The Change Room

by Karen Connelly

  He just had to focus on the technology—that would calm him down. Eliza, seated at the table, sang out, “What’s happening with the music over there?”

  Darkness and stark streetlight butted every window. No one had shut the blinds. The kitchen walls were green-blue; they floated inside an aquarium. Andrew took a step away, muttering, “I need my glasses to do this.”

  “No,” Shar said, “I’ve figured it out.” He stepped close again, behind her now; it was like a dance. I am drunk, she thought, and pulled the pin out of one of the outlets in the stereo and stuck it into another. Still no music. Was her iPod too old for the sleek little stereo? “Maybe my device is outdated.”

  “I think your device is just fine. You have to keep looking for the right…spot.”

  “Uh-huh.” Suddenly the speaker blared music, surprising her; she jumped away, into Andrew; he did not step away. Lightly, they pressed together, front to back. “Ah, there we go!” he said. She felt his hands lift her from her elbows; he launched her. “Oh!” she said, stepping forward, almost losing her grip on the iPod.

  She scrolled through a list of singers and countries, travelling decades and continents…Tinariwen, Emilie-Claire Barlow, John Grant, Mes souliers sont rouges, Lhasa, Silvio Rodríguez, TamilBeat, Snow Patrol—Just Say Yes!—Ahmad Zahir, Sogand, Sarah Dugas, Caetano Veloso. Of all the old men she loved, she loved three Iranians the best: Banan, Shajarian and Nazeri. She loved Yölintu, too, those old rocker Finns, but vodka baritones weren’t right for this evening. “Bear with me!” she called out. “The DJ is picky about the playlist.” She slid past a hundred songs in a dozen languages. The Iranian pop star Googoosh must sing tonight, but her entrance could only come at the end of the evening. She decided on the next couple of hours. Pink Martini, Laura Mvula, the Moondoggies, and Zaz, to keep the mood light, and light-filled; the song “Je veux” had recently made the young French singer famous.

  This very moment, though, she touched the screen until an unmistakably Greek arpeggio climbed the air and Eleftheria Arvanitaki stepped singing into the room.

  Eliza shrieked, knowing neither the words to “Defteri zoe then exei” nor their meaning, but recognizing the nostalgia of the song. “Oh, my god!” she exhaled, pulling the lamb out of the oven. “How beautiful!” No one was sure what she was talking about: the meat, the music, or the other woman in the room.

  40

  Who Eats Her Cake

  AFTER THE FIRST FEW CUTS INTO THE LAMB, ELIZA held up a delicate rib in her fingers. “It is wrong to leave a scrap of meat on these bones! Eat with your hands!”

  Martin and Andrew raised a toast to Eliza: “Still the most beautiful chef in the world.” Shar was happy to listen to stories about Thalassa, how delicious the food had been. They talked, often with their mouths full, about food and wine. With unabashed enthusiasm, Shar told them about amazing meals she had eaten, in Palermo, in Venice, in her grandmother’s Marseillaise kitchen, in Tehran. Her listeners watched her face and her hands, which moved as though she were signing her language as well as speaking it. “Some say that the Iranians are the great artists of the Middle East, both in food and in music. I promise to play you my favourite Persian singers before the night is out.” She described the artists’ salon that her aunt held every month, continuing the tradition of her grandfather, who had been a well-known musician. “He was considered one of his generation’s best ney players, the Persian flute. He also loved to sing.”

  “You never told me that,” Eliza said, in a tone that sounded too proprietorial. She added, “I mean, you know, when we were talking about family history stuff.”

  Martin said, “Shar’s a woman of secrets.”

  Shar glanced at him with a cool eye. “No,” she said, lightly, plucking another olive from the dish. “I just wanted to save a few stories for this dinner.”

  Eliza said, “So tell us about these salons at your aunt’s place. What were they like?”

  She turned in Eliza’s direction. “I was a wide-eyed teenager amongst the gods. I used to perch on the edge of a crammed sofa or, more often, on the staircase that went up to the roof, discreetly waving cigarette smoke out of my face and leaning forward to hear the poets recite their work, and the famous singers sing, and the daring political dissidents argue about the government. I was too young and shy to participate, but I chatted around the edges, I asked questions. Sometimes one of my aunt’s friends would draw me out and ask my opinion about things, or tease me. It was so much fun, to be alive in that language. My mother is from France, yet we agree that only people who don’t know Farsi can possibly say that French is the language of love. I miss it!”

  Martin asked, “But don’t you go to Iran anymore?”

  “I haven’t been for a while. Too busy with school. I have to admit, though, since moving here, I’ve been speaking a lot of Farsi. This is Tehranto, you know. It’s full of Iranians.”

  Martin and Shar began to compare languages. She spoke five to his seven. After the initial listing—where they’d learned or studied their languages, and how—the conversation opened up again. Eliza was mystified. Was it really possible that they would get through an entire evening without Martin being brilliant in Borneo, magnetic in Mongolia? It was almost worrisome.

  Eliza glanced around the table, listening, not listening. Shar’s straightened hair fell away from her face. Cleopatra, Eliza thought. Sarah Bernhardt with finer bones. Or Sophie Marceau with thick black eyebrows. This or that great beauty does not compare. I could look at her all day, all night long. I want to know her for the rest of my life. Then she met Andrew’s inquiring gaze.

  He lifted his glass ever so slightly off the table; she did the same, smiling. After their private, wordless toast, they each took a quick sip. Eliza felt a pain under her heart, or in her stomach, along her shoulders, a pain so pervasive there was no way to locate it. Love skinned you alive. It was the quick beneath the outer layer, the house and the work, the edifice of success, those new pipes in the basement (so dependable!), the boxes of glasswork at the studio, hundreds of carefully bred flowers, shipped across the province or the continent or the world, each of them already decaying, not nearly so time-worthy as the cutlery in the drawers behind her, the expensive coffee maker, the acacia-wood napkin holder, the accent lamps, the matching towels, this endless accumulation of objects and layers and belongings—so many dumb belongings!—most of which could not be abandoned until they were cast off, finally, once and for all, in a future she could not fathom.

  Correction: she would be cast off, cast out of life, out of time. But the damn cutlery would go on shining! Death lay in wait inside her, but she could not imagine it, not now, not yet, when she felt so alive. As she grasped it, the reason and heart of her own life, right here, in the house, Shar, Andrew and Martin burst out laughing at a joke Eliza had missed. She didn’t mind. Uncomprehending, she began to smile, too, and thought, This is true. It’s real. And mine.

  Martin waved his hand over the table. “I hate to tell you this, my friends, but we’ve eaten everything.”

  Shar put her hands to her cheeks. “Mon Dieu, we’ll starve to death!”

  Andrew added, “Or get fat!”

  “Here,” said Eliza, holding out a plate, “a few more flowers. And two pieces of bread. We shall survive.”

  “Give me a slice,” said Shar, putting out her hand. “Does anyone want to eat the last of this oil? It would be wrong to waste olive oil from the island of Lesvos!” She dunked the bread in the last of the greens, and took a big bite. “I’ve been waiting all evening for this!”

  Eliza stood up. “And I have a very special dessert—also from Lesvos. And we have coffee. Or tea. Who wants what?”

  Martin asked for tea and Eliza went to fill the kettle with water and get out the dessert plates. Surreptitiously, she watched Shar talking to Martin and Andrew; she watched the men respond to her natural charisma. Tonight her charm and irreverence seemed even sexier. Sexier in a…straight woman’s way! Eliza
frowned.

  Andrew, coming over to help with the tea things, caught the expression. “What is it, dear?”

  “Oh, it’s…” She looked past him, around the dining room, down the hallway to the living room. “The blinds are still open,” she said. “I forgot all about them. Will you make the tea? Six teaspoons, okay? No one likes watery tea!” She went from room to room, pulling down fabric rolls, closing slats and letting curtains drop.

  Andrew explained, “We usually leave them open until after the kids go to bed. Jake’s afraid of the dark and the house is actually darker with the blinds closed. He likes the streetlights to shine in.”

  Martin asked, “Is he still having those nightmares?”

  “It’s not so bad anymore, thank heavens.” Andrew addressed Shar. “Sometimes he wakes up screaming. It used to scare the hell out of us.”

  “When I was little, I also had bad nightmares! Always about death, in one way or another. But the summer I turned six, my mom and I spent a few weeks with my grandmother in Marseilles. One afternoon I fell asleep in her garden on a little daybed. I woke up hours later, in the dark. Somehow, I thought I had died. It was dark, my mother was gone. But all the night flowers were open around me. Jasmine, angel’s trumpet—those big white blooms—and little fuchsia ones that are even sweeter than jasmine. The moon was up and the flowers were glowing. Really, they were glowing! And I thought, I am dead, yes, but this is heaven. I’m in heaven! Then I heard my mother calling my name. And my childhood nightmares ended.”

  Andrew said, “But maybe you did have them again, later. After you returned to Canada. And you just don’t remember.”

  A smile touched Shar’s mouth and eyes. “A child often has a keen memory of fear or distress. And so she—or he—remembers when the fear ends…Don’t you think so, Martin?” It was the first time during the evening that she had said his name. Andrew looked from Shar to his brother, curious.

  Martin replied, “I’ve always thought amnesia was the saving grace of childhood.”

  Eliza brought the teapot to the table. “It’s definitely the saving grace of parenthood. I’ve kind of forgotten how horrible Jake’s nightmares used to be.”

  Andrew said, “How could you forget? You’re the one who used to get up to comfort him. And he’s still so afraid of the dark.”

  Eliza loaded up a tray and brought the rest of the tea and dessert things to the table. Martin lifted the lid of the ceramic teapot. “It might not be steeped enough, but that’s better for me. I’m beat. I’m sorry, everyone, but I have got to go to bed.” He reached over to take a small turquoise and gold–painted tea glass off the tray. “That trip to Turkey, right?”

  “Yes, and here is the cake!” She brought it to the table, set it down to oohs and aahs, and deftly cut into the dark heart of it. “You cannot be too tired to eat this cake, Martin. It’s too good to miss.”

  She set the velvet brown dessert in front of him. “Chocolate?” he asked.

  “No! Guess what the taste is.”

  He was the most snobbish eater among them, diner at fine restaurants all over the world; she had always enjoyed impressing him with her cooking. She handed out two more small plates to Andrew and Shar, then sat down with her own.

  They began to eat. Martin raised his eyebrows, chewing, moving the crumbly but smooth sweet around in his mouth. He nodded, impressed. “Ridiculously good. Did you make it yourself?”

  “Of course I made it myself. I can’t have a dinner party with a store-bought cake.”

  He took another bite. “I have no idea what it is. Not chocolate. Almost spicy. Buttery. And very sweet but not a hard sugary note anywhere. What is this?”

  Andrew said, “She’s obsessive. Why can’t we have a store-bought cake once in a while? Don’t encourage her, Martin, by giving her compliments.”

  “I will give her compliments. This is incredible,” he mumbled through another mouthful. “Did you ever make it at Thalassa?”

  “Do you want another piece?”

  “Just a sliver. A big sliver.”

  She set down her fork and cut him another slice. “I made it maybe once a month. It’s extremely labour intensive. Shar, do you know what it is?”

  Shar opened and closed her mouth, puckering up and smacking her full lips. “This is harder than wine tasting. Mmm…Raspberry? A touch of overripe peach?” She laughed. “Burnt leather?”

  “You have no idea?”

  “There must be butter, it’s so creamy. Almond?”

  Eliza ducked her head slightly and looked coy. “Neither. Any more guesses?”

  “No,” Martin said, “but I’m all ears. What is it?”

  “On Lesvos, it’s a cookie called koulouromou-hrovrasto—no, wait, that’s too many syllables, but something like that. At Thalassa, I developed a recipe to turn it into a cake. It’s fig. And a whole litre of extremely good olive oil.”

  Andrew complained, “She boils and boils and boils figs until the whole first floor feels like a jar of hot jam. Fig-jam sauna cake is the translation of koulourrooboohoo or whatever it is in Greek.”

  Shar whistled. “Aren’t we lucky to eat it, then? Bella fica! Brava!” She considered telling her dinner companions that bella fica in Italian also meant “beautiful pussy.” But instead she smiled politely, put more cake into her mouth, and chewed as slowly as possible.

  41

  An Almost Perfect Life

  FROM THE SECOND FLOOR, ANDREW CALLED DOWN THE staircase, “Where are the sheets for the guest bed?”

  Eliza responded, “In the damn linen closet! Above the sticker that says ‘twin beds.’ ”

  He brought the crisply folded sheets into the office. “Sorry that we didn’t have time to do this earlier.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I could even sleep in one of the boys’ beds.”

  “Your feet would hang off the end. So will theirs, soon enough. They’re growing like weeds. Wait until you see them tomorrow.” Andrew snapped a white sheet over the narrow bed. “At least I managed to clear my research books and student papers off.”

  “Andrew, I can do it. Go back to your dinner party. Sorry I couldn’t keep up.”

  “She’s quite a live wire, isn’t she?” Andrew turned slightly, to gauge his brother’s reaction.

  Martin felt his brother’s old familiar watchfulness. “Both of them are. A lot of electricity down there.” He didn’t want to talk to Andrew right now; he just wanted to lie down. Music floated up from the dining room; something Middle Eastern and melodramatic, it sounded like, synthesized. A few peals of feminine laughter rose through the music. Martin’s small suitcase was resting, open, on a low bench. He turned his back to Andrew and unzipped his toiletries bag, retrieved his toothbrush, his toothpaste, biding his time until his brother left.

  Andrew finished the bed-making. “So can I ask you something?”

  “No.” Martin turned around. “I really need to sleep. We’ll have time to talk tomorrow, on the drive out to Mom and Dad’s. It seems we have a lot to talk about.”

  “The only reason I didn’t tell you is because Mom didn’t want me to.”

  “I understand. It’s okay.” He thought, Still reporting to her. Doing what she says. Sad, really.

  “You’re not angry at me?”

  “No. You had your reasons.” Martin rolled his lips over the edges of his teeth, and bit down on them to keep from rising to the bait.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But—see?—he rose to the bait. “It means that you, like everyone else on the planet, had particular reasons for pursuing a particular course of action. In this case, not letting your only brother in on a significant family development. Which is fine.” He expelled air out of his nose like a bull. “I thought they had sold their shares in that Florida development.”

  “They swore to Eliza that they were selling. Then they didn’t do it.”

  “How many times did I tell them just to buy a decent rental unit on Palmerston Boulevard and you
can’t go wrong. Or three crack houses in Parkdale!”

  “They didn’t want to have the headache of taking care of property in Toronto.”

  Martin laughed savagely. “Florida was so much better than a regulated banking system and a rising market. Jesus Christ. No wonder Eliza’s pissed off. This was Mom, wasn’t it? Her dreams of being richer than her rich Uxbridge friends.”

  “Don’t blame it all on her. Dad’s responsible, too.”

  “Come on. You know exactly what she’s like. Delicate and ladylike and a goddamn bulldozer, running people over whenever she feels like it.”

  “Martin.” Andrew’s voice dropped a notch. “She’s an old lady now. You can’t be angry at her forever.” He stepped past his brother and closed the door.

  Martin looked at the light cotton pyjamas he had just tossed on the bed. He wanted to take them in his hands again and rip them apart. Why was this shit all right here at the surface? Because of Shar. She had reminded him so keenly of his past because she actually knew something about it. “Have you ever thought that if I weren’t so angry at Mom, I might hate you? You were the one who told her.”

  “Jesus! I was only twelve. But even I knew you shouldn’t have been having sex with a teacher! It was abuse. She was abusive.”

  “Maybe she was. Of course she was. I know that now. But she cared about me, too.”

  Unlike—the thought slid like a red-hot poker into his mouth, but he held it there, clamping his jaw down, burning his teeth—unlike their name-calling, narrow-minded mother. What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? With one of your old elementary school teachers! Martin, what you’ve done with her is disgusting. Shameful!

  She never found out how long it had gone on—Martin couldn’t possibly tell her. He thought she would be as repulsed by that as she was by the relationship. As if he didn’t always feel bad about it, responsible somehow, in a way he couldn’t name; he had been a child. Yet the guilt stifled him for years. He always felt that he hadn’t resisted enough when he was little. He had been Marlene’s special friend. Then it began to feel so good. The terrible, wrong act was pleasurable. Every orgasm with her was a sin. When he was a teenager, he could only turn it into a love story, to understand it, with himself as the gangly, passionate, brilliant hero who could never let his beautiful lady get into trouble, and lose her job, and go to jail. He had saved her, and lost some essential part of himself. His childhood, his adolescence.