Mating for Life (12 page)

Later, everyone went to bed, Gill in the master bedroom, Laurence on a futon in his upper-level study. As she climbed between the sheets, she had a sudden sense that all was as it should be, but this feeling didn't last for long. It never had.

• • •

The next morning, Gill woke early, before Laurence—­although it didn't especially matter, now that they weren't in the same bed—and went for her daily run. The reality of what they had been doing now felt to Gill like the act of peeling a Band-Aid away slowly.
And the dirty line around the Band-Aid is still going to be there when the Band-Aid is peeled away, and scrubbing that off is going to leave the skin raw and itchy.
She tried to run away from this thought, but the pounding of her feet seemed to insist on the metaphor.
I've been married to a writer for too long.

Gill hadn't brought her phone with her as she usually did when she ran. She hadn't wanted to talk to Daniel, or anyone, that morning. The next time she spoke with Daniel, she had decided during her sleepless night, she would have something definitive to say.
No more pretending. We told the girls. I'll introduce you soon, but not yet.

As she ran she thought about how, before the argument they had had in the kitchen after what had happened with Rolf, their only other argument had been about Laurence wanting to try counseling. Back in the city, back before all was revealed, he had said to her, “If we go, I'll feel like at least then we'll know we tried everything.”

“But do you see the way you're talking?
Then we'll know we tried everything
. Past tense, as though our marriage is a dead thing. Because you know it isn't going to work, and then we'll have gone through the agony and embarrassment of sitting in front of someone we don't know, airing our dirty laundry, secretly waiting for him or her to tell us we're right and the other person is wrong. And besides, we
did
try everything: we tried having Bea. That was giving it our all,
that
was trying. If a child wasn't going to bring us together . . .” There it was: the logic. Laurence didn't like it as much as Daniel did, though.

But actually, there was one other argument
,
wasn't there?
It had happened after she had told him about Daniel, referring to it as an “emotional” affair only, feeling slightly sick about the lie but also not wanting to take any chances. She remembered feeling angry at his lack of reaction. She remembered how she started to argue with him. “
You've
had countless emotional affairs, you know,” she had said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your characters. The perfect women you create because you aren't
with
the perfect woman.”

“Gill. You've got to be kidding. You can't accuse someone of having an affair with a fictional character.”

She remembered that she had lost all hold on her precious logic in that moment. “Oh, yeah!? Well, that's exactly what I'm doing!” she had shouted, before storming from the room.

For years she had pored over his manuscript drafts, or the typed, discarded pages she would find in odd places, but it was never, ever her, not even a single characteristic, and it never had been. Even that summer she hadn't been able to quit the habit of snooping through his work, and one afternoon when he was swimming with the girls she'd found herself reading a short story about a red-haired woman. This one seemed more vivid than all the others, and awakened a jealousy in her she thought had gone dormant. She felt so vengeful, there in the attic of the old cottage, that she had very nearly deleted the story from his hard drive. But she hadn't.

Gill slowed her pace when she realized she was gasping. She turned and began to jog slowly back toward the cottage.

Down the driveway, and the jogging stopped. Laurence, Beatrice, and Isabel were standing beside the water. Gill realized they were having the memorial service for Rolf and felt stung that Laurence hadn't thought to wait.

Laurence was holding a piece of paper, which he passed
to Isabel, who started to read in her clear young voice. Gill realized it was a poem. Emily Dickinson.

After great pain a formal feeling comes—

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round—

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought,

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone—

This is the Hour of Lead—

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons recollect the Snow—

First Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

Gill looked down at the wedding ring she still wore on her left hand. It felt very heavy. She had lost weight that summer from the stress, and the ring slid off easily and landed in her other palm. She looked forward, at Isabel. Should she give the ring to her? Would she even want it? She closed her palm around the ring and walked toward her “husband” and daughters. “We should go inside and have a talk,” she said when she was close enough for them to hear her.

She hated that this would be a moment Isabel was likely to always remember, that Beatrice would have a foggy awareness of. She squeezed the ring more tightly until she was sure it would leave a mark.

7

Eastern Gray Squirrel
(
Sciurus carolinensis
)

The eastern gray squirrel has two breeding seasons each year, the first in winter and the second in summer. Each of the mating periods lasts for about three weeks. Generally, only females over two years of age will breed in both seasons. Courtship behavior begins when a receptive female calls continuously from a treetop with ducklike sounds. Several males soon gather and often fight to determine the dominant animal. As they congregate, the female becomes agitated and begins to race through the trees, followed closely by all the males. When she is ready she will stop and allow the dominant male to mate with her.

L
iane almost didn't see the short story that changed her life. She had considered canceling her subscription to the
Malahat Review
but had changed her mind about it at the last minute. Still, when the fall issue had arrived in the mail, she had ignored it in favor of the other things she had been reading lately, articles in magazines she had never thought she would buy but now did in an attempt to make her life more fun. Her new life, the one she now led alone.

Liane had previously lived in a condo with Adam in High Park. They would regularly take their dog, Atticus, to the off-leash park, where the Labradoodle (Adam had insisted it
was the perfect choice for them, because these types of dogs did not shed or produce allergens; when he had first said the name of the breed she had thought it was a joke, but she hadn't known the half of it—at the park, she met owners of schnoodles, whoodles, Jack-a-Bees, and Peke-a-Poos) would happily chase squirrels or other dogs, but mostly the squirrels.

The proximity to the off-leash park was mostly why Adam had gained sole custody of the dog when Liane left, or at least that was how she had allowed it to be justified. The truth, though, was that Liane had liked Atticus but hadn't ever really loved him. Perhaps the fact that she'd let him go so easily made this obvious, but she hoped Adam didn't know. It felt like yet another failure, piled on top of her failure to stay with him.

Either way, now she lived in a Queen Street West apartment, above a store that sold wool. When she had gone to see the apartment, she had stood on the street and looked up at the window box filled with red geraniums and felt certain that this was the place where she was going to start her brand-new, happier life. The wool store, the flowers, her standing on the sidewalk. She had closed her eyes for a moment and breathed through her nose.
Yes. This is the place.

She had considered calling her mother or one of her sisters, just to check. But she hadn't. It was perhaps the first decision she had ever made in her life without checking it with someone else. Her life had always been defined by her roles: daughter, little sister, girlfriend, student. Now she wasn't a girlfriend or a student. And while she was still a sister and a daughter, she was pulling back. Not forever, just for now.
You need to be Liane. You need to find out who that is.

But, just over two months later, the Indian summer the city was experiencing in late September had turned the geraniums brown and sorry-looking. And Liane was feeling lonely and suspected that
she
was probably a bit sorry-looking as well.

It was morning, and she was on her way to work. She was early because she'd recently read an article, in one of those magazines she had never needed before because there had always been so many females in her life who gave advice, about not being late. One of the suggestions had been to add a half hour of time to any estimate. So Liane had started doing this, which meant that now, instead of being late, she was often early. For some reason, being early for things made her feel even lonelier. There was something about the rush from place to place, she realized, that had made her feel vital, necessary, part of something, not alone. So now she was dawdling at her front door instead of leaving.

She looked over at the window and decided she was going to water the sad brown geraniums one last time. Perhaps when she returned home from work later that day a miracle would have occurred: they would be restored to their former crimson glory and she would be as happy as she thought she was going to be when she signed the lease for the apartment.

After she opened the window and watered the flowers, she closed it again, latched it, picked up her bag containing her laptop, novel, and lunch, considered bringing the
Malahat Review
with her but didn't, and left the apartment, walking down the stairs with their weathered black treads and out onto the sidewalk. As usual, she stopped at the coffee shop at the corner to have her porcelain travel mug filled with light roast. A squeeze of agave syrup, several dashes of cinnamon because yet another article had touted cinnamon as the cure for all ailments.

She looked down at her watch and found she was still twenty minutes ahead of schedule. But she could see a streetcar pulling closer and so, out of habit, she rushed toward it, feeling a sudden and unexplainable urgency rise within her:
I must catch this particular streetcar now.

She was out of breath when she boarded, fumbling for her
transit pass, juggling her coffee and her bag. Her novel fell out at her feet, a beat-up copy of
Cat's Cradle
she'd purchased at a secondhand shop nearby and thought that for $1.75 why not? The streetcar was crowded and she clung to a pole and wondered,
Why did I do this? I'm not even late
. She thought about reading the now even more battered Vonnegut novel, but hated to read standing up. So she looked at her own reflection in the window as the streetcar passed through a tunnel of tall buildings, and soon she was nearly at the subway.

She was pushing through the crowded streetcar to get to the door when she saw a man standing a few poles over, reading. And she was sure of it, immediately. It was him. His hair was the same color, his nose the same shape, his lips curved in the same way.

She was filled with elation. There was
purpose
to the watering of the dead geraniums, the pointless rush for the streetcar.

She had gained confidence in the weeks since she had started standing in front of classrooms full of students on a daily basis and acting like she was in charge. She had even found she liked it, much more than she thought she would, and even without Adam standing on the sidelines, prodding her in the direction he wanted her to go in. So she bravely walked toward the man on the streetcar, determined to introduce herself. He turned his head and looked up from his book. She read the title.
How Do We Fix This Mess?
It was about the global financial meltdown.
He would never read that.
She didn't know him well, or at all, but she knew that much.

She felt foolish
. It was because of the dream, probably.
Her stop arrived and she exited the streetcar, thinking about it as she walked down the steps, out onto the street, and down into the subway. It had been one of those dreams you wake up from but then want to fall back into again. Only, when you close your eyes and try to redream it, it isn't quite the same. The dream was very simple—unlike her others, which made her
feel confused when she woke up. She had been on a streetcar, just like the one she had been riding moments before, but this one was practically empty. And then she saw him, standing even though there were seats all around him, reading a book. He had looked up and seen her and she had taken three steps and stood before him. He had put his book down on a seat and opened his arms and said, “Come here,” and she had done just that, stood right up against him, her chest perfectly aligned with his chest, her heart perfectly aligned with his heart, their two hearts beating against one another while the streetcar moved through the city for miles and miles and miles. When she had woken, she had closed her eyes, but the feeling had already disappeared. What had the feeling been?
Absolute calm. Perfect rightness.
And a little bit of sadness, too, but maybe that had just come from the waking up and realizing it wasn't real.

So here you are, pining after a man you never even really met.
Tears blurred her vision. She looked down at the floor.
What is wrong with me?
Because of the tears and the way she was squinting, for a moment the floor of the subway platform bubbled and wavered below her. The floor appeared so insubstantial that she had the thought that if she stepped onto the blurry, wavy spot, she would disappear. She would have finally found her door in a tree, her portal to another world. What would she feel, she wondered, if she
did
find herself standing in another world, one that existed below the subway platform, one that only a select few people knew about?

Relief,
she realized.
Relief that this is not all there is.
And in that moment Liane understood why people needed religion so much: mysticism, the concept of another realm just beyond the fingertips of humanity, was very soothing. Of course, Liane was an academic and a realist (she tried to believe in magical worlds the way her father had told her to, but could never truly), and she wasn't religious. It was just nice to finally
understand it. She blinked away the tears and the subway floor became solid again.

• • •

“Liane, why aren't
you
married? You're intelligent, attractive . . . ?” It was Grace Arnold, who taught Marriage, Reproduction, and Kinship 302, and she was speaking in the leading tone Liane recognized to mean she was making a point. But Liane hadn't been paying attention to the conversation between Grace and Tansy, the professor whom she assisted (who knew Liane was recently
dis
engaged and shot her a sympathetic glance). She had instead been eating an apple for breakfast and reading a copy of
The
Walrus
she'd picked up from a table (secretly and guiltily wishing it was
Women's Health
) because she had been early for work, of course, but not early enough to actually accomplish anything.

Now a piece of apple caught in her throat and she started to choke.

“I'm sorry,
what's
stopping you from marrying?” Grace prompted.

Liane wondered if she would die, right there in the anthropology faculty lounge. Someone would shout,
Is there a doctor in the house?
and all her colleagues would say,
Yes!
But no one would be able to save her, and they'd all be forced to admit that they weren't
really
doctors, but, rather, academics. The timeless argument would ensue. Rigor mortis would set in.

“Perhaps it's that the biological urge is weakening, generation by generation?” Grace continued.

Another cough. Liane swallowed the now vile-textured chunk, cleared her throat, and said, possibly because she was light-headed from the choking, “Actually, I used to be engaged, but . . .”
But what? Why would you say that?
“It didn't work out.”

After Liane spoke, a few of the others in the lounge looked
up before returning to books or reports or research or lecture notes or other conversations.
That's right. I used to be engaged to the dean's son. It's how I got this job. And I still have it. Because in this particular day and age, you can't fire or not hire someone for breaking an engagement.

“How long?” Grace asked.

“How long what?”

“How long were you engaged?”

“Oh. I . . . don't really know.”
About a minute? Never officially? I stole a ring I found in my mother's cottage and pretended it was mine?

“And would you do it again?”

Liane thought about this. “No,” she said, and knew she was being honest.
No, I would never wear a fake engagement ring and pretend everything was fine and alienate myself from my sister, never again.

Grace nodded, then turned back to Tansy.

Liane sat for a moment, unsure of what to do, then looked back down at her magazine and pretended to read as she listened to Grace continue to argue about whether, in a few thousand years (presuming the world made it that far; Liane
thought
this, but didn't say it, the current trend in the lounge being optimism), the concept of marriage would be seen as an ancient ritual, or would still be one of the vital constructs of society, however unattainable and unrealistic it had become for almost everyone. Tansy was arguing, slightly less vociferously,
for
marriage.

“We've evolved,” she was saying. “We may not be monogamous by nature, but people need companionship, especially as they grow older. It just makes sense.”

“Does it? More and more people are choosing
not
to marry, though,” Grace declared. “We all know this. We have an example of this right here in our own faculty lounge.”
Who, me?
Liane turned her head from side to side. Everyone was
looking at her. She realized that she had made it sound like she was against marriage, and she hadn't intended to convey this.

“So it might be evolution. Yes?”

This was a habit of Grace's.
Yes?
she would say, and people would nod (or at least Liane would, because she had a habit of nodding when people said,
Yes?
) and then realize they had unwittingly supported her point. “We might be evolving
away
from monogamy rather than toward it. Simply wanting a companion when you're old is not a sign of an evolution, Tansy. Plus, the instances of
re
marriage are going down. Yes?” Now Liane did find herself nodding without wanting to, even though she, technically, was not part of the conversation but rather an unwilling illustration. “Some people are trying it out once, realizing it's not for them, and moving on with definitive absolution. Look at your mother, Liane!” Now Grace clapped her hands, and Liane blushed. “Wasn't she a pioneer of all of it?”