simon’s luck

rose gets lonely in new places; she wishes she had invitations. she goes out and walks the streetsand looks in the lighted windows at all the saturday- night parties, the sunday- night familysuppers. it’s no good telling herself she wouldn’t be long inside there, chattering and gettingdrunk, or spooning up the gravy, before she’d wish she was walking the streets. she thinks shecould take on any hospitality. she could go to parties in rooms hung with posters, lit by lamps withcoca-cola shades, everything crumbly and askew; or else in warm professional rooms with lots ofbooks, and brass rubbings, and maybe a skull or two; even in the recreation rooms she can just seethe tops of, through the basement windows: rows of beer stems, hunting horns, drinking horns,guns. she could go and sit on lurex-threaded sofas under hangings of black velvet displayingmountains, galleons, polar bears, executed in brushed wool. she would like very much to bedishing up a costly cabinet de diplomate out of a cut-glass bowl in a rich dining room with a biggleaming belly of sideboard behind her, and a dim picture of horses feeding, cows feeding, sheepfeeding, on badly painted purple grass. or she could do as well with batter pudding in the eatingnook of a kitchen in a little stucco house by the bus stop, plaster pears and peaches decorating thewall, ivy curling out of little brass pots. rose is an actress; she can fit in anywhere.

she does get asked to parties. about two years ago, she was at a party in a high-rise apartmentbuilding in kingston. the windows looked out on lake ontario and wolfe island. rose didn’t livein kingston. she lived up-country; she had been teaching drama for two years at a communitycollege. some people were surprised that she would do this. they did not know how little moneyan actress might make; they thought that being well-known automatically meant being well-off.

she had driven down to kingston just for this party, a fact which slightely shamed her. she hadnot met the hostess before. she had known the host last year, when he was teaching at thecommunity college and living with another girl.

the hostess, whose name was shelley, took rose into the bedroom to put down her coat.

shelley was a thin, solemn-looking girl, a true blonde, with nearly white eyebrows, hair long andthick and straight as if cut from a block of wood. it seemed that she took her waif style seriously.

her voice was low and mournful, making rose’s own voice, her greeting of a moment ago, soundaltogether too sprightly in her own ears.

in a basket at the foot of the bed a tortoiseshell cat was suckling four tiny, blind kittens.

“that’s tasha,” the hosetess said. “we can look at her kittens but we can’t touch them, else shewouldn’t feed them any more.”

she knelt down by the basket, crooning, talking to the mother cat with an intense devotion thatrose thought affected. the shawl around her shoulders was black, trimmed with jet beads. somebeads were crooked, some were missing. it was a genuine old shawl, not an imitation. her limp,slightly yellowed, eyelet-embroidered dress was genuine too, though probably a petticoat in thefirst place. such clothes took looking for.

on the other side of the spool bed was a large mirror, hung suspiciously high, and tilted. rosetried to get a look at herself when the girl was bent over the basket. it is very hard to look in themirror when there is another, and particularly a younger, woman in the room. rose was wearing aflowered cotton dress, a long dress with a tucked bodice and puffed sleeves, which was too short inthe waist and too tight in the bust to be comfortable. there was something wrongly youthful ortheatrical about it; perhaps she was not slim enough to wear that style. her reddish-brown hair wasdyed at home. lines ran both ways under her eyes, trapping little diamonds of darkened skin.

rose knew by now that when she found people affected, as she did this girl, and their roomscoyly decorated, their manner of living irritating (that mirror, the patchwork quilt, the japaneseerotic drawings over the bed, the african music coming from the living room), it was usuallybecause she, rose, hadn’t received and was afraid she wouldn’t receive the attention she wanted,hadn’t penetrated the party, felt that she might be doomed to hang around on the fringes of things,making judgments.

she felt better in the living room, where there were some people she knew, and some faces asold as her own. she drank quickly at first, and before long was using the newborn kittens as aspringboard for her own story. she said that something dreadful had happened to her cat that veryday.

“the worst of it is,” she said, “that i never liked my cat much. it wasn’t my idea to have a cat. itwas his. he followed me home one day and insisted on being taken in. he was just like some bigsneering hulk of an unemployable, set on convincing me i owed him a living. well, he always hada fondness for the clothes dryer. he liked to jump in when it was warm, as soon as i’d taken theclothes out. usually i just have one load but today i had two, and when i reached in to take thesecond load out, i thought i felt something. i thought, what do i have that’s fur?”

people moaned or laughed, in a sympathetically horrified way. rose looked around at themappealingly. she felt much better. the living room, with its lake view, its careful decor (a jukebox,barber-shop mirrors, turn-of-the-century advertisements—smoke, for your throat’s sake—old silklampshades, farmhouse bowls and jugs, primitive masks and sculptures), no longer seemed sohostile. she took another drink of her gin and knew there was a limited time coming now whenshe would feel light and welcome as a hummingbird, convinced that many people in the roomwere witty and many were kind, and some were both together.

“oh, no, i thought. but it was. it was. death in the dryer.”

“a warning to all pleasure seekers,” said a little sharp-faced man at her elbow, a man she hadknown slightly for years. he taught in the english department of the university, where the hosttaught now, and the hostess was a graduate student.

“that’s terrible,” said the hostess, with her cold, fixed look of sensitivity. those who hadlaughed looked a bit abashed, as if they thought they might have seemed heartless. “your cat.

that’s terrible. how could you come tonight?”

as a matter of fact the incident had not happened today at all; it had happened last week. rosewondered if the girl meant to put her at a disadvantage. she said sincerely and regretfully that shehadn’t been very fond of the cat and that had made it seem worse, somehow. that’s what she wastrying to explain, she said.

“i felt as if maybe it was my fault. maybe if i’d been fonder, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“of course it wouldn’t,” said the man beside her. “it was warmth he was seeking in the dryer. itwas love. ah, rose!”

“now you won’t be able to fuck the cat any more,” said a tall boy rose hadn’t noticed before.

he seemed to have sprung up, right in front of her. “fuck the dog, fuck the cat, i don’t know whatyou do, rose.”

she was searching for his name. she had recognized him as a student, or former student.

“david,” she said. “hello, david.” she was so pleased at coming up with the name that she wasslow in registering what he had said.

“fuck the dog, fuck the cat,” he repeated, swaying over her.

“i beg your pardon,” rose said, and put on a quizzical, indulgent, charming expression. thepeople around her were finding it as hard to adjust to what the boy said as she was. the mood ofsociability, sympathy, expectation of goodwill was not easy to halt; it rolled on in spite of signsthat there was plenty here it wasn’t going to be able to absorb. almost everyone was still smiling,as if the boy was telling an anecdote or playing a part, the point of which would be made clear in amoment. the hostess cast down her eyes and slipped away.

“beg yours,” said the boy in a very ugly tone. “up yours, rose.” he was white and brittle-looking, desperately drunk. he had probably been brought up in a gentle home, where peopletalked about answering nature’s call and blessed each other for sneezing.

a short, strong man with black curly hair took hold of the boy’s arm just below the shoulder.

“move it along,” he said, almost maternally. he spoke with a muddled european accent, mostlyfrench, rose thought, though she was not good about accents. she did tend to think, in spite ofknowing better, that such accents spring from a richer and more complicated masculinity than themasculinity to be found in north america and in places like hanratty, where she had grown up.

such an accent promised masculinity tinged with suffering, tenderness, and guile.

the host appeared in a velvet jumpsuit and took hold of the other arm, more or lesssymbolically, at the same time kissing rose’s cheek, because he hadn’t seen her when she camein. “must talk to you,” he murmured, meaning he hoped he wouldn’t have to, because there was somuch tricky territory; the girl he had lived with last year, for one thing, and a night he had spentwith rose toward the end of term, when there had been a lot of drinking and bragging andlamenting about faithlessness, as well as some curiously insulting though pleasurable sex. he waslooking very brushed and tended, thinner but softened, with his flowing hair and suit of bottle-green velvet. only three years younger than rose, but look at him. he had shed a wife, a family, ahouse, a discouraging future, set himself up with new clothes and new furniture and a successionof student mistresses. men can do it.

“my, my,” rose said and leaned against the wall. “what was that all about?”

the man beside her, who had smiled all the time and looked into his glass, said, “ah, thesensitive youth of our time! their grace of language, their depth of feeling! we must bow beforethem.”

the man with the black curly hair came back, didn’t say a word, but handed rose a fresh drinkand took her glass.

the host came back too.

“rose baby. i don’t know how he got in. i said no bloody students.

there’s got to be some place safe from them.”

“he was in one of my classes last year,” rose said. that really was all she could remember. shesupposed they were thinking there must be more to it.

“did he want to be an actor?” said the man beside her. “i’ll bet he did. remember the good olddays when they all wanted to be lawyers and engineers and business executives? they tell methat’s coming back. i hope so. i devoutly hope so. rose, i bet you listened to his problems. youmust never do that. i bet that’s what you did.”

“oh, i suppose.”

“they come along looking for a parent- substitute. it’s banal as can be. they trail aroundworshipping you and bothering you and then bam! it’s parent-substitute rejecting time!”

rose drank, and leaned against the wall, and heard them take up the theme of what studentsexpected nowadays, how they broke down your door to tell you about their abortions, their suicideattempts, their creativity crises, their weight problems. always using the same words: personhood,values, rejection.

“i’m not rejecting you, you silly bugger, i’m flunking you!” said the little sharp man, recalling atriumphant confrontation he had had with one such student. they laughed at that and at the youngwoman who said, “god, the difference when i was at university! you wouldn’t have mentioned anabortion in a professor’s office any more than you would have shit on the floor. shat on the floor.”

rose was laughing too, but felt smashed, under the skin. it would be better, in a way, if therewere something behind this such as they suspected. if she had slept with that boy. if she hadpromised him something, if she had betrayed him, humiliated him. she could not rememberanything. he had sprung out of the floor to accuse her. she must have done something, and shecould not remember it. she could not remember anything to do with her students; that was thetruth. she was solicitous and charming, all warmth and acceptance; she listened and advised; thenshe could not get their names straight. she could not remember a thing she had said to them.

a woman touched her arm. “wake up,” she said, in a tone of sly intimacy that made rose thinkshe must know her. another student? but no, the woman introduced herself.

“i’m doing a paper on female suicide,” she said. “i mean, the suicide of female artists.” she saidshe had seen rose on television and was longing to talk to her. she mentioned diane arbus,virginia woolf, sylvia plath, anne sexton, christiane pflug. she was well informed. she lookedlike a prime candidate herself, rose thought: emaciated, bloodless, obsessed. rose said she washungry, and the woman followed her out to the kitchen.

“and too many actresses to count—” the woman said. “margaret sullavan—”

“i’m just a teacher now.”

“oh, nonsense. i’m sure you are an actress to the marrow of your bones.”

the hostess had made bread: glazed and braided and decorated loaves. rose wondered at thepains taken here. the bread, the p?té, the hanging plants, the kittens, all on behalf of a mostprecarious and temporary domesticity. she wished, she often wished, that she could take suchpains, that she could make ceremonies, impose herself, make bread.

she noticed a group of younger members of the faculty — she would have thought themstudents, except for what the host had said about students not being let in—who were sitting on thecounters and standing in front of the sink. they were talking in low, serious voices. one of themlooked at her. she smiled. her smile was not returned. a couple of others looked at her, and theywent on talking. she was sure they were talking about her, about what had happened in the livingroom. she urged the woman to try some bread and p?té. presumably that would keep her quiet, sothat rose could overhear what was being said.

“i never eat at parties.”

the woman’s manner toward her was turning dark and vaguely accusing. rose had learned thatthis was a department wife. perhaps it had been a political move, inviting her. and promising herrose; had that been part of the move?

“are you always so hungry?” the woman said. “are you never ill?” “i am when there’ssomething this good to eat,” rose said. she was only trying to set an example, and could hardlychew or swallow, in her anxiety to hear what was being said of her. “no, i’m not often ill,” shesaid. it surprised her to realize that was true. she used to get sick with colds and flu and crampsand headaches; those definite ailments had now disappeared, simmered down into a low, steadyhum of uneasiness, fatigue, apprehension.

fucked-up jealous establishment.

rose heard that, or thought she heard it. they were giving her quick, despising looks. or so shethought; she could not look directly at them. establishment. that was rose. was it? was thatrose? was that rose who had taken a teaching job because she wasn’t getting enough acting jobsto support herself, was granted the teaching job because of her experience on stage and television,but had to accept a cut in pay because she lacked degrees? she wanted to go over and tell themthat. she wanted to state her case. the years of work, the exhaustion, the traveling, the high schoolauditoriums, the nerves, the boredom, the never knowing where your next pay was coming from.

she wanted to plead with them, so they would forgive her and love her and take her on their side.

it was their side she wanted to be on, not the side of the people in the living room who had takenup her cause. but that was a choice made because of fear, not on principle. she feared them. shefeared their hard- hearted virtue, their cool despising faces, their secrets, their laughter, theirobscenities.

she thought of anna, her own daughter. anna was seventeen. she had long fair hair and wore afine gold chain around her throat. it was so fine you had to look closely to make sure it was achain, not just a glinting of her smooth bright skin. she was not like these young people but shewas equally remote. she practised ballet and rode her horse every day but she didn’t plan to ride incompetitions or be a ballerina. why not?

“because it would be silly.”

something about anna’s style, the fine chain, her silences, made rose think of her grandmother,patrick’s mother. but then, she thought, anna might not be so silent, so fastidious, sounforthcoming, with anybody but her mother.

the man with the black curly hair stood in the kitchen doorway giving her an impudent andironic look.

“do you know who that is?” rose said to the suicide woman. “the man who took the drunkaway?”

“that’s simon. i don’t think the boy was drunk, i think he’s on drugs.”

“what does he do?”

“well, i expect he’s a student of sorts.”

“no,” said rose. “that man—simon?”

“oh, simon. he’s in the classics department. i don’t think he’s always been a teacher.”

“like me,” rose said, and turned the smile she had tried on the young people on simon. tiredand adrift and witless as she was, she was beginning to feel familiar twinges, tidal promises.

if he smiles back, things will start to be all right.

he did smile, and the suicide woman spoke sharply. “look, do you come to a party just to meetmen?”

when simon was fourteen, he and his older sister and another boy, a friend of theirs,were hidden in a freight car, traveling from occupied to unoccupied france. they were on theirway to lyons, where they would be looked after, redirected to safe places, by members of anorganization that was trying to save jewish children. simon and his sister had already been sentout of poland, at the beginning of the war, to stay with french relatives. now they had to be sentaway again.

the freight car stopped. the train was standing still, at night somewhere out in the country.

they could hear french and german voices. there was some commotion in the cars ahead. theyheard the doors grinding open, heard and felt the boots striking on the bare floors of those cars. aninspection of the train. they lay down under some sacks, but did not even try to cover their faces;they thought there was no hope. the voices were getting closer and they heard the boots on thegravel beside the track. then the train began to move. it moved so slowly that they did not noticefor a moment or so, and even then they thought it was just a shunting of the cars. they expected itto stop, so that the inspection could continue. but the train kept moving. it moved a little faster,then faster; it picked up its ordinary speed, which was nothing very great. they were moving, theywere free of the inspection, they were being carried away. simon never knew what had happened.

the danger was past.

simon said that when he realized they were safe he suddenly felt that they would get through,that nothing could happen to them now, that they were particularly blessed and lucky. he tookwhat happened for a lucky sign.

rose asked him, had he ever seen his friend and his sister again? “no. never. not after lyons.”

“so, it was only lucky for you.”

simon laughed. they were in bed, in rose’s bed in an old house, on the outskirts of acrossroads village; they had driven there straight from the party. it was april, the wind was cold,and rose’s house was chilly. the furnace was inadequate. simon put a hand to the wallpaperbehind the bed, made her feel the draft.

“what it needs is some insulation.”

“i know. it’s awful. and you should see my fuel bills.”

simon said she should get a wood stove. he told her about various kinds of firewood. maple, hesaid, was a lovely wood to burn. then he held forth on different kinds of insulation. styrofoam,micafil, fiberglass. he got out of bed and padded around naked, looking at the walls of her house.

rose shouted after him.

“now i remember. it was a grant.”

“what? i can’t hear you.”

she got out of bed and wrapped herself in a blanket. standing at the top of the stairs, she said,“that boy came to me with an application for a grant. he wanted to be a playwright. i just thisminute remembered.”

“what boy?” said simon. “oh.”

“but i recommended him. i know i did.” the truth was she recommended everybody. if shecould not see their merits, she believed it might just be a case of their having merits she wasunable to see.

“he must not have got it. so he thought i shafted him.”

“well, suppose you had,” said simon, peering down the cellarway.

“that would be your right.”

“i know. i’m a coward about that lot. i hate their disapproval. they are so virtuous.”

“they are not virtuous at all,” said simon. “i’m going to put my shoes on and look at yourfurnace. you probably need the filters cleaned. that is just their style. they are not much to befeared, they are just as stupid as anybody. they want a chunk of the power. naturally.”

“but would you get such venomous—” rose had to stop and start the word again—“suchvenomousness, simply from ambition?”

“what else?” said simon, climbing the stairs. he made a grab for the blanket, wrapped himselfup with her, pecked her nose. “enough of that, rose. have you no shame? i’m a poor fellow cometo look at your furnace. your basement furnace. sorry to bump into you like this, ma’am.” shealready knew a few of his characters. this was the humble workman. some others were the oldphilosopher, who bowed low to her, japanese style, as he came out of the bathroom, murmuringmemento mori, memento mori; and, when appropriate, the mad satyr, nuzzling and leaping,making triumphant smacking noises against her navel.

at the crossroads store she bought real coffee instead of instant, real cream, bacon, frozenbroccoli, a hunk of local cheese, canned crabmeat, the best- looking tomatoes they had,mushrooms, long-grained rice. cigarettes as well. she was in that state of happiness which seemsperfectly natural and unthreatened. if asked, she would have said it was because of the weather—the day was bright, in spite of the harsh wind—as much as because of simon.

“you must’ve brought home company,” said the woman who kept the store. she spoke with nosurprise or malice or censure, just a comradely sort of envy.

“when i wasn’t expecting it.” rose dumped more groceries on the counter. “what a lot ofbother they are. not to mention expense. look at that bacon. and cream.”

“i could stand a bit of it,” the woman said.

simon cooked a remarkable supper from the resources provided, while rose did nothingmuch but stand around watching, and change the sheets.

“country life,” she said. “i came here with some ideas about how i would live. i thought iwould go for long walks on the deserted country roads. and the first time i did, i heard a carcoming tearing along on the gravel behind me. i got well off. then i heard shots. i was terrified. ihid in the bushes and a car came roaring past, weaving all over the road—and they were shootingout of the windows. i cut back through the fields and told the woman at the store i thought weshould call the police. she said oh, yes, weekends the boys get a case of beer in the car and theygo out shooting groundhogs. then she said, what were you doing up that road anyway? i could seeshe thought going for walks by yourself was a lot more suspicious than shooting groundhogs.

there were lots of things like that. i don’t think i’d stay, but the job’s here and the rent’s cheap.

not that she isn’t nice, the woman in the store. she tells fortunes. cards and teacups.”

simon said that he had been sent from lyons to work on a farm in the mountains of provence.

the people there lived and farmed very much as in the middle ages. they could not read or writeor speak french. when they got sick they waited either to die or to get better. they had never seena doctor, though a veterinarian came once a year to inspect the cows. simon ran a pitchfork intohis foot, the wound became infected, he was feverish and had the greatest difficulty in persuadingthem to send for the veterinarian, who was then in the next village. at last they did, and theveterinarian came and gave simon a shot with a great horse needle, and he got better. thehousehold was bewildered and amused to see such measures taken on behalf of human life.

“country life.”

“but here it is not so bad. this house could be made very comfort able,” said simon, musing.

“you should have a garden.”

“that was another idea i had, i tried to have a garden. nothing did very well. i was lookingforward to the cabbages, i think cabbages are beautiful, but some worm got into them. it ate up theleaves till they looked like lace, and then they all turned yellow and lay on the ground.”

“cabbages are a very hard thing to grow. you should try with something easier.” simon left thetable and went to the window. “point me out where you had your garden.”

“along the fence. that’s where they had it before.”

“that is no good, it’s too close to the walnut tree. walnut trees are bad for the soil.”

“i didn’t know that.”

“well, it’s true. you should have it nearer the house. tomorrow i will dig up a garden for you.

you’ll need a lot of fertilizer. now. sheep manure is the very best fertilizer. do you know anyonearound here who has sheep? we will get several sacks of sheep manure and draw up a plan ofwhat to plant, though it’s too early yet, there could still be frost. you can start some thingsindoors, from seed. tomatoes.”

“i thought you had to go back on the morning bus,” rose said. they had driven up in her car.

“monday is a light day. i will phone up and cancel. i’ll tell the girls in the office to say i have asore throat.”

“sore throat?”

“something like that.”

“it’s good that you’re here,” said rose truthfully. “otherwise i’d be spending my time thinkingabout that boy. i’d be trying not to, but it would keep coming at me. in unprotected moments. iwould have been in a state of humiliation.”

“that’s a pretty small thing to get into a state of humiliation about.” “so i see. it doesn’t takemuch with me.”

“learn not to be so thin-skinned,” said simon, as if he were taking her over, in a sensible way,along with the house and garden. “radishes. leaf lettuce. onions. potatoes. do you eat potatoes?”

before he left they drew up a plan of the garden. he dug and worked the soil for her, though hehad to content himself with cow manure. rose had to go to work, on monday, but kept him in hermind all day. she saw him digging in the garden. she saw him naked peering down the cellarway.

a short, thick man, hairy, warm, with a crumpled comedian’s face. she knew what he would saywhen she got home. he would say, “i hope i done it to your satisfaction, mum,” and yank aforelock.

that was what he did, and she was so delighted she cried out, “oh simon, you idiot, you’re theman for my life!” such was the privilege, the widespread sunlight of the moment, that she did notreflect that saying this might be unwise.

in the middle of the week she went to the store, not to buy anything, but to get her fortunetold. the woman looked in her cup and said, “oh, you! you’ve met the man who will changeeverything.”

“yes, i think so.”

“he will change your life. oh lord. you won’t stay here. i see fame.

i see water.”

“i don’t know about that. i think he wants to insulate my house.” “the change has begunalready.”

“yes. i know it has. yes.”

she could not remember what they had said about simon coming again. she thought thathe was coming on the weekend. she expected him, and she went out and bought groceries, not atthe local store this time but at a supermarket several miles away. she hoped the woman at the storewouldn’t see her carrying the grocery bags into the house. she had wanted fresh vegetables andsteak and imported black cherries, and camembert and pears. she had bought wine, too, and a pairof sheets covered with stylish garlands of blue and yellow flowers. she was thinking her palehaunches would show up well against them.

on friday night she put the sheets on the bed and the cherries in a blue bowl. the wine waschilling, the cheese was getting soft. around nine o’clock came the loud knock, the expectedjoking knock on the door. she was surprised that she hadn’t heard his car.

“felt lonesome,” said the woman from the store. “so i just thought i’d drop in and—oh-oh.

you’re expecting your company.”

“not really,” rose said. her heart had started thumping joyfully when she heard the knock andwas thumping still. “i don’t know when he’s arriving here,” she said. “maybe tomorrow.”

“bugger of a rain.”

the woman’s voice sounded hearty and practical, as if rose might need distracting orconsoling.

“i just hope he isn’t driving in it, then,” rose said.

“no sir, you wouldn’t want him driving in it.”

the woman ran her fingers through her short gray hair, shaking the rain out, and rose knew sheought to offer her something. a glass of wine? she might become mellow and talkative, wantingto stay and finish the bottle. here was a person rose had talked to, plenty of times, a friend ofsorts, somebody she would have claimed to like, and she could hardly be bothered to acknowledgeher. it would have been the same at that moment with anyone who was not simon. anyone elseseemed accidental and irritating.

rose could see what was coming. all the ordinary delights, consolations, diversions, of lifewould be rolled up and packed away; the pleasure found in food, lilacs, music, thunder in thenight, would vanish. nothing would do any more but to lie under simon, nothing would do but togive way to pangs and convulsions.

she decided on tea. she thought she might as well put the time to use by having another go ather future.

“it’s not clear,” the woman said.

“what’s not?”

“i’m not able to get anything in focus tonight. that happens. no, to be honest, i can’t locatehim.”

“can’t locate him?”

“in your future. i’m beat.”

rose thought she was saying this out of ill-will, out of jealousy. “well, i’m not just concernedabout him.”

“maybe i could do better if you had any possessions of his, just let me have it to hang on to.

anything he had his hands on, do you have that?”

“me,” said rose. a cheap boast, at which the fortune-teller was obliged to laugh.

“no, seriously.”

“i don’t think so. i threw his cigarette butts out.”

after the woman had gone rose sat up waiting. soon it was midnight. the rain came downhard. the next time she looked it was twenty to two. how could time so empty pass so quickly?

she put out the lights because she didn’t want to be caught sitting up. she undressed, but couldn’tlie down on the fresh sheets. she sat on in the kitchen, in the dark. from time to time she madefresh tea. some light from the street light at the corner came into the room. the village had brightnew mercury vapor lights. she could see that light, a bit of the store, the church steps across theroad. the church no longer served the discreet and respectable protestant sect that had built it, butproclaimed itself a temple of nazareth, also a holiness center, whatever that might be. thingswere more askew here than rose had noticed before. no retired farmers lived in these houses; infact there were no farms to retire from, just the poor fields covered with juniper. people workedthirty or forty miles away, in factories, in the provincial mental hospital, or they didn’t work atall, they lived a mysterious life on the borders of criminality or a life of orderly craziness in theshade of the holiness center. people’s lives were surely more desperate than they used to be, andwhat could be more desperate than a woman of rose’s age, sitting up all night in her dark kitchenwaiting for her lover? and this was a situation she had created, she had done it all herself, itseemed she never learned any lessons at all. she had turned simon into the peg on which herhopes were hung and she could never manage now to turn him back into himself.

the mistake was in buying the wine, she thought, and the sheets and the cheese and the cherries.

preparations court disaster. she hadn’t realized that till she opened the door and the commotion ofher heart turned from merriment to dismay, like the sound of a tower full of bells turned comically(but not for rose) into a rusty foghorn.

hour after hour in the dark and the rain she foresaw what could happen. she could wait throughthe weekend, fortifying herself with excuses and sickening with doubt, never leaving the house incase the phone might ring. back at work on monday, dazed but slightly comforted by the realworld, she would get up the courage to write him a note, in care of the classics department.

“i was thinking we might plant the garden next weekend. i have bought a great array of seeds (alie, but she would buy them, if she heard from him). do let me know if you’re coming, but don’tworry if you’ve made other plans.”

then she would worry: did it sound too off-hand, with that mention of other plans? wouldn’t itbe too pushy, if she hadn’t tacked that on? all her confidence, her lightness of heart, would haveleaked away, but she would try to counterfeit it.

“if it’s too wet to work in the garden we could always go for a drive. maybe we could shootsome groundhogs. best, rose.”

then a further time of waiting, for which the weekend would have been only a casual trial run,a haphazard introduction to the serious, commonplace, miserable ritual. putting her hand into themailbox and drawing the mail out without looking at it, refusing to leave the college until fiveo’clock, putting a cushion against the telephone to block her view of it; pretending inattention.

watch-pot thinking. sitting up late at night, drinking, never getting quite sick enough of thisfoolishness to give up on it because the waiting would be interspersed with such green andspringlike reveries, such convincing arguments as to his intentions. these would be enough, atsome point, to make her decide that he must have been taken ill, he would never have deserted herotherwise. she would phone the kingston hospital, ask about his condition, be told that he wasnot a patient. after that would come the day she went into the college library, picked up backcopies of the kingston paper, searched the obituaries to discover if he had by any chance droppeddead. then, giving in utterly, cold and shaking, she would call him at the university. the girl inhis office would say he was gone. gone to europe, gone to california; he had only been teachingthere for a single term. gone on a camping trip, gone to get married.

or she might say, “just a minute, please,” and turn rose over to him, just like that.

“yes?”

“simon?”

“yes.”

“it’s rose.”

“rose?” it wouldn’t be as drastic as that. it would be worse.

“i’ve been meaning to call you,” he would say, or, “rose, how are you?” or even, “how is thatgarden?”

better lose him now. but going by the phone she put her hand on it, to see if it was warm,maybe, or to encourage it.

before it began to get light monday morning she packed what she thought she would need intothe back of the car, and locked the house, with the camembert still weeping on the kitchencounter; she drove off in a westerly direction. she meant to be gone a couple of days, until shecame to her senses and could face the sheets and the patch of readied earth and the place behindthe bed where she had put her hand to feel the draft. (why did she bring her boots and her wintercoat, if this was the case?) she wrote a letter to the college— she could lie beautifully in letters,though not on the phone—in which she said that she had been called to toronto by the terminalillness of a dear friend. (perhaps she didn’t lie so beautifully after all, perhaps she overdid it.) shehad been awake almost the whole weekend, drinking, not so very much, but steadily. i’m nothaving any of it, she said out loud, very seriously and emphatically, as she loaded the car. and asshe crouched in the front seat, writing the letter, which she could more comfortably have written inthe house, she thought how many crazy letters she had written, how many overblown excuses shehad found, having to leave a place, or being afraid to leave a place, on account of some man.

nobody knew the extent of her foolishness, friends who had known her twenty years didn’t knowhalf of the flights she had been on, the money she had spent, and the risks she had taken. here shewas, she thought a bit later, driving a car, shutting down the windshield wipers as the rain finallylet up on a monday morning at ten o’clock, stopping for gas, stopping to get a transfer of money,now that the banks were open; she was competent and cheery, she remembered what to do, whowould guess what mortifications, memories of mortification, predictions, were beating in herhead? the most mortifying thing of all was simply hope, which burrows so deceitfully at first,masks itself cunningly, but not for long. in a week’s time it can be out trilling and twittering andsinging hymns at heaven’s gate. and it was busy even now, telling her that simon might beturning into her driveway at this very moment, might be standing at her door with his handstogether, praying, mocking, apologizing. memento mori.

even so, even if that were true, what would happen some day, some morning? some morningshe could wake up and she would know by his breathing that he was awake beside her and nottouching her, and that she was not supposed to touch him. so much female touching is asking (thisis what she would have learned, or learned again, from him); women’s tenderness is greedy, theirsensuality is dishonest. she would lie there wishing she had some plain defect, something hershame could curl around and protect. as it was, she would have to be ashamed of, burdened by,the whole physical fact of herself, the whole outspread naked digesting putrefying fact. her fleshcould seem disastrous; thick and porous, gray and spotty. his body would not be in question, itnever would be; he would be the one who condemned and forgave and how could she ever knowif he would forgive her again? come here, he could tell her, or go away. never since patrick hadshe been the free person, the one with that power; maybe she had used it all up, all that wascoming to her.

or she might hear him at a party, saying, “and then i knew i’d be all right, i knew it was alucky sign.” telling his story to some tarty unworthy girl in a leopard-spotted silk, or—far worse—to a gentle long-haired girl in an embroidered smock, who would lead him by the hand, sooneror later, through a doorway into a room or landscape where rose couldn’t follow.

yes, but wasn’t it possible nothing like that would happen, wasn’t it possible there’d be nothingbut kindness, and sheep manure, and deep spring nights with the frogs singing? a failure toappear, on the first weekend, or to telephone, might have meant nothing but a different timetable;no ominous sign at all. thinking like this, every twenty miles or so, she slowed, even looked for aplace to turn around. then she did not do it, she speeded up, thinking she would drive a littlefurther to make sure her head was clear. thoughts of herself sitting in the kitchen, images of loss,poured over her again. and so it was, back and forth, as if the rear end of the car was held by amagnetic force, which ebbed and strengthened, ebbed and strengthened again, but the strength wasnever quite enough to make her turn, and after a while she became almost impersonally curious,seeing it as a real physical force and wondering if it was getting weaker, as she drove, if at somepoint far ahead the car and she would leap free of it, and she would recognize the moment whenshe left its field.

so she kept driving. muskoka; the lakehead; the manitoba border. sometimes she slept in thecar, pulled off to the side of the road for an hour or so. in manitoba it was too cold to do that; shechecked into a motel. she ate in roadside restaurants. before she entered a restaurant she combedher hair and made up her face and put on that distant, dreamy, short-sighted look women wearwhen they think some man may be watching them. it was too much to say that she really expectedsimon to be there, but it seemed she did not entirely rule him out.

the force did weaken, with distance. it was as simple as that, though the distance, she thoughtafterwards, would have to be covered by car, or by bus, or bicycle; you couldn’t get the sameresults by flying. in a prairie town within sight of the cypress hills she recognized the change. shehad driven all night until the sun came up behind her and she felt calm and clearheaded as you doat such times. she went into a café and ordered coffee and fried eggs. she sat at the counterlooking at the usual things there are behind café counters — the coffee- pots and the bright,probably stale pieces of lemon and raspberry pie, the thick glass dishes they put ice-cream or jelloin. it was those dishes that told her of her changed state. she could not have said she found themshapely, or eloquent, without misstating the case. all she could have said was that she saw them ina way that wouldn’t be possible to a person in any stage of love. she felt their solidity with aconvalescent gratitude whose weight settled comfortably into her brains and feet. she realized thenthat she had come into this café without the least far-fetched idea of simon, so it seemed the worldhad stopped being a stage where she might meet him, and gone back to being itself. during thatbountifully clear half-hour before her breakfast made her so sleepy she had to get to a motel,where she fell asleep with her clothes on and the curtains open to the sun, she thought how loveremoves the world for you, and just as surely when it’s going well as when it’s going badly. thisshouldn’t have been, and wasn’t, a surprise to her; the surprise was that she so much wanted,required, everything to be there for her, thick and plain as ice-cream dishes, so that it seemed toher it might not be the disappointment, the losses, the dissolution, she had been running from, anymore than the opposite of those things; the celebration and shock of love, the dazzling alteration.

even if that was safe, she couldn’t accept it. either way you were robbed of something—a privatebalance spring, a little dry kernel of probity. so she thought.

she wrote to the college that while in toronto attending the deathbed of her friend she had runinto an old acquaintance who had offered her a job on the west coast, and that she was going thereimmediately. she supposed they could make trouble for her but she also supposed, rightly, thatthey would not bother, since the terms of her employment, and particularly her pay, were not quiteregular. she wrote to the agency from which she rented the house; she wrote to the woman at thestore, good luck and good-bye. on the hope-princeton highway she got out of the car and stood inthe cool rain of the coastal mountains. she felt relatively safe, and exhausted, and sane, though sheknew she had left some people behind who would not agree with that.

luck was with her. in vancouver she met a man she knew who was casting a new televisionseries. it was to be produced on the west coast and concerned a family, or pseudo-family, ofeccentrics and drifters using an old house on salt spring island as their home or headquarters.

rose got the role of the woman who owned the house, the pseudo-mother. just as she had said inthe letter; a job on the west coast, possibly the best job she had ever had. some special make-uptechniques, aging techniques, had to be used on her face; the makeup man joked that if the serieswas a success, and ran for a few years, these techniques would not be necessary.

a word everybody at the coast was using was fragile. they spoke of feeling fragile today, ofbeing in a fragile state. not me, rose said, i am getting a distinct feeling of being made of oldhorsehide. the wind and sun on the prairies had browned and roughened her skin. she slapped hercreased brown neck, to emphasize the word horse-hide. she was already beginning to adopt someof the turns of phrase, the mannerisms, of the character she was to play.

a year or so later rose was out on the deck of one of the b.c. ferries, wearing a dingysweater and a head scarf. she had to creep around among the lifeboats, keeping an eye on a prettyyoung girl who was freezing in cut-off jeans and a halter. according to the script, the woman roseplayed was afraid this young girl meant to jump off the boat because she was pregnant.

filming this scene, they collected a sizeable crowd. when they broke and walked towards thesheltered part of the deck, to put on their coats and drink coffee, a woman in the crowd reached outand touched rose’s arm.

“you won’t remember me,” she said, and in fact rose did not remember her. then this womanbegan to talk about kingston, the couple who had given the party, even about the death of rose’scat. rose recognized her as the woman who had been doing the paper on suicide. but she lookedquite different; she was wearing an expensive beige pant-suit, a beige and white scarf around herhair; she was no longer fringed and soiled and stringy and mutinous-looking. she introduced ahusband, who grunted at rose as if to say that if she expected him to make a big fuss about her,she had another thing coming. he moved away and the woman said, “poor simon. you know hedied.”

then she wanted to know if they were going to be shooting any more scenes. rose knew whyshe asked. she wanted to get into the background or even the foreground of these scenes so thatshe could call up her friends and tell them to watch her. if she called the people who had been atthat party she would have to say that she knew the series was utter tripe but that she had beenpersuaded to be in a scene, for the fun of it.

“died?”

the woman took off her scarf and the wind blew her hair across her face.

“cancer of the pancreas,” she said, and turned to face the wind so that she could put the scarf onagain, more to her satisfaction. her voice seemed to rose knowledgeable and sly. “i don’t knowhow well you knew him,” she said. was that to make rose wonder how well she knew him? thatslyness could ask for help, as well as measure victories and surprises. she tucked her chin in,knotting the scarf.

“so sad,” she said, business-like now. “sad. he had it for a long time.”

somebody was calling rose’s name; she had to go back to the scene. the girl didn’t throwherself into the sea. they didn’t have things like that happening in the series. such things alwaysthreatened to happen but they didn’t happen, except now and then to peripheral and unappealingcharacters. people watching trusted that they would be protected from predictable disasters, alsofrom those shifts of emphasis that throw the story line open to question, the disarrangementswhich demand new judgments and solutions, and throw the windows open on inappropriateunforgettable scenery.

simon’s dying struck rose as that kind of disarrangement. it was preposterous, it was unfair,that such a chunk of information should have been left out, and that rose even at this late datecould have thought herself the only person who could seriously lack power.