Adam's Peak (13 page)

“Sure you do.” He made his voice patient, coaxing.

“Ernie was just ... a different chap,” she finally said. “He didn't suit the planting life the way our father wanted him to. He was very artistic, but Dada had different plans for him. He wanted Ernie to be like him. Like all fathers, no?”

Once again, the story began to sound familiar. Rudy gave up. He didn't really need his aunt's version of the details—and Aunty, for her part, was clearly unwilling to give them.

“That painting of Adam's Peak was done by Ernie,” she said after a pause. “He is very talented.”

Up the lane a dog barked. Rudy wove plans in his head. Monday, he'd start looking for a place of his own—an apartment, closer to the city, or maybe a small house. Now that the decision was made, he was impatient to get started, to make up for lost time. He'd spend his evenings and weekends furnishing the place and settling in. Then, he would buy Adam's plane ticket. Adam wouldn't waffle; he was too impulsive. They would make their pilgrimage to the peak just before the season ended. And after the climb, they would go to Kandy.

“You'll come to Easter Mass tomorrow?” Aunty said.

Rudy locked his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him. He imagined the crowds and the suffocating heat and sighed quietly. “Sure.”

March 28, later
. I don't really buy my aunt's line about all fathers wanting their sons to be like them. I mean, in a sense it's true, but I think it's the wrong angle. I think what parents care about is not exactly that their kids be like them, but simply that their kids
like
them, as people. But they're afraid to ask outright, so they go looking for clues. If the son or daughter seems to go for the same sorts of things as they do, it means they have common interests. It means that if the parent and the kid weren't tied by blood, and they happened to cross paths somehow anyway, they'd still have a relationship of some kind. My dad knows Adam loves him. I'm sure of that. But it's not enough for him. Instead of appreciating the fact that Adam (unlike yours truly) would do anything for him, drop anything and come running, just because he's
family ... instead of being goddamn thankful for that, he appreciates
me
. He sees my sensible career, my conservative clothes, my girlfriends, even my decision to come back here, and he thinks, “I don't need to feel guilty about him. He's the sort of fellow I could be friends with. He could be part of my life even if he weren't my son.” And you know what? I understand him.

Somehow the afternoon had slipped away. He imagined Clare Fraser watching him as he wrote to her, repulsed perhaps by his laziness—his podge of belly and his unwashed hair, his Led Zeppelin T-shirt and ratty old Adidas shorts. Apart from wallowing in the past and writing letters to strangers, he'd done nothing. He was planted on his bed in the breeze of the fan, staring at the blue walls and sinking deeper and deeper into the underworld of his own thoughts. On the other hand, he'd made a decision. He'd uprooted himself from his aunt's house, and he was an afternoon closer to establishing himself the way he had intended. Perhaps Clare would understand the significance of this. Perhaps she'd allow him a day of laziness.

He slumped lower, letting his diary slide to the mattress. He imagined the moment he would spot Adam through the security gate at the airport—the strange awkwardness of sensing that the only thing connecting them at that moment would be blood. Not nearly as thick as it was rumoured to be, he feared.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been holding that moment, frozen, in his mind, when the telephone rang. Startled, he swung his legs off the bed then stopped as he heard Aunty Mary cross the living room. Her “Hello” was followed by a longish silence, and he knew somehow that the call was long-distance. Waiting for his aunt to speak again, he convinced himself it was Adam, fatefully in tune with his plan.

O
VER THE PHONE
, long-distance, Emma never seemed quite herself. Or maybe, Clare thought, it was that she seemed more completely herself—separated from Morgan Hill Road and its patterns, living her busy, independent Vancouver life. On the topic of Clare's motorcycle ride with Adam Vantwest, she said all the right things, but there was something in her tone, a hint of distraction, that suggested it was no big deal.

“He's gay, right?”she said.

“I think so. Yeah.”

“Too bad.”

“It doesn't matter, Emma. He's way too young. And besides, he's ...”

“What?”

“I don't know. Kind of ... impulsive, or something. But anyway, it's irrelevant.”

“Impulsive is exactly what you need.”

“Emma.”

“Okay, okay. So did you find the present I got you? I hid it in your suitcase.”

Clare, slouched on the loveseat in the studio, shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I did. Sorry, I forgot to thank you. But you shouldn't have spent so much.”

“Oh pshaw. Have you tried it yet?”

“Not yet.” She straightened up and eyed the clock on the piano. It was late afternoon. More than a day had passed, but Adam hadn't yet come by for his jacket. “Listen—I'd better get going,” she said. “Markus and I are going to a movie.”

This was a lie. She rarely socialized with her boss anymore. His feelings had gotten in the way. Increasingly, over the year they'd been working together, she understood the ambiguities in his behaviour—the pauses, the hesitations, the incomplete gestures—to be signs of an unspeakable desire,
for her
, and the idea sat like a lump inside her, embarrassing and irritating. Reason told her that Markus was the kind of partner she was fated to be with—respectful, conservative, neither attractive nor ugly. A decent human being. But if Markus was fate's choice for her, she was determined to put up some resistance.

“Tell him you're quitting,” Emma said. “Do it, Clare! I've already got a couple of possibilities lined up for you.”

“Maybe. I'll see what kind of a mood he's in.”

“What difference—Oh, shoot, I've got another call. Okay. Let me know. I'll talk to you later.”

Emma didn't believe she'd leave her job; Clare could tell. She wasn't convinced herself. But as she hung up the phone, she forced herself to make a plan. Monday was the next time she would see Markus, the earliest opportunity. She would arrive a few minutes before her shift. Markus would be hanging around, maybe talking to Peter, the new part-timer who played in a band and had a pierced tongue. She would take him aside—not to his office, if she could help it—and she'd inform him, quietly and matter-of-factly, that she would be leaving.
This has been a really great job,
she would say,
but I'm moving to Vancouver.
Straightforward. And if she committed herself that far ...

She took her hand off the phone and ran it through her hair, realizing she'd ended the call without telling Emma she'd become a brunette. It was a compromise: she'd chickened out of riding up Mount Royal with Adam, but she'd coloured her hair—an operation carried
out secretly in the bathroom, with flimsy plastic gloves and a foul-smelling concoction she'd picked up at the drugstore. The colour was called “chestnut,” and the results were surprising. Each time she passed a mirror, the strangeness of her reflection gave her a jolt of pleasure. In appearance at least, she'd tweaked the pattern, even if it was just a disguise. She imagined Adam showing up for his jacket and assuming she was the kind of person who did this sort of thing regularly.

But he hadn't shown up yet. Outside, it was already dark. Clare went to the window, as she had countless times already that day, to look for him. She didn't want to be caught off guard—the leather jacket was draped over the back of the loveseat, ready to be grabbed. More importantly, she didn't want her mother to answer the door, though at that particular moment it would have been impossible to get there before her. Isobel was in the living room, supervising the taking of measurements for the new carpeting. If anyone came to the door, she'd be right there. But as far as Clare could see, there was no one home at the Vantwests'.

She sat down at the piano and thunked a few chords. They sounded like the ash-blond Clare, so she tried again. Her right hand wandered about in B flat—darkly, chestnutly. Black, cologne-scented leather music. Her left was slow and sparse. She imagined the Jazz Studies Director sitting on her loveseat, his eyes half closed, bobbing his chin and saying there was an unusual something ... a certain, oh, tensile introspection to her delivery ... an implicitness in the voicings. It was the sort of thing a jazz person such as he would say. And secretly she'd find the comment silly and pretentious.

She stopped playing, pushed the stool back, and spun around lazily. When she'd passed Adam's jacket four or five times, she braked and changed direction. This time, she went faster. She leaned her head back and turned the studio upside down. As she whirled, the geography of the room—the window, the wall of books, the loveseat, the piano—became an unfamiliar jumble. She closed her eyes until the stool reached its lowest point and stopped. When she looked again, she was facing the window.

What if it doesn't work, Emma?

What if what doesn't work?

Going to Vancouver. I'll still be the same person, won't I?

That's up to you. If you're expecting the change of scenery to do it all for you, then no, it won't work.

But I can't stay here.

No. For God's sake, no. You're stuck in a perpetual adolescence there. It's pathetic.

She stood up and approached Adam's jacket, cautiously, as if it were Adam himself. He wouldn't be coming for it that evening. It was Saturday; he'd be out. She picked it up and slid her bare arms into the satiny sleeves. The fit was a little loose, but more intimate than before. She put her hands in the pockets. Then she crossed the studio to her bedroom, to the full-length mirror inside the closet door. The reflection she saw was astonishing. She'd known, the first time she wore Adam's jacket, that she looked different. But the person in the mirror was a stranger. She pulled off her headband and shook out her dark brown hair.

My God, Clare. Look at yourself. You're gorgeous.

She stared hard at her reflection.

But is it me, Emma? Could this ever be me?

She stood forever in front of the mirror, experimenting with infinite minute adjustments to her posture and clothes, shutting out the ivory walls, the almond duvet, the tidy beigeness of the whole room. Eventually, her gaze drifted from the mirror to the top shelf of the closet, the pile of sweaters that concealed Emma's gift. It needed to be thrown out, before her mother found it. She slid her hand under the bottom sweater and took down the over-wrapped parcel. Thief-like, she hid it inside Adam's jacket, then she locked the bedroom door. She pulled down the blind and turned on the stereo. Co-op Radio was playing something foreign—twangy, percussive, unpredictable. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she unrolled the T-shirt then the tissue paper. The orange vibrator plopped onto the duvet, lolled there unabashedly, demanding her attention with its suggestive shape and unnatural colour. She picked it up and weighed the dense rubber in her palm, then she put it down again.

How do you expect me to have sex with a piece of plastic, Emma?

You're not having it with the vibrator. It's like I told you in the shop.

Tell me again.

You're having it with yourself. Or whomever. Use your imagination.

Like who? And don't say Markus.

I don't know. The motorcycle guy. Adam.

He's gay.

So what? You were attracted to him, weren't you?

She hugged her knees to her chest. The feeling
was
there, she supposed—the muffled twitching, the reaching for something unimaginable. They happened so rarely, these sensations, that when they did, she didn't know what to do with them. Emma talked about masturbation as if everyone did it, like breathing. But to Clare it seemed wrong. Not morally wrong, but wrong nonetheless. Pathetic, she guessed. It was something she couldn't explain to Emma. Or, rather, it was a secret she'd managed to keep from Emma: that even to herself, she was a virgin. Emma seemed incapable of imagining such a thing. She spoke of clitoral orgasms and G-spot orgasms, of getting herself off on Jacuzzi jets, as if any woman would understand exactly what she was talking about. As if
Clare
would understand. But Clare, listening quietly, nodding meaningfully, had pulled one over on her.

Once again she picked up the orange device. She leaned back against her pillows, and held the thing at eye level, between her index fingers. It was no more absurd, really, than an attraction to Adam. No more pathetic.