Too Much Happiness (7 page)

“Quite possibly I am not in my right mind,” says Joyce. “At the moment my gut feeling is to pitch these all out and buy plastic.”

“Postparty syndrome,” says Tommy. “We know all about it.”

“So who was that girl in the black dress?” says Joyce. “The one who walked out on the game?”

“Christie? You must mean Christie. Christie O’Dell. She’s Justin’s wife, but she has her own name. You know Justin.”

“Of course I know Justin. I just didn’t know he was married.”

“Ah, how they all grow up,” says Tommy, teasing.

“Justin’s thirty,” he adds. “She’s possibly older.”

Jay says, “Definitely older.”

“She’s an interesting-looking girl,” says Joyce. “What’s she like?”

“She’s a writer. She’s okay.”

Jay, bending over the sink, makes a noise that Joyce cannot interpret.

“Inclined to be rather aloof,” Tommy says. He speaks to Jay. “Am I right? Would you say that?”

“She thinks she’s hot shit,” Jay says distinctly.

“Well, she’s just got her first book published,” Tommy says. “I forget what it’s called. Some title like a how-to book, I don’t think it’s a good title. You get your first book out, I guess you are hot shit for a while.”

Passing a bookstore on Lonsdale a few days later, Joyce sees the girl’s face on a poster. And there is her name, Christie O’Dell. She is wearing a black hat and the same little black jacket she wore to the party. Tailored, severe, very low in the neck. Though she has practically nothing there to show off. She stares straight into the camera, with her somber, wounded, distantly accusing look.

Where has Joyce seen her before? At the party, of course. But even then, in the midst of her probably unwarranted dislike, she felt she had seen that face before.

A student? She’d had so many students in her time.

She goes into the store and buys a copy of the book.
How Are We to Live
. No question mark. The woman who sold it to her says, “And you know if you bring it back Friday afternoon between two and four, the author will be here to sign it for you.

“Just don’t tear the little gold sticker off so it shows you bought it here.”

Joyce has never understood this business of lining up to get a glimpse of the author and then going away with a stranger’s name written in your book. So she murmurs politely, indicating neither yes nor no.

She doesn’t even know if she will read the book. She has a
couple of good biographies on the go at the moment that she is sure are more to her taste than this will be.

How Are We to Live
is a collection of short stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book’s authority, making the author seem like somebody who is just hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside.

Nevertheless Joyce takes the book to bed with her that night and turns dutifully to the table of contents. About halfway down the list a title catches her eye.

“Kindertotenlieder.”

Mahler. Familiar territory. Reassured, she turns to the page indicated. Somebody, probably the author herself, has had the sense to supply a translation.

“Songs on the Death of Children.”

Beside her, Matt gives a snort.

She knows that he has disagreed with something he is reading and would like her to ask what it is. So she does.

“Christ. This idiot.”

She puts
How Are We to Live
facedown on her chest, making sounds to show that she is listening to him.

On the back cover of the book there is the same author’s photo, without the hat this time. Unsmiling still, and sulky, but a bit less pretentious. While Matt talks, Joyce shifts her knees so that she can position the book against them and read the few sentences of the cover biography.

Christie O’Dell grew up in Rough River, a small town on the coast of British Columbia. She is a graduate of the UBC Creative Writing Program. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband, Justin, and her cat, Tiberius
.

When he has explained to her what the idiocy in his book is all about, Matt lifts his eyes from his book to look at her book and says, “There’s that girl that was at our party.”

“Yes. Her name’s Christie O’Dell. She’s Justin’s wife.”

“She’s written a book then? What is it?”

“Fiction.”

“Oh.”

He has resumed his reading but in a moment asks her, with a hint of contrition, “Is it any good?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“She lived with her mother,” she reads, “in a house between the mountains and the sea—”

As soon as she has read those words Joyce feels too uncomfortable to continue reading. Or to continue reading with her husband beside her. She closes the book and says, “I think I’ll go downstairs for a little.”

“Is the light bothering you? I’m about to turn it off.”

“No. I think I want some tea. See you in a while.”

“I’ll probably be asleep.”

“Good night then.”

“Good night.”

She kisses him and takes the book with her.

She lived with her mother in a house between the mountains and the sea. Before that she had lived with Mrs. Noland who took in foster children. The number of children in Mrs. Noland’s house varied from time to time but there were always too many. The little ones slept in a bed in the middle of the room and the bigger ones slept in cots on either side of the bed so the little ones wouldn’t roll off. A bell rang to get you up in the morning. Mrs. Noland stood in the doorway ringing the bell. When she rang the next bell you were supposed to have been to pee and got yourself washed and dressed and be ready for breakfast. Big ones were supposed to help the little ones then make the beds. Sometimes the little ones in the middle had wet the bed because it was hard for them to crawl out in time over the big ones. Some big ones would tell on them but
other big ones were nicer and they just pulled up the covers and let it dry and sometimes when you got back in bed at night it was not quite dried. That was most of what she remembered about Mrs. Noland’s.

Then she went to live with her mother and every night her mother would take her to the AA meeting. She had to take her because there wasn’t anybody to leave her with. At the AA there was a box of Legos for kids to play with but she didn’t like Legos very much. After she started learning the violin at school she took her child’s violin with her to AA. She couldn’t play it there, but she had to hang on to it all the time because it belonged to the school. If people got talking very loudly she could practice a little softly.

The violin lessons were given at the school. If you didn’t want to play an instrument you could just play the triangles, but the teacher liked it better if you played something harder. The teacher was a tall woman with brown hair that she wore usually in a long braid down her back. She smelled different from the other teachers. Some of them had perfume on, but she never did. She smelled of wood or a stove or trees. Later the child would believe the smell was crushed cedar. After the child’s mother went to work for the teacher’s husband she smelled the same way but not quite the same. The difference seemed to be that her mother smelled of wood, but the teacher smelled of wood in music.

The child was not very talented, but she worked hard. She didn’t do that because she loved music. She did it for love of the teacher, nothing else.

Joyce puts the book down on the kitchen table and looks again at the picture of the author. Is there anything of Edie in that face? Nothing. Nothing in the shape or the expression.

She gets up and fetches the brandy, puts a little of it in her tea. She searches her mind for the name of Edie’s child. Surely
not Christie. She could not remember any time when Edie had brought her to the house. At the school there had been several children learning the violin.

The child could not have been entirely without ability, or Joyce would have steered her to something less difficult than the violin. But she couldn’t have been gifted—well, she had as much as said she wasn’t gifted—or her name would have stuck.

A blank face. A blob of female childishness. Though there had been something that Joyce recognized in the face of the girl, the woman, grown up.

Could she not have come to the house if Edie was helping Jon on a Saturday? Or even on those days when Edie just turned up as some sort of visitor, not to work but just to see how work was coming along, lend a hand if needed. Plunk herself down to watch whatever Jon was doing and get in the way of any conversation he might have with Joyce on her precious day off.

Christine. Of course. That was it. Translated easily into Christie.

Christine must have been privy in some way to the courtship, Jon must have dropped in at the apartment, just as Edie had dropped in at the house. Edie might have sounded the child out.

How do you like Jon?

How do you like Jon’s house?

Wouldn’t it be nice to go and live in Jon’s house?

Mommy and Jon like each other very much and when people like each other very much they want to live in the same house. Your music teacher and Jon don’t like each other as much as Mommy and Jon do so you and Mommy and Jon are going to live in Jon’s house and your music teacher is going to go and live in an apartment.

That was all wrong; Edie would never spout such blather, give her credit.

Joyce thinks she knows the turn the story will take. The
child all mixed up in the adults’ dealings and delusions, pulled about hither and yon. But when she picks up the book again she finds the switch of dwelling places hardly mentioned.

Everything is hinged on the child’s love for the teacher.

Thursday, the day of the music lesson, is the momentous day of the week, its happiness or unhappiness depending on the success or failure of the child’s performance, and the teacher’s notice of that performance. Both are nearly unbearable. The teacher’s voice could be controlled, kind, making jokes to cover its weariness and disappointment. The child is wretched. Or the teacher is suddenly lighthearted and merry.

“Good for you. Good for you. You’ve really made the grade today.” And the child is so happy she has cramps in her stomach.

Then there is the Thursday when the child has tripped on the playground and has a scratched knee. The teacher cleaning the injury with a warmed wet cloth, her suddenly soft voice claiming that this calls for a treat, as she reaches for the bowl of Smarties she uses to encourage the youngest children.

“Which is your favorite?”

The child overcome, saying, “Any.”

Is this the beginning of a change? Is it because of spring, the preparations for the recital?

The child feels herself singled out. She is to be a soloist. This means she must stay after school on Thursdays to practice, and so she misses her ride out of town on the school bus, to the house where she and her mother are now living. The teacher will drive her. On the way she asks if the child is nervous about the recital.

Sort of.

Well then, the teacher says, she must train herself to think of something really nice. Such as a bird flying across the sky. What is her favorite bird?

Favorites again. The child can’t think, can’t think of a single bird. Then, “A crow?”

The teacher laughs. “Okay. Okay. Think of a crow. Just before you begin to play, think of a crow.”

Then perhaps to make up for laughing, sensing the child’s humiliation, the teacher suggests they go down to Willingdon Park and see if the ice-cream stand has opened for the summer.

“Do they worry if you don’t come straight home?”

“They know I’m with you.”

The ice-cream stand is open though the selection is limited. They haven’t got the more exciting flavors in yet. The child picks strawberry, this time making sure to be ready, in the middle of her bliss and agitation. The teacher picks vanilla, as many adults do. Though she jokes with the attendant, telling him to hurry up and get rum raisin or she won’t like him anymore.

Maybe that is when there is another change. Hearing the teacher speak in that way, in a saucy voice almost the way big girls speak, the child relaxes. From then on she is less stricken with adoration, though entirely happy. They drive down to the dock to look at the moored boats, and the teacher says she has always wanted to live on a houseboat. Wouldn’t it be fun, she says, and the child of course agrees. They pick the one they’d choose. It is homemade and painted a light blue, with a row of little windows in which there are potted geraniums.

This leads to a conversation about the house the child lives in now, the house where the teacher used to live. And somehow after that, on their drives, they often come back to that subject. The child reports that she likes having her own bedroom but doesn’t like how dark it is outside. Sometimes she thinks she can hear wild animals outside her window.

What wild animals?

Bears, cougars. Her mother says those are in the bush and never to go there.

“Do you run and get into your mother’s bed when you hear them?”

“I’m not supposed to.”

“Goodness, why not?”

“Jon’s there.”

“What does Jon think about the bears and cougars?”

“He thinks it’s just deer.”

“Was he mad at your mother for what she’d told you?”

“No.”

“I guess he’s never mad.”

“He was sort of mad one time. When me and my mother poured all his wine down the sink.”

The teacher says it is a pity to be scared of the woods all the time. There are walks you can take there, she says, where wild animals won’t bother you, especially if you make a noise and usually you do. She knows the safe paths and she knows the names of all the wildflowers that will be coming out about now. Dogtooth violets. Trilliums. Wake-robins. Purple violets and columbines. Chocolate lilies.

“I think there is another proper name for them, but I like to call them chocolate lilies. It sounds so delicious. Of course, it isn’t anything about the way they taste but the way they look. They look just like chocolate with a bit of purple like crushed berries. They’re rare but I know where there are some.”