by Cecelia Frey
“Cause and effect. A causes B. And if you can’t go back and change A, you may as well learn to live with B. What I’m saying is, past behaviour doesn’t matter so much as present behaviour.”
As George spoke, Helena watched his face intently, which was easy to do because he did not look at her directly. It must be the accident or the life she had been living since then. He must know that she had been sleeping around, that she habitually drank herself into a state of oblivion. He must feel embarrassed for her, uncomfortable with her disgusting life.
She saw upon closer scrutiny that he did look older than in the old days. The skin around his eyes was puffy, his eyelids had begun to droop. His hair was greying, his mouth a thinner line. But aging suited him; he was now the experienced man of the world, the distinguished professor. Even though he was wearing jogging clothes and sipping coffee in his kitchen, she could sense power of intellect and position. And that voice! Soft, husky, syllables rolled off his tongue. Italian had been his first language. His father had been a landed immigrant in Montreal who had great success in the restaurant business. A woman could fall in love with that voice, she thought. When they were students, she had been half in love with George herself. Now, in middle age, he was still a sexy man.
He had stopped talking. She became conscious of a silence between them. “What time does Esther get up these days?”
“I don’t know. I’m usually out jogging. What are you two up to today?”
“Not much, I hope. But likely Esther has an agenda.”
“You don’t sound terribly enthusiastic.”
What would he do if she suddenly blurted out, ‘If only I didn’t find everything so meaningless! Nothing seems worth doing — working, shopping, eating.’ She was suddenly curious about him. Here was a man who had life by the throat, who seemed happy and content with his lot. How did he, anyone, do it? He had his work, of course. George had always been deeply involved in his work. And he had Esther. Anyone who had Esther could not help but be among the blessed. Still, it must be more than that. Happy people must think a certain way. George had never needed the idea of a deeper meaning to life; he didn’t need to make a connection between the ordinary and the profound. He didn’t need the profound. An image of the Cave flashed through Helena’s mind: the dim interior, the smoke haze, the disc jockey on Fridays, with his stroboscopic lights casting brilliant flashes of purple and chartreuse and coral on the walls around them against which the figures at the tables were outlined as shadows. “I remember from our Cave days, you believed in free will and freedom of choice and that people should act as they pleased without worrying about repercussions from a higher being.”
“Did I say that? One talks so much nonsense when one is young.”
“The arguments we had!”
“The beer we consumed!”
“But you must have a personal philosophy?”
George furrowed his brow. He looked out the window into the back yard. “No…” he said. “Not really. Just the usual. You know, trying to do one’s best work.”
“Ben was stuck with his stern Jewish God whom he tried to believe was dead. But his sense of a moral universe wouldn’t go away. Only now it was man’s responsibility. What a burden! I wonder if he still thinks that way.”
“It’s all so gloomy. The moral good, the terrible burden of choice, the responsibility of defining one’s own nature, etcetera. I don’t think it matters much. We try to do the best we can, of course, not to hurt people and so on, but quite simply, we are born and we die and that’s the end of it. Driven, compelled, of course, by our reproductive forces. The thing is to try and have a pleasant journey through.”
“So you don’t feel the need to save your immortal soul.”
“As a scientist, I can’t believe in a soul. The eyes are the window to the soul, the poet says. I’m afraid I see only eyes, molecules, genetic material. Well, a woman’s eyes, that’s different.”
“I wish I was that way. For me, if life doesn’t have some deeper meaning, then why bother to do anything?
“Can’t you just do the thing for its own sake? But I suspect you’re one of those people who need to believe there’s a deeper meaning.”
“Maybe. I don’t want to believe that Amanda’s life was nothing more than her existence as a biped on this planet for thirty-eight years. But, also, when you think of it, life has to be more than meaningless. It’s too perverse to be meaningless.”
“I suppose I believe the meaning of life is just that, what we experience while we’re alive on this planet, and I try to see to it that my experiences are happy.”
“But what about suffering?”
George shrugged. “I suppose my philosophy, if we want to glorify my shoddy ideas with such a grand term, is that as individuals we must try not to suffer. I might even say we have a duty not to suffer. Our job is to pass on genetic material. An evolved position would be to pass on the best genetic material possible. I realize that sounds like the cold-blooded scientist. But we’re not likely to attain that goal any time soon. Presently, human beings tend to pass on genetic material in a haphazard chaotic manner that totally lacks any intellectual component.”
“But what if you’re the sort of person who can’t help yourself suffering?” asked Helena who was not interested in genetic material, but was certainly interested in suffering.
“That’s it. Some people can’t help themselves. I happen to be able to help myself. So I do.”
“It sounds like a nice philosophy. Comfortable anyway.”
“Yes, I do believe in comfort. Why not? Why be uncomfortable if you don’t need to be?”
“Ben would say that being uncomfortable is the meaning of life. That through being uncomfortable we might learn to be good. So we should ask ourselves questions that make us feel uncomfortable.” Helena smiled without humour. “What a grim pair we must have made. Except in those days, the first years of our marriage, we hadn’t come up against any real discomfort. We didn’t know what was lurking around the corner. Ben’s mother…”
“There you go. You have to stop that. There was nothing lurking around the corner. Things simply happened. People do get sick and die. Ben’s mother got cancer and died. Why invest it with more meaning than that? You and Ben are people who invest moments with meaning and out of those moments create a mythology.”
“But you do believe that we can make choices?”
“Oh yes. For instance, I chose to take on more administration responsibilities.”
“And the effect of that is that you become an administrator rather than a scientist.”
“And then one simply has to live with that. Or change it back if you want to or if you can.”
“But what if that was the wrong choice?”
“Well, in this case, I could probably reverse my decision to some extent. But I tend to believe there are no wrong choices. Only different choices. And then you get onto a different path, which may be equally good. Or bad.”
“I guess my mind can’t get over the idea that there are wrong choices.” And I made one, she thought. And the world doesn’t forgive wrong choices. In fact, it seems to delight in them, takes pleasure in turning the screw. We live in a malevolent universe. She didn’t mean to say the word “evil” out loud. It sounded positively fundamentalist. But it slipped out. “Evil surrounds us. It gets inside of us.”
George did seem somewhat dismayed by that. “Oh … I wouldn’t say…”
“I used to think evil was an idea dreamed up by witch doctors and such. But now, I don’t know.”
“Nonsense.”
“Maybe you can contact evil like you do the flu.”
“Now you are fantasizing.”
“Maybe an exorcist makes sense.”
“I’m afraid I’m not up on exorcists. Do they have to be saints or something?”
“Not saints. I t
hink they’re special people who are somehow given the power.”
“Power?”
“Of goodness. They can draw evil out of a person and take it upon themselves and then, ideally, destroy it with their goodness. Some people do have that power within them. Their goodness is stronger than evil.”
“Have you told Esther? About the evil part and the exorcist business?”
“No.”
“I’m not sure you should. She’s very impressionable.”
“No, I won’t say that to her. I don’t really believe it myself,” she lied. She didn’t want to alarm him into thinking he had a crackpot under his roof. “I’ve simply come home to see my big sister.” She’s part of the process I need to go through, she thought. The process of dying. But she had no intention of letting Esther know that, let alone George.
“Yes, I think it was a good idea to come home.”
“And Ben. Do you ever see Ben around the university?” For Benjamin, too, was part of the process.
George looked down as though he were studying his empty coffee cup. “Occasionally.”
Helena kept her eyes steady on George’s face. “How is he?”
“He seems fine. We don’t talk much. Just to say hello. He’s been reinstated. Only as a sessional. But he has three courses this semester.”
“They started him out with one, on a trial basis.”
George seemed surprised. “You’ve talked with him then?”
“He came to see me in the hospital. After the accident.”
George was silent. He seemed to be waiting for her to either pursue the topic or not, as she wished. When she did not, he straightened and set his cup down on the counter. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here. You know I don’t mind if you’re a fright in the morning.” He smiled at her across the room, his eyes on her chin, as if he found something fascinating there. “We haven’t had a house guest for some time.”
“Esther said in the car last night that Delores didn’t come home last Christmas. She has a new beau and they went to his family in Hamilton.”
“Yes, she seems quite taken with this one.”
“Esther said they’re living together. What do you think of that? Are you a modern father?”
“Oh yes, what else can you be? All you can do these days is go with the flow. If I voiced disapproval she’d go ahead and do what she wanted anyway.”
“Well, I’m no expert. I certainly don’t know anything about raising children. What does Esther think?”
“Oh, Esther wants Delores to get married. She wants to throw the big shindig. She wants Delores to be safe, secure, and happy.”
“That’s Esther for you,” said Helena. “To think that marriage and children automatically result in safety, security, and happiness.” But why wouldn’t she think that? she thought. That’s been her experience.
George looked at his watch. “I should be off. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t want to interfere with anyone’s fitness regime.”
George moved to the door. “There’s more coffee. And of course, help yourself to anything you can find. There’s cereal in the pantry, bread here in the box for toast…”
“Thanks. I can’t face food in the morning.”
“I usually breakfast when I get back.” He took down a jacket from a shelf and put his arms into the sleeves. He bent over to change his slippers for runners, then straightened, slightly red-faced. Hand on door handle he paused, staring ahead through the glass. “What I’d say is that usually we act in a way that best ensures our own survival.” He opened the door. “At least the survivors do.” He closed the door behind him.
Through the early morning half light Helena watched George make his way along the walk. At the end of it, he slipped on a patch of ice, flung out his arms, righted himself, and disappeared around the garage into the lane.
The snow was almost gone. The wide verandah, the barbecue against the house, hooded for winter, the curved walk out to the garden and lane, were bare, while the patchy snow on the lawn either side of the walk was crusted. Last night the snow had come down in large wet flakes. Helena saw windshield wipers. The image regurgitated, became bile in her mouth, mixed with the taste of bitter coffee — last night, Esther navigating the small car, slipping and sliding along the bleak treeless streets, windshield wipers scraping splats of icy water, windshield wipers whipping sheets of rain. No, she must not think of windshield wipers.
Instead she thought of the bottle of pills in her purse. She thought of these with longing, as an exhausted person thinks of bed and sleep, or a starving person food, or an alcoholic the next drink. But first she had to talk to Ben.
The last time she had woken up on a ratty couch in an abysmal room with the latest man she had found to abuse her, the last time she had faced herself in a brown clouded mirror over a rusted sink and dripping drainpipes, the last time she had observed fresh bruises on her jaw and around the socket of an eye, Amanda had intervened. Amanda’s flesh superimposed itself on her bones, covering purple bruises with her own unmarked skin, and at the eyes, covering anguish with grey clarity. “Ben came to see me last summer.” Amanda’s voice, Amanda’s gentle voice, had come out of the face in the mirror. She had to find Ben and make him tell her what Amanda had said.
As some people are visited by saints, she had been visited by Amanda, and Amanda had directed her to Ben. Helena had to know what had happened between Ben and Amanda during their visit. She had convinced herself that there was significance in it. It was just too strange, Ben going to see Amanda. It was not the sort of thing he would do. He never imposed on people that way. He hated driving. He had never owned a car. Something must have directed him to Amanda. Amanda must have said something to him, something about her, something that she could decipher as a message of forgiveness. Helena hung on to this conviction. Without that message she could not die. To die in the state she was in would be to spend eternity in a black vacuum of torture. Amanda, through Ben, was her only chance.
II. VERONICA
“NO FUCKING WAY!”
“Esther…”
“Don’t say that name to me. I hate that name. I can’t stand that name.”
“How can we discuss…”
“There is no discussion. I’m going to phone Esther today.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“Won’t I?”
“It’ll destroy Esther.”
“Why the fuck should I care what happens to Esther? Esther is a fat sloth hanging upside down from a dead tree.”
“Veronica, please…”
George and Veronica were in bed in her room in what had once been a grand old house near the university. Long ago it had been partitioned into rooms that were rented out to students — it reminded George of a rabbit warren. Veronica’s room was better than some. It was on the second storey and opened onto a balcony overlooking a street lined with old poplars. In summer it was surrounded by bowers of branches, the leaves reaching from the street into the balcony, giving George the impression that he was floating in a green airy glade. In winter, he seemed to be floating in a white fairy tale wonderland. Was this why, when he was here with Veronica, he felt that he was experiencing freedom? It was the same feeling he’d had as a young man not yet caught in the stream that would decide his life for him. It was the feeling of being young and behind the wheel of a new sports convertible, driving with the top down on a summer evening with your best love of the moment by your side.
In other ways, however, his relationship with Veronica placed him firmly into a dungeon, a conspiracy of deceit that weighed heavily on his shoulders. He longed to be free of the murkiness that surrounded him. He longed to be reborn into the clean, clear, innocent light of day. He shifted his body into a more comfortable position on the sagging mattress. Sometimes, they had a good laugh about the mattres
s, but not today. “I’ll have to think of something,” he said as much to himself as to Veronica.
“It’d better be soon. This has been going on long enough.”
“Do you have to yell? Don’t you have a normal tone of voice?”
“Screaming’s the only thing that works with you.”
“Can’t we be reasonable human beings?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you always win. When we have a rational discussion, you twist things so you always win.”
“I’m telling you, I need more time. What’s twisting in that? It’s a simple request.”
“I can’t stand this one more day!”
“Shhh. My God, the neighbours. They’ll think I’m killing you.”
“That’s what you’d like to do. Destroy the evidence.”
“Don’t be crazy.”
“You drive me crazy. I’m going crazy here in this room!”
“You should go out more. Go out with your friends.”
“Pass me off on my friends, so you can be rid of me. You don’t want to be with me any more. You don’t think I’m fun any more.”
“Fighting isn’t fun. Can’t we be kind to each other?”
“At least when I’m fighting I know I’m alive. Not just being someone’s doormat.”
“I’m tired of fighting.”
“You’ve had your fun and now you want out.”
“I don’t want out.”
“Then why are you looking at your watch? I’m tired of you looking at your watch. I’m tired of you saying that you’ve got to go. I’m tired of being Dr. Martin’s affair.”
“Don’t overdramatize. You have a life.”
“Some life. Being grateful for the dregs of your life.”
“Esther and I…”
“I told you I don’t want to hear about Esther. For me, Esther doesn’t exist.”
“You’re right, she doesn’t exist. Not here in our world. But Esther and I have been together a long time.”
“Time for a change.”