My Present Age (12 page)

I nod agreement. Marsha seems in a good mood and I don’t want to spoil it; also, I’m busy trying to read her demeanour. She can’t hide that she has something to tell, and that what she has to tell pleases her. It may be bad news for me, but I know now that
Victoria hasn’t got cancer. Nobody, but nobody, with news like that to deliver has a half-smile playing on their lips. What a relief. Although I knew it was foolish, that fear lay at the back of my mind all yesterday and today. The Big C.

For the first time in twenty-four hours I unwind a little. If I don’t press Marsha too hard, too soon, like I did last night, it will all come out. So I follow in the train of her last observation and cheerfully natter away. “Well, Marsha, nothing is completely harmless any more, is it? Take milk. My grade four teacher, Mrs. Appleyard, drilled it into our little noggins that milk was ‘the perfect food.’ Mom used to warn me if I didn’t drink the vile stuff rickets would make little Eddy’s legs look like a Hula Hoop. Now they say moo juice clogs the arteries. What the hell?” I conclude. “We weren’t meant to live forever. I eat
everything
. Why worry?”

This last bit of philosophizing is a mistake. Marsha, true child of her generation, believes something ought to be done about death. If it can’t be abolished, arrangements should be made to have it indefinitely postponed. “Still,” Marsha says, “diet is very important. And exercise. Exercise is wonderful.” As she says this I’m sure she casts an appraising eye at my girth.

“Yes, a number of people have told me the same thing. I jogged for a while, but I tended to overheat and caught a lot of colds. I found it wasn’t healthy.”

“I’m training now,” says Marsha. “I go to a spa.”

“Mmm.” I sip my drink and try not to appear encouraging.

“I weight-train. Are you surprised?”

I gather I’m supposed to be, so I dutifully declare my wonder.

“A lot of men don’t approve. They think it’s unfeminine. What do you think, Ed?”

I hate this kind of setup. It’s heresy-hunting pure and simple.

“Anything that stops short of a hernia and a truss is well within the boundaries of femininity in my books,” I say. “But speaking personally, I wouldn’t want to see any wife of mine in a truss.”

“Oh-oh,” says Marsha, “guess who’s feeling threatened.”

“Not me.”

“All men find the idea of strength in a woman – strength of any kind – enormously threatening. Bill certainly did. What are all you men afraid of?”

I swallow the last of my Scotch. There are some people I should never argue with, and Marsha is one of them. Things always get out of hand. I don’t answer because I don’t want to antagonize her before I get news of Victoria.

Taking my silence as a sign she has scored a hit, a very palpable hit, Marsha decides to be magnanimous in victory. She returns to body-building, which appears to be her favourite mania at present. Like any recent convert she feels the need to testify and proselytize.

“Weight-training has made me feel at home in my body,” she volunteers.

“Mmm.”

“A person feels better, has more energy, moves more gracefully. Weight-training means nobody has to feel ashamed of their body any more. If they want to, they can improve it.”

“What’s that crack supposed to mean?”

“I’m not criticizing, Ed.”

“Look, Marsha, let me tell you something. I’ve been taking cheap shots ever since I was seven years old about the earthly tenement in which my soul is so conspicuously lodged. I’m sick and tired of it. Lay off.”

To emphasize my point I slop out of my chair; my feet strike the floor with a resounding thump.

“Where are you going?” says Marsha, alarmed at the idea of escaping prey. “You’re not leaving.”

“Fat chance
. No, Porky Pockets just wants another drink. Watch him waddle his way to the bar, thighs rubbing together. Oink, oink, oink.”

“You can pour me one too. I’m getting tense. You’re making me very tense. You always do.”

I pour the drinks and carry them back to Marsha. “Don’t be angry, Ed,” she says. “We’re old friends.” She pats the divan. “Sit down.”

“I don’t think it’ll bear the load,” I say, choosing to lower myself on to the carpet.

“It’s times like this you remind me of Bill.”

“I happen to like Bill, so I’ll take that as a compliment, and not in the spirit you intended.”

Marsha draws up a leg and locks her fingers around the knee. From under the hem of the caftan emerges a long, thin, white foot with painted nails. It rests at the edge of the divan at my eye level.

“That’s generous of you,” she says, “because Bill doesn’t like you. He hates your guts. Or maybe I ought to put that in the past tense. Now that he’s full of Christian love, maybe he
used
to hate your guts.”

I don’t know why I am always surprised to learn that people don’t like me, because quite a number don’t. Even as a little kid I rubbed people the wrong way, and I’ve come to the conclusion it was not so much what I did, but my manner of doing it. Style always counts for more than substance. But I had never suspected I’d had that kind of effect on Bill.

“Oh? And what did I ever do to Bill?” Oddly enough I really want to find out why Bill should hate me. I don’t like to be hated.

Marsha smiles in the unpleasant way she has when her bitterness with life rises into her face and she must try and disguise it. I think I understand something about her no one else does. Marsha still loves Bill. None of their friends can see this because they don’t realize it is possible to love a lunatic. Her smile never wavers as she says, “For a fairly sharp character you miss a lot, don’t you, Ed? It wasn’t what you did to Bill, dear, it was what you did to Victoria. That was it.”

I try to hide my confusion by raising my glass to drink. I compose my mouth along its rim. “And what concern was it of Bill’s what I did or didn’t do to Victoria?”

Marsha’s toes curl under with pleasure. “Come, Ed, I can hardly believe you didn’t see it. Bill had a thing for Victoria. Maybe not a grand passion, but not just a bolt in the pants either. A lot of men seem to want to think women are naturally better than they are, and that was part of it with Bill. He tended to romanticize her, see her as a long-suffering, noble soul. I couldn’t fit the bill, of course. But he could make himself see Victoria as a victim, rather like the wife of that disgusting bureaucrat in
Crime and Punishment
. I can’t recall his name at the moment. Can you believe it? I just read the book a month ago and now I can’t remember the goddamn name. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Marmeladov,” I say, “his name is Marmeladov.”

Marsha looks sceptical, considers, and then replies: “Why, you’re right. It
is
Marmeladov.”

“Of course I’m right.”

“Poor Ed. Right about everything that doesn’t really matter and wrong about everything that does.”

Marsha is doing quite a job on me. I have to admire how she works – indirect, sly, a measure of truth in everything she says. I was never a good husband. Not even a passable one. There is nothing to refute. All I can do is lamely say, “I didn’t know Victoria and I attracted that kind of attention. I didn’t know we were items of conversation.”

“Come, Ed, don’t be modest. The two of you always had a loyal and interested following. Like Liz Taylor and Dick Burton. Perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but there was very nearly a pool drawn up on how long your marriage would last. And any number of people took delight in watching
your
career. There’s a certain amount of pleasure that comes from seeing somebody who is obviously intelligent fail. It’s reassuring. It emphasizes the importance of character over brains. And Victoria – well, you know, in the beginning she talked too much about what you were going to do. People resent that. Victoria was very naive when she was young – life with you improved her in that respect.

“Still, maybe that’s why she attracts men the way she does. She’s loyal. Like old Shep. And given the right qualities in a man – a certain phony intellectualism, let’s say – she’s even admiring. She can’t help but be, and not even her best friend would make extravagant claims about her mental equipment. She’s easily impressed.

“And finally there’s no discrediting the fact that it was common knowledge she was unhappy with you, and that she had an occasional romantic fling. That made her a centre of attraction for some. Not that I’m saying she was up there on the block for the asking. I’m not saying that. Victoria picked and chose, showed discrimination. More than one of your acquaintances thought he might get lucky. Hope springs eternal in the human heart. I know it did in Bill’s.” Marsha, finished, drinks her Scotch in her cool way. I want to grasp one of those large, bony toes and twist it, twist some fear and pain into that self-satisfied face.

I turn on my back so she is not looking directly into my face when I ask the question. There are speckles in the stippled ceiling plaster. “And poor Bill, were his prayers ever answered?”

I think she giggles. “Does it really matter at this late date?”

The terrible thing is that it does. Even at this late date. “I suppose not. Does it matter to you?”

“What? That my little Billy screwed Ed’s Victoria? Not in the least.” She sounds no more convincing than I. After a moment’s hesitation she says, “I’m more concerned with what he’s up to now.”

What Bill is up to may prove interesting. In any case, a change of subject would be welcome. I roll back on my side. “Do tell,” I say. “Bill hasn’t gone out and lost his heart to one of those pink-pant-suited sisters of the First Chosen now that he’s been refitted for action and is fertile again, has he?”

“Hardly. As far as Bill’s concerned there can never be another woman in his life but me.” Marsha’s voice is tinged with irony. “It’s all because we had that goddamn church wedding.”

I recollect Bill and Marsha’s wedding with much fondness. Initially Bill had insisted they be married in a civil ceremony at the
courthouse, but Marsha’s Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. Only a few guests were allowed in judge’s chambers and Daddy, for business reasons, felt it incumbent upon him to invite practically everybody listed in
Henderson’s Directory
. Bill, of course, stood firm on his principles. He was having no truck with organized religion in any of its ghastly manifestations. His obdurate behaviour made Daddy desperate. Marsha’s Pop offered to write a thousand-dollar cheque and donate it to the Waffle branch of the NDP if Bill would get his hair cut and be married in the United Church. Daddy would hand over the loot at the reception if Bill behaved himself as agreed. So, in the interests of social justice Sadler compromised himself. However, Daddy never produced the cheque, because, he said, a contract made under duress wasn’t a contract in anybody’s books.

Now it seems that Bill’s political expediency is having unforeseen consequences.

“Because we were married in a church,” Marsha is saying, “Bill claims we are married in the eyes of God, which means married
forever
. He says that if I divorce him it doesn’t change a thing. We’re still married. He quoted something from the Bible. You know that bit about whatever God has joined, no man can put asunder? Talking to him is an experience, really. He says as soon as I’m saved we can resume our life as man and wife. I swear, Ed, he’s completely out of his mind.”

I’m enjoying this. “You ought to be patient with him. After all, he’s an idealist, always was.” I would like to add that he’s also a simplifier, but that involves an explanation of my theory and there isn’t time.

“He’s an asshole, always was. And now he’s taken to phoning our old friends and urging them to repent their sins. Which he lists at some length, I might add. You can’t believe the embarrassment it’s causing me. I still see a lot of these people. He doesn’t.”

I wonder why Bill has not troubled to contact me. Does he hate me so passionately that he desires to withhold from me the opportunity to repent and save my soul? “Who’s he called?” I demand.

“A lot of people.”

“Like who?”

Marsha hesitates. “Well, Benny for one. Benny says if he doesn’t stop he’s going to get a court order to stop him.”

Benny. There’s a black soul in need of saving. We were roommates at university but ever since he agreed to represent Victoria in her divorce action he’s been no friend of mine. “Wonderful! Wonderful news!” I cry. “Let me guess which of the seven deadly sins Bill accused friend Benny of. Lust. That has got to easily have been number one on the list. How often he regales his smutty little chums with tales of his carnal exploits in the firm’s secretarial pool. And then covetousness. The man salivates at the thought of the bench. Imagine Benny sitting Solomon-like robed in the weeds of the Queen’s justice. And envy. He’s an envious son of a bitch, Benny is.” Even while I enumerate Benny’s wickednesses, which leap so readily to mind, I am thinking of the others who must figure prominently on Bill’s top ten of those to phone when he wants a break from the singing of hallelujahs or the mortification of the flesh. I wonder if he’s called Victoria, who is, after all, an adulteress. “And anger,” I add. “The sin of anger. Benny has a terrible temper. You wouldn’t believe how he used to carry on and scream at me – scream, mind you – when we roomed together.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Her eyebrows arch like a cat’s back.

“Good old Marsha,” I say, without a trace of fondness.

“Good old Ed.” Her voice too is expressionless. An uncomfortable silence succeeds. It seems we can no longer carry on the charade of old pals jawing over old times. The evening has arrived at the point when business ought to be talked. I clear my throat, begin. “I take it you’ve seen her. What’s the problem?”

Marsha regards me with a calculating air. Inexplicably she says, “I got a wedding invitation today. My youngest brother is getting married.”

What the hell is this? I smile and nod.

“God, you can’t imagine what a wedding in my family is like,”
Marsha continues. “The men are creatures from the Stone Age; you wouldn’t believe what their attitudes to women are. If I go stag, the way I did to my cousin Cecilia’s wedding, all my uncles, God, all my
great-uncles
, will be dancing with me out of pity and telling me I’m prettier than the bride. And Daddy will invite one of his franchise managers who happens to be under forty-five, divorced or a bachelor, and manoeuvre the poor schmuck into a chair beside me at the banquet. Do you know what these guys like to talk about? How many ten-gallon pails of lard they go through a week at their outlet. It’s supposed to impress you. It’s a gauge of sales. Ed, you can’t imagine what it’s like to be a single woman, worse, a
deserted
woman, in the midst of those Neanderthals. It’s humiliating. But how do you not go to your own little brother’s wedding? It’s just not possible.” Marsha is finished. Her eyes narrow, she waits.