The Romantic Read online

  “A Nehru jacket,” I said, stunned. Who’d have guessed that not only would she completely absorb the shock of how I looked and what I’d told her but that a few hours later she’d be delivering a bulletin apparently meant to spur me on.

  “It was really very smart,” she said. “Gold buttons and red brocade trim.”

  We began walking.

  “I bet you all end up chumming around together,” she said.

  “I’ll bet we don’t.”

  Funny she came out with that, though. Since the night of the party I’d occasionally fantasized about being part of a group of like-minded people, but I accepted that there was something incurably offputting about my personality, and however agreeable I tried to be I’d still end up irritating everybody. Anyway, this outfit I had on, my make-up, they weren’t intended to be lures. They were me saying,“I have Abel. Who needs you?”

  “I just thought …” Alice said. “Birds of a feather …”

  It dawned on me that she was seeking reassurance. “I don’t want friends,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want more friends.”

  I wanted Abel. Even though we were together I still tended to think of my love for him and my loneliness as inextricable. He had always been the real difference between me and the rest of the world, the real tragic loss in my life next to which the supposed tragic loss, the one that garnered all the pity, counted for nothing.

  “I’ve never been one for the social whirl myself,” Alice said. She was going after her skin cream, slipping her hand in her purse, unscrewing the lid, scooping out a dab, screwing the lid back on, all without breaking stride. She cleared her throat. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “What?”

  “Well …” She briskly rubbed her hands. “It’s about you and your fella, you know, Abel, about the two of you.” Out popped the red circles.

  “About us what?” I thought I knew where she was headed but I wanted to see if she’d actually say it.

  “I’m sticking my nose in and I won’t blame you if you tell me to mind my own beeswax. It’s just that my mother has had seven kids and I know how darned easy it is …”

  She turned on me such a stricken face I decided to rescue her. “It’s all right, Alice. He lives in Vancouver. We only had the one night together, and I have a feeling I’m not going to get pregnant over the phone.”

  “Vancouver? I didn’t realize—”

  “Anyway, I have no intention of being stuck with a baby.”

  She released a shaky laugh. “Oh, I love babies. But they’re oodles of work, believe you me. Oh, gosh!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A few months before he died, Abel told me he had never believed in God or heaven or any kind of metaphysical salvation, but I found that hard to believe considering what a fanatical optimist he’d always been. “Don’t worry,” he’d say, when panic was the only sane response. “Don’t get yourself down,” when you were scraping your soul off the pavement. Right up until the last days of his life he tried to assure me that we’d both be okay.

  “You won’t be,” I said. “A dead person is not okay.”

  By then he was spending most of his days and nights swilling Canadian Club whisky and spitting up blood into a red towel (red makes the carnage less evident) and still he could say, in a sympathetic tone that seemed to suggest I was the self-destructive one: “Everything’s fine.”

  Part of me, parts of me—the petrified core, the dumb heart, the tender extremities where arousal still flickered—let myself believe this. He was so smart, he must have a plan. His parents and even his doctors nursed the same delusion. We agreed among ourselves to try to refrain from hectoring him. “He has to reach rock bottom,” we all said, as if rock bottom were one floor higher than death.

  I have an essay he wrote when he was in university. It’s called “Oblivion”—ironically enough, since it’s the only one of his papers that he didn’t burn over his neighbour’s barbecue. (“This is what spies do,” I said as he lit the pages. I asked him to at least let me keep the pen-and-ink drawings and was refused. “This is you afraid of being judged,” I said then. A weak charge. Judged by whom? His parents and me? Still, because I knew that he revered the lowly and humble, I pushed it, I said,“This is vanity.” He picked up a sheaf of poems. “This,” he said,“is vanity.”)

  The essay turned up among the cats’ vaccination papers. For a while his mother held on to it and then she gave it to me in a shoebox containing a few things she wanted me to have: his calligraphy pen, his fossil trilobite cufflinks she suggested I could have made into earrings, his roach clip, which she thought was a specimen collector.

  She admitted to not having read the essay through to the end. “The sentences are hard going,” she said, and my feeling, confirmed once I’d taken on those sentences myself, was that she meant more than difficult, she meant disheartening.

  “Life,” it starts out,“is oblivion erupting, for a brief moment, into non-oblivion in order that oblivion may proclaim: ‘I am.’ The assumption being, of course, that living things are aware enough to make such a proclamation. Let us suppose that they are. Let us suppose that they are, to a degree, self-aware. This makes for the possibility of life recognizing itself, yes, but not as oblivion, only as life. In order for life to recognize itself as a fleeting pulse of oblivion, self-awareness must be refined into pure awareness, which is observation unimpaired by either ego or preconceptions.”

  At least he allowed that life is an event, to the degree that it is a springing-out of nothingness. Except that he felt it was only another form of nothingness, nothingness taking a look at itself. Did he think that he himself was just some particle of oblivion, then, put on earth for no other reason than to observe? But why would he drink, if that were the case? Unless he wanted to deliberately dull his senses … to reach a point where he could observe from a state of mind so close to oblivion itself that there’d be no risk of corruption by either ego or preconceptions.

  Well, that’s one way of looking at him, as fatally enlightened.

  The other way—as just another gifted but damaged human being—I still tend to avoid, even though I suppose a pretty compelling case could be made when you think of what he had to contend with. The orphanage. His real mother and father, whoever they were. Me. What I did.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Two days since I phoned him.

  It seems pointless putting on make-up let alone a minidress. I’ve been dishonourably discharged, the uniform no longer means anything. Anyway, the last thing I feel is sexy.

  What’ll I do, then? Go back to wearing my mother’s skirts and dresses that I shortened using Scotch tape because my father, who’s still convinced she’ll waltz through our front door one day, refuses to let me “sabotage” her clothes with a needle and thread? Go back to my virginal look? I’ll bet that would make Alice happy. Despite the cheerful interest she seems to have taken in my transformation, I can’t believe she isn’t praying for me to come to my senses: “Please, dear Lord, restore Louise to the path of decency and modesty.”

  With a fingernail I scrape the vomit crust from the corner of my mouth and get out my tube of lipstick and try to remember that I made the decision to become someone else before Abel and I reunited (only a few hours before, it’s true … still, before). Except I wouldn’t have acted on it. The belief that he loved me is what gave me the courage, and everything I did from then on I imagined he could see.

  Up until now. I can’t imagine him seeing this, the throwing up and sobbing. But I can’t imagine him seeing me calm or sleeping either, if he has stopped loving me. If he has pushed me out of his mind, I don’t even have the ghost of him. I have nobody worth being interesting for. I am nothing.

  I choose my green-and-black-striped empire-line minidress owing to its relative looseness. Since getting out of the shower I have the feeling that the least pressure will shatter my torso. I feel hollow, the empty shell you hear about. Putting on my underwear and the
n the dress and my shoes is a cruel chore. As for breakfast, forget it. I have only a couple of mouthfuls of orange juice. My father looks at me piercingly over his coffee mug. “Are you sure you shouldn’t stay home?”

  “I’m dressed,” I say. All that work!

  “Your eyes are bloodshot.” Because I almost never cry in front of him, he fails to diagnose grief. “I wonder if you’ve got conjunctivitis. Pink eye. It’s highly contagious, you know. You could have got it from your mascara, especially if you share it around.”

  I tell him to leave me alone, I’m going to school. I forget why I’m so determined. Something to do with not wanting to cry in bed all day, not wanting to slit my wrists in the bathtub. He offers to drive me but I feel I need the walk to fortify myself.

  Alice is waiting at the corner, of course. I apologize for not showing up yesterday. “I had the flu,” I say.

  “You still look a little green around the gills,” she says.

  “I do?” I touch my stomach. It feels rubbery and big, twice as big as an hour ago. A nauseating dread wallows through me.

  “Whoops-a-daisy.” She grabs my hand. She is as solid as a wrestler. “I’m taking you straight back home.”

  “No, no.” I pull free. “I don’t want to go home. I’ll be okay.”

  She adjusts her books so that she’s cradling them in one arm. “Come on, then,” she says, linking her free arm through mine. “We’ll try and keep you on your feet at least.”

  The walk is a little under a mile, not far compared to the distance some kids have to travel. Our route goes through the subdivision to a small plaza (barber shop, smoke shop, bank, milk store, beauty salon), around the plaza into Matas Parkette with its wooden benches and granite statue of Dr. Adolph T. Matas, 1812—1882, Physician, Surgeon and Linguist, Friend to All (which doesn’t stop people from saying Doctor Fat Ass and Fat Ass Park), then along a sidewalk that runs adjacent to a main road.

  As we’re entering the park I feel sick again. “I’ve got to sit down,” I say, yanking myself free and staggering over to a bench.

  Alice bustles up behind me. “Put your head between your knees.”

  I obey.

  She sits and snaps opens her purse. From my bent-over position I look at her calves under the thick nylons that crush her blond leg hair into a mat. I hear her unscrewing the lid of her hand-lotion jar. “Nobody’s watching,” she says. ‘You might feel better getting it out of your system.”

  I know what she means but I decide I am being urged in another direction, and so I say,“Can you be pregnant and still get your period?”

  Silence, except for the faint sound of her hands rubbing together. “I’m not sure,” she says at last.

  “What about morning sickness? Do you know if that can suddenly start after two months?”

  She clears her throat. “I remember when my mother was carrying Teddy she had the worst time that way right in the middle, the fourth and fifth months. Before and after she was fine.” She screws the lid back on and closes her purse. “How are we feeling?”

  “Okay.” I sit up. Would Dr. Matas, Friend to All, have given me an abortion? “The thing is,” I say,“they weren’t my usual heavy periods.”

  Alice picks up her books and purse. “We should get a move on.”

  I let her take my arm again. “Oh, God,” I say at the thought of the rest of my life.

  “Have you seen that sign in the window of Parker’s Drug Store?” she asks.

  “What sign?”

  “Pregnancy tests.” Her cheeks flare up. “Confidential and quick.”

  Why would she, of all people, have noticed that? “No.”

  “I’ll bet you any money you’ve only got a touch of the flu, but if you want to put your mind at rest …”

  “You pee into a bottle, don’t you?”

  “Yes, they need a specimen. First thing in the morning is best, before you’ve eaten anything.”

  “Alice—” I force us to stop. She looks at me. Her burning little face. “You won’t tell anybody.”

  “Tell? Good heavens, no! Who would I tell?” She gestures zipping her lips. “There. Tucked away all safe and sound.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I sit on the piano bench. There used to be a chair, a good one, mahogany with green leather upholstery (Mr. and Mrs. Richter brought it over from Germany), but Abel gave it to the manicurist across the hall after her only chair collapsed under the weight of a hefty client. The gold velvet loveseat that he picked up a few weeks later at a thrift shop lasted only a day before the superintendent made some passing comment about how nice it would look in the lobby. So that’s where it got moved to.

  Why Abel stays on in this small, rundown basement apartment is a mystery to the Richters, especially as they’re always offering to help pay the rent on a bigger apartment in a better part of town. They can’t understand that he stays on precisely because it is small and rundown. But it’s not a hovel—hardly that with all the cleaning he does—and it’s not empty, either. His books are here, three floor-to-ceiling cases of them. Also his piano, his desk, his old four-poster bed and the tea trolley and Oriental carpet that used to be in his parents’ dining room. I myself like the effect of all this. The suggestion of genteel poverty, of a scholarly indifference to comfort.

  It’s Saturday, late morning, and I’ve dropped by on my way to lunch with a friend. Abel sits across from me, on the bed, leaning one shoulder against the wall whose network of cracks he likes to speculate describes the river system on a distant planet. Nudging each other for space on his bony lap are his two stray cats: three-legged Peg and drooling Flo. The bed is made, the bottles hidden somewhere. I notice that since I was here last the tea trolley, where he keeps his pills and vitamins, plus the medical paraphernalia his father bought for him (thermometer, stethoscope, blood-pressure gauge), has had its shelves lined with white paper. Normally, at this time of day, he’d be in jeans and a clean shirt, but I got him out of the shower, so he’s wearing his bathrobe. His nails have been cut, probably by the manicurist, what’s her name, something helpless-sounding: Nell or Cindy. Absurdly, I am jealous of her. If Abel was still in any condition to have a type, a fading beauty with a flagging nail-cutting business would be it.

  I cope with the jealousy by never bringing up her name. The sense I have in this apartment of sexy angels fluttering around the windows, I never talk about, either, I couldn’t say why. It’s certainly not being afraid he’d think I was crazy. Nobody is crazy in his books, and he’d be only too happy to talk about something other than the dried blood in the pleats of his lips, the flaking skin on his neck. He’s dehydrated again, he must be. I won’t ask, but when he brings a shuddering hand to his neck, I can’t resist alluding to it, saying,“Whoever thought an alcoholic could end up dying of thirst?”

  The hand moves to his chest. Is the skin there coming away as well? I haven’t seen him naked in over six months, he won’t let me. We still lie down together, and he touches me all over, but subtle flinches give me to understand I am to confine myself to his head. Everything up there, above the neck, still works perfectly. His teeth are white and straight, and despite a yellowish tinge to the whites of his eyes he can still see an ant across the room. All this vigour upsets me when I think of the waste. If he lets himself die, it all dies, his whole body.

  He keeps glancing toward the bathroom. He probably has a bottle stashed in there and can’t wait to get to it. Since signing himself out of the Marwood Clinic, he won’t drink in front of me or his parents. Of course, we aren’t fooled, or, at least, I’m not. His mother, finding him at home and sociable, will say that he’s “off the wagon,” by which she means “on.” She tells him what she wants to hear. ‘You’re getting better!” she announces, and takes his silence for affirmation. (I do this, too, although not where his drinking is concerned. It’s his feelings, specifically his feelings for me, that I decree.)

  “So, do you need money?” I say, returning to the subject of why he had h
is phone disconnected, and why I raced over. When the operator said his number was no longer in service, I panicked.

  “It isn’t the money. The ringing …”

  “What about the ringing?”

  “It’s loud.”

  I decide not to pursue that.

  “I’m fine,” he says. He takes a clean, folded handkerchief from his bathrobe pocket and dabs at the puddle of drool Flo has deposited on his leg. “Everything’s fine.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Louise.”

  “What?”

  “I think you should go now.”

  Two days later. I’ve brought groceries: Cream of Wheat, applesauce, Gerber baby food, ginger ale. As recommended by the doctor. He puts everything in the refrigerator rather than in the cupboard, which tells me that last night Mr. and Mrs. Richter came by with more or less the same things and he doesn’t want me to see this and feel I wasted my time. Except I have wasted it, and so have they. We all know that most of what we give him ends up in the garbage.

  He offers me a glass of the ginger ale. “That’s for you,” I say, exasperated. I sit, as before, on the piano bench, him across from me on the edge of the bed, the cats on his lap. He isn’t agitated, he must have been drinking before I arrived. He is considering my question: does he ever pray? Through the ceiling we can hear the upstairs tenant screaming,“God almighty! Lord Jesus!” The first time I heard her carrying on like this I thought she was having sex. I say,“I don’t believe in God but sometimes I catch myself begging Him, ‘Please God, please God,’ and I only went to church the one time.”

  Abel taps out a beat on the bedpost and then stops and looks at his hand as if startled by its dexterity. He has told me he still occasionally “fools around” on the piano, but whenever I’m here the lid is down and there are books and an ashtray on top. “Yeah,” he says. “Every once in a while I pray.”

  “To God?”

  “No. No, not God.”