As an added benefit to these kinds of conversations, every now and then one receives useful advice from the other, follows up, and resolves a difficulty—medical, culinary, interpersonal, or other— successfully. This is beside the point but it’s definitely a plus. Maxine has followed Karen (and her partner Theresa, mostly in absentia, since Theresa doesn’t run) through their purchase of a house and adoption of a daughter, has discovered how to roast cherry tomatoes, has come to learn about Karen, about Theresa, about little Chloe, about bringing your electrical up to code. Karen has gone from an acquaintance in the women’s running group to someone whose life is not just known to Maxine but actually part of Maxine’s. And, although Maxine can’t imagine what she could possibly have been saying for the last year or so, the reverse is probably also true.
After the seminar, Maxine tosses her brown satchel into the hall and bends down for the envelope she’s just stepped over, which is lying on the floor near the mail slot. It’s one of those expensive ones with the raggedy edges that is handmade or is made to look handmade, and as Maxine opens the plain, elegant card, she wonders who sent it. Maxine reads the card—Barb, inviting her for supper on Sunday. Alas. She locates the cordless, stretches out on the couch, and calls Gail, who, it turns out, has pulled off a highly successful last-minute office luncheon—not a lunch, Max, a luncheon—for forty people, stepping into the breach last night, when the other caterer was hospitalized.
My god. You mean Emerg, or did they admit her?
Max, you’re missing the point here.
The point is that a number of guests asked for Gail’s card and whether she did hors d’oeuvres, and Gail is expecting to hear from them about Christmas parties within a day or two. She rewarded herself with a new and rather pricey vermilion lipstick she’s dying to escort downtown. But not tonight, as she needs to recover from the luncheon. Gail was up puréeing soup at dawn, to her attached neighbours’ annoyance, and she’s zombified. A night out on the weekend? Excellent. And Maxine no doubt met Craig at the writing seminar. How was that? Maxine must call Craig. Just for a follow-up coffee, no big deal.
I am totally not calling him. Forget it.
Don’t be so narrow-minded. Nan adores him.
She can ask him out then. Maxine can feel that she has cocked her head with the snotty, ironic expression Gail accuses her of acquiring when she digs in her heels about something.
There’s no need to be snotty about Nan.
I love your Nan. I’m saying she can make her own decisions.
Oh and I’m holding a gun to your head here. I mean, you have a perfect opportunity to get to know a guy. For once. Because god knows one is not going to plop down out of your ceiling and land on the keyboard. But. For reasons invisible to the naked eye— OK Gail, he might be your cousin and all, but Craig is creepy.
He’s sweet.
He’s the only one who made a special announcement that he was single when everyone introduced themselves at the beginning of the seminar.
Gail pauses for a briefmoment: There’s nothing wrong with that.
And when we had the receptiony thing after, his fly was open the whole time and there was this little white cotton bulge pooking out.
Eew.
And he has that arrogant psychopath look.
...OK, yeah, he does have that.
(And now Maxine feels completely guilty, because just the other day in the supermarket she took off her coat and a security guard gave her a funny look, and then a woman near the toothpaste called out with some urgency Ma’am, excuse me, ma’am, and Maxine went over, wondering what the woman could possibly want from her—she didn’t look like an employee, was she going to ask Maxine for money?—and the woman said Your pants, ma’am, and sure enough Maxine had been wearing the burgundy jeans with the unreliable zipper, and did that make her a bad person, any more than Craig?)
I’m sure he’s a nice guy, though, Maxine adds.
It’s not as if Maxine has never had a boyfriend. She just hasn’t seen a suitable candidate lately. She and Keith were together for a few years at university, but he went away to do a master’s in Amsterdam and there wasn’t much point then, although she sometimes wonders what would have happened if she’d gone with him. Keith had round granny glasses, dark hair with lots of curls, an easy, lanky way about him. He wore outdoorsy sorts of clothes and looked like a wildlife biologist, which he wasn’t. They haven’t kept in touch. Maxine thinks of him occasionally with affection. Later there was Andrew. They shared an apartment and Andrew wanted to get married but, although he was a nice guy, small things about him got on her nerves, more and more things, until almost everything he did was irritating. It can’t be the individual things, Gail had told her. You don’t have to marry the guy if you don’t want to, but there’s no such thing as an annoying way of tying your shoes. Maxine wasn’t convinced at the time, although now she sees the reasonableness of it. There was a shirt he wore—a metallic grey shot through with something orangey—and she couldn’t help hating him a bit when he wore that shirt. She was not, she now realizes, considerate in the way she let Andrew go, although that wasn’t intentional. Letting go of people wasn’t her area of expertise.
Maxine flicks on the radio and washes a small head of lettuce. A British high commission has closed in Kenya. There’s an al-Qaeda connection and it’s all over the radio again. Fear. Terrorism. Doubt is poisonous. The more people doubt some things—the pacific intentions of certain religious groups, for example—the more they doubt absolutely everything. Whether the meat’s full of chemicals, whether the guy next door’s going to hack someone’s head off one day for no reason. It’s a generalized suspicion. They’ve had over a year of suspicion now, and no one can agree what to be suspicious of. Maxine has the urge to walk up to Middle-Eastern-looking people and say I know it wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything wrong—but she realizes that, however well-intentioned, this behaviour might be misconstrued. And she doesn’t know. It would be just Maxine’s luck to absolve the only hardened terrorist within thousands of miles, out of fuzzy fellow-feeling. What could one say, anyway? I’m sure it had nothing to do with you? I don’t imagine there’s any proof of your involvement? (That one runs a tad lukewarm.) I believe you are innocent? But then you’d end up adding, hastily, No, of course no one has accused you of anything, I didn’t mean, look I was just trying to. Maybe something simple: I love you. But that might be going too far.
Just die, Maxine says, dropping a tiny pellet into a bowl. The blue fins flicker eagerly. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to give pets as gifts.
She drops another pellet.
Couldn’t you get some bacterial thing from the water? Couldn’t you starve when I forget to feed you?
Kyle knew about the workshop so he didn’t come then but the next day is Friday and around the middle of the afternoon she hears his feet on the stairs outside, his quick knock and the front door opening, and soon they are in the kitchen looking for something to eat.
Look, I don’t know about homework, OK? I don’t remember how. I don’t know what you’re supposed to know.
I’m supposed to know about the book of Job, and it’s really boring and I don’t understand it.
Maxine sighs but Kyle appears not to take it personally. Not personally enough.
I thought, she says, you were here to play computer games.
I have to do some homework before I play on the computer. It’s a rule. How about, he suggests, if you read the first two chapters and I read the first two and then we talk about it?
Me, read it?
Yeah. Otherwise how can you talk about it?
But I don’t have homework. I don’t need to read it.
You do if you’re going to talk about it.
But—
You might learn something useful. For your novel.
You barge in here and hog the computer and now you’re wanting me to read the Bible. Well forget it, I’ve already read some and it’s long. But by now Kyle knows h
er well enough to grin and wait. And so it comes to pass that Maxine digs out the faded red Bible she’d been given by her grandmother and lies on the couch with Job, chapters 1 and 2, while Kyle reads them off the Internet.
It’s a bit much, says Maxine. I mean, he didn’t do anything, and just because the Enemy of Man comes along and says he should be afflicted, God goes along with it. I don’t think that shows much strength of character on God’s part, do you?
Maxine? I don’t think that’s what they want us to learn.
Oh. Well, then, how about a fact check. What, uh, let me see. What does God do to Job?
He takes everything away and smotes him with boils.
Smites. And it’s the scab, not boils.
Mine says boils.
Let me see that. Maxine hops up and scrutinizes the online text. OK, what do you think would be worse, boils or scab?
Maxine?
Well I’m just pointing out the interesting parts. It’s not my fault if they don’t want you to learn anything.
How come you have a bookmark in right there?
None of your business. So, what have we learned then?
There’s different words for the same things?
Correct. It wasn’t written in English and you can translate one thing different ways.
I think scabs because they’d be itchy all the time. I had a huge one in Bermuda from scraping my leg on a rock underwater when I was swimming? And it was itchy like forever. I think it might still be itchy sometimes.
Do you miss Bermuda?
All my friends are there. Like Ben and Amir. And I went swimming all the time in the sea. I hope we move back. You can come visit.
4
december 2002
kyle has discovered an Internet site with quizzes about countries, continents, and capitals. There’s a timer and a box where you type things in, and Maxine is hazy on the details but he’s keen for her to participate. He does these quizzes all the time, muttering as he types, country after country punched into the little box and if it’s the right name, it slides away and sits on the right spot on the map. He’ll ask Maxine to name all the countries in Africa and type her answers in. Kyle has done this so often he can name the capital of every country in the world, with the exception of the odd tiny island. Maxine’s geography is fuzzier than she would like to admit. She couldn’t believe Zaire didn’t exist. Just gone. She hadn’t got the memo re: Zaire.
What do you mean, it’s not there?
Is there another way to spell it?
Try with two dots over the i.
…Nope.
That’s ridiculous, it was always there.
Maxine, I just searched it. It’s part of the Democratic Republic of Congo now. It’s not a country any more.
That’s absurd, says Maxine. She’s putting her papers aside and leaning in behind him to look at the screen and make sure, but of course he’s right. There’s also The Gambia. It used to be plain old Gambia when Maxine was growing up. What’s with that? While Maxine was looking away, the world changed. Words, countries had come and gone.
You look like someone should have asked you first, Kyle tells her.
Well, someone could have mentioned it.
The funny part is that it works. Things do change. The first time Maxine abandons her attempt to name national capitals, Kyle says sympathetically, Wow, they didn’t teach you guys much in school back then, did they? But for some reason he wants her to improve.
He’s patient, and he uses helping strategies. After she has responded Mexico City, the next answer will be Guatemala City, and then Panama City. He’ll say Laos and she’ll say I don’t know, and he’ll say Vvvv-Vvvv-Vvvvvvii. And she’ll say, irritably, I don’t know! and just when he’s about to tell her, she’ll interrupt: Oh wait, wait now, Vientiane? After a few weeks of this, she’s saying, Djibouti, now that’s a trick isn’t it, Kyle, because the capital of Djibouti is Djibouti,HAH!Hah haHAH! She’ll rhyme off Astana-Kazakhstan, Asmara-Eritrea, Ashgabat-Turkmenistan, as if she’d known them all along. It’s hard to know who is more pleased by this or why, but when Maxine successfully identifies every country in Africa and its capital, they go out for hot chocolate.
On her last day in the office, Maxine was to meet her boss in the boardroom at four o’clock, to finalize the details of the transition, he’d said, and deal with any loose ends he might need to address with her replacement. I know you’re on top of it already, he’d added, gazing down at Maxine’s desk, where brightly-coloured file folders sat in strategically asymmetrical stacks, each of which had a large, lined sticky note on top. The handwriting on the sticky notes was calm and even, and suggested that everything was manageable. But, he’d told her, I’d like to make sure we’ve covered all the bases.
Punctuality was not Maxine’s chief virtue, but she did scuttle, at only a couple of minutes past four, along the hall that led to the boardroom, armed with a notebook and a list. For a brief moment she thought the atmosphere felt not quite as deserted as on a normal Friday at this time, but the thought passed, and then she opened the door to the boardroom and stopped dead. The boardroom was full. It was full of her boss and her colleagues and bowls of chips and a cake and a cooler overflowing with pop and Corona, full of streamers and balloons and her boss’s granddaughter Bridget, who was pulling on Maxine’s finger and saying, The presents are over here.
Someone pressed an open Corona into her palm. They gave her a pen and a notebook and a fish in a bowl, to keep her company when she missed them all terribly, which, it was explained, she would. Bridget was tugging at her arm so Maxine squatted down.
I was allowed to come, Bridget said solemnly, Because of the cake.
Well, said Maxine. I’m, um, glad you were available.
I think I can have seconds.
Oh, I see. Let’s get you some, then. What do you think I should call the fish?
Bridget thought for a minute and then scooched up to Maxine’s ear. She whispered: His name is Bluebird.
So Bluebird it was. Maxine’s boss made a speech in which he said they were only letting her slip away briefly, on the condition that she come back. He said that in return for all the writing assistance she had provided in this office, he would be offering input into her manuscript at what he described as a significantly reduced rate, as a result of which she could expect to discover in it many more references to positive developments in the upstream petroleum industry and to an intelligent and dashing supervisory figure. At the end, everyone laughed and clapped and Maxine said thank you to the carpet and then, to her surprise, her boss gave her a hug.
Things don’t always go as planned, Maxine, he said quietly. Just in case—you’re always welcome here.
I had no idea, Maxine tells Gail later. I mean, either they were really happy to get rid of me— Oh Max, give it up.
Or. Well, they were all so nice. It seemed like they really appreciated me. Maxine screws up her face as she processes this thought.
On the way downtown Maxine had been thinking: Portugal, Lisbon; Liechtenstein, Vaduz. Germany, Berlin; Switzerland, Berne. If the Western world used to feel self-assured and confident of a brighter future and now it jumps at shadows and wonders which city is next on the list, then maybe it just wasn’t very self-aware. Maxine is fairly self-aware, although the awareness is not undistorted. And she’s got Gail to set her straight. Unlike Frédérique, Gail exists in the flesh. Blue eyes, blond hair of the kind that tends not to look recently brushed, somewhere between curly and frizzish. She has the long limbs and wide wrists of a tall person, and one of those wrists is propped on the edge of the table at the Ship while her fingers tap the drum beat to something on the sound system. Some tall people feel the need to counteract their height by being as quiet and invisible as possible, but Gail does not number among them. It’s not that she’s loud, exactly, not all the time, but her personality has a certain force. Now Gail is leaning forward over the table to tell Maxine that when she has trouble getting in the mood she
fantasizes about two naked women pulling her onto a large bed. This comes as a surprise to Maxine, who had thought Gail and Ted were in good shape that way, not the sort of couple who would require imaginary assistance, and she asks, in as discreet and roundabout a manner as is possible in a conversation about a person’s sex life after five beers on a Friday night, if she was mistaken in that regard. Gail, who seems to be coming more fully alive as the discussion progresses, who appears actually to be glinting at the eyes and teeth and somewhere in the hair, snorts.
Max, you are so naive. Do you know what word I think, when my mind’s clambering into that bed? I can see their smiles, their boobs swinging, and I think the word cavort.
Jeez, says Maxine.Wasn’t there a guy on The Muppets who used to say that? Cavort, cavort? It wasn’t Kermit. Jeez.
Gail can’t remember, but she confesses she has made obscene phone calls within the last ten years (she refuses to be precise about when). She pulled out the yellow pages, dialled business numbers at random until a man’s voice answered, and then said in her sultriest tone, Rub your teeth on my nipples, honey. Maxine is concerned about the ethics, the repercussions. What if the guy felt upset? What if he worried about it all day, wondering whether his secretary had overheard, whether his wife would find out? Gail would never know; she just hung up. It wasn’t responsible.
I didn’t say it was my finest hour. We were talking about things you regret.
Regret, repeats Maxinemuzzily. Oh yeah. Did you feel...I mean, was it fun?
Shit yes, says Gail. I don’t regret it very much. Hardly at all.
But you didn’t feel guilty, you didn’t go around wondering if you might run into one of those guys’ girlfriends?
Maxine Page 4