Authors: Margaret Laurence
You should tell Dad that. He’d be pleased to think you even remembered. Hey – what’s up, honey? You’re not crying, are you?
No. Eyelash in my eye.
— So why complain about Mac being guarded?
Morning, and the sky is like the light water-color blue from a paintbox. Warm-cool, the air smells of grass and last night’s rain. On Bluejay Crescent the laburnum branches bend a little with the yellow wind-swaying burden of blossoms, and the leaves of the big chestnuts are green outspread tree-hands.
Kids under school age are out already, whizzing up and down the sidewalks with wagons and tricycles. In the distance, the mountains form the city’s walls and boundaries, some of them snow mountains even now, as though this place belonged to two worlds, two simultaneous seasons.
C’mon, flower. We’re going shopping.
Jen replies unintelligibly, then begins to sing, not loudly, but recognizably the tune of a song Duncan once brought home from school.
Hey, that’s marvelous. That’s lovely. What about trying the words?
— I can see it all now. Jennifer MacAindra, The World’s One and Only Nontalking Opera Star. Very funny, Stacey. In the meantime, have you taken her to Dr. Spender, just to check? You have not. He’s so busy and I hate to pester him unless it’s a real crisis. Mac thinks I’m nuts to worry, and probably I am. The truth is I’m scared to take her.
Stacey puts Jen in the Chev and they drive to the supermarket.
— Nobody could help feeling some lift on a day like this. I don’t get out enough. My boundaries are four walls. Whose fault? Okay, mine. By the time the day ends, I’m too beat to seek rich cultural experiences, whatever that may mean. That babe in Varying Views of Urban Life. That’s what she said.
What we must seek is rich cultural experiences
. I thought she probably meant she didn’t get laid often enough. But I sat there nodding and smiling and agreeing with her. I swear I’ll never take another of those damn evening courses. What’s left of me? Where have I gone? I’ve brought it on myself, without realizing it. How to stop telling lies? How to get out? This madness. I’m not trapped. I’ve got everything I always wanted.
Hang on, doll, and don’t lean out the window, eh?
Down on the streets near the beaches where Stacey often takes the children, there are rows of high old shaky timber houses, no proper fire escapes. Dwelt in by whom? Sandaled artists courting immortality and trying to scrape by in this life? Extravagant-voiced poets preaching themselves? Semi-prophets with shoulder-length hair, baubled in strings of colored seeds or glass, pseudo gemmery, maybe not pseudo for their purposes? Languid long-legged girls who speak a new tongue and make love when they feel like it, with whoever, and no regrets or recriminations?
— It changes too rapidly for me to keep track. What do I know of it? Only what I read in the papers. What do they think about? Impossible for me to know? What do they think about me? “Love-In Held in Park.” Newspaper couple of years ago. “We Aim to Love, Not Hassle, Says Leader.” “Love who?” reporter asked. “Everybody” was the brave if reckless reply. Why did I have the persistent nasty suspicion that that generality and generosity would most likely stop just short of me? I wanted to explain myself. I still do. Wait, you! Let me tell you. I’m not what I may appear to be. Or if I am, it’s happened imperceptibly, like eating what the kids leave on their plates and discovering ten years later the solid roll of lard now oddly living there under your own skin. I didn’t used to be. Once I was different.
Stacey, traveling light, unfearful in the sun, swimming outward as though the sea were shallow and known, drinking without indignity, making spendthrift love in the days when flesh and love were indestructible.
Here we are, flower. Let’s hope it’s not too crowded.
— What’ll it be like, when Jen is at school? I’ll have to be careful, then, or I’ll find myself speaking aloud one day when I’m alone among the Zoomy Puffs and the Choco-Corn
Bleeps, and the young mums (damn them – they get younger every year, it seems to me) pushing carts full of groceries and babies will smile in embarrassment and pretend not to notice.
The long aisles of the temple. Side chapels with the silver-flash of chrome where the dead fish lie among the icy strawberries. The mounds of offerings, yellow planets of grapefruit, jungles of lettuce, tentacles of green onions, Arctic effluvia flavored raspberry and orange, a thousand bear-faced mouse-legended space-crafted plastic-gifted strangely transformed sproutings of oat and wheat fields. Music hymning from invisible choirs.
I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places –
Diamond Lake, fifty miles north of Manawaka. At night the spruce trees held themselves intensely still, dark and immutable as old Indian gods, holding up the star-heavy sky. The path of the moon lighted the black lake. The fishes danced and the night birds dipped and pirouetted in obeisance towards the fallen light, the shreds of heaven. And Stacey Cameron, under the green-purple neon starlight of the Wapakata Dancehall, danced with the airman from Montreal. He held her close, his sex pressed against hers. Then miles along the beach, the sand still day-warm under their bare feet, until they reached the leaf-blanketed hillside. Feeling the tacit agreement of the forest for their unspoken plans. Stacey afraid, but wanting too much to let go. Unexpectedly rising to him, not having known before that it was to be like this, everything focused in the crux where they met and joined. They both cried out, and then they half slept and wakened tender and it was nearly morning there on the curled yellow-green moss of the spruce-screened slope with the lapping of the lake in their heads.
— Whatever happened to him? How did he get on? Dead over Germany? The local paper only ever printed the lists of provincial casualties. Running a shoe store in Montreal? A bar in Antigonish? A ranch in the Cariboo? The unanswered questions.
Stacey suddenly realizes what is happening. Last week it was pop music, and the week before that. New manager now, maybe, someone who knows what age the women are who do most of the spending here.
— Conned again. Conned into memory. Now I’m not even certain that this music hasn’t been going on for weeks or months. How long have I been remembering without knowing it? Al, was it really more than twenty years ago? Al Duschesne, half French, half English, claiming he was doubly outcast. Belonging once for half a night in me. I remember everything about you. The way the hair was gold on your belly and forearms in the almost-morning. Your sex. Everything. I wish I could see you. No, I don’t. I wouldn’t want you to see me, not now, not in my present shape. Of course, you’ll have changed, too. But not as much. Women may live longer but they age faster. God has a sick sense of humor, if you ask me.
Jen, sitting at the front of the grocery cart and dangling her short legs, begins to sing, a wordless humming but tuneful. Her narrow fine-boned face seeks Stacey’s, and her eyes are watchful, hesitant with hope. Stacey smiles quickly.
Hey, you’re improving, flower. That’s great.
— Stacey, how dare you complain about even one single solitary thing? Listen, God, I didn’t mean it. Just don’t let anything terrible happen to any of them, will you? I’ve had everything I always wanted. I married a guy I loved, and I had my kids. I
know
everything is all right. I wasn’t meaning to complain. I never will again. I promise.
Duncan and Ian last summer at the beach, wrestling and wisecracking, brown skinny legs and arms, the shaggy flames of their hair, their skin smelling of sand and saltwater. Sea-children, as though they should have been crowned with fronds of kelp and ridden dolphins.
— Please. Let them be okay, all their lives, all four of them. Let me die before they do. Only not before they grow up, or what would happen to them?
When Mac comes in that evening, he hands Stacey five small boxes and five rolled-up scrolls. Gingerly, she unfolds one of the scrolls. It tells her that Duncan Cameron MacAindra is seven years old and has been enrolled in the Richa Younglife Program. He is
ABBD
(Junior), and he promises to record on the following chart the zoom ratings of his energy up-go and his memory snap-up. Stacey opens one of the boxes. Each pill occupies its own nest. There are seven colors – pink, purple, peacock blue, tangerine, canary, green and crimson. Stacey touches them lightly.
Pretty. They’d make a nice necklace.
The kids better take them at breakfast, so they won’t forget. A color for every day, see, so it’s quite simple. Only don’t get the boxes mixed up. Each one’s got a different combination, depending on which program the particular person is on.
Mac?
What?
When you worked for Drabble’s, we didn’t go around spraying them with Angel-Breath Mouth Freshener.
Thor goes through the charts personally every month, for all members of staff and their families.
He’s got a nerve.
You can’t mount a real campaign unless you’ve got a hard core of support. If somebody can’t even be bothered to give them to his own family, well
Okay. Okay okay okay. Give ’em here. Let’s round everybody up.
You are making things damn difficult, Stacey. I hope you’re enjoying it.
I don’t mean to. Honestly. Honestly, Mac. Mac?
What?
I’m sorry.
Yeh, so you say. Look, I don’t want you to be
sorry
. Only quit bugging me, eh? Haven’t you seen the Richalife displays in the drugstore down the street?
Yes.
Well, it’s like that all over. Big displays. It’s catching on. I suppose you don’t want the kids to go to university?
Oh Mac. Of course I do. You know that.
Well, then. Get off my neck. I’m earning more than I ever have.
You’re working too hard.
Stacey, I am not working any harder than I have to. Now, please.
Okay, honey. Really.
By seven in the evening, Mac is closeted in his study, as he has been every evening this week. Stacey knocks and enters. Mac is sitting at his desk. In front of him are many colored brochures, a map of the province, sales charts, and several Xeroxed memo pages –
Let’s Talk Richness, A Quality of Living
and
Getting Across the Message Audiovisually
. Mac looks up, frowning.
Whatsamatter?
Nothing’s the matter. I have to go over to Tess’s tonight. I promised. What does he mean, A Quality of Living?
Stacey, I’m busy. Can’t you see?
Okay, I’m just going. What did Thor say about my quiz?
He said he never heard of anybody feeling guilty because they couldn’t bake bread. I told you you shouldn’t have put that.
You laughed at the time. Don’t deny it. What did he expect me to do? Put down what I feel guilty about or something?
Ha bloody ha.
You never showed me what you put down.
It wasn’t spectacular. Listen, Stacey, I’m busy.
Doing what? Yoga?
Everybody has to present their idea for totally new types of sales campaigns.
That’s not fair. What’s he trying to do?
How should I know? I guess he doesn’t want any dead wood.
Mac – why did you say that?
A joke.
Yeh. Ha bloody ha. Mac?
Mm?
Are you afraid?
Me? What of? You must be kidding.
You’re only forty-three. You’re a damn good salesman. There have never been any complaints about you, that I know of. You’ve been working like a dog since you joined Richalife. You don’t need to be afraid.
Stacey, for Christ’s sake. I am not afraid. I am busy at the moment trying to work out ideas. Now will you please leave me alone?
You’re really not – well let’s say nervous – about Thor? He scares me. Something about him. I don’t know.
Stacey, everything is okay. How many times do I have to say it? Can’t you please for heaven’s sake quit yakking about my work?
I’m sorry. But you won’t talk. You won’t ever say.
There is nothing to say.
Oh well in that case
Look, what do you
want
me to say?
I don’t
want
you to say anything
Then why do you keep on
I’m sorry it’s just that
Well, everything is all right, see?
Yeh. Well, okay. I feel very strange sometimes.
What do you mean, strange?
Like as though everything is receding
Receding?
As though I’m out of touch with everything. Everybody, I mean. And vice-versa. If you see what I mean.
Maybe you need to see the doctor. Do you feel sick?
At heart
What?
Nothing. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. It was – I don’t know. Do you want some more coffee before I go?
No thanks. Are you okay, Stacey?
Sure. I’m fine. You’re sure
you
are?
Yes, yes. Quite sure. Have fun at Tess’s.
Thanks. I won’t be late.
I may turn in early.
Okay. Well good-bye.
Good-bye.
Stacey goes upstairs to dress. No use in trying to compete with Tess, who would look splendid even if she were wearing an old potato sack tied with bindertwine. Stacey puts on her blue-silk suit. This is the first time she has worn it this spring, and the zipper on the skirt will hardly do up.
— Hell. I can’t have put on that much. Oh heavens – look at me. Feast your eyes on those hips. Tomorrow – I swear it – the banana diet. I will buy half a ton of bananas and eat nothing else. I’ll stick to it. So help me, I will. What did Mac mean, nothing to talk about? He probably isn’t worried in the slightest. I’m making him nervous. “Are You Increasing Your Husband’s Tensions?” More than likely. Why should I think he’s worried? It’s only me that’s worried – only I who am worried. Compared with mothers of fifteen kids who are swallowing only air in India or somewhere, have I got troubles? No. God, to tell you the truth, it’s getting so I feel guilty about worrying. I know I have no right to it, but it keeps creeping up on me. I’m surrounded by voices all the time but none of them seem to be saying anything, including mine. This gives me the feeling that we may all be one-dimensional.