inside. Currer attends middle school a couple of blocks away, and she said she would walk there herself, and I nodded and said, Fine. Currer turned away, plugging in her headphones, proceeding at an excruciating slow pace, her footsteps as small as a geisha’s. I ran after her, explaining that I wanted to buy a Sunday New York Times and some little cigars, purchases I could effect at a store on the same block as her school. I sometimes have to think hard to come up with chores that take me to the vicinity of Currer’s school. There is a fine wine shop nearby, and that comes in handy, although not as handy as you might think, because the owners know a wino when they see one. I ask all sorts of questions about vintages and vineyards, but usually my eyes are red and my breath is stale and wailing, and I know the proprietors want to hand me a bottle of Four Aces and tell me never to return.

  “Hey!” Something occurred to me as I sat at Rainie’s dining-room table, which is surprising because my mind was occupied with trying to determine just how much wine I should pour into my empty glass. Rainie had filled me up shortly after my arrival, but that was long gone. I had refilled modestly, drained it, and now I was looking at the bottle and wondering how much I could and should claim. I didn’t want the ullage to exceed half, because Rainie hadn’t had a glass yet, but then again, I craved more than another mere mouthful.

  “Drink up,” said Rainie. “I bought two bottles, plus you brought one.”

  “Okay.”

  “We might as well get lit to the tits,” said Rainie van der Glick.

  “I was wondering,” I mused, giving my glass-filling an aura of civility, “about your spectacles. What did you use to do to them?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sometimes the lenses would be black—”

  “Oh, right. I used to hold them in a candle-flame to blacken the lenses. I wanted sunglasses, right, but Mother would never buy me prescription sunglasses, because, well, I was a homely girl and such vanity did not suit me. Quote unquote.”

  “Parents don’t understand the burden of spectacles.”

  “Quite so, Philip.” Rainie had come over to the table to pour herself a glass of wine, so she too was affecting culture. There is nothing so refined as the language of two boozehounds in the early stages of wine-consumption.

  Rainie returned to the kitchen and, watching her go, I noticed that her stabs at femininity weren’t half as heartbreaking as they had once been. “So,” she called over her shoulder, “what’s happening with you and Veronica?”

  “What’s happening? What’s happening is that Ronnie hates me.”

  “I’m sure she’s angry with you,” acknowledged Rainie, which is much like acknowledging that water is wet. “I’m also sure she doesn’t hate you.”

  I shrugged, because I wasn’t really interested in discussing Ronnie’s emotions. I wasn’t capable of it, to tell the truth, although that may not have been my fault entirely. Veronica’s heart is like the sun; it may be comprised of various gases in various combinations, but the big point is, it’s way too hot to go anywhere near, or to look at directly.

  Rainie and Ronnie were friends, of a kind; they dined together two or three times a year and went on annual shopping campaigns, a couple of which I witnessed in my capacity as sherpa. These campaigns were mounted post-Christmas, when the witless shopkeepers lowered the prices in an effort to clear stock. Ronnie and Rainie would hit each store with the intensity and coordination of bank robbers, Rainie booting open the door, Ronnie making for, not the nearest sales table, rather the one farthest to the rear. Ronnie would throw the merchandise in the air, judging quality and aesthetic appeal through slitted eyes. Rainie would work on the closest tables, winnowing out articles that might have worth and merit, which she would show to Veronica as that woman made a patrol of the perimeter, circling as a hawk circles, ever ready to pounce. Ronnie would dismiss the stuff in Rainie’s hands, and Rainie would toss it back onto tables, never the table whence it originated. It was as though the women were punishing the shopkeepers for selling such shoddy merchandise.

  So I suppose Rainie might have had insight into my wife, but I didn’t draw her out on the subject. There is a large element of shamefaced reserve here, because although I’d told Rainie the headlines—MCQUIGGE HAS AFFAIR WITH MAKEUP, IS THROWN OUT OF THE HOUSE —I’d managed to avoid spilling most of the actual beans.

  “What happened,” asked Rainie, setting before me a plate of pasta with pesto, “exactly?”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is Phil there? Philly Four-Eyes?”

  “Who is this, please?”

  “This is Bill Nystrom. From the Valleyway United Church?”

  “… Yes?”

  “Well, I’m returning your call!”

  “There’s been some misunderstanding.”

  “That goes without saying, Phil.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “A joke!”

  “Mr. Nystrom—”

  “Please. Bill.”

  “Bill, look, I was just, you know, resting. You know. With my eyes closed. Isn’t it some ungodly hour of the morning?”

  “Nine-thirty! Hardly ungodly.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Besides which, there’s really no hour of the day that’s ungodly, is there, Phil?”