“So your marriage wasn’t fine?”
“What?”
“When you called the day after the hockey game, I told you my marriage was fine and you said your marriage was just fine too and that’s why it ended.” He remembers this conversation because it tipped him over. It caused him to question, and doubt.
“That was a clever thing to say wasn’t it?”
“So why did your husband try to kill you in a Thai restaurant.”
“The usual…you know? Husbands and wives fight sometimes. And sometimes, things get out of hand.”
“Okay, for the record, strangling your wife is not the usual. But you already know this. And why have I never heard about this before?”
“It’s not something I like to talk about. And anyway, you and I don’t have those kinds of conversations.”
“Okay. Let me ask you a direct question. Why do you think your husband tried to kill you?”
“He was using me to shelter money, and my name was standing as the only contact for a couple numbered companies. I felt he was taking advantage of me. I felt used.”
“Okay.”
“So I transferred most of the money into my own account in the Cayman Islands, for safe-keeping.” She pauses, takes a breath. “And he took offence.”
“You have a bank account in the Cayman Islands?”
“I have two accounts in the Cayman Islands and one in Luxembourg. I told him over dinner. He didn’t like it.”
“So how much did you transfer?” Ray realizes he’s likely pushing it but he had no idea about this side of her. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’m just curious. Probably too curious.”
“Nine hundred and sixty,” she says.
“Your husband tried to kill you over a thousand bucks?” There’s no way a guy tosses his wife onto a table and tries to kill her for a thousand dollars. There must be something else. Ray is thinking the guy was just a controlling asshole. It had to be something other than that paltry amount of money.
She giggles. “Thousand,” she says. “Nine hundred and sixty thousand.”
He tries to grasp that number, and what it might mean to have it and then lose it. “Did you…did you have to give that money back?”
“What money?”
“The money you transferred?”
“What money?” she says. “The money that was in my bank account? The money I wasn’t supposed to know about? That money?”
Ray has the impulse to check his bank accounts, to make sure his paltry investments are still there. “So what happened after the restaurant?”
“A couple things. First, I had a difficult time convincing the police that my husband and I were role playing – that we liked kinky sex and this was part of our thing. I saved his ass. They really wanted to put him in jail.”
“And second?”
“He moved out and I called my brother in New York,” she says. “I’m going to eat a banana.”
“What?”
“I’m going to eat a banana. If you want to go to the café and eat something, you can. But keep talking to me.”
Ray looks at the café and shrugs. He can get a drink there, and maybe something to eat. He would certainly like a drink.
* * *
He sits under the awning, close to the windows and his waitress is young. She is wearing a tight black dress and heels. Ray notices all the waitresses at Café Americana are wearing tight black dresses and heels. He asks for a glass of pinot noir and she does not hesitate to tell him what they have by the glass, and to point out her favourite. Ray orders a nine-ounce glass.
“Is she cute?” Nancy asks.
“She’s hideously ugly,” Ray says.
“So, gorgeous then.”
Ray thinks the waitress has lovely curves, and her eyes are curious and kind. She is not so young that this job is just an inconvenient stop on the way to some better place. There was nobody else sitting on the patio and this emptiness makes it beautiful because it’s filled with potential. Ray decides this café could use some blankets for the chairs. When he was in Zurich a few years ago, Ray noticed there were neatly folded blankets on the chairs at the outside tables of the cafés and restaurants – and people used them. The blankets folded over each chair made the cafés welcoming.
“You should order some food,” Nancy says. “You have to eat.”
“And once I’ve had a bite to eat, and finished my wine, I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. I can’t keep this up indefinitely.”
“Did you say I can’t keep up this infidelity?”
“No. That’s not...” Ray wonders if she’s threatening now.
Ray sighs. “Yes, I’ve been unfaithful. You haven’t been unfaithful to anybody. I actually don’t need to be reminded about my less-than-upstanding character.”
The curvy waitress looks over at him from behind the bar and he holds up his wine glass – nods for another.
A woman carrying a black poodle walks by the café. A man with a large backpack rides by on a bicycle. A woman wearing a sweater that falls to her ankles drags two children by their stick arms down the sidewalk. She is in a hurry; her children are not. Ray gets a different view of the street from where he is sitting. He can see the line of elms and the way the elevation rises up toward the west. The trees blur the idea of perspective – they meld together in a mass of green and pending yellow.
* * *
Seven weeks ago, Ray met with the engineers about the elms on a different street. It was a 7:30 a.m. meeting. He did not like morning meetings and he was a bit grumpy about this one
Ray sat alone on one side of a boardroom table. On the other side, there were three engineers. Adam Farnsworth was the executive director – the buck stopped with him. He was a bald, short man with thick-framed glasses who loved to get down to business. He was intolerant of long, imprecise meetings. He wore the title of engineer, and the iron ring of that calling, with pride – and he had a reputation as a curious and passionate problem solver.
“I’m not just talking about this one project,” Ray said. “I’m looking for a solution for every project.”
“What you’re asking is not feasible.” It was one of the junior engineers, a new guy named Charlie Masterson who brought the biggest pile of paper to the meeting – as if there was an award for the person with the biggest pile of paper on the table in front of them. Charlie was young and intense and fashionable in his checked shirt, skinny tie and narrow trousers, and this made him unlike any engineer Ray knew.
“It needs to be feasible,” Ray said. “I’m looking for a solution to a problem. This city needs to build sidewalks in mature neighbourhoods without killing the trees that line those sidewalks.”
Charlie picked up a binder. “We adhere to the guidelines…”
“…I’ve read your guidelines.”
“You read the guidelines?” Charlie said. He either doesn’t believe Ray, or he’s impressed.
“Well, let me see. That binder you’re waving around the room is the Sidewalk Design, Construction and Maintenance Manual – a best practice for sustainable municipal infrastructure, by the National Association of Construction Engineers. Those guidelines talk about attractive and functional sidewalks that promote the benefits of walking and that decrease our reliance on automobiles. They talk about designing sidewalks for the mobility and visually impaired. They talk about strollers, and bicycles, and construction recommendations. Space recommendations. Concrete specs. Asphalt specs. The guide tells you how to build a great sidewalk but it never mentions the value and beauty of an eighty-year-old tree.”
Charlie looked at his boss, Adam Farnsworth, who was nodding silently.
“We do our best to save as many trees as we can,” Charlie said.
“I know you do, but I think we c
an do better. The guidelines don’t acknowledge mature neighbourhoods with mature trees and that’s a problem. There’s a thing called the protected root zone and your sidewalks – the way they’re designed now – infringe on that zone, every single time.”
“There’s no other way to build a proper sidewalk…we have to dig.”
“Look, right now, the way we replace sidewalks in mature neighbourhoods is like performing a surgery where the operation goes perfectly but the patient dies.”
“What?”
“I’m asking for you to build a brilliant sidewalk and save the trees that line that sidewalk. I think we need to consider the bigger picture when it comes to neighbourhoods. An eighty-year-old elm is worth more than a perfectly constructed sidewalk.”
“What?”
“Trees. They’re not mentioned in the guidelines. Not one mention of trees. I’m thinking it was an oversight.”
“Adam?” Charlie said. “If we don’t do this right, we’ll be back in ten years replacing sidewalks. Maybe less than ten years.”
Adam played with the ring on his pinky finger, twirling it back and forth.
Ray smiled. “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”
“At this moment, you’re asking for something impossible. And impossible is always expensive. We haven’t even run the numbers. Have you considered the cost?”
“Look Charlie, I don’t need an answer right now. I just want you to take it to a couple meetings and see if you can solve the problem.” Ray paused, remembering it was easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. “You’re the best engineers in the city,” he said, “if not the country. And I need your help.”
“We’ll look at it again,” Charlie said. “That’s all I can say.”
“Before you go, I have something for you. It’s a report on the benefits of mature trees. It talks a lot about the fact that the shade from urban street trees can add as much as sixty percent to the life of asphalt. Something to do with reduced daily heating and cooling.” Ray handed each of the engineers a copy of the report.
The engineers stood up and so did Ray. He shook their hands as they left the room. Ray honestly did not know if he made an impression. Adam Farnsworth was the one he needed to convince and he was silent during the meeting.
Ray was alone in the conference room. He stood in the window and looked down. He has always liked the view from the forty-second floor. There are some mornings when he comes in and the sunrise is there in his window. Nine times out of ten, Ray would swirl his chair around and look at it. It was his meditation on morning light. Even though there might be a few executive assistants stomping into work in their runners and dresses, they knew not to bother him. No one came to his door with a good morning until mid-morning and by then he’d be getting ready to go out on one of the trucks with a crew to work with trees.
* * *
Ray decides he can do this – he can convince Nancy to go to bed and wake up in the morning, and then, to keep moving forward. He is realistic and reasonable about it and he knows he can convince her that it’s logical to stay alive. “Let me tell you something,” Ray says. “There is nothing pretty about what you’re talking about. There’s a horrifying, terrifying, ugly fall and then a splat, like someone dropping a sack of potatoes.”
“Why are you…what are you doing?”
“I want you to understand that thirty-nine stories is a long time.”
“I know where I am, Ray. Why are you telling me this? Why are you ruining this for me?”
“Because there is nothing beautiful about death and death is what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t care. I won’t care.”
“I just want you to understand that this is an ugly business you’re contemplating.”
“I know what I’m doing,” she says.
“Good, because I’m going to leave soon.”
Nancy is quiet and Ray is hoping her silence is a tacit approval, or at least, understanding.
“Did you eat your banana?”
“Yes. I ate a banana. Are you going to eat something?”
“No. Just wine for me.”
“Don’t you think you should have something to eat? When was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t want any food.” Even he can hear the hard edge to his voice. He is not in the mood to be mothered.
“I think it will snow today, later, tonight,” she says.
“And now we’re talking about the weather?”
“Well it’s better than being morbid and disgusting.”
“Nancy, I did not tell you it would be a good idea to jump off your balcony.”
“So? What does that mean?”
“It means that if anyone is morbid here, it’s the woman in the mirror.”
“I love it when it’s snowing,” she says.
“Hmmm,” he says. It’s more a grunt than anything. He can’t believe his good fortune – two women in his life who love the snow.
“What does that mean?”
“What?”
“That sound you just made. That grunt.”
“Nothing. I was just acknowledging your love of the snow.”
“But I don’t love the snow. I only love it when it’s snowing.”
Chapter 12
Tulah at 29
Tulah’s Snow Journal
Monday, March 22, 2004 #267
I’m watching it through a hospital window and it’s blowing sideways. It’s slanted and hard…I don’t want this baby to be born into snow like this. The snow started after we got to the hospital, and I insisted that Ray take me out into it because I had to feel it on my face before she was born. The nurses looked at us like we were crazy. Ray told them I loved snow. It’s true. I do love the snow. One of the nurses asked how far apart my contractions were and I think I yelled at her, ‘They’re not my contractions! They’re just contractions! They don’t belong to me! Now, I’m going out into the snow, for a minute. I’ll be right back.’ The nurse insisted on coming with us. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Put on a coat. It’s snowing!’
Outside the main door of the women’s pavilion, with a nurse and Ray, the snow changed. It was as if God inhaled and then exhaled slowly. The snow was falling down steadily. It was gentle and kind. As if someone was listening to the inside of my head. Of course we all looked up.
I asked the nurse what her name was.
She looked at me. ‘Frances Marie,’ she said.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I thought about Grandma Frannie. Her face in the snow. The taste of her tea. The feel of her hand in mine. Then I got whacked by another contraction – like a jolt of electricity through my body. It was one massive spasm. I think I moaned. I couldn’t help it. Frances Marie’s face switched from a kind of wonder-filled bliss, to all business and I was wheeled into the hospital and the birthing show began.
I do not remember the pain. I have words to describe it, but the pain itself is not a real memory. It was painful, but the actual pain? Nothing.
Patience Marie is born at 3:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of the Holy Trinity Hospital on Spadina Avenue. Around thirty-six weeks, they discovered she was turned around in the birth canal so they performed an external cephalic version, which applies pressure to the abdomen and manually manipulates the baby into a head-down position. It worked and though there was a risk of the baby rotating back into a breech position, Patience stayed put.
Tulah wanted to do it without drugs and that’s exactly what happened. She and Ray breathed together, and she squeezed his hand until he couldn’t feel it anymore. They played Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, over and over.
Patience came into the world and Ray felt a jolt of protectiveness for his daughter. He was not expecting this protectiveness to be as intense as it was. It extended not just for his daughter, but for all daughters. All girls, and you
ng women and women in general. He could feel an instinct to shelter and protect slip into place.
The baby is settled beside them in a crib and they are exhausted. Ray crawls onto the bed beside Tulah and they both drift off. At some point, a nurse brings a warm blue blanket and covers Ray. She is so gentle. He feels it but can’t will himself to wake up and say thank you. The gratefulness he feels for the blanket gets melded together with his gratefulness for Tulah, and a healthy baby daughter and the murky subconsciousness pulling him down into sleep.
In the morning, Ray kisses Tulah’s forehead. He kisses his daughter and walks three blocks through virgin snow to a Starbucks. The air is wet-grey and cool, and he is happy making the first imprints in the snow. On his way back, he can see a rabbit has crossed his path. He wonders if this is lucky – a sign of some kind. He decides it’s a good thing.
“Can we make one of her names – Frannie?”
“Patience Marie Frannie Roberts-Daniels?”
“Too much?”
“A little, I think. But we can go back to the drawing board with the name.”
“No,” Tulah says. “I love Patience Marie.”
When Tulah drifts into sleep, Ray picks Patience up and holds her against his chest. He wants her to feel his breathing – the rhythm of his life, something. She is swaddled and sleeping, and after a while he starts to sing – a low and soft rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider.
* * *
Sarah was born about a year later, on April 16th. The sky was the colour of zinc and it was raining. On the way to the hospital, the windshield wipers working as hard as they could, Tulah wondered about precipitation and giving birth, and how she and her babies fit with snow and rain. They get out of the car and the rain smell is a heady balm.
They played William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices throughout the labour. It was if they were walking in a dream, or through a dream. The music made it feel holy. When Sarah was safely delivered, and the cord cut, Tulah burst into laughter. She laughed and cried and it threatened to be an incontrollable laughter. A nurse whose name was Grace brought her a cup of chamomile tea and she calmed down until she was just crying.
This Is All a Lie Page 16