by Cecelia Frey
The next morning, a glorious sunny morning in spring, George woke up in his new kingsize bed, minus the satiny quilts and cushions, and was immediately enveloped in a shroud of gloom. This happened some mornings, he didn’t know why. He thought it might be a dream he could not remember, only a feeling remained, a sad melancholy longing for something vague, unnameable, out of reach. He had never given much credence to dreams, never used to remember them. But lately he’d been having a recurring dream of loss. The loss was connected to a deadline, and a great deal of anxiety surrounded the situation. He had to give a lecture, catch a train, an airplane. He had to find what he had lost in order to meet the deadline. He had to find his notes before the lecture began, he had to find his suitcase before the flight took off. He would run from place to place in frantic search. The dream had no resolution. He always woke up before the class started or the plane left.
He wondered if he had drunk too much at yesterday’s department party or later in the evening when he and Veronica had celebrated privately. He’d had to drink most of the bottle of champagne since Veronica wasn’t drinking much these days. He dismissed the thought. He never suffered from hangovers. He didn’t have a heavy head. All he had was the residue of a dream.
George malingered beneath the warm sheets, beside the warm body of Veronica, Polly curled into her curve. Often she brought the child into their bed in the night, a holdover from breastfeeding days when she said it was easier than to sit up with her. In another curl, inside Veronica, was the new one to be born in the fall. Soon he would have two to babysit.
It was his morning for the familial duty. Veronica as a teaching assistant had to instruct a class at ten. At two o’clock this afternoon he had a meeting with a grad student and, of course, he would look in at the lab, but he had no teaching duties during the spring semester so his time was flexible.
He looked at the red numbers of his bedside clock. He would give himself ten more minutes max, then he would jump up and face the new-fangled coffee station Veronica had recently invested in. Its little packets of various strengths and flavours and its complicated procedure of dialling the brew was a formidable challenge first thing in the morning.
The bright morning sunshine streamed through the window with nothing to intervene. The elm that had bounced its branches against the window had been cut down. The robins that had lived there had fled. George missed the elm, the floating leaves, their particular shade of new spring green against a cerulean sky. He missed the robins that used to wake him at three in the morning with their rising of the sun song allowing him to snuggle back into the blankets with the pleasureable knowledge that he didn’t have to get up for three hours. However, Veronica wanted a vegetable garden, she wanted to puree carrots and peas so that Polly would not be ingesting the additives and chemicals in commercial baby food. The roots of the huge tree discouraged a garden, its shade was a further detriment to plant growth. The tree had to go.
Esther had to go. A giant garage sale was organized — dishes, pots, pans, knickknacks, including the Royal Doulton minus the shattered Lady Anne. Esther was consulted, through Delores. She stated that she wanted nothing. Veronica stated that the whole place had to be repainted, refurbished, redecorated. Although George liked the house and its convenience to his work, he thought it would be easier to sell and buy a modern place in the suburbs.
“Oh yes, you’d like that wouldn’t you, hide me away some place where you don’t have to introduce me to the neighbours,” had been Veronica’s response. He surmised that she did not want to give Esther the satisfaction of forcing her out, but an even stronger motivation in her wanting to stay seemed to be that even though she hated Esther, she loved the house. She had never had a house before, not even as a child when she had lived in basement suites and trailers with her deficient parents. And this particular house in an old established neighbourhood of professionals reeked of a certain class to which she wanted to belong, a class exuding respectability, prestige, and social stability.
Such outbursts from Veronica were a source of dismay in George. Why was she still so scrappy when there was no longer a reason for it, when in nearly every issue she seized victory? Had she become so used to fighting to get along in the world that it had become her modus operandi? Or was it that fighting had been a fundamental part of their old relationship, that the sexual tension it aroused had given their union its bite, its excitement. If so, in his opinion, for the new relationship to work, they had to find a replacement.
In the end they fell into a sort of verbal sparring, keeping a light teasing quality in their voices while each knew there was an element of truth behind words and tone. But before they arrived at that solution they’d had to go through early days, when the new relationship had not yet taken hold, when it was being tested, and neither of them was sure how it would turn out. They did not voice their uncertainty, that would have been too dangerous, but they approached each other with a measured wariness, almost a shyness. Because their old relationship had consisted mainly of the physical, they did not know each other. Even Veronica seemed to realize that a wild romantic fling was quite different than settling down into domestic bliss. Without voicing it, they knew they had to reinvent their relationship.
Their first summer in the house, Veronica threw herself into the renovation project with frenzied zeal. She wanted no trace of Esther left behind. She hated Esther all the more for letting her win by default. The enemy had simply left the field, left her without anyone to fight. She did not completely trust George’s feelings in the matter. Would George have left Esther if Esther hadn’t left first? When she broached the subject to George he told her to stop talking nonsense. “Haven’t you got what you want?”
“I didn’t get it the right way. I didn’t want her to hand you over to me. Don’t you see she still controls our lives?”
To which he had replied, rather wearily, “Do you have to speak to me in that shrewish tone? You always boast about lifting yourself out of the gutter and becoming an educated professional person. Why don’t you speak and behave as though you are one?”
Paint cans and long-handled rollers appeared. Design books and wallpaper catalogues littered the tables and chairs. The kitchen was first on the list. Out went the solid oak and country cottage kitchen cushions and placemats. In came a stark white modern kitchen prepackaged, requiring only easy assembly according to a chart even a child could follow, so implied the instructions. George wanted to get in a contractor but Veronica thought it would be good for him. “Get your head out of your ass,” as she put it in the tone reserved for poking holes in what she called his sublime egoism. The project turned out to be fun. It took him back to his youth when he used to tackle all the usual minor home repairs himself. Veronica helped him. He was surprised to learn that she was very good at grasping the concepts of construction manuals. He also learned that she liked having projects, that she attacked each new one with great enthusiasm. And even though her pregnancy was becoming more obvious by the day, she was still narrow in the shoulders and better than he at reaching into far corners of inside cupboards to fit the screws.
At times, George had the impression that he was playing house with a child, with someone like Delores. What am I doing with this young girl, in this ludicrous situation, he would wonder, hammering nails into drywall, traipsing around to the various hardware and building materials outlets when he should be in his lab working.
But it was in these ordinary things that they became a couple. They were too preoccupied to continue to worry about Esther or how their relationship had come together. The house, preparing for the new arrival, the start of classes in the fall, these concerns filled their days. And as time went on, life for the George Martins settled down. The months before Polly was born were especially productive. Veronica was a female animal with accelerated hormonal activity preparing the nest for her young. George was astonished. Wild and promiscuous in her youth, she became super
organized and supermotivated, as though the energy she had formerly put into being miss party girl was now directed into her child and her house. It seemed that with her own little kingdom where she felt safe, she had never been busier or happier. With her prince to protect her, she could surrender her battle station. Her nature, stunted and deprived from a lifetime of struggle and rejection, when transplanted grew and blossomed. This expansion included her former lover, her husband. She teased him unmercifully but looked at him with tender eyes. She saw his faults, all that was pompous and vain about him, and called him her dear old teddy.
She had little sympathy for his keeping the ghost of Esther alive in himself, so he was careful not to let her see it. Veronica seemed satisfied that with all the changes they had made, they had gotten rid of Esther. George knew that, in spite of Veronica’s attempts to eradicate her, Esther was everywhere — in the gardens which she had planted and tended with such devotion, the walls which she had delighted in painting and wallpapering, for even Veronica was not successful in getting rid of the walls that held the house up around her or the perennial shrubs that were so well established their roots were impossible to eradicate. George also knew that getting rid of Esther in the house was easier than getting rid of Esther in himself, which in his view, was only to be expected. He sometimes thought that he should have insisted they sell and buy new, but he always concluded that that would not have solved the problem.
As life went on and Veronica advanced in her studies, she brought that professionalism to the relationship. Was she not supposed to be, after all, a doctor of psychology? She should be able to view things rationally, in perspective. As more time passed she even came to accept her default win. What the hell, as she put it to George, I’ve got you and I’ve got myself a life. What do I care about Esther?
The new life worked partly because they both had busy lives and they both loved Polly. But in the last analysis, it worked because both of them knew it had to. For her part, Veronica had fought too hard to get him for it not to work. As for George, from the beginning, standing in the eerie darkness of the old kitchen, the only light coming from under the microwave hood, Esther’s note in his hand, he knew that he must make it work. Esther demanded it.
My destiny has been subverted, he thought as the red number on the clock shifted to the hour and he knew that he must get up before it shifted again. A devious god with a wicked sense of humour had reached down a long arm and placed a detour sign on the clear unencumbered smooth highway on which he had been travelling with Esther, and pointed him to a side road of pot holes, twists and turns.
But perhaps these three beside him were his destiny. Is this what he had been travelling toward all his life? Sometimes, when he looked at Polly and cuddled her to his chest, it seemed so. But he didn’t believe in destiny. What was that existentialist rot Ben used to spout during their Cave days? At every moment we are free to choose. In fact, we must choose. Not to choose is a choice in itself.
This is the life I’ve chosen, George said to himself swinging his legs over the side of the bed. But on his way to the bathroom, he had the uncomfortable thought that Esther had chosen for him, and that Veronica, smart, sassy Veronica was accurate in her assessment.
Polly was slumped against the side of the stroller. George bent and lowered the seat back and gently eased her into a horizontal position. He adjusted a light blanket to shade her face from the sun and continued walking along the path that circled the park until he came to the bench near the playground equipment, the same one he used to sit on while watching Delores on the swings and slides. He braked the stroller, spread himself on the bench in the sun, and wondered why Esther was so mean.
How could she have done it? How could she have been so thoughtless of him? His Esther. All the years they had gone through together. Best friends, he had thought they were best friends. Best friends should be tolerant of each other, should understand everything, should forgive anything. The affair had been a bad decision. Okay, he admitted it. Lots of people make bad decisions, especially men when it comes to women. But to just up and abandon him to a thoroughly modern young woman when she knew he was a traditional old male!
And to leave him a note! After twenty-two years of marriage. True, as she had pointed out in the note, if he had been home, she would not have had to leave him a note. True, the reason he had not been at home was that he had been visiting Veronica, but hadn’t Esther given him permission to do so? Not only permission, but instructions to do so. They could not abandon Veronica, she must be taken care of, especially in her vulnerable condition.
And now, two years later, she was still being mean and thoughtless. How could she refuse to talk to him on the phone? She knew him so well. She would know how he suffered. She would know how he needed her, needed to talk to her. How could she be so spiteful as to not allow Delores to give him her phone number? The red rash on Polly’s little bum, what the hell was it? A runny nose and sore throat, what do you do about that? Those interminable nights of walking the floor with inevitable colic, if only he could have picked up the phone and called Esther. Those evenings when Veronica dashed out the door to her three-hour evening seminar leaving him to mop up the kitchen and bed down a teething child, a child who, although Veronica expressed milk into a bottle for the bedtime feeding, preferred the real thing to plastic and screamed her head off unless he bounced her in his arms for endless hours. How he had longed to simply pass a screaming baby into Esther’s knowledgeable arms. In spite of Veronica’s confidence in the matter (he had raised one child, he was an intelligent adult for Christ sake), he couldn’t be expected to know anything about babies. He was a middle-aged academic.
Esther must know that he needed her help in dealing with Veronica. There was no rest, no coming home as it were. His homecomings consisted of having a child in one arm and groceries in the other. If he got home first he was expected to get supper going and keep Polly occupied. He could not be tired with Veronica. She would not allow it. “Get with the program,” she would say. “Women have been doing it for aeons.” He longed to come home in the old way, to have Esther meet him at the door with a martini and a good hot meal. He longed to lay his head in her lap and tell her how tired he was, how he was too old for life with a young wife and toddler. He fantasized Esther stroking his head and offering cooing noises.
He had no one to take care of him, him. He had courted a sexy young woman without a thought in her head except pleasing him in bed and woke up to find a highly motivated intelligent career woman, a woman he did not understand, a woman whose values, whose ways of doing things, even her personal habits, were different from his. While he applauded her academic efforts, he simply was not used to it. His mother, Esther, had been wives and mothers and homemakers. He couldn’t understand this woman who left her discarded clothing on the bedroom floor, who barged into the bathroom when he was brushing his teeth and elbowed him to his side of the vanity, whose idea of entertaining was nachos with the works.
It was bad enough that Esther had abandoned him, but she had also encouraged Delores to do so. Delores had emailed him some time ago with the message that she would not be visiting this summer. She had not visited last summer, either, but he had hoped that time would change her attitude. How could she so easily discard the memories they shared? Planting a tree together, she with her little shovel, her small hands helping him place the roots in the hole, helping him hold the watering can, her short legs racing outside each morning to see if it had grown overnight. He saw the picture so clearly in his head. But that wasn’t him in the picture. It was a young man whom he recognized only as a vague acquaintance.
His phone calls to Delores were becoming more and more strained, so much so that lately he felt that he did not know the person at the other end of the line. After they dispensed with the weather and an overview of what she was doing academically, there seemed little else to say. He knew that the boyfriend she had such hopes of a few years p
revious was off the plan. That had been revealed in phone calls back and forth shortly before Esther left. He and Esther had discussed it, Esther typically taking the sentimental position, “Poor Delores. It’s so sad,” forcing him into the practical position, “It sounds like she’s better off without the jerk.” “But it’s always sad when young love doesn’t work,” Esther countered. “The young go into it with such hope, such expectations.”
Perhaps Delores had someone else now. He didn’t know. She was reluctant to discuss deeper personal issues with him and he was incapable of broaching such subjects. He realized with something of a shock that their conversations had always skimmed the surface, clever repartee rather than heartfelt talk. He also realized that this was not likely to change, especially now with her hostility toward him because of Esther.
Still, he kept phoning and when he did, he tried to bring up the subject of her mother’s life. But she simply would not talk about it. Likely, she had orders not to. He wondered if Esther had found someone else but he dare not ask. And he could not hold the thought for long. It was inconceivable. How could she have found someone else? How could she give her smiles, her attention, herself, to someone else. She was part of him, part of those two who had been young together. But he wondered about the young man who had been half of the couple. As in the picture with Delores, he did not know him. He could not find him.
He missed Esther and Delores, but most of all he missed himself. When Esther left, she took the essential part of him with her, leaving him without anything of himself that was solid, that he could get a grip on, leaving him with the question. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? He didn’t realize it at first, the shock waves had to subside. Then as the weeks and months passed he realized that he was a man without a past. Esther owned his past, not only everything they had done together but his thoughts, his work, his recreation activities, even the sitcoms they used to watch weekday evenings. He had belonged to her as he had belonged to God or, since he didn’t believe in God, to life itself. He had lost this sense of belonging.