What Can't Be Undone

by dee Hobsbawn-Smith

  On Saturday morning, I’m drinking coffee on my deck when I see George leave the house. At eleven, Trudy hobbles through the glass doors and collapses in the chair beside the grill. She’s in a sack-like grey dress that hides what has happened to her athlete’s body. I avert my eyes, but she waves and whispers. I have to lean across the railing to hear.

  “Dim sum, Alex.”

  Of course. Takeout from Chinatown.

  During lunch, George leaps from the table every five minutes to bring out more dishes, a fresh pot of tea. “Shui mai?” He holds out the steamer basket filled with pork dumplings, but Trudy turns her face away. “Eel in tofu?” She shakes her head. He waves barbecued pork buns at her, then rice noodle pancakes. Nothing. “Trudy, honey, you love this stuff. What gives?” He slumps over his tea, lights a cigarette and studies the cherry trees.

  I am acutely anxious for him, and scathingly angry with Trudy. Time to leave before I betray my feelings. As I turn to go, a hint of a smile, malicious and triumphant, arrows at me from Trudy, reclining in her chaise.

  Astrid and I had the occasional blow-up. Every marriage does, and Astrid was used to being in charge. We lived in a careful bubble of acquiescence, me yielding, her biting her tongue. Unpredictable little things set her off, but she usually wrapped her irritation in wit. One afternoon when she was baking a cake for Stacey’s birthday, I came into the kitchen, just to be friendly, and leaned against the cupboard watching her separate eggs and measure sugar in efficient movements.

  “You going to stand there all day? Can’t you make yourself useful?” She waved her arm toward the cupboard. “I need the cake pan. Get it down, will you?”

  Cake pan found, I resumed my station. But something had gotten into her.

  “For chrissakes, Alex. Don’t just watch me. Do something.”

  “Astrid — ” I took two steps toward her.

  “Here. Separate this.” She reached down to the carton of eggs on the counter, picked one up. Tossed it. Underhand, gently. To me. I put out my hand in sheer reflex, and caught it like a first baseman’s lob to second. She threw another, laughing, then another. I managed to catch nearly all of them, but the last two got by me. It was either drop the six I was cradling or let them go by. They whistled past me, thudded dully on the cupboard door behind me. In amazement, I watched the eggs slide down the wall.

  “Astrid! What was that all about?” She was weeping. “Honey, hush. It’s okay.”

  I put my arms around her. When she finished, we washed the cupboard door and the floor. Astrid didn’t speak until we sat down over a cup of tea. Her voice was tiny.

  “Alex. Sorry. Sometimes I just want to shake you. I get tired of being the one who initiates everything.”

  I picked her up and carried her to bed.

  Through the open window, I overhear George’s gruff voice. “I don’t want to fight, sweetie. You’re not yourself. Those drugs … ” He carries his coffee out to the balcony.

  Trudy’s voice follows him, a follow-up to her dim sum initiative. “I hate how you fuss over me, George. I can’t stand it.”

  George, at the sink, has his back turned, but I see his body deflate.

  “I want a divorce, George. No discussion. This is the me I am. Now. From now on.”

  He looks around, sees me on my balcony. I step indoors, move as far forward in the building as I can. I think about escape, about going into the garage, into the car, into the street, unrolling a few kilometres of insulation between us. He’s not the type to detonate, but you never know, and George isn’t quite the man I thought he was.

  My car exits the driveway with a purr of the overhead door. In my rearview mirror, I see George’s red Firebird on my tail as I roll around the corner. I pull over, unwind my window and lean out, but he stares straight in front of him and drives away.

  George avoids me for a few days, his back turned whenever he’s outside, the lace drawn between our houses like the Iron Curtain. I’m surprised, but not really. People like a scapegoat. I try not to take it personally, but I miss the company. He breaks the ice one sunny morning as I sit in my yard, an old copy of Close Range open on my lap.

  “Morning.”

  “George, hey, how’s things?”

  “Got a light?”

  “Yes, of course.” We fuss with the matches. Each sputters and almost catches flame, then one spurts into a small blossom. His cigarette lit, he settles into the chair, easing his broad back into its curve. “How’s Trudy?”

  “In bed since you left the other day. I hoped it was a tempest in a teapot. She cried all day.” He sighs and stares at the river valley. “But later, she asked if I’d been unfaithful. All I could think of was what if we stacked up all those cardboard dim sum takeaway boxes and swore to be faithful on top of them? It would be just as meaningful. I had to tell her. She kept at me all day, said she wanted to know, just couldn’t leave it alone. You know what women are like.” He catches himself, looks at me wryly. “Well, what our women are like.”

  My Astrid’s face on the pillow, extinguished. I don’t have the heart to correct him.

  “So that’s it, then.”

  “Yep. That’s it. She’s changed her mind twice. Now she says she’s leaving.”

  The realtor hangs a For Sale sign on my fence in October, a week before he lists George and Trudy’s house. Astrid’s poppies are brown and toppled by frost in her garden, the towering sunflowers picked blind by birds. My writing is stalled, my days too long. George is jumpy, trying to quit smoking. It’s too much, I tell him. Quit later. You can only handle what you can handle.

  On a sun-glazed Indian summer day, doors and windows wide to catch the late warmth, I am packing up the front library when the door slams. Trudy, a silent shadow shuffling into a waiting cab. Two suitcases. I stand behind the curtains, watching. If Astrid was here, she’d make an acerbic observation about the folly of lovers and humanity in general. She wouldn’t assign blame, so I don’t either. I can hear George clinking glasses and ice cubes through the membrane of lace. I walk through her garden and up the back stairs. George meets me at the door. “She’s gone to her sister’s,” he says, and hands me a whisky.

  Neither of us is good at staying in touch. I get the occasional email, then one resigned note telling me they got back together again, but it fizzled. He goes back to travelling. I go back to writing, my computer on the dining room table in my new condo downtown, the river hidden by skyscrapers. Halfway through my new play, I see them clearly as I hunch over my keyboard, the two women in our kitchen, bright as poppies, and I feel the thin line of yearning for what I want the past to be. But I can’t compel my typing past the grit of eggshells, the disdained pork dumplings. The women stay in my memory. The screen in front of me stays blank.

  Still Life with Birds

  TODAY, LIKE EVERY WORKDAY, BEGINS IN the restaurant kitchen. Without turning on the radio to break the lake’s silence, Ariana makes a cheese and chive omelette for the two of them to share. Plates and espressos in hand, she climbs the back stairs and enters Violetta’s bedroom without knocking.

  “Vi. It’s time.”

  “It’s time to begin, isn’t it,” Vi warbles from her bed, deliberately off-key. Ariana has learned to interpret every blink of her sister’s one functioning eye, and when Vi winks, she looks past the stare of the blind right iris, glazed wide open. Vi giggles, picks up her meter and tests her sugar levels. Ariana, perched on the foot of the bed, has to look away when Vi slides the needle into her upper arm.

  They eat in silence. Ariana rolls the ties of Vi’s yellow sunhat between her fingers and sips her coffee. Vi still surprises her, flashes of humour embedded like unexpected glass. She can see the lake through the window, smooth except for the ruffle of wild waterfowl along the shore. “Bonne anniversaire, ma belle,” she says to Violetta.

  “Don’t say it, Ariana. Please.”

  “Vi, we need to talk. You could have broken your collarbone last week. That doctor … ”

 
“I know what he said.” Vi holds up both hands, her fingers waggling into quotation marks. “‘Post-transplant steroid use can lead to osteoporosis.’ I’m fine. Don’t fuss so much, Ari.” Vi is dressed before Ariana can move, her feet quiet on the hardwood. “I’ll go feed the ducks.”

  “Wear your hat!” Ariana flings the hat toward the stairs. “Remember what he said about skin cancer!” Vi’s whistling echoes up the stairwell. Ariana frowns and runs downstairs, grabbing the hat en route from the top riser, drops it on the kitchen counter near Vi’s favourite stool. She can’t wait on Vi, needs to start the duck pâté and confit. Making them brings back memories of Grandmère at the butcher block, her deep laugh, but memories are no comfort when she considers the possibility of life without Vi as well.

  During a lull at lunchtime, Ariana steps out of the sweltering kitchen. It’s just as hot outside, the air hanging in wavering lines, and sweat leaves a long smear across her sleeve as she wipes her face. She’s glad to see light glinting from the windshield of Gordon’s truck at the far end of the parking lot. The orchardist’s presence means Vi will smile more than usual. Yet every time her sister returns from an outing with Gordon, a noose of resentment tightens around Ariana’s ribcage. What kind of woman resents her own sister’s friendships? Especially a sister who’s bedevilled by physical frailties? Five years since Grandmère summoned Ari home from France, where she was working at her cousin’s bakery in Toulouse. It was autumn in the south of France. Ariana returned to a blizzard in Saskatoon, and to Vi, red-faced, hooked up to a dialysis machine, shrilly haranguing the nurses. Soon after, while Grandmère waited in the family room, Violetta and Ariana were rolled into the brightly lit operating room on parallel gurneys, holding hands.

  Ariana herself has no time or inclination to socialize. All she’s ever wanted is to cook, to own a restaurant. At the end of each day, she has no energy left to spend on a friend, or a lover, for that matter: Vi takes all her emotional currency.

  She has read somewhere that saving a life ties two people, in this life and into the next. Not that she’s a Buddhist, or even clear on the concepts of reincarnation or karma, but from the moment she offered her kidney to Vi, the feeling intensifying after the surgery itself, she has felt accountable for her older sister. What adds a worrisome chafe to the yoke is the hard fact that organ recipients rarely live more than fifteen years after their transplant. Vi is thirty-five, nowhere near as strong as she used to be when the three of them, Vi, Grandmère and Ariana, spent their time and energies tending the market garden and greenhouses.

  Her older sister hasn’t sounded so cheerful since her time at university. Before the transplant. Gordon is good for her, no doubt about it. She should simply rejoice that Vi has lost her pinched look.

  The lot is jammed with cars. It won’t be many weeks before the patio is empty at lunch — the sun is noticeably cooler now that September has fluttered halfway through its rounds. The back door slides soundlessly shut behind her, and Ariana goes back to work, assembling salads, plating galettes, arranging trays of bread and pastries. Violetta strides back and forth through the patio door, her hands full on every pass. It’s Ellen’s day off, and Ariana, expecting a slow day, had only scheduled Gwen. Vi, who rarely serves, volunteered to wait tables when the parking lot started to fill.

  Ariana sighs, catching a glimpse of Vi smiling at a small girl in a gingham sundress. It’s just the two of them since Grandmère died, three years gone last April. She misses Grandmère’s pragmatic nods and quick hugs. The fact is they won’t get rich running a seasonal lakeside bistro and patisserie. It’s fine for her, but what does Violetta want to do with the rest of her life? Vi never mentions it, but Ariana feels her sister’s clock ticking.

  Ariana jumps at an unexpected touch on her shoulder, and a voice in her ear. “I’ve brought you a few more sour cherry trees.”

  “Gordon! You startled me.”

  His short blond hair is dark with sweat, his Smithbilt in his hands. “Sorry, shortcut through the kitchen. D’you mind?”

  “No, of course not!” Gordon’s freckled face, sunburned despite the hat, reminds her of a puppy, all bounce and wide-mouthed grin. She had been prepared to dislike him the first day he showed up for lunch, another redneck farmer, but his intake of breath and widened eyes at his first taste of her duck galette had disarmed her.

  “I set the trees by the back door. They’re the hardy varieties I took Vi to see last week at the university. Didn’t she tell you? I’ll dig them in after lunch.”

  Ariana recalls her sister returning that day, her hair loose on her shoulders, her face relaxed. Her small, secret smile as Gordon’s truck pulled out of the yard.

  “Too funny,” Ariana says. “The trees’ varieties, I mean. Romeo and Juliet.”

  Gordon flushes right up to his hairline. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “You’re so good to us! Thanks, Gordon.”

  “No worries. You both work way too hard. Need some lookin’ after.” He puts on his cowboy hat and light-foots through the screen door toward the patio. Ariana stares at the door as it swings back and forth. Why was he blushing? This man’s generosity is wearing down that worry-stone’s hard edges.

  As if on cue, Ariana hears her sister’s voice, a sharp rise of consonants. “Merde!”

  Spinning around, she sees Vi stumble, caught on the fly by Gordon, his short, stocky body surprisingly nimble as he leaps from three strides away to Vi’s side. He stabilizes the plates in her long hands, jokes with the guests who dodge the flying cutlery, ruffles the gingham girl’s hair. After all is returned to rights, plates safely delivered, Vi and Gordon stand together beside the Amur maples that line the patio, Gordon’s arm folded like a wing over Vi’s shoulders, red leaves like bloodstains collecting beside her collar.

  Violetta is flushed, patting her chest when she returns to the kitchen. Ariana can feel her own blood pressure climb several points.

  “Vi! Are you all right?”

  “Just a little light-headed.” Vi stoops to rub her calf. “I barked my shin on one of those tomato planters. Did you see that tiny girl, Ari? So cute. She reminded me of you when you were little. Same button nose. I was afraid I’d fall on top of her.”

  “Sit down, will you? They’ll be all right out there without you for a few minutes.” Ariana shoves the stool toward her sister. “I’m so terrified every time you take a tumble.” She wants to pat her, but Vi has collected so many bruises lately, she’s reluctant to pat anywhere. Nothing broken. A relief. But the injuries seem to be coming more rapidly. It’s as if her sister’s inner spring is unwinding. She settles for a quick hug but misjudges its placement. Vi winces and leans away. “Oh, Vi, I’m sorry. That’s it, this is the last time you talk me into letting you wait tables.” To Ariana’s surprise, Vi doesn’t put up an argument. “You’re lucky Gordon was there. He brought more trees.”

  “He said as much.”

  “Here. Eat something.”

  Vi plucks the slice of bread from Ariana’s hand, pecks at it, swallows.

  “Vi! Stay put a minute longer!” Her sister’s grin is back on her face before she disappears through the swinging door.

  Gordon has been here almost every day this month. On each trip, he has unloaded something unexpected from the back of the pickup — shrubs, rosebushes, and once, a new hoe to replace Ariana’s after it had snapped in her hands. Ariana has offered him money, but he shrugs her off, his chuckle reminding her of the coots’ clattering voices in the reed beds. “Maybe lunch later?” he always responds, rubbing his chin and grinning before he slides away. “I’ll just go see if I can help Vi. She in the office?”

  Ariana rolls pastry as she looks out the kitchen window, the dough pooling beneath her rolling pin the way the water ripples around the teals and pintails. Bistro Étoile is a deliberate re-creation of the small lakeside cafés she visited in France, right down to the two-tone umbrellas fluttering over the patio tables. Grandmère had immediately seen the possibilities of the
idea when Ariana broached it after her return from France. “You’ve learned all I can teach you,” she said. “It’s time.” Her square hands, so like Ariana’s, shook slightly as she handed Ariana a cheque. The morning they opened four years ago, Ariana stood outside beside her, their shoulders just touching, watching the umbrellas. Waiting. When the first cars edged down the long driveway beside the lake, she hugged Grandmère and went inside to cook, a tiny prayer to St. Honoré, the patron saint of pastry chefs, flitting in her head. Please, make it last, make this last. Keep my sister safe. She didn’t dare say it out loud.

  The dough beneath her hands feels springy. Ariana fits it into a tart pan, her fingertips fluting the edge into a wave. Vi’s near-accident this afternoon is a wake-up.

  Ariana flicks the switch on the overhead fan. Through its muffled roar, she hears Vi’s voice.

  “Are there any cookies left? What about profiteroles?” Vi, standing before the counter, holds out a basket, her grey eyes wide, smiling. “That man has the most amazing appetite!” She reaches out and tucks a strand of Ariana’s cropped black hair back behind her ear. She’s humming under her breath, a French nursery tune that Ariana vaguely recognizes. Vi always hums when Gordon’s in the vicinity. Her face changes then, from its normal narrow aspect, somehow becoming rounder, more childlike.

  Ariana finds herself humming along. She fills the basket with cookies, then gives Vi a little shove. “Go on then.” She nods, observing the two of them bending over the tomato planters. Gordon is Vi’s first real friend since the transplant. On his first visit, after appreciatively downing the galette, Gordon consumed several pastries, two double espressos, plum eau de vie, candied hazelnuts. He stayed long after the patio emptied, gazing at the lake as it swelled into wavelets under the heavy westerly breeze. At four o’clock, he braved Ariana’s kitchen. “Excuse me?”