The Cost of Living (40 page)

“What do you want me to write? A proposal?”

“Yes. Say it in writing.”

“Why?” I said. “Do you think I'm going to take it back?”

“No. I want it for Dad. Date it from three months back, so he won't be able to say I held a gun at your head.”

“What is this?” I said. “What's it about?”

“Well, I'm pregnant,” said Bea. “I was afraid if I told you you'd say it wasn't yours. Anyway there's nothing I could force you to do. There's no way of forcing a man to do anything. I could only wait for you to make up your mind about me. Dad thinks we're already engaged. I told him that to keep him quiet. I didn't want him to go down to your office and that.”

The thought of what had been going on made my blood stop. I had never seen a change in him; there were always the same meals in the kitchen, the early supper, the noiseless television, the twins' laughter. Then Bea said, “I'll get rid of this one if you want, because of your new job and all. I suppose I can't keep my cat?”

I had expected “Can I keep Roy?”

“You can have another,” I said. We seemed to be talking about the same thing.

Mr. Griffith asked me a few questions. One was “Been married before?” and another “What about the boy?”

“I'm adopting Roy,” I said. This had not come up, except in my mind. Bea must have been waiting, once again, for me to decide. I remember that she looked completely astonished as I said it; not grateful, not even relieved. When she gave my written proposal to her father, her remark was “Don't say I never gave you anything for your old age.”

It was nearly our farewell evening. We were around the kitchen table drinking wine I had brought. He read the proposal, made a ball of it, and threw it in the sink. Bea's face went dark, as if a curtain had been blown across the light. It was a dark look I saw later on Roy when he was learning to stand up to her. Mr. Griffith said, “Let's get back to something serious,” and hoisted the bottle before him. His hand shook, and that made Bea smile. When she saw she had made him tremble, she smiled. That is all I know about her father and Bea.

Before we left she took her cat away to be destroyed. She had already stopped watering the plants, and the birdcages were empty. By the time we were married and she went away to start a new life with me, the household, the life in it, had been killed, or had committed suicide; anyway, it was dead.

Earlier today, in the tunnel of Saint-Cloud, between the western limit of Paris and the autoroute, stalled in Saturday traffic, Leonard Baum talked about his wife. The
NATO
removal coincides, for the Baums, with a fresh start. They have come to a “When all's said and done” stage of marriage. When all's said and done, it hasn't worked out too badly. When all's said and done, we did a good job with the children. We see absolutely eye to eye where the children are concerned. There's always that.

They are a raggle-taggle international family. They have been in Denmark, and in the Congo. Unless you know many varieties of North American accent (Bea knows none, as Malcolm can easily prove), they could be from anywhere. The girls, with their perpetual sniffles, their droopy skirts, their washed-out slacks, and their wide backsides, seem reasonably Canadian to Malcolm, though Bea says she has never seen anything like them in her life before.

“I feel like hell about Karin,” Leonard said, “but that's what she wants me to feel. Suicide is always against somebody. She knew I wasn't responsible for her. I couldn't be. I am responsible for Martha and Susan and…” He forgot his wife's name. So did Malcolm. Both men searched for her name. Malcolm tried to pretend he was looking at her, straight across a room. She was tall and fair, her hair was pinned up, she looked like Malcolm's idea of a transfigured horse and like his idea of a missionary. “
Verna
!” said Leonard. “I'm responsible for Verna.” Leonard now spoke so plainly that he must be suffering from shock. “When Verna turned Catholic, she said she didn't want any more sex. She didn't want any more children, and she had this new religion. Once there was no more of that to argue about, we got on better than before. I never missed a weekend at home and I never missed a meal. I didn't want my home to fall apart. I gave Karin as much time as I could. She poured all her life into the time I gave her. My life today makes no more sense than a sweeper's in India. I've been writing my own obituary: ‘He left two young daughters and a hard-up wife.' ‘His many friends were unanimous—the guy was a bastard.' ‘All his life he thought he was going to Pichipoi.' You know what Pichipoi means?”

He's going to talk like this all the way home, Malcolm thought. He has talked about himself before now, but himself thirty years ago. We know about his mother and his father and his mother's cherry jam. He never talked about Verna, any more than I would talk about Bea. I know about Pichipoi. It was the name of an unknown place. The Jews in Paris invented it. It was their destination, but it was a place that might not be any worse than the present. Some of them thought it might even be better, because no one had come back yet to say it was worse. They couldn't imagine it. It was half magic. Sometimes in their transit camps they'd say, “Let's get to Pichipoi and get it over with.” Leonard wasn't here. He must have been in Canada, in college. I was what—four, five? Roy's age? Leonard is still in control of his life. He was in control when he chose Verna over Karin. There is no more terror and mystery in Leonard's life than in mine. Now he thinks he has no control. His life is running away with him, because the girl tried to kill herself, the French have kicked us out and they hate us, the police have his name, he has to face Verna, and the future can't be worse than the way he feels now, stalled in the tunnel of Saint-Cloud. He shouldn't say “Pichipoi.” It was a word that children invented. That makes it entirely magic. It is a sacred word. But it was such a long time ago, as long ago as the Children's Crusade. Leonard is generous; he knows he is presuming. He is on sacred ground, with his shoes on.
They
were on their way to dying. If every person thought his life was a deportation, that he had no say in where he was going, or what would happen once he got there, the air would be filled with invisible trains and we would collide in our dreams.

Leonard said, “I feel vindictive, now we're leaving. This is a private conversation, so I don't mind telling you. I get pleasure knowing a recession is on the way. When I see the sports cars with ‘
À Vendre
' in the windshield and I hear that cleaning women are coming round now and asking for work, I think of how we were gouged. Four hundred a month we paid for that dump. The phone never worked. We paid extra for hot water and heating and for using the elevator. Verna keeps asking, ‘What's going to happen now?' Verna's very intelligent, but she asks me these questions, like ‘Why are there wars?' She said, ‘Leonard, explain to Martha and Susan about the new patterns of history. The girls are very interested in current affairs.' ‘It's easy,' I said. ‘Say Uganda has a project. They want to put a man on the moon. They'll apply to France.' ‘Leonard, are you being serious?' Verna says.”

Leonard knew he didn't have to say, “Don't repeat anything I've told you.” He simply said, “Thanks a lot, I've talked your ear off.” The shopping center of Résidence Diane looked like a giant motel. Where the lawns began, midges danced under the trees. Three American wives, in bare feet, holding mugs of coffee, stood on the holy grass. The
gardien
was furiously whistling, like a lifeguard who for some reason was unable to launch a boat. He stood at the edge of the grass and the three wives did not look at him; they stood laughing together with their mugs of coffee. Malcolm and Leonard saw something Malcolm, at least, had never seen before: a grown person dancing with rage. The
gardien
could not stop blowing his whistle; it seemed to be part of his breath. His arms were stiff with temper and he danced, there, on the path. Leonard raised his shoulders. He looked at Malcolm, and all at once seemed slightly foreign and droll.

In the midst of her packing and sorting and of Leonard's explanation, Verna Baum has remembered Malcolm and Bea. The ring at the door now is Verna, pushing a waterproof shopping cart. In it is an electric iron than cannot be plugged in anywhere except Hamilton, Ontario, two pairs of hand-painted porcelain doorknobs bought in the Paris Flea Market, a souvenir chessboard from Florence and about thirteen chessmen, a shoebox filled with old Christmas cards and Kodachrome holiday memories—these are for Roy. Roy will sit on the floor peering at them and sorting them over and over.

Bea, who has rubbish problems too, looks out of the corner of her eye and says, “Just leave it all in the hall.”

Verna has also come because she wants to tell Bea exactly what her mistakes are as a mother. She may never see Bea and Malcolm again. They will exchange a letter or two, then Christmas greetings, then nothing at all. She sits down in the kitchen. Her long missionary horseface blocks Malcolm's view of Bea. Verna accepts sherry (half a tumbler), which she thinks has less alcohol in it than beer. Does she know that Leonard's girl tried to kill herself, that Leonard was too scared afterward to drive his own car? All she chooses to say is that she studied psychology in an American university and is in a position to analyze Roy, pass censure on Bea, and caution Malcolm. He understands her to say “I was a Syke-Major” and for a moment takes it to mean her maiden name. Bea is making the children passive, Verna says. Roy will be a homosexual and Ruth will be sucking her thumb at thirty-five unless Malcolm at once confiscates the stroller and the tricycle. Verna's words are “I want you to hear this, Mac. It's time somebody around here spoke up. Those two little kids should be walking on their own four feet. Roy doesn't trust you. He never asks a question. When Martha was hardly older than Roy I told her about you-know and she said, ‘How long does it take?' She trusted me then and she trusts me now.”

“If Ruth ever asks me anything like that, I'll belt her one,” says Bea. “It's none of her damned business.”

“It will have to be her business at some point,” says Verna.

“Well, her business is none of mine. I don't want my own daughter coming round telling me it's too much or not enough.”

“Your reactions are so aggressive, Bea,” says Verna. “I wish you'd have someone take a look at Roy. I'm glad Mac's here, because I want him to hear this. Mac, Leonard is very worried about Roy. He's a very sick child. He's an autistic child. You know that, don't you?”

“Autistic my foot,” says Bea. “He's bone lazy, that's all. He talks when he wants to.”

Malcolm, standing with his back to the sink, half sitting on the edge of it, slides along to where he has a better view of Bea. Verna has a red sherry flush right up to the edge of her eyes. “Mac never looks at Ruthie,” she says. “You wouldn't know she had a father. If intelligent parents like you two can't do the right things, what can you expect from people like the Congolese? I don't mean that racially. They make mistakes over weaning and that, but they have every excuse. Even our parents had an excuse. They didn't know anything.”

“Mine did,” says Bea. “My mother was a saint and my father worshipped her. We were very, very happy. Three girls. When I was thirteen my mother said to me, ‘All men are filth.'” Bea laughs.

Verna swings round to Malcolm as if to say, “Now do you see what's wrong with Bea as a mother?”

Bea, glancing at Malcolm, says, “I can't talk openly if somebody thinks I'm telling lies.”

“Oh, Bea, I don't!” This is Verna, but who cares what Verna says? The play is back to Malcolm and Bea.

Purified, exalted, because she has just realized what a good mother she is; sensing that Malcolm at this moment either wants to leave her or know something more about her, so that the marriage is at extremes of tension again, Bea calls happily, “Roy, there's a whole box of pictures for you in the hall.”

She cuts the crusts off Roy's sandwiches and carries the plate to the living room. A puppet show is adjusted for him on the hired television and he is told to turn the sound off the instant it ends. Bea comes back and sits on a kitchen stool with her skirt at the top of her thighs. She grows excited, delaying Verna, keeping her because Malcolm wants her to go.

To say she had not wanted her children, as Verna sometimes hints, is a lie, Bea argues. She wanted a boy, then a girl—just what she was given. You have to take into account how Roy was conceived. She hardly knew the man. She never tried to hide Roy, or pretend he wasn't hers, though under the circumstances she might have been pardoned. She read Spock and gave Roy calcium and Vitamin D. “Mystery” had been her word for Roy unborn. But why hadn't anyone warned her the Mystery was so very ugly? Birth was ugly. Death was another ugly mystery. Her mother, dying…“Now, Bea, that's just brooding over the past.” Verna again.

But most of everything is just dirt and pain, says Bea. When she was pregnant with Ruth, she knew there was no mystery, she knew what to expect. She knew Malcolm wanted a child just to satisfy his ego, and because he felt guilty over something, and she woke him up in the night to say, “Look at how ugly you've made me.”

Their lives are spread out for Verna like the wet tea leaves in the sink; like debris after a crash. No secret, dreaded destination could be worse than this. He leaves the room, walking between the two women, who seem too rapt to notice him. In the living room Roy is playing with Kodachromes, squinting, holding them up to the light. Malcolm bends down, as if helping the child. He sees the Baums' holiday in Spain, the Baums around a Christmas tree. Roy does not seem to notice Malcolm, but then he seldom does.

Neither Malcolm nor Roy heard the music rise and become poignant.