Authors: Linden MacIntyre
Maybe she’d begun to notice JC Campbell in those frantic early days because he, like her, seemed to be on the periphery of everything. He seemed to be just a little bit more serious about work, a little less inclined to be unconscious at the end of every social function. He often helped her with the cleanup after the other men had stumbled home or off to temporary sleeping arrangements. Back then she thought he was from Halifax. She’d suspected, for a while, that he was homosexual, that his remoteness came from a feeling of exclusion. But Sextus told her that he probably held himself a little apart because of fallout from an incident when he was still a student. JC had secrets, but he definitely wasn’t gay.
That evening, December 19, 1997, they parted after dinner with a hug. It was almost fraternal, but it left a lingering sensation oddly similar to reassurance, and it stayed with her, as did certain moments in their conversation.
The next time she saw him he was on television. There was sunshine. He was talking to a camera. He had told her that he preferred to be the guy behind the scenes, the producer or the writer. But there he was, speaking to the world. She found herself staring without hearing what he had to say.
Effie Gillis had by then achieved just about as much as she aspired to in terms of her career and her life. She was into healthy middle age, she was a department head at a major university. She was published and looked forward to perhaps a peaceful decade contemplating parts of history she deemed to be important, conveying insight with poise and credibility to her students and her peers. She and Sextus were rebuilding a relationship that she’d convinced herself might now provide stability even if it fell short of the intimacy she still craved. It was easy in such circumstances to forget the fragility of expectations. The reminder, when it came, was brutal.
After the initial shock wore off, she would be able to recall with some amusement that it came on a Palm Sunday, a week before the end of Lent, when warm spring days and all the old familiar stories of redemption lift the spirits. Her brief encounter in the subway station months before had all but faded from her mind. Then her brother called. His words were blunt, especially from a priest: “The miserable quiff is having an affair with Stella Fortune.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“You know who I’m talking about. That sleazebag Sextus.”
In the background she could hear dishes rattling, human babble, raucous laughter.
“Are you there?” Duncan asked.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said.
“Well, say something.”
“What do you expect me to say? That I’m shocked? That after all the years I’ve known him, anything he could do would come as a surprise, especially involving women? Wake up, Duncan.”
“Effie, I thought Stella had more sense than that. Sextus Gillis. Of all the goddamned people she could have—”
“You thought Stella had more sense than your sister,” she said tightly, anger rising.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“No?”
“I feel like an idiot,” he said. “I told her things …”
“Presuming you were dealing with some higher sensibility.”
“I’m sorry I called,” he said. “I should have left you in the bloody dark.”
He hung up, and afterwards she felt sorry for the selfishness of her reaction. She could picture her brother standing there alone, slouched against the wall beside the pay phones, misery personified.
Duncan had moved to Toronto in the fall of 1997. He told her only that he’d been granted a sabbatical to work the streets in what he called a rescue mission. Saving lost street people while rescuing his ministry, he said. Trying to redefine his priesthood, to give it relevance, or, maybe, in the end, to give it up entirely. Effie hadn’t been aware that Stella Fortune was a factor, though she’d known that they were friends when he was pastor in her parish in Cape Breton.
Duncan called later to apologize. “You’re the one who should be pissed,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t deserve me lashing out.”
“I feel it’s my fault,” Duncan said. “If I’d been paying more attention … But I thought she had more … character.”
“We don’t know the whole story,” Effie said. “One thing Stella has is character. But character sometimes gets trumped by needs.”
“I don’t think I want to know the whole story,” he said, and laughed briefly. “You didn’t have a clue?”
“I didn’t. How did you find out?”
“Stella phoned. Apparently he just started dropping in on her. Then he made it clear to her that he wanted a more intimate relationship.”
“So she came to you?”
“She wanted my advice.”
“My God, Duncan,” Effie said.
“What?”
“I can’t believe how thick you are. Do you really think it was
advice
she wanted?”
She told herself she was too old for heartache, but not for embarrassment. Privately she knew it was her smugness she regretted most; it bothered her that she had let her guard down, as if past mistakes could ever immunize a fool from future foolishness. All the years she’d known Sextus, all the old betrayals, now weighed heavily upon her. She realized she didn’t really mind the now inevitable solitude. She’d learned to think of it as independence. What bothered her was this reminder that there was, never far beneath the surface of her poise, a yearning (dare she call it loneliness).
It took about three days for the embarrassment to ripen into an unspeakable anger.
On day four, which was Holy Thursday, Sextus called her.
She hung up.
He phoned again that same day and left a message: they needed to talk; he’d made a huge mistake; he wanted to explain; he knew she’d understand if only he could have a moment. Nobody understood him better than Effie did.
She erased it.
Her smugness, she now realized, had come from the certainty that male behaviour could never catch her by surprise again. It was a small reward for all the years she’d spent coping with the turmoil men cause. Father. Brother. Husbands. Live-in partners. Even her neurotic male colleagues at the university. There was no excuse this time. It was entirely her own fault. She could and should have seen it coming. Her brother had disapproved of her renewed relationship with Sextus from the outset, but she really didn’t need a warning. Sextus Gillis had been dazzling and disappointing her since childhood. She dumped a husband for him, eloped and married him, tried to raise a child with him, tried to rise above his infidelities—and eventually threw him out and got over him successfully.
She should have had the sense, based on past experience, to avoid another entanglement from which there could be no constructive disengagement. But she was home when they started up again, back in Cape Breton where, she concluded afterwards, most of her worst life lapses had occurred.
She was vulnerable (God, how she hated to admit that), but, it seemed, he was too. And it shouldn’t have been totally far-fetched to think he’d changed a little at middle age, grown perhaps. Except it
was
too much to hope for and certainly too much to ask for. And here she was, messed up again.
Then it was day five, Good Friday, and JC Campbell was on her doorstep.
“Well, well, well,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again.”
“I’m a reporter,” he said. “I have ways of tracking people down. May I come in?”
She stepped back to let him in, then closed the door behind him. Stood there, mind blank.
“What a great spot,” he said, hands on hips, taking in the room. He walked over to a bookcase and studied a shelf of Gaelic volumes, murmuring more compliments. She was at a loss. To ask abruptly what he wanted would sound unfriendly. He was an old friend of sorts, but then again he was a stranger and, more to the point, one of Sextus’s friends. She felt vaguely threatened.
“I was going to pour a drink,” she said.
“So, what are you having?”
“A Scotch,” she said.
“Single malt or blend?”
“Single,” she replied.
“No ice in mine, then.” He was smiling.
He still had his coat on, sitting at the corner of her kitchen table, sipping his drink. “You probably don’t realize that I am on a mission.”
“It hadn’t crossed my mind,” she said.
“Well. It’s awkward. And I make it a policy to stay away from personal … situations. But you know Sextus.”
She stood, walked away from the table, then turned. Leaned back against the kitchen counter, arms folded. “What about him?”
He raised a protective hand. “I know, I know. But I said that I’d drop in on you to say what he hasn’t had a chance to say himself.”
“He hasn’t had the chance because I don’t want to hear it.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll keep it real short. Whatever it was he got involved in—I don’t know the other party, whatever her name is. It was a fling. He said you’d understand the difference: a ‘fling’ as opposed to an ‘affair’ or a ‘relationship.’ Personally
I
don’t quite understand the difference. I’m just saying what he said.”
“So you can report back. You said it. Mission accomplished.”
“Sextus,” JC said, shaking his head and smiling. “Sextus never changes. He actually thinks it was Duncan’s fault. Really. Duncan left some woman dangling, the way Sextus sees it. She was lonely. He had no choice. He had to respond. Damsel in distress and all that. He actually blames Duncan.”
“I don’t think my brother should hear that part of the story. He’d tear Sextus’s head off. Not that it would be any great loss.” She laughed, for the first time in days, and felt a momentary ping of joy.
“I hear you,” he said. “Yup. I hear you loud and clear.” He drained his glass and stood. “That’s not bad. What is it?”
“Highland Park,” she said. “My brother turned me on to it.”
“Well, I’d best be on my way,” he said. “I’ve done my thing.” For the first time he seemed to be embarrassed.
“I’m going to freshen mine,” she said. “Do you have time for another?”
“If you twist my arm.”
Before he left her place on Good Friday, even though she barely knew him, she invited him to dinner Easter Sunday, knowing that he’d stay the night. She also knew that she was motivated mostly by malice when she slept with him the first time. And because she assumed it would be the only time, she allowed her fury to explode.
I’ll show you what it feels like to be dominated, to be used
. And when she sensed his submission, she rose in primal majesty above him, and in her mind, assumed his body as her own and wildly thrust it back at him.
I want you to be hurt, hurt, hurt
. Her hands turned into fists, as if to strike him, and only then did she realize that he had firmly grasped her by the wrists, was fighting back, and everything she ever was or ever would be fused without warning in that all-consuming instant
now
.
And
now
he shouted back, and suddenly they both were laughing as they collapsed, entangled in absurdity.
She expected, looking back on it, that JC Campbell would have been severely daunted by her raw display of passion, a bit intimidated by her self-indulgence, her aggression. She didn’t really care. But in the end she realized he hadn’t even noticed what she thought of as perversity, was unbothered by her obvious emotional detachment.
When she woke up on that Easter Monday morning, he was making breakfast.
Reality intruded briefly just before he left that day. At the door, he said, “I’ll call you later.” She tried to smile. How many farewells begin that way?
Give me a shout. Have a nice day
. She felt the dead weight in her chest. At least he hadn’t mentioned “love,” the second most abused word in the English language, after “sorry.” How many times had she lived this doorway scene?
She forced a smile. “Sure.”
“I have to pop into the office for a bit,” he said. He stood silent for a moment. “I
will
call.”
“You don’t even have my number.” She felt the urge to laugh. His face was almost boyish.
“I do,” he said. “I made a note of it, from your kitchen phone, on Friday. When you weren’t looking. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“That was sneaky. You only had to ask.”
“I was afraid of the answer,” he said. He turned and trotted down the doorstep, then stopped and waved.
And shortly after five o’clock that day he called.
She hadn’t really been prepared for the anger that poured out of her in what passed for “making love.” In the aftermath, she was surprised by his extraordinary calm, as if her provocative behaviour and her outburst had been commonplace in his experience. The last thing she expected was to ever hear from him again. In her own mind, it had been Effie’s last one-night stand. But he was almost eager when he called on Monday evening. He thought they should have lunch on Wednesday, talk some more. Talk more? What had they talked about?
It was a polite lunch at an Italian place on College, a place she was surprised he knew. One of
her
favourite places, but he suggested it. The conversation was mostly about how she came to specialize in Celtic studies. He listened carefully, avoiding speculation or analysis, though he ventured one conclusive comment. “It makes sense,” he said. “It’s an area that needs examination by someone with a modern outlook. Someone who can connect the dots between then and now, maybe tell us something about ourselves.”
“Well,” she said.
“Well, what?”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
There was very little discussion about him. That would come later, by way of mostly disconnected observations about other things, figuring out where he was at certain moments in her life.
By the end of lunch she wanted to know more: about Lebanon and Israel; about Russia and the Balkans and the Caucasus; about Spanish-sounding places that had been mentioned on the news. El Salvador.
Duncan had friends there, she said.
“Really?” He sounded surprised. “I’ll have to ask him.” Then, “I suppose you get back east quite a bit. Stay in touch.”
She laughed. She told him she’d pretty well lost touch with Cape Breton after she and Sextus moved to the city in 1970. She’d only started going back in ‘94, started fixing up the old home. Before that, maybe once in God knows how many years. Not since about 1972.