Vanishing and Other Stories (19 page)

 

WHEN HE LEAVES
in the mornings, Penny tries to mark papers but can't concentrate. Most often she ends up squatting in the bathroom, staring into her garbage can. The contraceptives aren't perfect. She's heard that sometimes they tear. Sometimes they slip off. Penny picks them from her garbage and examines them. She thinks: We trust our future to this? They are smoky white and thin-skinned. She holds them to the light and they look sad, as though they are weeping.

 

 

INSTEAD OF GOING FOR A WALK
, David drives Penny along roads she's never seen. They are heading to the edge of the city, away from the restaurants and office buildings. Out here the houses are square and simple, and look as though they've been assembled by children. No one cares for their lawn and the grass comes up in patches.

“This used to be an army town,” says David, and there is entrepreneurial lust in his voice. “It's nothing now, but it'll change.”

He stops the truck in front of a bungalow with faded blue siding, his newest acquisition. One side of the porch has collapsed, and there's no walkway, only the frosted ground.

“This is it.” He unlocks the door and shows her around the empty rooms. He taps on walls and tells her to ignore the carpet that lifts away from the rooms' edges.

“What do you think, angel? It's heaven, isn't it?” He shows her one of the bedrooms. “This room'll be your study,” he says. “This the nursery—for Dai Junior.”

Penny knows he's joking. But still, she lets herself imagine. Their homes would be like this one, in a constant state of renovation. She would continue to teach for a while, but soon she would get wrapped up in David's ideas, his schemes—maybe become his partner, or his bookkeeper. Maybe she'd be good at it. They would have lots of children, and these kids would grow up with practicality as well as the brash confidence of the nouveaux riches. On weekends the family would go for brisk walks. They would probably own dogs.

“It's nice,” she says, and steps into the master room. She presses her face to the large south-facing window. There is a view of other
houses that look like this one, some empty lots, and roads without sidewalks. Penny wonders what this property says about David. She is thinking with her Montreal mind, a mind that associates place—not only street, but precise location on that street—with identity. She hasn't yet understood the freedom of this city, the way it allows David to move from place to place without bestowing judgment on him, without locking him into a grid of language, religion, ethnicity. Nothing labels his past or decides his future. She hasn't yet realized how quickly he can move on.

 

 

PENNY RECEIVES A POSTCARD
from Donna, sent while she was on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. It's as full of half-truths as Penny's letters.
We're having a great time! I didn't want to come here at first—you know me and heights—but I'm getting used to it. Our hotel is super.

Penny stares at the postcard's image. The water looks cold and dangerous. She imagines leaning against the railing and feeling the spit in her face. Marriage, she thinks, must be lonely too.

She doesn't know how to reply to Donna, so instead she writes Andrew a letter. Then she walks along the frosted sidewalk to the mailbox. Snow fell the night before and the city is hushed. The lid of the postbox creaks from the sudden cold.

She imagines Andrew in Montreal, at the desk in the bedroom he's slept in since he was born. It faces the window, and is made of dark, scratched wood. His hair hangs over his forehead and he continually brushes it out of his eyes. Penny can see grooves in it from his comb. He is surely reading. In his last letter, he wrote that
he had discovered Tolstoy's later, short works. His elbows rest on either side of a book that he has nearly destroyed with love, underlining phrases and folding over corners.

I was wrong. I never loved you.

She doesn't mail the letter. Instead, she tucks it into her pocket, a possibility she'll carry with her.

 

 

A PHOTOGRAPH OF PENNY
'
S MOTHER
hung on their kitchen wall. The glass was coated with dust, but the photo was stunning: Katherine
en pointe
, her arms in third position. She wore a white bodysuit and a skirt that fanned out broad and white. Her chest was as pale as her tights, her legs as slim as the leafless, winter trees outside Penny's motel window.

Katherine has remained as thin as in the photo—she lives off toast and marmalade—but her body has a brittle look now. She spends her time on the couch. She reads and nurses her injury, which is as haunting and unpredictable as a ghost. Apart from her walks, she rarely moves. Her digestion is slow and painful, so she dislikes eating and has taken up smoking instead. Her teeth are edged in black. “By the time I reached twenty-six,” she has said, “my body was dead to me.”

It had been years since Penny noticed the photo. But two weeks before she left on the train, she stood in the kitchen and stared at it. Katherine was at the table, drinking coffee from a stained cup. Penny's father was in the living room, listening to the radio.

Penny touched the glass, traced the outline of her mother's body with her finger. She used to beg her mother to speak of that
graceful, former self. Katherine had told her of the studio where she danced: its crumbling brick walls and the exposed piping that leaked onto the floor. Even in winter the rooms were too hot, and the dancers' sweat formed condensation that dripped down the mirrors. There was a smell of hair lacquer, rosin, and blood that seeped from the dancers' blisters onto the silk of their shoes.

“Tell me about when you were in Paris,” said Penny.

Katherine looked up from her book and seemed pleased. “What do you want to know?” Then, just as she did when Penny was younger, Katherine imitated her dance instructors.
“Mesdemoiselles, des tendus, s'il vous plaît.”
She stood, paraded through the kitchen, and snapped her fingers. “Light footwork, please! You sound like a pack of elephants.”

This had always made Penny laugh, and it still did. But now she saw something dark in her mother's imitation of these women. Women who had once danced onstage, and who still hungered for that light. Who lived with the bitter knowledge that their bodies had betrayed them, that time had betrayed them. Women who understood, already, what it was like to die.

“I'm going to get married,” Penny said. “Andrew and I are going to get married.” She had meant to do this properly, with Andrew and her father present, all of them at the table.

Katherine's face took on its usual expression—an almost theatrical sternness. It was the expression of a woman who felt wronged: denied a life of grace and beauty. Given, instead, a two-bedroom walk-up, a broken body, and a host of chores that made her feel bored and incompetent.

“Things are different now,” said Penny. “Things for women are changing.”

Katherine only laughed at that. She reached for her novel, but Penny grabbed the book before her mother could hide herself in it. “You worry he'll disappoint me?”

There was the sound of the radio in the other room.

“Of course he'll disappoint you. But that's not the worst part.” Katherine stepped toward Penny and touched her daughter's hair. “Disappointing him. That's what'll kill you.”

She slipped the book from Penny's hands, then walked out of the kitchen. When she moved slowly, her limp was more noticeable.

Penny went to the doorway and watched her father. He was so absorbed in the news—the Cubans and Americans were having a standoff, the world frozen in a moment of choice—that he didn't notice her. He still wore the suit he'd worn all day at the bank, and leaned with his elbows on his knees. He looked worn from standing on his feet, performing the underpaid, bureaucratic duties of a clerk.

For once, he didn't seem distant or unknowable or strangely quiet. Penny felt as though she understood him. He wanted a peaceful house. A bright, cheerful child. A wife who could love him and who could cook. Like Andrew—who wanted an orderly, contented home, the kind that keeps childhood nightmares at bay—he had the simplest desires.

 

 

PENNY SURVIVES THE ENTIRE YEAR
, despite having to fail her favourite Margaret. The faculty party this week is to celebrate the end of term. One of the European professors orders a crate of wine
and uncorks every bottle. Penny doesn't keep track of how many glasses she drinks.

She has been teaching the subjunctive all week—
que je sois aimée, que tu sois aimé
. None of the Margarets and only one of the Jennys is clear on the use of this verbal mood. And she and David haven't been for a walk in over a month. He is making big sales and rushing renovations. When he does return to the motel—to shave, shower, eat—he kisses her forehead roughly and says things like, “How's my girl?” He is distant, like a husband returning from time with his mistress.

Now she eats cheese cubes and talks to Gérard. He is a good listener and, to her surprise, he doesn't laugh.

“A similar thing happened during the war,” he says. “Women got engaged to two or three soldiers at once, to hedge their bets.”

“What did they do?” Penny leans against the wall, which is keeping her steady. “If more than one of their fiancés survived?”

“Good question.” Gérard sips his wine, which has tinted the inside of his mouth purple. “I suspect they rarely faced that issue. I suspect they had more pressing problems.”

Penny nods. “More pressing problems.” She thinks of the contraceptives in her garbage. She'd spent the entire afternoon on her hands and knees, picking through them to see if any had torn. She thought—she almost hoped—she would be punished, like the heroine of a cautionary tale. But everything seems to be in order. She will return to Montreal at the end of the month. Her ticket is booked, and Andrew expects her.

“I'll probably just keep going west,” she says. “Get on the train and go all the way to Vancouver.”