“Come on,” Betty argued as Pat's proposition beeped to a close on their answering machine. “I'm going to show you mine.”
They had returned home to a surprise message from Andrew's mother announcing she had been suddenly called to Kingston and would they like to meet for dinner.
“No. No. No. No,” he said.
“You can't be serious.”
“You live with me, not my mother.”
“Free food. Better wine. Stories about you when you were a wee laddie,” she said. “Come on.”
“That's just it, her stories will all be about how I was never a wee laddie. She'd prefer if I showed up tonight on Rollerblades and blew bubbles in my milk.”
With less than two hours between their receiving this message and the proposed hour of invasion, with the fun of showers and gin, of pinkened bodies tucked into layer after layer of familiar clothing, he simply forgot to worry about his mother and his lover possibly discussing when his father died. His only thoughts were of lowering the thong he had watched rise, and of whether Betty would confirm the rumour that the presence of a (common-law) mother-in-law makes a young woman even hornier. If they'd known of Pat's visit days, not minutes, in advance, he might have made one quick case or another to Pat to ensure that Betty wouldn't be told so casually of the lie upon which their relationship was based. Given how infrequently he and Pat talked, let alone talked about Stan's death, he probably could have left her a brief voice mail or email, a simple
Please don't mention exactly when Dad died
and he'd have been fine. Even at the restaurant, working on the fly as Betty went to the washroom, if he'd leaned closer to his mother and made a quick request for secrecy, he would have earned a disapproving look from her but still found sleep that night in the usual way. He might even have waited until Betty
was approaching the table and tried a shotgun pass; “It's easier for me if she thinks he died
two
Augusts ago.”
Yet the pleasures of living with Betty were both constant and evolving, and he couldn't always remember that their household was founded on a lie. The surprise of his mother's visit and, unbelievably, its laughs, further blinded him. To his shock, that evening's three-way conversation with his mother was the first loss. Dinner between just him and Pat had been more or less perfunctory since he'd graduated from Happy Meals. His choice of restaurant, her credit card. See you in two weeks. Suddenly, Betty in the mix, the laughs flowed more freely than the wine.
“I'm serious,” the well-dressed Pat assured the well-dressed Betty, “a snowsuit, a balaclava and a diving mask. In July! All so he could free a bee from the car.”
Endure this embarrassment and he'd soon be back in Betty's arms, back in the body trade. She had become his night, his lust and sleep, his home. Until Pat reached into her purse for a khaki envelope.
“Look at this,” Pat held up a mid-sized Revenue Canada envelope. “We've been divorced for sixteen years. He dies, and six months later I get his tax forms. Honestly, what do we pay for?”
“Six months?” Betty asked.
Andrew froze.
“Counting's still the same since I was in school, isn't it? August. Now. There isn't a
new
new math, is there?” asked Pat.
He actually preferred the hatred in Betty's face to the confusion and the diplomacy which preceded it. She had every right to put on the visor of nastiness that fell from her quickly peaked eyebrows onto her burning eyes. He deserved her sharpened jaw, her compressed lips and much more. Or much less.
Betty calmly announced, “Pat, thank you for the meal and company. I'm leaving now. I'm sure Andrew can invent some explanation.”
“Betty, wait, listen â”
“No. Not one word. Do
not
follow me.” Rage boiled in her face.
Watching her push herself across the restaurant, he could just recognize the envy beneath his own guilt and shame. Yes, Betty, I'd run away too if I were you. Absolutely goddamned right.
“Andrew, what is going on?” Pat asked.
“We started seeing each other in September. I told her Dad died
last
August, not this one. We'd just met.” When Pat said nothing verbally but spoke volumes with a piercing look, he added, “I didn't want her pity.”
“So you say.”
In Rivière-du-Loup, he wakes in a series of hot bags. The tent burns with an afternoon sun seemingly hot enough to ignite the grey nylon walls. The sleeping bag, half-opened and half-drenched with sweat, lies crumpled beneath him. More forceful than the sun are his gouging hands and their tireless, unconscious scrape at his measly crotch. In the bright light he can clearly make out sideburns of red spots at the apex of each thigh and sprinkled across his scrotum. The Gold Bond hasn't been medicine enough.
His crotch shrinks from the cycling shorts like a pound dog from a raised hand. From the bottom of a pannier he unearths his single pair of hiking shorts. He slides into the civilian clothes then checks the cycling computer's clock. Early afternoon. A pint and a meal? Undoubtedly. A potentially interminable wait for medical attention? Maybe he could just buy some calamine lotion and ride off. Perhaps the blind wash of kilometres will keep his scratching fingers out of his crotch. But he has seen that red-eyed stare below, knows the Martians have taken Central America and covet the north.
He'd have bathed even without the intended medical examination of his grand canyon, bathed for city life and the crisp delight of a cold scrub. Port after stormy seas.
Walking from the overgrown orchard where he camped, toward the rushing river, he sees again why rivers have always made such obvious borders. Despite the machine-cut wood chips that blanket the larger trails behind him and the monospecial humanness of the old orchard, the park behind him is positively sylvan compared with the parking lot that towers above him on the opposite side of the river. Curves and chlorophyll behind, concrete ahead. And up. The riverbank he picks his way down descends from a metre of dirt and brush into a metre of jagged rock, whereas the other side rises in a towering, coppery cliff. A parking lot tops the cliff, allowing
grandmère
and
grandpère
to enjoy their ice cream from the comfort of their idling
Crown Vic while Andrew picks his way half-naked into the rushing, frigid water. Sitting against a slab of rock while the water cobbles his feet in cold, he watches a carload of teens drop a bag of fast-food litter out their car window before squealing off and wonders how much anyone bothers to see him below.
What, really, is so wrong with a little nudity? Sitting on one of the larger of the riverside boulders, he slips out of his hiking shorts. The gaping shorts rise and fall so quickly and promiscuously compared to the cycling shorts he has rolled on and off every day. Smashed rocks along the shoreline prolong his chilly, wading dangle to comic lengths as he sends one scouting foot after another between the sharp shards. Even in the shallows the current is strong, so his glances at the towering parking lot are largely abandoned for a tight view of the next step and the next. Pain and navigational challenges leave him, perhaps thankfully, to hear the floating, indistinct murmur of voices without seeing any pointing fingers or faces split by leers or fury. Though what, really, would they see? Where is the crime in a distant delta of fur, a genital daub? Finally, he reaches a pool, adds his bent knees to the sharp points of the rocks. Cold slices a strip off his back and temporarily smothers his speckled itch. Rolling over onto his stomach, he reaches down for a hold against the current, hangs a nightshirt of icy water from collarbone to hip, hears the first cheer from above.
Returned to his change-room rock, slopping wet feet into the wide legs of the hiking shorts, he can feel the rash's burning itch through a skin of frigid water, and the hospital question shifts from
if
to
when
. Back at the campsite, hunger, dread at the anticipated emergency-room wait and a reluctance to sweat another drop from his stippled crotch finally ignite a dormant underbrush of laziness. Rather than break down his tent and re-sling every pannier, he simply drags the entire kit into denser brush. While he can lock his bike downtown, he can't lock the gear to it, and he could be hours at a hospital. Sometimes you just have to trust.
Thankfully the only shirts he has are two cycling jerseys. Without a jersey's tall pockets he would no doubt have succumbed to the speed of rash logic and taken nothing but cash off to town. As is, he adds the amputated novel to the centre pocket (hospital wait) and his wallet to
the left. The knife already sits in the third pocket. He grabs the postcards at the last moment because he has a thirst for more than water. In his beer, he'll think of the postcards, will want the familiarity of her flowing handwriting with its peaks and curls, its loops and crossovers. Rationally, he thinks of patriotism as manufactured consent or brand loyalty or mass delusion, yet the sight of the word
CANADA
written out repeatedly in Betty's hand swells his heart a little, even if they are addressed to a Halifax apartment he has already vacated. In her hand, from foreign shores he hasn't seen,
CANADA
becomes a pet name. Normally it's hard to love the worst per capita water and energy use in the world, or a nation of civil servants. Stan once told Andrew that there are more education administrators in Ontario than there are in all of Western Europe. In a newspaper,
CANADA
refers to the idiots keen to torch and pollute the Canadian environment to fuel the American economy and the unimaginative meekness of a country that exports twenty per cent of the world's lumber but no furniture. Nonetheless, across the twenty-seven postcards, the common denominator
CANADA
evokes how much Betty and Andrew knew of each other before they even met, the similar props and scenes and activities and overheard comments of each other's childhoods. At their first kiss they could almost see back to the insides of the family cars of their childhood, could guess what kind of sandwiches their grandmothers had made. Biking off in search of a restaurant with a patio and strong, unfiltered Québécois beer on tap, jersey pockets stuffed with half a Canadian novel and Betty's postcards, he has never felt more Canadian. He doesn't yet know that the Québécois beer he seeks is now owned by a Japanese brewery.
Why did he ever ignore the touring recommendation to sling a pair of weatherproof flip-flops on the back of the rack? His uniform shoes mercilessly pinch these furlough feet.
A rash isn't going to get him anywhere at emerg, especially a crotch rash. Oh, put it where you shouldn't, did you? Just make yourself a part of the furniture and we'll have someone who's currently thinking of applying to med school glance at you dismissively within the decade. Might as well eat first.
Never in the history of this body has he sat down to table and menu with such ferocious ability. Each bite of salad is a cambered bite
of green air. Then the buttered, earthy breast milk of soupe aux champignons. He's quickly off the menu, thinking that crème brûlée has melted gooey stuff, so “une baguette avec le fromage brûlée” should get him some melted cheese.
“
Mais avec les oignons et champignons dans la moitié.” Another Maudite,
oui
. This high-alcohol beer, essentially a pint of wine, doesn't help him keep his hands above the table and not scratching at his rash. Back and forth his knees swing, fanning his crotch. “Oh, et un potat â pomme de terre, s'il vous plaît.” Pie and a cappuccino for desert. Three Maudites? His high-rev metabolism takes the beer like water.
The fact that Canada has two official languages but most Canadians only speak one and a half affords both tolerance and strangeness. Where else can you feel like an immigrant in your own country? English and French Canada, these two solitudes, endure the same offshore queen on their stamps and money. A Canadian summer drive with a flat tire twists simple data into phenomenological poetry.
The others, not the back ones, they will have need of the same impression please.
Stop to walk your dog while driving through Quebec and you become a crazy uncle.
The best fashion in which to make the acquaintance of a dog is with the bum of your hand. Like this.
“Oui, une autre bière.” Back into the half-novel. Both hands above the table. Above. The. Table.
Divorce, career and character had kept Betty's journalist father, Jim, away from most of the dentist appointments and dance recitals. To her partial surprise, this removal, this track record for stocking RESPs but not kitchen cupboards, made her email him, not her mother, when she was leaving the lying Andrew. After running from Andrew and his mother at the restaurant, she'd spent the night at a friend's.
Lies were like tar, sticky and toxic. If she had tried to fight Andrew's lies, she would have just become ensnared herself. No, she ran. From the restaurant. From Andrew. Even, finally, from the relationship she'd been running from when she had first run into Andrew. Emotionally, she knew the exhilaration of wind at her back. When she emailed her dad, that bird of a feather, she didn't need to explain a thing.
Will you take me to lunch? Tomorrow? Tues. at the latest?
Her mom would have speed-dialled before she'd read the entire email. Yes, Elaine would have offered unconditional support and immediate vengeance and broiling indictments, would have accurately mapped the distance between
boy
and
man
, but the shape of it would have been all wrong. Short questions. Personal tirades. A hypothetical yet demanding tactical debate. With her dad she'd be free to speak in paragraphs or monosyllables as it came, or didn't.
Tomorrow, yes. Do I pick you up or meet you? (The Piggy, ya?)
Stepping into the restaurant, Betty saw her dad as an island once again. Afloat there on the raft of his table, he was, as always, so variously removed from the dad she had once clung to. Age, time and Elaine's running caricature all kept Jim and Betty in a very loose solar system. They hung in some balance, but not a tight one. He was just shy of forty when they stopped living together, and was now partially clothed
in nostalgia and mystery. In her memory, his shoulders were broad, muscled and tanned from their early life at the waterfront house, Black Rock. Today, the man at the restaurant table had smaller, more sloping shoulders.