Waiting for Time (4 page)

“That's it—everything I can tell you!” the woman says. It is almost dark outside, clouds scud across the sky. Charlotte gets up and pours herself a whiskey, comes back and, unasked, begins talking about how she and the baby had gotten to Ottawa, how she found a room in the Petrassi house, got herself a job in Saul's book store. She talks about Saul, about what a good man he was, how fond he had been of Lav, how he had paid for her education, how proud he had been when she started working on a doctorate.

It seems ungracious, a slight against Saul, to interrupt her, but eventually Lav does—standing in the apartment doorway, pushing against the tide of words she asks, “What was Cape Random like, then? Was it really so bad?”

“It was awful—awful!” Charlotte rests her head against the door frame as if just thinking about the place makes her weary.

“But how? How was it awful?”

“It was the worst place I ever saw—the very worst! Cold—dismal—the sea all around, pounding away day and night. A god-forsaken strip of sand sticking out into the ocean with four or five crazy families living on it. No electricity, no plumbing—not even clean water to drink because the whole place was sliding into the sea. Seawater seeped in underneath and the wells were all salty. They had to cart water down from another place by boat—in big barrels—or else drain it out of the bog—brackish water you had to let stand in jugs overnight so the dirt would settle. And it would still be brown—cankery colour. I can taste it yet—brown and gritty, smelling of dead things!” Realizing how loud her voice has gotten, Charlotte pauses.

Her face has come undone. Just by speaking of Cape Random she has broken some taboo. Looking distraught, half mad, she darts up and down the beige carpeted hallway—as if expecting some neighbour to leap out and defend the place she hates so much.

After a long minute her mother continues, but in a whisper: “I remember the night you were born, the old woman washed you in that bog water. You smelled old, like something dug up. Frightened me, that smell did. Then and there I promised myself I'd get away from the Cape, away from Newfoundland, before you could walk or talk—before the place owned you like it did them. And it wasn't just the Cape—the whole island is a hell hole. Bleak and barren—the kind of place would drive anyone crazy—if it didn't kill them outright!” Charlotte leans forward, close to her daughter, staring up, hissing words into her face: “Don't ever, ever go there! Don't ever let anyone send you there!”

Lav does not move, does not say a word. The impossible has happened, her mother has spoken of feelings, of passion, of hate. Horror stories she has longed for are being told.

Charlotte looks exhausted, “You're satisfied now, I suppose!” she says bitterly. “Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't that what you've been pestering me for all these years?”

Falsely, Lav shakes her head. Her mother is not deceived: “Of course it is. It's just what you want—black stories, regret, easy regret. Milk as much sorrow out of life as possible—it's been your way ever since you were little. A lover of grief, you are, Lavinia Andrews—probably soaked into you from that bog water.”

Charlotte shrugs, steps back. Reassembling herself she pats her hair, adjusts the scarf and without another word shuts the door in her daughter's face.

Philip's past, on the other hand, contains no murk, his story is history. From the beginning Lavinia has been impressed by the clarity of her lover's life.

All around the Bay of Quinte there are houses crowded with Philip's history. Houses where nothing has ever been lost: powder horns, cooking pots, family Bibles, needlepoint samplers, jewellery, tools and enamelled pill boxes, lacquered tins that once held china tea, ivory buttons and button hooks, glass bottles, all polished and on display. Evidence not so much of success as of permanence, of permanence and responsibility.

And Philip's relatives are there too, of course, in those grey stone houses: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews.

It seemed to Lav that Philip's family existed outside of time, beyond trouble. His older brothers are architects, they work in the family business, his sister's husbands do something nebulous in offices. The men do not discuss business at home. The women are well educated but seem without personal ambition. One unmarried aunt teaches at the University of Toronto. The wives, although they put in long hours fund-raising for community hospitals, symphony orchestras and art galleries, do not have paying jobs. Teen-aged nieces and nephews attend private schools. They do not do drugs, or at least not noticeably, do not hitch-hike across Canada or vanish into cults.

In Philip's world people never vanish—or even die. Not only are his parents alive, so are his grandparents, all four of them. Even those who disappear from most families, the dead and divorced, are very much present in Philip's. Sepia-faced ancestors stare down from the walls as if guarding their possessions, divorced couples stay politely friendly, the stone houses are always home to them and to their children. Families gather to celebrate Christmas, rally 'round for marriages, christenings, funerals. By not attending such gatherings, by showing anger, by refusing to maintain this family tradition of civility, Philip's wife Zinnie has disgraced herself since their separation.

It was those powder horns, those cooking pots and family Bibles, those button hooks and carved sideboards that kept Lav from hearing her lover when he told her he was about to leave. Philip's origins were visible and so, by extension, must his destinations be.

It was November and bitterly cold in Ottawa the night Philip made his announcement. He had suggested a fire—the first of the season. The dry wood caught at once and Lav settled down on the sofa with her mother's letter and a pile of papers she had brought home from work.

“Not going to bother with those tonight, are you?” Philip asked. He passed her a drink and went to stand, elbow on mantlepiece, sipping his whiskey.

Later Lav will remember how well this classic male pose suited him. Despite thinning hair, despite bifocals he is too vain to wear at work, Philip looked quite handsome, tall and loose-limbed as he stood there declaiming on the decline of significant research in Canada—a particular concern of his despite the fact that he himself had done no research for years.

Lav was reading a letter from her mother. A letter which contained an invitation to spend Christmas in California. Charlotte has now lived there for three years, has become the wife of Rick Cabrillo whom Lav has not met. The Cabrillos live in Bayside, in a house Charlotte describes as modern Victorian—a house festooned with fretwork and a front portico supported by cream coloured Greek pillars. Charlotte has sent a picture of herself and Rick standing beneath the portico, surrounded by pots of pink azaleas. They have their arms around each other, they are tanned, they smile, they look as if they have dressed to match the pink and cream house. Lav studied the picture, it might be pleasant to spend Christmas in California, she wonders if she should suggest it to Philip.

“…some remarkable work being done in Australia. After twenty years with Fisheries and Oceans I'll have a good severance package,” Philip was saying when she began to listen. “I'll certainly be able to pay off my share of the mortgage on this house. So if you decide to sell we can divide the equity—I expect it's doubled in the nine years we've been here.”

Could he really have said that? Could there have been no hint of defensiveness in his voice when he spoke the words “nine years”—the length of time they have been lovers? Could he have so brutally announced his intention, so quickly gotten on to the practical aspects of his leaving? Surely Lav misremembers.

Surely. Yet it is all so clear, how he stood, how he spoke, not guardedly but with care, pausing, just as he does when making a presentation at work—waiting attentively for questions.

Lav asked no questions. She sat, trying to control her face, examining the recent past for some omen that might have warned her this was coming—there had been a dinner party months before when the host and hostess ended the evening snarling at each other in the kitchen. Lav and Philip had been among the guests who slipped into coats and left as quietly as possible.

“Thank God we're not like those two—I cannot think why people stay in such relationships!” Philip said later, unknotting his tie in the peace and quiet of their house.

There was never any acrimony in their relationship—no embarrassment, no big arguments, no petty meanness. Lav and Philip had worked at keeping such things out, had come to an understanding about what their financial arrangements would be, whether they should have children together, how much privacy each needed.

It had taken a little time, a little care, but they had arranged a life in which each had freedom to indulge their separate interests—Lav did volunteer work at the National Gallery, Philip played squash and belonged to an amateur theatrical group—and enjoyed the civilized shared pleasures of a comfortable old house, good food, quiet conversation, friends, music, twice-yearly ski week-ends with his relatives, visits to galleries and theatres.

When Lav learned she was to be appointed Philip's assistant she had worried briefly, secretly, about how they would maintain this comfortable balance. Would it be too much—working side by side during the day, then eating together, talking, exchanging ideas, making love, at night? Her concerns had proven unnecessary, their work life flowed smoothly into their private life. Lav knew, and enjoyed knowing, that Philip's growing reputation for being a top-notch administrator depended partly on her approach to problems, which was, she thought, even more analytical than his.

She was aware, of course, had been given subtle hints, that certain people in the department considered her promotion unearned. Lav did not think this was so, she was good at what she did and knew it. Later she would wonder—she had, after all, done little original research, published no papers—could Philip have sometimes suggested her name to people at the top, given her credit for work that was really his?

“…and I'll make some kind of financial arrangement for Zinnie and the children—something I can oversee from Australia. Nat can set up a trust fund.” Philip seems to be appealing to her for suggestions as to how he might best provide for his wife and children. And Lav sits there trying to look helpful—trying to look kind and caring—a civilized, modern woman. A woman who has learned to fit in, one who is never nasty, who never wails, tears her hair, never draws blood.

We are being unfair, of course—introducing you to Philip at a bad moment. He is in many ways an admirable man, a tactful, considerate man, a man with whom Lav has lived happily for nine years. From the beginning he was completely honest about Zinnie and his sons, who, according to Philip, live in squalor, surrounded by unwashed socks, unanswered letters and unkept promises.

Philip and his wife had been living apart for two years before he met Lav. They did not intend to divorce—Zinnie because it does not matter and Philip because this arrangement gives him free and open access to the three children, some chance of organizing his family's financial affairs.

Yet that night he spoke of his children with a kind of absent-minded nostalgia that seemed to relegate them, and Lav, to the past: “…dirty dishes and dirty laundry in every room—piles of papers, stacks of brochures and posters—wild stuff, she calls it—propaganda for that environment thing she's into…and cats—cats everywhere. I've seen my own children eat beans out of cans and I doubt there's a matching cup and saucer in the house.”

Philip poked irritably at the fire, sparks flew upward. “Once—for a very short time—I thought living like that was exotic, now I see how squalid it is, how completely undisciplined Zinnie is—too undisciplined to ever achieve anything. Of course, her parents were the same—strange, arty people who expected their own daughter to call them by their first names—went off to Zaire in their sixties and vanished. The boys seem to have caught it—I used to hold out some hope for young Chris, but if this first semester is any indication I doubt he'll make it through the year at Queen's.”

Philip has tried to direct his sons into professions, hoped the oldest boy would want to become an architect, join his uncles in the family firm. Now, for the first time, the possibility that his own children might slip out of the middle class occurs to him.

After Philip had gone upstairs—kissing Lav on the neck, mumbling that she was one in a million—she sat nursing her drink. She thought of phoning Zinnie, suggesting that she dump all three children on Philip and run. Taking dramatic licence, Lav imagined the boys much younger than they really are, contemplated with pleasure the havoc their day-to-day presence would wreak on Philip's life, on his escape plan.

She and Zinnie could drive south together, shedding clothes, becoming tanned, younger as the miles slip by. They might visit Charlotte. Lav poured another brandy and reread her mother's letter. She imagined arriving at the Victorian house—Zinnie would wear her yellow duck slippers, bring her stacks of inky brochures, her disgraceful cats.