The Lemon Table (7 page)

“It’s terrible what’s happening in the Balkans,” said Janice.

“Yes.” Merrill had long ago stopped reading those pages of the
Sun-Times
.

“Milošević must be taught a lesson.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“The Serbs never change their spots.”

“I don’t know what to think,” repeated Merrill.

“I remember Munich.”

That seemed to clinch the discussion. Janice had been saying “I remember Munich” a lot lately, though in truth what she meant was that she must, in early childhood, have heard grown-ups referring to Munich as a recent and shameful betrayal. But this wasn’t worth explaining; it would only take away from the authority of the statement.

“I might just have the granola and some whole wheat toast.”

“It’s what you always have,” Merrill pointed out, though without impatience, more as a matter of indulgent fact.

“Yes, but I like to think I might have something else.” Also, every time she had the granola she had to remember that shaky molar.

“Well, I guess I’ll have the poached egg.”

“It’s what you always have,” Janice replied. Eggs were binding, kippers repeated, waffles weren’t breakfast.

“Will you make the sign for him?”

That was just like Merrill. She always arrived first and chose the seat from which you couldn’t catch the waiter’s eye without getting a crick in your neck. Which left Janice to flap her hand a few times and try not to get embarrassed when the waiter displayed other priorities. It was as bad as trying to hail a taxi. They just didn’t notice you nowadays, she thought.

2

T
hey met here, in the breakfast room of the Harborview, among the hurrying businessmen and lounging vacationers, on the first Tuesday of every month. Come rain or shine, they said. Come hell or high water. Actually, it was more, come Janice’s hip operation and come Merrill’s ill-advised trip to Mexico with her daughter. Apart from that, they’d made it a regular date these last three years.

“I’m ready for my tea now,” said Janice.

“English Breakfast, Orange Pekoe, Earl Grey?”

“English Breakfast.” She said it with a nervous crispness which made the waiter stop checking the table. An indeterminate nod was as near as he came to an apology.

“Coming right up,” he said, as he was already moving off.

“Do you think he’s a pansy?” For some reason unknown to her, Janice had deliberately avoided a modern word, though the effect was, if anything, more pointed.

“I couldn’t care less,” said Merrill.

“I couldn’t care less either,” said Janice. “Especially not at my age. Anyway, they make very good waiters.” This didn’t seem right either, so she added, “That’s what Bill used to say.” Bill hadn’t said anything of the kind, as far as she could remember, but his posthumous corroboration was useful when she got flustered.

She looked across at Merrill, who was wearing a burgundy jacket over a purple skirt. On her lapel was a gilt brooch large enough to be a small sculpture. Her hair, cut short, was an improbable bright straw, and seemed not to care that it was unconvincing; instead, it merely said, this is to remind you that I was once a blonde—some sort of blonde, anyway. More an aide-memoire than a hair-colouring, thought Janice. It was a pity about Merrill: she didn’t seem to understand that after a certain age women should no longer pretend to be what they had once been. They should submit to time. Neutrality, discretion, dignity were called for. Merrill’s refusal must be something to do with being American.

What the two of them had in common, apart from widowhood, were flat suede shoes with special gripper soles. Janice had found them in a mail-order catalogue, and Merrill had surprised her by asking for a pair too. They were very good on wet pavements, as Janice still called them, and it did rain an awful lot up here in the Pacific North–West. People constantly told her it must remind her of England, and she always said Yes, always meaning No.

“I mean, he didn’t think they ought to be allowed in the armed forces, but he wasn’t prejudiced.”

In response, Merrill stabbed her egg. “Everyone was a darned sight more discreet about their private business when I was young.”

“Me too,” said Janice hastily. “I mean, when I was too. Which would have been at about the same time.” Merrill glanced at her, and Janice, reading a reproof, added, “Though of course in a different part of the world.”

“Tom always said you could tell from the way they walked. Not that it bothers me.” Yet Merrill did seem a little bothered.

“How do they walk?” In asking the question, Janice felt transported back into adolescence, back before marriage.

“Oh, you know,” said Merrill.

Janice watched Merrill eat a mouthful of poached egg. If she was being given a hint, she couldn’t imagine what it might be. She hadn’t noticed how their waiter walked. “I don’t,” she said, feeling her ignorance as culpable, almost infantile.

“With their hands out,” Merrill wanted to say. Instead, uncharacteristically, she turned her head and shouted, “Coffee,” surprising both Janice and the waiter. Perhaps she was calling for a demonstration.

When she turned back, she was composed again. “Tom was in Korea,” she said. “Oak leaves and clusters.”

“My Bill did his National Service. Well, everyone had to then.”

“It was so cold, if you put your tea on the ground, it turned to a mug of brown ice.”

“He missed Suez. He was in the reserves but they didn’t call him up.”

“It was so cold you had to tip your razor out of its case into warm water before you could use it.”

“He quite enjoyed it. He was a good mixer, Bill.”

“It was so cold, if you put your hand on the side of a tank, your skin came away.”

“Probably a better mixer than me, if the truth be known.”

“Even the gas froze solid. The gas.”

“There was a very cold winter back in England. Just after the war. Forty-six, I think, or maybe it was forty-seven.”

Merrill felt suddenly impatient. What did her Tom’s suffering have to do with a cold spell in Europe? Really. “How’s your granola?” she asked.

“Hard on the teeth. I’ve got this molar.” Janice picked a hazelnut out of her bowl and tapped it on the side. “Looks a bit like a tooth, doesn’t it?” She giggled, in a way that further annoyed Merrill. “What do you think about these implant things?”

“Tom had every tooth in his head when he died.”

“So did Bill.” This was far from true, but it would be letting him down to say anything less.

“They couldn’t get a shovel into the ground to bury their dead.”

“Who couldn’t?” Under Merrill’s stare, Janice worked it out. “Yes, of course.” She felt herself beginning to panic. “Well, I suppose it didn’t matter in a way.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“In what way?” Merrill liked to say—to herself and to others—that while she didn’t believe in disagreement and unpleasantness, she did believe in telling things straight.

“In … well, the … people they were waiting to bury … if it was that cold … you know what I mean.”

Merrill did, but chose to remain implacable. “A true soldier always buries his dead. You should know that.”

“Yes,” said Janice, remembering
The Thin Red Line
but not liking to mention it. Odd how Merrill chose to comport herself like some high-faluting military widow. Janice knew that Tom had been drafted. Janice knew a thing or two more about him, for that matter. What they said on campus. What she’d seen with her own eyes.

“Of course, I never met your husband, but everyone spoke so highly of him.”

“Tom was wonderful,” said Merrill. “It was a love match.”

“He was very popular, they all told me.”

“Popular?” Merrill repeated the word as if it were peculiarly inadequate in the circumstances.

“That’s what people said.”

“You just have to face the future,” said Merrill. “Look it full in the face. That’s the only way.” Tom had told her this when he was dying.

Better to face the future than the past, thought Janice. Did she really have no idea? Janice remembered a sudden view from a bathroom window, down behind a hedge, a red-faced man unzipping, a woman putting out her hand, the man pushing at her head, the woman refusing, an argument in dumbshow as the party’s noise swirled below her, the man putting his hand on the woman’s neck, pushing her down, the woman spitting on the man’s thing, the man slapping her across the top of the head, all in twenty seconds or so, a cameo of lust and rage, the couple parting, the war hero and love match and famous campus groper zipping himself up again, someone rattling the handle of the bathroom, Janice finding her way downstairs and asking Bill to take her home immediately, Bill commenting on her colour and speculating about that extra glass or two she must have downed when he wasn’t looking, Janice snapping at him in the car and then apologizing. Over the years, she had forced herself to forget this scene, pushing it to the back of her mind, almost as if it were about Bill and herself in some way. Then, after Bill had died, and she had met Merrill, there was another reason for trying to forget it.

“People said I would never get over it.” Merrill’s manner seemed to Janice monstrously complacent. “That’s the truth. I
shall
never get over it. It was a love match.”

Janice buttered some toast. At least here they didn’t deliver your toast already buttered, as they did at some other places. That was another American habit she couldn’t get used to. She tried to unscrew the lid of a small pot of honey, but her wrist wasn’t strong enough. Then she tried the bramble jelly, with equal lack of success. Merrill seemed not to notice. Janice put a triangle of ungarnished toast into her mouth.

“Bill never looked at another woman in thirty years.” Aggression had risen in Janice like a burp. She preferred to agree with other people in conversation, and she tried to please, but sometimes the pressure of doing this made her say things which surprised her. Not the thing itself, but the fact that she said it. And when Merrill failed to respond, it made her insist.

“Bill never looked at another woman in thirty years.”

“I’m sure you’re right, my dear.”

“When he died, I was bereft. Quite bereft. I felt my life had come to an end. Well it has. I try not to feel sorry for myself, I keep myself entertained, no I suppose distracted is more the word, but I know that’s my lot, really. I’ve had my life, and now I’ve buried it.”

“Tom used to tell me that just seeing me across a room made his heart lift.”

“Bill never forgot a wedding anniversary. Not once in thirty years.”

“Tom used to do this wonderfully romantic thing. We’d go away for the weekend, up into the mountains, and he’d book us into the lodge under a false name. We’d be Tom and Merrill Humphreys, or Tom and Merrill Carpenter, or Tom and Merrill Delivio, and we’d keep it up all weekend, and he’d pay in cash when we left. It made it … exciting.”

“Bill pretended to forget one year. No flowers in the morning, and he told me he’d be working late so he’d grab a bite at his desk. I tried not to think about it, but it made me a bit down, and then in the middle of the afternoon I got a call from the car company to check they were to pick me up at seven thirty and take me to the French House. Can you imagine? He’d even thought it out so that they gave me a few hours’ warning. And he’d managed to smuggle his best suit into work without me noticing so that he could change into it.
Such
an evening. Ah.”

“I always made an effort before I went to the hospital. I said to myself, Merrill, no matter how darned sorry you feel for yourself, you make sure he sees you looking like something worth living for. I even bought new clothes. He’d say, ‘Honey, I haven’t seen that before, have I?’ and give me his smile.”

Janice nodded, imagining the scene differently: the campus groper, on his deathbed, seeing his wife spend money on new clothes to please some successor. As soon as the thought occurred, she felt ashamed of it, and hurried on. “Bill said that if there was a way to send me a message—afterwards—then he’d find one. He’d get through to me somehow.”

“The doctors told me they’d never seen anyone hang in there so long. They said, the courage of the man. I said, oak leaves and clusters.”

“But I guess even if he was trying to send me a message, I might not be able to recognize the form in which it came. I comfort myself with that. Though the thought of Bill trying to get through and seeing me not understand is unbearable.”

Next she’ll be into that reincarnation crap again, thought Merrill. How we all come back as squirrels. Listen, kid, your husband is not only dead, but when he was alive he walked with his hands out, know what I mean? No, she probably wouldn’t get it. Your husband was known on campus as that little limey fag in administration—that any clearer? He was a teabag, OK? Not that she would ever actually tell Janice. Far too delicate. She’d just crumble to bits.

It was odd. Knowing this gave Merrill a sense of superiority, but not of power. It made her think, someone’s got to look out for her now that little fag husband of hers is gone, and you seem to have volunteered for the job, Merrill. She may irritate the hell out of you from time to time, but Tom would have wanted you to see this one through.

“More coffee, ladies?”

“I’d like some fresh tea, please.”

Janice expected to be offered yet again the choice of English Breakfast, Orange Pekoe or Earl Grey. But the waiter merely took away the miniature, one-cup pot which Americans mysteriously judged sufficient for morning tea.

“How’s the hip?” Merrill asked.

“Oh, much easier now. I’m so glad I had it done.”

When the waiter returned, Janice looked at the pot and said sharply, “I wanted fresh.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said I wanted fresh. I didn’t just ask for more hot water.”

“I’m sorry?”

“This,” said Janice, reaching for the yellow label which dangled from the lid of the pot, “is the same old
teabag
.” She glared at the supercilious young man. She really was cross.

Afterwards, she wondered why he had got all huffy, and why Merrill had suddenly burst into manic laughter, raised her coffee mug, and said, “Here’s to you, my dear.”