Double Talk (13 page)

“Geoff was worried that you'd be upset. He thought we might cramp your style, that you'd feel pressured to move out. But I told him you didn't think that way.”

“No, it's cool.” But it wasn't cool at all. The fact he had mentioned my moving out meant the writing was on the wall. I was starting to get pissed off. But then Wallace did something out of character: he got positively gushy for a few minutes.

“This will be so good for Geoffrey. He's wanted to get back to town for such a long time. And he's been so depressed lately, since before you arrived, really. You probably noticed.”

“I hadn't.”

“Really?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “I thought he might have been driving you a bit nuts. You know how it is when people are depressed, they tend to be all open about their feelings and expect others to be the same way. Just know that he means well. He's always trying to think of little ways to make you feel more at home, though he can be a bit of a mother hen by times.”

“No kidding.” There was a silence and then a forced laugh on the other end of the line, followed by an even longer silence, and a little sigh.

“Things haven't been the same since Romania.”

“Romania?” I thought immediately of Nadia Comaneci, sprite of the beam and the rubber mat.

“Yes. Romania.”

“You mean the place?”

“Well, I wasn't talking about the Quidi Vidi boat races.”

“I don't get it.”

“Never mind.”

“What do you mean, Romania?”

“Okay. If I tell you, you can't let on to Geoff that you know anything. If he ever brings it up, you have to act surprised. All right?”

“All right.” I was all ears.

“About a year before you came over, we started making enquiries about maybe adopting a child. Not surprisingly, the adoption agencies told us that a gay couple didn't stand much chance — you've probably noticed all the media hysteria around AIDS. Anyway, Geoff managed to make contact with a woman who said she could arrange for us to adopt a little boy from Romania. A friend of ours, Áine from Sligo, said she'd help us out. We thought having a woman involved would make the whole thing easier. She and Geoff even got married down at the courthouse so they would have the right paperwork. Two weeks before you were to arrive, they went to Romania, to a place called Lasi, where they were met by the woman who was supposed to arrange the adoption. The first thing she did was demand the outstanding amount they were supposed to pay once the adoption was finalized. We had already given her ten grand. When Geoff refused, she threatened them. She said homosexuality was a criminal act in Romania and Geoff could easily wind up in prison.”

“Wow. Did he give her the money?”

“He did, ya. I know it sounds crazy, but he was willing to believe that she still might carry through on her promise. Even now I think he holds out some hope he might hear from her.”

“That's terrible,” I said, trying to sound convincing. At the same time — although for no reason I could pin-point at that moment — I had the strong impression Wallace was somehow relieved it had all fallen through. “Wow!”

“So you can understand why it will be really good for him to get back to town, to be out and about again. Friends have been really worried about him.”

“I had no idea,” I said. And then imagined Wallace thinking: That's because you're so wrapped up in your own bullshit.

“He'll be back to his old self in no time.”

“So when will you be making the move in?”

“We've set May 1 as a tentative date … But it could be later.”

“Excellent.”

“But listen to me going on. Why was it that you called again?”

“Oh, right. I called to tell Geoff that I got his parcel of comics.”

“You got them. Great.” And before I had a chance to say anything more, he began to gush again, telling me how hard Geoff had worked to find the back-issues, how Áine from Sligo was supposed to pick them up on her way back from Ireland at Christmas, but then she decided that she wasn't coming back at all, how Geoff was so disappointed when he found out that the company would only ship by sea-mail, which would take ten to twelve weeks. And then he stopped abruptly and waited for me to say something. “So you liked them — the comics?”

“Liked them? I loved them. I haven't been able to stop looking at them. Tell him from me that he really shouldn't have — okay?”

“You can tell him yourself tomorrow. We're coming in to celebrate!”

“Right on,” I said. “I'll get the place cleaned up.”

IV

Violet
Budd

Sun pours through the dining room's floor-to-ceiling French windows, lighting up blond and red strands in Lucy's mop of hair. Violet knows it is going to be another draining afternoon. She still has two papers to finish for the next morning — her final two papers — and isn't sure if she can pull it off. It takes all her energy to keep focussed on the task at hand, which is to keep Lucy occupied while lunch is being made. Violet doesn't have much appetite. The heat combined with humidity always upsets her stomach. And the stress of having to meet one more school deadline is not helping.

She stares out the window, across the gardens of her old neighbourhood. Lines from an essay she once wrote for a creative writing seminar enter her mind with startling clarity: “Decades of professional landscaping have created a pastoral idyll in which dappled light and a church-like hush work together to mollify the upper-middle class soul.” She was supposed to write a faux memoir. No one in her class knew that she was writing the real thing, and that underneath her carefully messed-up punk look and aggressive bad manners was a nice middle class girl. “There are no human sounds, just the country cacophony of cicadas jamming with starlings while crickets keep a steady beat.” Violet was disappointed to get only a B+. “The avenue, left fashionably potholed, is deserted, as are the gardens of the other Tudor-style mansions.” The professor was a half-dead, white European male.

She looks out on the grounds of her once home, at the kidney-shaped pool, at the waterfall, at the wrought-iron fences — they are nothing if not tastefully ostentatious, she thinks. She finds it hard to believe she once played endless games of hide-and-seek in these back gardens. She finds it hard to believe that she was ever that child, unaware of her privilege, so comfortable in her surroundings.

“Mom!” Lucy's hot little hands on her cheeks. “Mom, you're not paying attention.”

“I am, Lucy. I am, really.”

From her seat on the parquet floor, Violet can hear her mother chatting with Brian in the kitchen, his monotonous responses sometimes making his mother-in-law laugh. Anyone listening in would think Brian and her mother have an easy-going relationship. Between noon and five minutes past, Violet's mother beats a track from the kitchen to the dining room, carrying platters heaped with quiches and locally made cheeses, spicy sausages, B.C. lamb, roast duck (for Violet's dad), cabbage rolls, back bacon (for Brian), fresh baguette, pickles and preserves. Her mother's high colour, her dishevelled hair and her harried demeanour might easily fool the uninitiated into thinking that she has spent the whole morning preparing lunch. In her rebellious years, especially if they had guests, Violet would have called her bluff, made a show of asking her mother when she had sneaked away to Charelli's and how much she had paid for the feast. But Violet is no longer interested in confronting her mother. She has no appetite for it. If anything, these days Violet looks for ways to put the woman at ease.

“Mom, I've told you a million times not to use your wedding china when Lucy is here. What if she breaks something?”

“They're only things, Violet,” says her mother, who likes to portray herself as a free spirit.

Violet knows that as soon as her mother has finished preparing lunch, she will come sweeping down on them: “Oh Lucy, I'm so sorry I've neglected you. What are you playing, and can I play, too, please?” Her dramatic entrances sometimes startle Lucy. While her mother waits for Lucy's invitation to join in, Violet notes how she remains standing instead of squatting down and making herself smaller. She has forgotten how to put a child at ease, Violet thinks. Lucy knows her grandmother has little interest in her games. Violet is certain that Lucy also picks up on the disgust her grandmother bears towards her granddaughter's collection of chewed-up and paint-chipped Burger King toys. Violet does her best to keep their play date moving along.

“Oh, Yaaaay! Panther-Gran wants to play,” Violet chimes in enthusiastically, when Lucy finally tells her grandmother where to sit.

The older woman finds it difficult to settle into the purely passive role that Lucy assigns her. “It's nothing personal,” Violet tells her mother privately. “She's the same way with me. All she really wants you to do is watch.”

Violet knows this isn't as easy as she makes it sound. When Lucy says watch, she means watch. She does not mean read a book or look at TV with the sound turned down. She does not mean file your nails or even gaze off into space, daydreaming. And while it is charming at first to follow how Lucy forces her miniature toys to interact, giving each one a different voice, Violet knows it soon becomes mind-numbingly boring. Sooner or later, Violet knows her mother will crack under the strain. Uninvited, she will attempt to give voice to one nibbled-on Burger King character, only to be silenced by Lucy's famous black look. Or she will reach out and pick up one of the tiny figures. At this, Lucy will sigh, stopping her game until she has prised the tiny monster from her grandmother's hand and replaced it on the exact spot from which it has been removed.

Squatting on the floor, surrounded by Lucy's mutant army, her pantsuit cutting painfully into her, a glassy smile on her face, Violet's mom looks just one frayed nerve shy of a breakdown. Violet wonders if she is just this way with Lucy or was she always this way. She racks her brain for memories of days spent sprawled on the carpet with her mother among a jumble of toys, but all she can recall are interminably long Sunday drives or argument-filled trips to fun parks. “More power to her, then,” says Brian, “for at least trying with Lucy.”

Her mom and Lucy's only successful outing in that entire year in B.C. is an afternoon they spend at Beacon Hill Park. Her mom enjoyed the alpine and rock gardens, though she thought the park overall was far too crowded. Lucy loved it because of the petting zoo. She fell in love with the baby goats and cried when she found out she couldn't ride the baby donkey. It was on that day-trip they first played the panther game: Lucy the innocent bunny rabbit hopping along while Violet's mom lay crouched and waiting in the rhododendron bushes.

Panther-Gran, the name was an immediate hit. “Come on, Panther-Gran, time for bed!” Violet's dad will sometimes say, with a little growl. Brian thinks the name sounds like an over-the-counter medication, a supplement to remedy osteoporosis. Violet knows the name appeals to her mother for several reasons. It gives her the chance to tell everyone how much she looked like Cat Woman when she was young. And it acts as a kind of public notice, proclaiming to the world that she is a fun and involved grandmother.

“Where's my Lucy-Lu?” Violet's dad walks briskly into the room. “Where's my little nose miner, eh?”

“Poppy!” yells Lucy, running over and throwing her arms around him.

“There she is!” He scoops Lucy up into his arms where she begins to pepper his cheeks with kisses.

“You smell, Poppy.”

“Oh, Poppy just went a little heavy on the cologne this morning.”

Lucy scrunches up her face: “You're funny, Poppy.”

Violet sees how much her father enjoys his time with Lucy. He goes out of his way to make her laugh. He often says how much Lucy reminds him of his baby sister, Maureen, who died when he was eleven. “Poor Maureen,” he opines, in his old Duncan voice. The sound of that accent transports Violet to her Uncle Willard's sawmill, or to the banks of the Cowichan River with her dad and Uncle Wade, fishing for cutthroats and browns, and terrified she will hook one of the enormous salmon that sometimes swim lazily into view.

“Time to strap on the feed bag — what do you say, Lucy?”

“Yay, Poppy!” she howls, and immediately begins to gallop around the dining room table.

“Dot, now that wouldn't be Clem's Country Cuts Muscovy Duck, would it?” he gushes, clapping his hands and then rubbing his palms together.

Dot gives him the dead-eye: “Harold, dear, just how long did you say you spent at the nineteenth hole?”

Lucy titters. Violet sighs inside. Every Sunday he arrives home from the Uplands half cut, and every Sunday they insist on playing out their little charade: her playing at being pissed off, him at being recalcitrant.

Brian backs in through the kitchen's saloon doors, carrying a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine in one hand and four crystal glasses in the other. He is deeply tanned, and except for dark circles under his eyes — the result of staying up too late playing on the computer — Violet thinks he has never looked better. He is wearing a pair of grey flannel pants and a green linen shirt.