This Is All a Lie

by Thomas Trofimuk

  “You okay?” he says, his voice low, and dark, and barely awake.

  “Just had to pee,” she says. “It’s still snowing.”

  He grunts and she listens to his breathing as he sinks back into sleep.

  Chapter 15

  the Second Circle

  “As long as the sun shines, one does not ask for the moon.”

  – Zhanna Petya

  In August, Nancy picks up a call when she is pushing a shopping cart through the parking lot of a grocery store. It is early morning for her mother and 8 p.m. for Nancy. “Listen to this,” her mother says. “In July 1984, Russian cosmonauts aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 7 reported seeing angels hovering just outside the space station.”

  Her mother goes on to paraphrase the newspaper article:

  Some chalked this up to fatigue, as they had been in space for 155 days already. At first, according to Commander Oleg Atkov and cosmonauts Vladmir Solovyov and Leonid Kizim, the space station was completely bathed in an other-worldly orange light. This light appeared to come from outside the space station and moved through the walls into the craft. For a short period of time, this orange light was so bright it blinded the crew. When their vision returned, they all began looking for the source of the light. They worried about a possible explosion, as fires had occurred before on the space station, but what the crew found was more incomprehensible than the orange light. All three cosmonauts said they saw angels hovering inside the orange cloud, just outside the space station.

  “They told ground control they were humanoid in appearance – their faces and bodies looked human,” Nancy’s mother said, “but they had wings and dazzling bright halos. The beings kept pace with the space station for ten minutes before vanishing.”

  “Wings and halos?” Nancy says. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Yes, angels have wings and halos. And it is in the newspaper, Nensi.”

  “Those cosmonauts were breathing too much carbon monoxide. They must have been impaired. Nobody knows what that kind of prolonged weightlessness does to the brain.”

  “All three, Nensi. All three saw the same seven angels. Angels! When the angels looked at the men in the space station, they smiled. The angels smiled! The cosmonauts said the angels had wonderful smiles – smiles of joy, of ecstasy. They said no human could have smiled like that.”

  “Mom,” Nancy says. “What kind of newspaper are you reading?”

  “They all said they felt a great loss when the angels disappeared. It says that, here in the article. They were devastated when the angels went away.”

  Nancy has just finished placing the last of her groceries into the back of her car. She pulls down on the hatch door and because Mitsubishi did not begin to think about the difficulty of this hatch and the torque required to close it, Nancy breaks a nail. She’s standing behind the SUV with the hatch wide open, and she is looking at the broken nail. She bites off the ragged remainder and pulls with both hands on the hatch and finally pushes it shut.

  “Jesus, Mom. Enough about angels already. Tell me how you are.”

  “Things are good,” her mother says. She pauses and Nancy can so clearly envision her sitting at the kitchen table nodding. “I have not heard from Slava in a month. When you talk with him next, you tell him to call his mother.”

  * * *

  “I was fine being the mistress, you know.”

  “You were what?” Ray watches as a dog, a skinny German Shepherd that looks like a coyote, trots along the sidewalk away from his car. There’s a wild scruffiness to the dog that makes Ray think it really is a coyote. Even though it’s moving in a straight line, it seems as if it’s tilted sideways.

  “I was fine being the mistress.” Her words are slurred, as if she’s drunk and trying too hard to not sound drunk.

  He’s losing patience with her. He doesn’t care if she was fine. He doesn’t care if she was a well-adjusted mistress. “Look,” he says. “Why am I sitting here?”

  Nancy takes a breath and can feel her anger. “I was just an amusement ride for you, wasn’t I? Something for you to climb up on and fuck every now and then.”

  “That’s not how it was,” he says.

  “I was a roller-coaster, or some other ride at the fair. You got your thrill and then you got off and carried on.”

  “I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

  “It’s coming from the fact it’s true.”

  “I never thought of you like that.” Ray knows if he’d been serious about Nancy, he would not have continued to treat her like a mistress.

  * * *

  He looks at the elms along the street. One of them is in trouble. It was a dry year. Rain was sporadic and not enough. A gust of wind bends the trees and a flurry of leaves is scattered across the road.

  Ray’s job as an arborist was not the original career he’d pursued. Ray had his law degree. He was practising in a well-respected firm. Being a lawyer was what he thought he wanted. However, on the fourth month of the second year of articling with the law firm of Brice, Jones & Farnsworth, Ray woke up at 4 a.m. with chest pains. This was the beginning of his realization that law was not for him. At the hospital, the doctors were surprised by Ray’s blood pressure but his heart was fine. For now. They said it was a panic attack. A breakdown of everything that protects us from being overwhelmed by anxiety. He needed to move more. He needed to find a way to cope with stress. But Ray knew the slow build of twitchy unhappiness from his work as a lawyer was killing him. It wasn’t the stress and it wasn’t the hours – it was being completely aware of his unhappiness. There was a stench around the entire occupation that started to stick to his skin. Even the most benign fields of law contained a sleaziness factor. The so-called “heart incident” was an epiphany for Ray. The occupation of lawyer was killing him. He was one of two stars among the eight articling lawyers with the firm but he was ready to turn away. It was not easy, but he knew he was ready.

  He’d spent four summers and a year out of high school working at his uncle’s greenhouse and he was drawn to the memory of that joyful time. Ray’s training was not formal, but it was extensive.

  He got a job with the city’s Parks department. It was hard work, and they kept trying to promote him into positions where he no longer actually worked on trees – but rather, managed other people who worked with trees. Ray kept refusing these promotions. But, two weeks ago, he accepted a promotion with conditions of freedom. He managed a team, he was in the field as much as he wanted, and he got a hefty raise.

  It was easier to say what he did now. Arborist was easier on his conscience than lawyer. It was an additional syllable but it was easier to say. He smiles at the memory of a woman at a party who asked him what he did and he told her, except she heard abortionist. “You actually tell people that?” Her face was a squished horror of revulsion. “What, you don’t like trees?” Ray said. But she was already gone.

  * * *

  “I want you back, Ray,” Nancy says. “Even though you are a prick, I want you back. Even though you’re mostly an asshole, I want things to be the same as they were.”

  Ray is not sure what she just said, or for how long she’s been talking.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean – what? I think I’ve been quite clear.”

  “You want me back,” he says.

  “Yes. I want all of you, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you. Love is about compromise. It’s about bending. It’s about taking what you can get.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m talking about love.”

  “I don’t think that’s love, Nancy.”

  “I accept you as you are,” she says.

  “You don’t even know me.”

  She leans forward and pours another drink. “I know you cheat on your wife.
And I know your cock really well.”

  “Yes, I know you do, but that’s not exactly me. It’s a body part.”

  Ray looks at his parking receipt, and halfway down the block he can see a uniformed woman checking the windshields of cars. His parking slip is good for six more minutes. “Any chance we can finish up in the next six minutes?”

  “No,” she says. “I’m getting to know you before I go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To bed, Ray. Out dancing. Out on a date. Somewhere other than this conversation. You know. Go.”

  “I need to buy more time.”

  “You’re not going to buy more time by being short and grumpy with me, Ray.”

  “That’s not what I…Just hold on,” he says. He places the phone on the passenger seat and shoulder-checks to see that no cars are coming. He swings the car door open. At the machine, he buys another hour of parking.

  He sits back down behind the wheel and sighs heavily. He nods his acknowledgement to Dante’s Divine Comedy – because he is clearly in the Inferno. He is inside the Second Circle of Hell, guilty of lust, of surrendering to the desire for fleshy pleasure and most definitely adultery. The winds are blowing and there is no peace. There is no Virgil to guide him out of this hell. Ray is alone and will have to push forward on his own. He picks up the phone. “You there?” he says.

  * * *

  It was as if Ray and Nancy were floating and helpless in the ocean and their conversation was rising and falling with three-metre swells. Sometimes they could see the jagged land, all brown and emerald green, and sometimes, it was all blue-grey water in every direction.

  Chapter 14

  Tulah meets Ray

  Tulah’s Snow Journal

  Thursday, January 22, 1998 #140

  It’s snowing – fluffy, like down. It seems to hesitate, as if it’s confused about where it’s going. There was a moment today, up on the Beehive above Lake Agnes, when the snow was actually falling up! A breeze was pushing it up the mountain and the snow was rising up all around us. It was confusing at first and then it was amazing. And I mean ‘amazing.’ It was verging on unbelievable. Grandma Frannie would have loved that snow. It was way beyond magic. I thought I was going to lose my mind. Brenda and Justine were stunned into silence, which is something. Brenda asked me if the snow was falling up. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It is.’ It was like some movie where gravity stops and everything floats. For a few seconds everything is magic. The Inuit call this snow priyakli. That is, if you can believe anything on the internet. Anyway, priyakli is snow that looks like it’s falling upward.

  We’re studying poetry at school right now – all the forms of poetry. Eventually, I will have to teach a poetry unit to my students. I found out last week that I love Haiku. Not sure I could ever write one that is any good, but I really enjoy reading them and thinking about them. This one is from a Japanese poet named Basho.

  This snowy morning:

  cries of the crow I despise

  (ah, but so beautiful!)

  See? The snow makes everything beautiful!

  I’m in a room by myself. Sandi backed out at the last second so I’m stuck paying for this double room. I have two beds. I have choices. It’s okay. I also have a lake view. Okay, I have a lake view across a parking lot and it’s partially blocked by a massive chateau but still, it’s a lake view.

  * * *

  Tulah is staying with a couple girlfriends at a small hotel near Lake Louise called Deer Lodge. The Chateau Lake Louise imposes itself at the end of the lake and her hotel is a couple hundred metres down the road from the Chateau. She is excited about being in the mountains. She and two girlfriends were going to ski up behind Mt. Fairview but the avalanche warnings spooked them and eventually chased them into the communal hot tub on top of their hotel. Brenda is majoring in psychology and Justine is a junior writer with a communications company and is now back at university, adding a degree to her experience. They take a couple bottles of wine and some plastic beer cups to the tub and stay there all afternoon. It’s not swanky by a long shot but Tulah has learned that the astounding moments in life are hardly ever swanky – those moments come when you are open to adventure, when you open yourself to life, and playfulness. It snows on and off all afternoon and they watch as the mountains appear, and disappear.

  Later that night, they are at the Walliser Stube, one of the bars in the Chateau Lake Louise. It is a dark, narrow room with chandeliers that were made from the interwoven antlers of deer and elk. They are drinking a bottle of wine – the cheapest wine on the menu because they are all students. Men have already hit on her friends, they’ve had drinks sent over three times. They wind up sitting with a group of accountants from a firm that is on a leadership retreat at the Chateau.

  For the most part, the accountants get nowhere with the women. Brenda wants to stay and see what happens with one of them but her friends scoop her up and put her to bed. She is a compliant drunk. Once they have Brenda tucked in, Justine announces she’s done as well. Tulah says goodnight and crosses the hall to her room. The snow is falling past her window – twisting through the hotel lights and the street lights in the parking lot. Even though she is exhausted, she bundles up and heads for the lake. It’s a ten-minute walk and soon she is at the edge of the lake, with the surrounding mountains looming, the Chateau behind her, and the snow everywhere. The Chateau seems as if it’s huge from where she’s standing, but she knows looking down from the Beehive above Lake Agnes, it is a speck of trivial civilization compared to the surrounding mountains. Just now, with the cold seeping into her bones and the snow coming down harder than before, the Chateau, with its warm yellow light, is a comfort. The quiet is astounding. It aches through her and she feels the aloneness of standing on the hard shore of a frozen lake with snow falling. It’s as if the snow steals any uttered sound and she can see only as far as the lights from the Chateau. The mountains are only an assumption. When the cold starts to penetrate she decides to cut through the Chateau on her way back. She can warm up and then make the walk to her hotel.

  There is a man vacuuming near the entrance and he does not see her as she climbs the stairs to the upper lobby. She hears the music and at first, she thinks it’s a radio, or a stereo in a back room. She keeps walking toward the music and discovers it’s the sound of a piano and there’s a pure melancholy to this music that draws her in. She hesitates at the door to the ballroom. Someone is playing a piano inside. Tulah is tired and cold, and certainly not in the mood for romance. She still has to walk through the snow back to her hotel. But she is curious about this melody.

  An hour before Tulah’s walk to the lake, Ray found the piano in the corner, at the back of an empty ballroom. He was looking for a way through – a way to get outside and find a quiet spot to have a drink; a place out of the snow where he could sit for a while. The piano, covered by a dusty quilted cover almost stopped him from playing but it wasn’t secured. He pushed the cover out of the way and sat down. He had three bottles of beer that the bartender had slipped him. Ray offered to pay her for the beer but she wanted nothing. “They fell and broke,” she said, winking. She passed him the bottles and he slipped them into his jacket pockets. She was flirting. He had the money. It was as if this bartender was looking for an opportunity to be kind, or flirtatious and he was it.

  The piano, a Steinway that was surprisingly in tune, was a joy to play. There was such a clarity to the notes. It sang in the room but was not so crisp that the sound cut. It was full and well rounded. It was neither crystal clear, nor muddy.

  It’s dark in the room. The snow falling through the hotel floodlights and then sneaking through the windows creates a dim veil of something resembling light. He does not need much light to play the piano. He has no idea what he’s doing. Except a riff on the blues – a sort of bastard blues and there are no wrong notes tonight. He has pre-forgiven himself for any wrong notes, and there’s no orde
r to what he plays. It’s just whatever he feels. Ray was playing with a bass line – trying to get his left hand to go unconscious so his right could fool around. He was not much of a piano player at all, but he loved the sound of a piano – the thousands upon thousands of potential combinations, and melodies, and harmonies.

  He loses track of time. The music allows him to drift and so he is lost inside a Bm9 when the light swings into the room, and then disappears. He knows someone has come in, or someone has opened the door and decided not to come in. He doesn’t care. He’s not performing. This is for him. Until this moment, he believed he was alone and this is exactly what he will continue to believe, until there’s a voice, or a face, or both. He hopes whoever it is decides he’s terrible, and leaves as quietly as they entered. Or, if it’s security come to tell him to stop, well, there’s nothing he can do about that.

  Tulah sits in the darkened room, listens, and drifts. She thinks about her grandmother, and the snow. The snow has become something other than what it is and it is because of her grandmother. It’s a duet of joy and missing. After twenty minutes, she approaches the piano and Ray stops playing. It’s too weird for him to keep playing with this woman standing there looking at him – waiting for something. She is wearing a grey tuque and a full-length shearling coat that is too old for her and yet, she makes it work.

  “Who are you?” she says.

  “I’m Ray,” Ray says, smiling.

  “Tulah,” she says. “I’m, I’m sorry I interrupted, it’s just, it was beautiful. What you were playing was beautiful.”

  “It’s just a riff on the blues,” he says. “It’s nothing.”

  “Well, it sounded a bit more than nothing.” She hopes she isn’t gushing as much as she thinks she is.

  Ray looks at her. She’s wearing what looks like pyjama bottoms under her coat.