Ever since Kaye had entered their lives Irene had become acutely aware of the shortness of her shortcomings. Carl’s kids never had green stuff oozing out their noses. They were snooty enough, but never snotty. Carl was equipped with a genuine Stepford wife. He was a bit of a Stepford wife himself. “Uptight? You should see my brother. He pulls his ass when he blinks,” was how she had described him to the others.
The pressure was on.
In the drugstore Tina insisted on a grape flavoured placebo. Irene added some children’s aspirin and they headed for the checkout. At the end of the aisle Irene sensed atmospheric disturbance.
A shadow fell across their path. There stood Kaye, clutching a bag of nachos and a jar of salsa with a dusty lid, the December issue of Cosmopolitan tucked under her left arm. She did not look happy to see Irene.
“Kaye!” Irene’s surprise was genuine. “I thought you were going to Montreal?”
“My stepfather died on Christmas Eve.” Kaye deflated in a bottomless sigh, far heavier than her usual ones. Mourning may have accounted for her pale face. It looked blotchy without make-up. Dark bags dropped under her eyes. Something ugly and crocheted clung to the top of her head. It was pink and purple and had holes where the yarn had ripped.
“I’m so sorry,” Irene gushed. “Will you be going up to join your mother?”
“Yes.” Kaye looked like she hadn’t slept for days. “I’m leaving early in the morning. That’s why I’m just having some nachos and an early night. I can’t be bothered to cook. It’s been terribly traumatic for everybody.”
“I can imagine, especially at Christmas. How awful for you!”
Kaye looked brave.
Irene sped straight home, slid on ice through two red lights, ignoring her daughter’s screams of terror. She was on the phone to Gertrude before she got her coat off. Gertrude, stuffing a turkey with her left hand while talking, reminded Irene that Kaye was supposed to have left for Montreal the same day her stepfather had allegedly united with his maker.
Gertrude was on her way to her daughter’s new house where she was depositing the turkey in “a massive new oven,” so she was in a bit of a rush. But she thought up an excuse to call Kaye the next afternoon when Kaye was supposedly in Montreal consoling her grieving mother.
When Kaye answered the phone on the first ring, Gertrude blithely invited her over for dinner on the 29th. Kaye said she would unfortunately be out of town, but thanks all the same. She had just got back from Montreal where she had received a call from her dad who had insisted she join him in Los Angeles. He was taking her to a big extravaganza in Beverly Hills. Kaye had always been crazy about LA.
And listen to this: George Clooney was going to be there!
Gertrude said she could certainly understand why she would want to go to LA, it being such a warm sunny place this time of year, and what with the subzero temperature we’re having here, and Clooney being such a hunk and not to worry about it and Happy New Year and all that.
“Mm,” said Kaye.
On New Year’s Eve Margaret bribed her cousin’s Mexican husband Dominic in Milwaukee to phone Kaye long distance in case Kaye had call display. Kaye answered the phone, again on the first ring, and Dominic said, “Quiero hablar con Consuela, por favor.” Apologizing in bad English for having the wrong number, wished her a Buen año nuevo and hung up.
By then they could not, dared not, fathom how low they had sunk, just as they refused to acknowledge how great was Kaye’s elusive power over them, how empty their own lives, for them to obsess to such a degree over Kaye’s seemingly emptier one.
These thoughts had crossed their individual minds at some point over the past months, but they had hoped that as long as they said nothing out loud, they could pretend it wasn’t so.
Kaye returned to work after the holidays looking elegant in a mango pashmina shawl draped over her favourite blueknit dress. The shawl was a Christmas gift from Hal. That dear man always lavished her with gifts.
“And how was LA?” inquired Gertrude. “Did you meet George Clooney?”
“And Montreal,” asked Irene. “How was your stepdad’s funeral?”
The questions were laden with a hefty dose of sarcasm, but it was, as ever, lost on blithe Kaye. The funeral had been beautiful. Sad, but very, very meaningful. The Prime Minister, an old friend of her stepdad’s, had attended. He had given a most moving eulogy.
“And LA?”
“Oh God! How to even begin to describe it?”
“So . . . what’s George Clooney like?”
“Too gorgeous for words! But he was surrounded by an army of bodyguards, so I didn’t really get to talk to him or anything. He smiled at me though.”
Kaye saw no reason to explain how she had managed to be in two places at once. Later that morning when they left for coffee, she stayed behind, busy on the phone bragging about her trip.
This was the day Pat took it upon herself to monitor Kaye closely. It did not take long to verify that, while Kaye was on the phone incessantly, she never actually talked to anybody. She pretended to make calls. The incoming calls were all for Dr. Billington. She simply cut them off before shrieking “Oh hi!” in a loud voice. Once you paid close attention it wasn’t difficult to figure out her method. She kept one hand on the phone itself, playing with it, discreetly disconnecting the real caller while inventing a fake one. She was very good at it.
“You can tell she’s had a lot of practice.”
“That would explain why there are never any calls for her when she’s not at her desk.”
“But it doesn’t explain how she’s gotten away with it for so long.”
After this discovery Gertrude gave up and pronounced Kaye deeply disturbed. She said there was a name for her particular condition, but that she could not remember what it was. Something long and foreign.
Gertrude also went on to pronounce the five of them, herself included, sad and pathetic.
Nobody appealed the verdict.
If it had been uncomfortable to circle Kaye’s orbit before, from then on it became oppressive. Their acceptance of her lies had been disturbing enough, but living with their self-loathing for having swallowed those lies like Friday donuts now became so unbearable that over the months they started, one by one, to do the unthinkable: they applied for other positions within the hospital. At first they did not have the guts to tell each other, the way traitors keep their shameful schemes to themselves. Subsequently they suffered guilt on top of everything else.
But this they knew: life, as they had known it, would never be the same.
Four months later it was as if there had been an explosion in their midst. The blast found them scattered all over the building.
Gertrude, an office fixture for twenty odd years, shocked everybody by being the first to flee the scene, embarrassed, but too relieved to care. She had been offered a better paid job as administrative assistant down in Family Medicine.
Jill was next to go, landing a coveted spot in the Pediatric Clinic.
Margaret followed suit a month later, transferring her Personal Ads to a cubicle in the Business Office. This, she soon complained, was full of boring, sane women who talked endlessly about tidying their closets and cleaning their ovens.
Pat ended up in Audiovisual the same week Irene started a new secretarial job in Pathology.
Life had acquired a sad tint that sometimes made them avert their eyes when talking about it, a tint that had coloured them restless. They still got together for coffee and lunch, and outside work, but their gatherings were subdued, the flow of wine halted. They were bitter, quieter. They felt older, they went to bed early.
One day at lunch a pale, wild-eyed Jill steamrolled across the cafeteria towards her waiting friends, collapsed into a chair and started drumming her red nails on the table. It sounded like machine gun fire. It took a while before she was able to inform them, teeth clenched, that Kaye and Dr. Billington were getting married. Dr. B had left his wife of fifteen years.
“And get this! He and Kaye are already living together!”
No, this was not one of Kaye’s fantasies. Jill had verified the facts and they checked out. It was true. According to the girls who had inherited their old desks, neither Kaye nor Dr. B had given anything away. There had been no meaningful glances, no covert touching or sly winks. Nobody had had a clue. A travelling rumour insisted that it was in fact Mrs. B. who had left Dr. B for a woman, but nobody knew for sure.
The news had a catalytic effect on Jill. First she went on a diet. She lost thirty-five pounds in less than four months, a victory she celebrated by spending a fortune on a brand new wardrobe — and nothing off any sales racks either. She could not afford such a splurge, but that was beside the point, that was why the good Lord had created credit cards. It was, she explained, a high risk investment that hopefully would result in a huge yield within a very near future.
The new svelte Jill looked in the mirror and, although thrilled with what she saw there, decided that the image was still not up to snuff. She went a step further and dyed her hair platinum blond. That did the trick. She was now turning heads at an alarming rate. Which she ignored because, she revealed, she had a plan.
“What do you mean you have ‘a plan’?”
“Wait and see.”
As the Christmas party season loomed nearer, she put her plan into action. Step One: secure an invitation to the party up in the old department.
That was easy enough.
Step Two was slightly more complicated. Its success depended on being able to lure Dr. B into the office storage room. Jill had expected this to be a challenge, what with him being in love with Kaye and all, but some men exhibit a remarkable lack of moral fortitude within sniffing distance of a svelte blonde with cleavage.
Step Three made Dr. B a happy man.
Pat was the first to find out. She found it hard to digest the news when a grimly triumphant Jill dropped by the following evening to deliver an update on the efficient execution of her plan.
“You mean you and he . . . in the storage room?”
“That’s right.”
“No way!”
“Trust me. This is out of the mouth that did the deed!”
“What do you mean?”
“I performed oral sex upon the good doctor.”
“You gave him a blowj . . . !”
“Please! I prefer the term oral sex. It’s less tacky.”
“Jill! How could you?”
“Well, it did make me gag.”
Dr. B — Graham in this new incarnation — spent the following Saturday night at Jill’s. Eager for a repeat performance of Step Three, he arrived carrying flowers and a bottle of champagne. Once again the new improved Jill exercised her jaws.
Graham’s life took on a whole new meaning.
Meghan, Jill’s daughter, was at her dad’s for the weekend, at a safe distance from her mother’s ambitious debauchery.
Something else happened that evening. Gertrude called Kaye at the Billington residence. It was not a planned call, nothing they had decided on as a group. They no longer plotted events en masse. It had taken a lot of internal wrangling, a quarter of her special bottle of Scotch and six cigarettes before Gertrude was able to lift the receiver and dial the Billington number.
When she informed the others the following Monday at lunch, she did so with the haggard face of someone who has received devastating news. She had felt so terribly sorry for Kaye, she said, and had desperately wanted to do something for the poor deluded woman before it was too late, so she had called and offered her help. What else could she do? Did they see her point?
They said they did. Sort of.
It had been well intentioned, but it had failed miserably. Kaye, impatient and distracted, had informed Gertrude that she really had no time to chat, sorry, dear. She and Graham were hosting a big dinner party, catered mind you, as better parties are, but even so, there were details to see to, napkins to fold, silver to polish, fresh flowers to arrange, vintages to uncork, that sort of thing.
“There isn’t a single detail to see to, except you,” a frustrated Gertrude had shouted, on the verge of tears. “I know you’re alone. Talk to me, Kaye, for God’s sake! I’m here for you. You need help.”
“Oh, Gertrude, you’re so weird!” Kaye had laughed.
After Gertrude had hung up, she had cried for a long time, but that was a fact she kept to herself.
Less than a month later, Kaye and Graham split up. The evening he worked up the nerve to gently break the news about his affair with Jill to Kaye, Kaye interrupted him to ask, could she say something first, “Please Graham?” She had a confession to make, a confession so fateful it made her blush. Best get it over with. It was this: she had fallen in love with a man named Hal Watkins, a famous actor she had met at a friend’s a while back. She couldn’t help herself, she was in love. These things happen. They were so crazy about each other, she and Hal, they had decided to get married at once and fly off to Montego Bay for an extended honeymoon. Hal had a villa there.
There. She had said it. Could Graham ever forgive her?
A relieved Graham swallowed his own confession (far more eagerly than Jill had his semen) and assured Kaye how truly happy he was for her, and how he would have to learn to live without her.
“Mm,” said Kaye.
She disappeared from their lives after that. One day she was disturbingly there, the next she had ceased to exist.
The woman who had replaced Pat later heard a rumour about Kaye and George Clooney, hastily adding, “Not that I believed a word of it.”
According to another rumour Kaye had moved to Vancouver, though some claimed it was Montreal.
“Or maybe Tierra del Fuego.” Margaret was still pissed off.
Graham revealed to Jill that Kaye had started to frighten him as soon as she had moved into his house. First of all, she had brought next to no belongings at all. “I swear,” he said, “that woman walked through walls. And she never seemed to eat.” He had suspected her of sneaking out at night to suck the neighbours’ blood. They all looked a bit pale.
Was it true that his wife had left him?
He preferred not to discuss it, wounded pride, fragile male ego and all that, but yes, it was true. His wife had not left him for a woman though, unless that woman was herself. She had simply come to the realization that having a life of her own, using her considerable brain, would be far more fulfilling than being a doctor’s moll. She had already been accepted at M.I.T. to do a Ph.D. in biochemistry.
As soon as the divorce went through, gorgeous platinum blonde Jill Bernice Koplek married Dr. Graham Arthur Billington. Not because she loved him, she told her friends, defensively, though she had grown rather fond of the guy, for he was not without charm and kindness. No, she had married him because she was determined to never again go unnoticed. It was her way of making a statement.
“One could do worse than marrying a doctor,” she summed up, twisting the diamond ring around her finger as if it was uncomfortably tight.
They were all invited to the wedding and the reception afterwards, a fairly modest affair where they sat at a table on their own with Tina and Meghan, the bridesmaids, feeling a bit out of place. Most of the men in the crowd were doctors, all accompanied by their wives. Some of the wives were doctors too. Some were lawyers. Four of them were friends of the previous Mrs. Billington.
Only a few were molls. None were secretaries.
Jill remains part of their circle, though these days they see less of her. She is still working. In her free time she is busy redecorating the new ranch house in Ancaster. It has a beautiful view of the city below. She called Gertrude a while back to announce that she’s pregnant. She sounded genuinely pleased.
Irene runs into Graham — they’re on a first name basis now — at the hospital whenever he has an errand in Pathology. He looks happy, less anal, slightly smug. He has grown his hair longer. His new ties sparkle with bright colours.
/> Pat is dating a technician in A.V. His name is Harry. He is five years her junior. They have joined an amateur theatre group that is putting on Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. Pat says she can’t get over how much frigging fun it is. She has been selected for the role of Gwendolyn and is busy learning to speak with an upper-class British accent. Harry is playing Algernon. Everybody has been invited to the party on opening night.
Margaret has joined a yoga class and is on yet another diet. She has lost seven pounds in two weeks. The widower next door keeps asking her out, but Margaret says she’s not interested. All that man ever does is watch TV and play bridge, except for once a year when he drives his pick-up truck into nature to shoot a bunch of deer for no discernible reason. “Who needs that kind of shit?” she asks. She’s debating whether or not to join a theatre group as well. She used to act in high school, did they know that?
They did not know that.
Oh yes. And she can sing too.
Pat has told her they’re doing a musical next and that she should audition.
Margaret says she just might.
Gertrude’s daughter Evelyn is expecting her first child and Gertrude spent every evening until recently building a Victorian cradle out of expensive oak. It was coming along splendidly until about a week ago when she started complaining about the fact that she is always the one expected to perform these unnecessary duties. Last Sunday she gave the unfinished product to Mike, her son-in-law, to sand and varnish, saying it’s your kid, you do it.
She is fed up with gourmet cooking as well. It’s too much work, too much money and too many calories hurrying straight to her ass. She is off on a trip to Greece next month with an old friend she ran into a few months ago. She has not elaborated on the sex of the friend in question.
Irene enrolled in a pottery class a while back. Last month she made a beautiful fruit bowl in shades of swirling blues and greens mixed with the odd fleck of dark gold. Tina says she never knew her mum was such a great artist. Even her brother Carl has been over to admire her effort. He was very enthusiastic, which is not at all like him. He asked if maybe Irene would consider making one for his Stepford Wife’s birthday, in shades of beige and grey to match their decor. He sounded as if Irene had finally done something worthwhile enough that it deserved a reward.
Leaving Berlin Page 13