Real Life (6 page)

“Gerry and I are divorcing.” Beth couldn’t think of anything to say, and miscalculating, she sat down with a bump on one of her oak kitchen chairs. “I doubt you’re surprised, Mom,” Janice said. “You must have seen things weren’t working out.”

“I
am
surprised,” Beth said, they hadn’t been married two full years. “I knew you haven’t been quite yourself, but I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”

“We can’t talk to each other, we don’t want the same things, he seems to be going in some direction I can’t make sense of. I never expected this when we got married.” Confused, Beth wanted to ask if Gerald was abusive, or violent, or if he had a girlfriend, or—was Janice having an affair? Finally, she asked, “Is this—mutual?”

“Yes!” Janice said loudly, and then more softly, “Yes,” again so that Beth could hear her relief, her desire to leave and go
anywhere, now. “He’s a nice guy, Mom, but we can both see where this is leading. So we’re going to bail out before we start to hate each other. Before we get all entangled …” In the unfinished sentence Beth saw Duncan turning his back on her, walking away from her and the car loaded with her belongings. Quickly, she said, “Do you need me to come? I’ll come right away—”

“Oh, no,” Janice said. “I mean, I appreciate the thought, Mom, but really, I’m fine. Will you tell Dad for me?”

Beth had been planning to bundle up and walk to the grocery store for milk and bread as soon as she finished the dishes. This was her regular morning exercise, marching briskly down the shovelled and well-scraped suburban sidewalks, breathing in the bracing winter air. Now, feeling a little strange, although she couldn’t have said just how, she poured herself the last cup of coffee, instead, and tried to come to terms with what she’d just heard.

She suspected she was more upset than she ought to be, knowing, as she felt fairly sure she did, that Janice would be all right. She supposed this was because the news brought back memories of her own divorce twenty-six years ago now. Janice and Jeff, the children of her current marriage, were twenty-four and twenty-two. And maybe she was just a little bit angry with her daughter? And if so, why? she asked herself. Because—because—and she remembered how, after her own first marriage had broken up, she’d gone weeks that stretched into months with a pain in her chest that wouldn’t go away, that it had taken her years to admit was the literal pain of a broken heart, that—yes, it was true—she’d been close to committing suicide, that even now, today, she doubted she was fully recovered from what her divorce had done to her. And here was Janice, simply walking away, no harm done, no pain suffered. It did make her angry, and she had to laugh, rueful
that at her age, her first marriage so far in the past, she still could be such a fool.

She found she now craved her morning walk, and she went to the closet and pulled on her snowpants, her parka, and boots and left the house. Trudging down the sidewalk past the small bungalows that lined the street, she began to study them as if she hadn’t been passing them every day for years. Some were still decorated for Christmas even though it was two weeks past, and she realized now why Janice and Gerry hadn’t come home for it. At the corner was the pale blue house she could never see without an inward shudder.

One summer afternoon, years earlier, she’d been passing with Jeff in his stroller and Janice holding onto the handle, when a woman, looking to be slightly older than Beth and wearing shorts and a T-shirt, had come out the back door, knelt in the flower bed at the side of the house, and begun weeding. A moment later a boy of about ten, also wearing shorts and a T-shirt, came out and stood beside her. It was their faces that held Beth—their expressions contained such misery that she couldn’t look away. Just as Beth and the children were almost opposite the house, the front door opened, a man came briskly out, his face set grimly, and strode to where the woman knelt and the boy stood at the flower bed. He reached toward the woman, the boy stepped between them, there was a wordless struggle, the woman starting to rise, the boy grasping his father’s forearm, the man shoving the boy to break his grasp so that the child fell hard, full-length, onto the lawn, and then the husband stepping over the boy and striding away down the other side of the house.

Beth hadn’t known what to do. Call the police? Call to the woman and the boy to ask if she could help? Instead, appalled and full of some emotion she couldn’t quite identify—fear? shame?—she averted her eyes, at least partly not to let woman
and boy know there’d been a witness to their humiliation, and kept going.

The house had changed hands a couple of times since then, and she’d never seen that family again. She hoped the woman had had the sense to take her son and leave before worse harm was done. But remembering the look on her face, the way she seemed less afraid than terribly sad, and yet somehow resigned or patient about what was happening, Beth knew that the woman would never leave. But she often wished that she’d walked up the sidewalk to the two of them and offered help.

At least Duncan had never abused her. That was what she’d told people whether they asked or not, over the years. He never laid a finger on me, she’d told her parents and her siblings and her friends—later, when she began to have friends again. But she wouldn’t think about it; it was stupid to still occasionally catch herself thinking about it.

At dinner that night she broke the news of Janice’s divorce to Hugh. For a long time he said nothing, seeming stunned by it, and she watched his face grow slowly old, lines that the low light of the dining-room chandelier had faded reappearing in his forehead and around his mouth.

“I thought they were happy,” he murmured, and raised his eyes to meet Beth’s across the half-eaten casserole, the salad bowl, and their empty wineglasses. She had a sudden intuition that he had wondered if some fatal flaw of Beth’s, who was already divorced when he met her, had surfaced in their daughter. She could see him erasing the notion as quickly as it arrived.

“She says they aren’t happy together, that it was a mistake, nothing else,” Beth told him, her voice gentle, as if she were explaining something sad about life to a child.

“Nothing else?—” he said. “A marriage is nothing—”

“I was glad,” Beth said. “I don’t want her to suffer, and if she’s not suffering—”

“If she’s not suffering,” Hugh said, “either she’s lying or there’s something wrong with her.” When Beth didn’t respond, he went on. “Remember the wedding? Remember?” His voice was louder now and colour was returning to his face. Beth remembered now too: the long intimate gazes into each other’s eyes, their hands clasped tightly together, the endlessly long kiss at the altar, and at the head table during the reception, kiss after kiss, while the guests clapped and laughed and clattered spoons against their glasses.

“I always said,” Beth remarked, “that no matter how much people think they do, no one knows what goes on inside a marriage.” Before she could stop herself, she was back inside her own first marriage, Duncan browbeating her over something she’d said or done that she herself wasn’t even able to remember. Or, she thought now, that had never happened, that he invented because he seemed to hate me so much.

“What’s wrong?” Hugh asked.

“It’s just—Janice and Gerry,” she said, not looking at him. But she could feel his eyes held on her face.

“It’s natural that old memories would surface at a time like this,” he told her gently. Beth lowered her head, unable to look at him.

“I think you should go to her,” he went on, lifting his fork and setting it down again against the pale tablecloth.

“But I offered to. She was adamant that I shouldn’t come, that she doesn’t need me.”

“Never mind,” Hugh told her. “Go anyway. Go tomorrow.”

“I’m supposed to work at the nursing home tomorrow afternoon.”

“Get somebody to work for you.”

“It’s just that she said—”

“I know,” he said. “But how clearly can she be thinking? Go to her and see for yourself.”

As soon as she arrived at the bus station in the city she called Janice at work to give her a little warning.

“I’m staying at a hotel,” she told her. “I don’t want to be—I don’t want to make matters worse.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom,” Janice said, sounding like an exasperated parent. “Gerry’s moved out. Come to the apartment. I’ll leave now and meet you there.”

The apartment had been half emptied of furniture. There was still the sofa and coffee table, and a small television set standing on a folding
TV
table instead of the elaborate wall unit that had been there the last time Beth had visited, and there were a couple of whiter rectangles of space on the white wall where pictures had once hung. The kitchen looked much the same, although now there were only two chairs at the small maple table instead of four, and the wedding-present microwave was missing from the counter.

“I told him to take it,” Janice said, noticing her mother glancing at the empty spot framed by crumbs. Janice and Gerry both had careers, they had little time for housekeeping. “This weekend I plan to take stock. I might even move. You can help me figure it all out,” she said to her mother, casting a smile at her over her shoulder as she opened the fridge door to put away some of the few groceries Beth had brought. Beth had barely registered the briefness of the smile before the fridge’s emptiness, its gleaming white walls, struck her with a pang of grief. She’d arrived alone in this very city with only her clothing, a couple of paintings, some books to be unloaded into three bare, white-walled rooms like Janice’s, but hers without so much as a bed in it or even a chair to sit down on. And Duncan’s cheque in her purse that she couldn’t bear to look at.
She had been too numb even to cry, and that pain in her chest had spread and spread until it filled her throat and her abdomen …

“Mom! What’s wrong?” Janice was staring into her face with a worried expression. “You’re not sick, are you?”

Beth said, “I came here to make sure you’re all right,” and she laughed, embarrassed, turning away, taking off her coat and going to the closet at the front door to hang it up.

From the kitchen Janice called, “Should we just have omelettes for supper? And you brought a bottle of wine. Great!”

That night, sleeping on the wide living-room couch, refusing Janice’s insistent offer of what was now the only bed in the apartment, Gerry having taken the one in the spare room, Beth had a dream; a strange, confusing dream that, although it wasn’t a nightmare, troubled her enough to wake her, and for a long time she couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the morning, trying to tell Janice about it, she found she couldn’t get its images clear or convey its impact, which had been considerable.

“I was walking in a jungle, I think it was, or a forest like in Stanley Park in Vancouver.” Janice said, “Mmmm,” glancing at the newspaper folded on the table beside her. “It was very dark and I couldn’t see my way. There was somebody with me or behind me, I think. A man. I think it was your father, or else maybe it was my first husband—Duncan.”

“Duncan,” Janice’s voice overlapped Beth’s. “God, Mom, how old is that marriage anyway? And you’re still dreaming about him?” Flustered, Beth laughed in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m supposed to be here to check you out.” She smiled apologetically at her daughter. “Your father wants to make sure you’re okay.”

“Do I look like I’m in trouble?” Janice asked. She glanced down quickly, before Beth could read anything in her lively
brown eyes, so unlike Beth’s own, which were hazel and deep-set, and which she knew often held a puzzled, faintly worried look.

“Would you tell me if you were?” For a long moment Janice said nothing. Beth could see some resistance leaving her, her face grew softer, and her shoulders lowered barely perceptibly.

“I miss him,” she said. “And I feel—bad—you know? Because we thought we really loved each other, and it’s so … empty without him.” She lifted both her hands and pressed their heels against her eyes. “Tell me I’ll get over this,” she said, her voice muffled. Beth wanted to hold her daughter against her breasts, to smooth her gleaming dark hair and kiss away her tears, but she knew better than to move. Janice put down her hands. “You’re still not over Duncan—”

“I was married to him for eight years,” Beth said gently. “I left my home, my job, my family and friends, I moved into his community. On the farm we could never escape each other. We were both there, all the time. And he—” “He was cruel to you,” Janice said, softly. “I’ve never said that,” Beth said.

“You never said anything,” Janice said, suddenly sharp. “But we always knew, all of us, when you were thinking about him. He was part of all our lives, even though none of us ever met him.” She laughed in a surprised way, as if she’d just realized this, and found the realization amusing in a woeful, world-weary way. “And Dad used to say, ‘Leave your mother alone, give her some space.’”

Beth could feel a flush rising up her neck, and her knuckles, newly slightly arthritic, began to ache, a faint, low-level pain that was, nonetheless, a kind of suffering. She wanted to be angry, she thought how good it would be to be angry, to break dishes and scream terrible things, maybe even obscenities, if she could think of any, but she never had done any of these
things, and now seemed hardly the time to begin. She took refuge in getting the coffee pot and refilling both their mugs.

“It’s Saturday, you don’t have to go to work. Let’s go shopping for a microwave and a new
TV
stand.”

“Let’s go to the big mall,” Janice said. “I haven’t been there since we got married. Gerry hates malls and especially that one, it’s so noisy and crowded.” She pulled her thick hair back from her face. “Maybe I could get my hair done, something new. Mmmm?”

“We can have lunch there, make a day of it,” Beth said, forcing gaiety into her voice, as she knew Janice had just done.

Beth’s dream had been weighted with such mystery that, simple as it was, she couldn’t forget it, nor go back to sleep: night in an enormous, endless forest of huge, tall trees, so that she made her way in darkness, yet without stumbling on protruding roots or undergrowth. And a man following her, a husband, although she couldn’t be sure which one it was, or even if it was one of the men she’d been married to in real life. About three a.m. she got up quietly, intending to make herself a cup of herbal tea. A shaft of light glowed under Janice’s door, and seeing it, Beth knocked softly. She heard a murmured “Come in.”