by Cecelia Frey
He meant it as a joke, but she took him up on it. “You were good looking,” she said. He resented the surprise in her voice. But looking at the photo more carefully, it struck him a soft blow but a blow nevertheless. His skin was not as tight as it once had been and, while he could never be described as balding, his hair was certainly thinner, especially at the temples.
“Were Benjamin and Helena married then?” she asked.
“No. I suppose they were engaged, unofficially, that is. Nothing formal. They eloped eventually. Which didn’t surprise anyone. Ben wouldn’t have stood for much pomp and circumstance and Helena wasn’t the type, either. Sometimes a woman wants a big splash. Esther and I had a huge affair with everyone there but the Pope. We’d been married a few years when this photo was taken. The wedding pictures are in another album. Esther has it all organized.”
Veronica had held the album close to her face and stared with narrowed eyes. He had wondered if there was something wrong with her vision, but he learned later that she had very good vision. She had been studying the pictures of Ben and Helena.
“You were all together,” she said, lowering the album. He thought he detected a wistful tone in her voice.
“The six of us. We even got Amanda and Reuben in this one.”
“Amanda. That’s the one who died?”
“Yes. She went into nursing. But at one point the three sisters were all at university together. That must have been the year Esther was finishing up. And that’s Reuben there, with the crooked grin and twinkly eyes.”
“He has a nice face. He looks like he’d be a nice person.”
“He was. Or I should say, is. He was a farm boy from Saskatchewan. A bit naive, but weren’t we all? He thought he could actually live his dream. To be a folk music star. Another Bob Dylan. Influence a whole generation.”
“So what happened? To Reuben, I mean.”
“He hasn’t become a star but he’s still a musician. He still has a band.”
“So he has lived his dream.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And Amanda stuck with him?”
“Oh yes, she stuck with him all right. It wasn’t an easy life.”
“I’ll bet she didn’t mind. I’ll bet she didn’t mind at all. Not if she loved him.”
“You’re right. And that was the measure of Amanda. They were what we called flower children. Make love not war, live off the land, protect the environment, all that sort of thing. They went to the West Coast. I suppose it was easier to live off the land there. I remember when they left, in a bucket of bolts, dragging all their worldly belongings in a trailer behind them, piled high, tied around with rope so the pots and pans wouldn’t fall out. Brave souls or foolish, I couldn’t decide which. We waved them off at the crack of dawn. We’d partied all night, a warm summer night. Their going-away party. Four in the morning and already light. Esther made Amanda promise to call her the minute they arrived some place, any place.”
George was silent a moment, remembering, his head twisted sideways, staring at the photograph in the album on Veronica’s lap. He suddenly felt sad. “We were going to change the world.”
“What happened?”
“The world resisted, I suppose. Or perhaps we got tired.” He realized that he was sinking into nostalgia. He supposed he was in his cups. “It was all so long ago.” He took the album from Veronica and snapped it shut. “But we managed to have some good times along the way.”
“I mean to your gang.”
“It broke up, as gangs do. Amanda and Reuben left, Helena and Ben’s marriage turned sour, Esther and I were settled in with Delores. Life became serious.”
“Still, you belonged to something, to the university, to each other. It must have been nice.”
George nodded. “The university was much smaller then. Everyone knew everyone else.”
“It’s different now. Impersonal.” Veronica uncrossed her legs.
“Still, you must have friends there.”
“Oh yes.” She took a swallow of wine and set down her glass.
“And what are your aims?”
“Get this degree, then I’m outa there. I’ve had it up to here with academia. I want to live a little.”
Later it was he who had talked her into going to graduate school. Her first response to that had been, “No fucking way.” She was older than he had first thought — twenty-eight and registered as a “mature student.” Coming out of a dysfunctional family set-up — father abusive, mother shrewish, both alcoholic — she had left school at a young age and for several years taken a variety of jobs. A disastrous relationship changed her life. The young man came from an educated professional family. He was a student; she worked at Wal-Mart. He was her first real love and he dumped her. She enrolled at university — perhaps to regain her self-esteem, perhaps to be part of the world to which he belonged, George could only guess at reasons. She did very well. And why not? She was quick and smart.
He had encouraged her to go on in psychology. She had a natural aptitude for studying people and a keen interest in statistics dealing with aberrational behaviour. He taught a course that was a requirement for psychology students in the science faculty whose work would include conducting experiments with animals. He told her about grants and assistantships and her marks were such that she was successful in her applications. The great thing was, as he had explained to her, it allowed them to be more accessible to each other. It kept her at the university, close to him, even in some of his classes. It made their meetings convenient. They could have coffees, even lunches upon occasion, although they were always discreet. George knew how gossip could get started and whip through the department like bush fire. But even to brush elbows in a lab or murmur greetings in a corridor would fill him with an exhilaration, an expectancy of life, which he had thought gone forever and which had been kindled that first evening.
“And how about lovers?” George put the albums aside and felt a small thrill of daring. Was he, George Martin, actually flirting with a student? He must be, as they used to say, three sheets to the wind, whatever the hell that meant.
She seemed disturbed by the question. She leaned forward to pick up her glass, her hand caught it sideways and sent it flying off the table onto the floor where it hit a chair leg and smashed, sending bits of crystal and droplets of wine all over Esther’s immaculate carpet.
She sprang up. “Oh f… my God, look what I’ve done. And that was good crystal, too, I could tell. I’ll buy you another. Just tell me where to get it. And look at the rug. Oh, I’m so sorry.” She went down on her knees and started picking up bits of glass. She jumped up and ran in the direction of the kitchen. She came back with a cloth and again flung herself on her knees. She started dabbing at the beads of red. Fortunately, not much wine had been in the glass.
During all of this, George was ineffectively swaying from leg to leg, protesting, “that’s all right, don’t worry about it … please …it’s not a problem.” When she dashed into the kitchen, he half followed but met her on her way back. Because of the sudden violence, the sudden movement, the sound of breaking glass shattering the quiet composure of only seconds before, he was in a state of confusion.
Then he pulled himself together, bent down and grabbed the hand that was busy dabbing wine into the rug. “Don’t do this.” He pulled her to her feet. He spoke in low soothing tones. “Really, it doesn’t matter. I’ll get the rug cleaned tomorrow.” He was holding her wrist. Her bones felt so fragile. He looked into her eyes. They seemed to flicker with tiny flames. Then he noticed blood. On his hand, her blood had trickled from a cut on her finger. He pulled her hand to his mouth and put his mouth around the cut. His nerves jumped like an electrical current. He felt an exquisite agony, so sharp he almost cried out. He led her back to the sofa, sat down and pulled her down onto his knee. They stared at each other. It was in that moment, some m
inute point of time within that short intense moment, that George made the irrevocable decision to let himself go with the feeling. He had both his arms around her, then he put his legs up on the sofa at the same time lowering himself until he was stretched full length, taking her with him. As they lowered, her legs straightened. He turned her full against him and they lay like that for what seemed to George a long time. He could hear loud thumpings of his heart. Then with half-closed eyes he fumbled for her lips. They kissed slowly and long. The kiss was mingled with the taste of her blood. It drove him into a frenzy.
He fumbled with the top button on her shirt, his mind already busy wondering how he would deal with bra clasps, the bugbear of his youth as he remembered. Much to his relief, she was wearing nothing under the shirt. He enclosed one breast, firm and smooth, with his hot hand. The heat inside his body accelerated. I’m going to burn up, he thought. I shall become a black cinder.
She must have felt his heat through his clothes. “Fire. Fire,” she murmured.
He tried to take off her jeans but that was impossible. However, she cooperated by jumping off the sofa and slithering out of them. He sat up. Her shirt and panties dropped to the floor. She stood before him, tall and slim, yet with full breasts and hips. He heaved out a great shuddering sigh and gathered her to him and pressed his face into her belly. He breathed in her female smell. He pulled her down until she knelt between his knees. Her hands were in his hair. Now his mouth was against her neck. He pressed himself against her, at the same time pressing her to him, feeling her breasts through the fabric of his shirt. “You have to take this off,” she said, starting to undo buttons.
Realizing that the sofa would be inadequate for their needs, he took her hand and led her to the carpet before the fire. At the periphery of his mind, Esther’s shadow threatened but with one master stroke he obliterated it. As he pulled Veronica down with him, as he felt her silken cheek with his rough one, as he tightened his arms around her, a dizzy physical joy washed over him. He put all thought out of his mind, firmly, and for a short time he let himself exist only in the world of sensation. He could not have stopped this thing that was happening, not if he would be killed for it, not if he would be hung and quartered, not if he would have to suffer the torments of hell for eternity. This is all there is, he thought.
Lying naked in Veronica’s arms, her sweat mingling with his and drying into a salty crust on his skin, George felt that if he died that moment, he could directly enter heaven. He had been purified. He was in the state of grace that Esther used to talk about.
He forgot that he did not believe in Esther’s state of grace. He forgot that he did not believe in heaven.
They were on their backs, stretched out and recovering. “You were pretty energetic,” she said.
“For an old man.”
“You’re not old.”
He had a sudden thought. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you. That was wonderful.”
And she did seem to think he was wonderful. She seemed to have genuinely enjoyed the experience, to have enjoyed him. He made an attempt to bring reality in the form of the mundane into their ludicrous and futureless situation. “I’m afraid I’ve put on a bit of weight around the middle,” he ventured.
“I like that in a man,” she said, putting her hand on his hairy mid-section. “I like a man to have substance. My very own cuddly bear.”
He could not believe it, those first days, weeks, months. Lazarus raised from the dead. That was the simple truth of it. He did not intend to deceive Esther. But what could a man do who had been dead and then given a second chance at life? It was a miracle. Veronica was a miracle. He was grateful. To Veronica. To life. He had not expected this.
They still found joy in each other. He was pleasantly surprised that they could come new to each other each time, that with her he could still know ecstasy and that he could still please her so. When they were not quarrelling, they had good times together. Not so long ago she had said, “Loving you makes my life worthwhile. At first maybe I got into it for fun but now it’s what my life is all about. You’re my destiny and you can’t change destiny. A love like ours was meant to be. It can’t stop ever. Can it? Can it?”
“No,” he had said.
“I live for you. To hell with the thesis, I don’t care about the thesis, all I care about is you. You feel the same way. Don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” he had said.
George was returned to the immediate world by someone passing on the walk. He was on the campus, crossing from the jogging path along the top of the river embankment to his residential area. He was winding his way around the various buildings: biological sciences, chemistry, physics. Then he was on the walkway fronting the famous old halls: Assiniboia, Athabasca, Pembina. George loved this part of the campus, the old part, with its huge trees and old brick and stone buildings. This was his turf. These were his people. He nodded to several students, to one colleague who was wearing jeans and had long white hair and a youthful face, to another in a dark suit who had short iron-grey hair and a pouch face. Then he was crossing a large parking lot, then a newer section of campus, then a thoroughfare, busy at that time of morning with rush hour traffic. He had to stop and wait for a red light to change. Then he was on the familiar streets of his neighbourhood. There was the small park where he used to take Delores in the warm evenings and push her on the swing. There was the corner store.
The area between his home and the university, George thought of as his. He had walked this sidewalk for so many years. He was not unaware of the irony in the fact that Veronica lived on the other side, the student side, of the campus. He had thought before about the difference between the two areas, one upholding the status quo of solid professionals, the other inhabited by transients living erratic, unstable, financially insecure existences. How had he managed to cross that barrier? How had he managed to live in two such different worlds? How had he, a faithful family man, a respected man in his community, admired at the university, how had he cold-bloodedly divided his mind in two, as he might have divided an amoeba in the lab, and built a solid wall between the parts?
George had always been able to focus without distraction on the immediate. By the time he turned the corner onto his street, he had put Veronica on a back burner in his mind and engaged his thought fully with the idea of Esther. Far down where the street curved he could see his house, two-storey, white, with gable windows and green trim. His eyes travelled the street itself, the sidewalks, the houses of his neighbours and friends. Together, they had planted saplings, laid sod, raised families. He could not give this up, that was the long and the short of it.
He’d had his fun. Two and a half years of it. Now the shit had hit the fan, as they used to say. Fifteen minutes ago, when Veronica had said, “shut the door,” the party had ended.
“What is it?” His heart had beat rapidly. He knew she was going to tell him something unpleasant. “Are you going away?” She had talked about this, about applying for jobs once she had her degree and that the jobs of preference were in the East. He felt sick to his stomach. He vowed to never again eat another chocolate-coated oatmeal cookie. “Have you gotten a job?”
“How could I have a job when I don’t have the degree yet.”
“They’re conducting job interviews for potential graduates. Right now. On campus. They’re already looking at the fall.” George scarcely knew what he was saying. He was thinking, if she gets a job somewhere else, I’ll have to follow her.
“I haven’t applied for any of those jobs. I’m not interested in those jobs.”
“What is it?” he said.
“Shut the door and I’ll tell you.”
“What is it?”
He heard a noise behind him in the corridor. Someone came along the hall and went into the communal bathroom. He stepped quickly back into the room and shut the door. �
��What is it?” he said again.
Veronica looked him full in the face out of the sides of her eyes. Her eyes were measuring him, challenging him. “First, I want to ask you something.”
George braced himself as though getting ready to take a blow. “What?”
“I want you to promise that you’ll give me an honest answer.”
George’s eyes darted. His mind shifted as though it were slithering sideways in his skull.
“You’re already wondering how you can get out from under an honest answer, aren’t you? Your mind is setting itself up to spew out the response that will evade the issue rather than the one that is straight. Georgie, you would have made a great politician.”
George turned to leave. “There’s no point in me staying here and being insulted.”
“Calm down. Just try and give an honest response for once in your life. For once in your life don’t sift through the options until you come up with the most personally advantageous answer. Do you think you can do that?”
He said nothing. He willed his face to be blank, impassive. He was dealing with a different Veronica, one who had collected herself, who was able to collect herself. He felt like a father who suddenly realizes his child has grown up.
“It’s not that difficult. Don’t think before you answer. Say the first thing that comes into your head. Pretend it’s a game. You like games. You’re good at games.”
His chest felt very tight. Maybe he’d have a heart attack right here on the threadbare carpet, she’d have to call an ambulance. Serve her right.
“Ready?” her voice was cold, level, as though she were conducting an experiment and he was her subject.
He would not dignify this ludicrous scene by speaking, but he did look her squarely, if somewhat balefully, in the eye.