Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth (6 page)

Walking outdoors in my flannel pyjamas in the middle of the night made me feel cosy and adventurous at the same time, as if I’d been parachuted into enemy territory with an urgent message, but inside a story I knew would end well. This was the witching hour: around me the disembodied odours of sand and pine seemed to lift me out of my body as well. I could be anybody, anything, in the transient night air.

The lake under moonlight was alive, friendly, mysterious. Any moment now a mermaid, or Neptune himself, would rise to the surface. I knelt down and washed Sheila’s underwear with the rectangular bar of yellow soap. I wondered why anyone would be squeamish about the body’s foiled quest for reproduction. She didn’t have to touch the stain, or even look at it—but the whole idea made her sick. Why?

I got soaked, kneeling in the water. When I’d finished, I spread the panties on a large rock and sat on the cool, gravelly sand so I could watch the sun rise. Pale gold light gradually seeped out of its blue prison. It lit up the sky and unfurled on the water its trembling jewels. I thought of my father, who had been buried at sea.
Those are pearls that were his eyes
.

I stood up, rolled up the legs of my pyjamas, and stepped into the chilly water. The sand stirred under my weight and the small pebbles
pushed against my feet like a greeting. For the first time, I was sorry I didn’t know how to swim. Why had I not inherited my father’s talents? He’d been, according to my mother, a champion athlete once upon a time, as well as a star student and talented comic actor.

I was so absorbed by these meditations that when a voice broke the silence, I thought that I was imagining things, and that my father’s ghost was calling to me. But the voice was real. I turned around and saw Anthony sitting on the sand.

“I didn’t know you were here!” I exclaimed. “What did you say?”

“I was asking whether you were washing away our sins.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“I was making my way back to my humble cell when I saw a tall, shadowy figure in pyjamas heading towards the lake. My curiosity aroused, I stealthily followed.”

“I smell something,” I said. “Hash?”

“Possibly.”

“I’m never going to take drugs. I could end up like my mother.”

“Ah, the famous mother. I don’t think you’re in any danger. So what exactly are you doing here, Joan Malone?”

“I was just washing someone’s underwear.”

Anthony gazed at me impassively—or so it seemed to me—for a few seconds.

“One of the girls was crying,” I explained. “She got her period, and she’s squeamish.”

“Ah, I was right about you. Didn’t I say from the start?”

“But it doesn’t mean anything, because it’s easy for me. So it doesn’t count.”

“Yes, who would not leave their warm bed in order to solve another person’s delicate predicament?”

“It’s fun being out at night. I love when it’s dark but also hot. Anyhow, I thought anarchists believed in people. That we’re all good, if we get a chance. That’s what Sheldon taught us.”

“You have a point,” he said, bored with the subject. “Do you think Olga likes me?”

“I think she likes Sheldon,” I said. I’d seen Olga and Sheldon kissing in the forest, when I went to pee. It was a short kiss, a kiss in passing, but it hinted at things to come, or at something that had already happened.

“Yes, you’re right. Mating rituals of the ruling class.”

“Are you in love with her?” I asked.

“No, how can I be? I love you. Come here, Rapunzel, I’ll braid your golden hair for you.”

“It’s not gold,” I said. “It’s sort of orange.” I usually wore my hair loose or tied back with an elastic band; I associated braids not with flower children but with the oppressive sentimentality that accompanied my mother’s depictions of life before the war—
such happy girls we were baking bread laughing laughing—
it gave me nausea, that sort of oppression, that sort of sentimentality.

But it was all right: Anthony would ensure that I was shielded, at least for now, from my mother’s past. He divided my hair into strips with difficulty. “My God, don’t you own a hairbrush?”

“Sorry.”

“Joan Malone, I thought we had an agreement about that. You promised. And already you’re betraying me.”

“Why Malone?”

“‘In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,’” he sang softly.

“I don’t know that song.”

“‘As she wheeled her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow, crying “Cockles and mussels, alive alive-oh.’””

“What are cockles and mussels?”

“Non-kosher seafood.”

“What exactly is that?”

“What exactly is what?”

“Kosher. I’m never really sure what it means.”

“What kind of Jew are you anyhow?” he asked. “Kosher as in religious law permits you to eat it. Non-kosher as in pork, lobster, snails, itsy-bitsy spiders.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a brother like you,” I said.

He squinted at me. “A brother, huh?”

“My father died and my mother didn’t remarry, so I’m stuck being an only child.”

“What do you think, Joan—shall we take up arms against a sea of troubles?” Anthony asked, and suddenly he was himself. I was taken aback: he’d never spoken as himself before. Even when he was being Anthony, he was acting. Now he’d dropped the stance, and I felt privileged. Maybe it was wrong of him to hide all the time, even if we derived pleasure from the theatrics. His uncensored voice was vaguely wistful.

“Hamlet,” I said. “‘ To be or not to be.’”

“Yes. A braid in back suits you, and you’ll have fewer tangles.”

“I use conditioner. Can I ask you something?”

“Yes, but turn around so I’m not talking to your shoulders. Your braid’s done, though the end is going to come loose without an elastic.”

I turned towards him and absently scooped up a handful of sand, sifted the pebbles between my fingers. “Do you ever feel mean?”

“How mean is mean?”

“Very mean.”

“That’s exactly the question the Maid of Orleans asked. Exactly what she couldn’t figure out. Was she mean? And if so, how mean? And did being mean to her mother count?”

“I
am
mean to my mother,” I confessed, hanging my head. “I call her Mrs. L, I make fun of her, I do things on purpose to shock her, like barking or mooing.”

“Barking and mooing, huh? That is serious. But, really, I don’t think she notices. As long as you don’t put frogs in her bed, you’re doing fine.”

“Do you get along with your mother?” I asked.

“Ah. That’s a hard one, Joan,” he said, and I lost him again. He’d gone back to his impersonations. “It’s difficult to say. I would say that it’s impossible to get along with her, and impossible not to
get along with her. She is who she is.” He yawned. “You can turn off your flashlight. Waste of batteries.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“So, who are your friends, Miss Malone?”

“I don’t have any real friends,” I said. “The problem is I can’t invite anyone over.”

“Of course you can. No one cares.”

“You don’t know my mother.”

“Everyone’s parents are
meshuga
. Parents are
meshuga
by definition. Believe me, no one will notice. When’s your birthday, Joan On Her Own?”

“January. I’m twelve and a half.”

“Do you think you can wait for me?” he asked.

“Wait for what?”

“For me to come and rescue you, and myself.”

“I’ve been rescued already,” I said. “For the summer, at least.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said. “Everything comes from inside with you—you never do or think things just to make an impression, or so someone will think about you in a certain way. You’re on a whole different plane, my love.”

“Isn’t that bad?” I asked. It seemed to me that it was important to care about how you were seen.

“No, it’s very good. Very good and very hard.”

“I wish I knew more. But I hate reading facts, unless they’re about, you know, colour and all that stuff.”

“Tell me what you like,” he said. He stretched out on his back and drew one arm over his eyes.

“I like everything about being here. I wish the summer would never end.”

“You’re going to go places, Maya. Your artist’s soul will take you far.”

“I’m not an artist,” I said. “I can’t draw at all.”

“Loving art is the same thing. It’s lonely, though. I hope you’ll
let me come along. Will you? Will you let me come with you? Say in four years’ time?”

In some recess of my mind I understood what Anthony was saying. But when you’re loved by someone—loved
that
way—and you can’t respond, love slides from you like water sliding from flippers. “I’m not going anywhere in four years,” I said. “Except maybe university.”

“You’ll get married one day.”

“No, I’m never going to marry,” I said.

“And why is that?”

“I’m just not. I can tell.”

Very abruptly, Anthony stood up. “I hear the bells tolling,” he said. “They toll for me.” And he walked away in the direction of the dining hall.

I’d almost forgotten about Sheila’s underwear, which I’d left drying on a rock. The delicate blue lace looked like the reflection of a bird on the rough granite, and I sat down next to it, hugged my knees. The world around me was suffused with silent light, as if newly created and waiting to be claimed.

A series of unfamiliar sensations came over me. I knew my life was a tightrope act, with my mother’s nightmares perched at either end. Like her, I’d taken on a fugitive existence. I’d wanted to be a sparse person; I was hoping to keep my balance by shedding perspectives.

But Anthony’s faith in me had left me with an addict’s yearning for more. If I were part of the hustle and bustle, if I let myself loose among the crowds—the possibilities stretched out like a beanstalk to the clouds. My mother would wait below, anxious but hopeful, as I climbed up. And each branch of the beanstalk would lead me to another chattery group of people. I would have friends.

Friday, late. It’s been two weeks now since I began this incursion into the distant past. The days, like all my days, passed
mysteriously in a sea of trivia that demanded my attention. I prepared for class, met with students, bought food, cooked it, ate it, cleaned up, walked Sailor, did laundry. There were memos, emails, even a semi-love letter from a small city in Peru. Someone I met last year, through one of those wild coincidences that but for the flap of a butterfly’s wings might never have occurred at all.

It was February, the middle of the night, and I woke from a recurring dream I’ve been having for decades, a dream about searching for a place to live, perhaps temporarily, and then moving into or considering strange, rundown rooms and houses and wondering how to fix them up. Sometimes I can only reach the rooms by hoisting myself up through the narrowest of tunnels or funnels, with nothing to hold on to—a dreadful ordeal, but in the dream I have no choice.

What if I’d not had that dream, not turned on the light at that moment? But I did, I turned it on. Sailor, who’d been snoring at the foot of my bed, wagged his tail; it’s always a treat for him, company at night. It was warm under my duvet and cold in the flat, but I was hungry, so I dragged myself out of bed, turned up the heat, and plodded to the kitchen. I made myself a lettuce and tomato sandwich and strolled over to the front window, as one does in winter—partly to ward off cabin fever, partly to check out the snow situation. It was very cold out, close to minus ten with the wind chill, and yet there on the sidewalk, next to a car, was a young woman shouting at a man who was shouting back at her.

The man held on to the hood of his car. The engine was running, the door was open, and the man was trying to persuade the woman, or girl, to go with him. I could see by the sweeping movements of his arms that logic was on his side, but she refused to budge. Exasperated, protective, foiled, he grabbed her jacket and pulled. She tried to kick him and missed—the cold makes us all a little klutzy. That was the last straw for the man. He threw himself into the car in disgust and drove off, leaving his
companion alone on the street. She clasped herself and frantically looked around for some place to duck into. No hat, no gloves, an inadequate jacket—like my students, who even in the midst of blizzards dress as if they lived in California.

I hurried downstairs, opened my front door, and called out to her, but the wind swallowed the sound of my voice. I called again, urgently, because I was in my bathrobe and in precisely two seconds I’d be dead of hypothermia. She heard me this time, looked up. It didn’t immediately occur to her that I was inviting her in, because when, in real life, do fairy godmothers actually show up when you need them? “Do you want to come in?” I yelled in English, then in French. “You must be cold!”

She nodded vigorously and climbed the icy helical stairs, grasping the rail so as not to slip, then followed me up the stairwell to the flat, then to the kitchen, and then to wherever I moved in the kitchen, as if she were attached to me by a short cord. When I walked to the sink, she walked with me; when I went to the cupboard to fetch two mugs or to the fridge to take out a lemon meringue pie, she stayed close behind. She kept her coat on, and I had a fleeting image of one of those cartoon sleuths shadowing a suspect.

“I’m Maya, by the way,” I said. “I teach art.”

“I’m Tyen. I was doing a graduate degree in biochemistry at UBC,” she said. She was older than I’d thought at first, in her late twenties at least.

“Who was that guy?”

“My cousin. He’s mad at me. My family wants me to go back to Vancouver. I can’t go back. I’m mortified!”

I’m used to second-language English, and I assumed Tyen had meant to say something else—
fed up
, for example. “I have a spare flat below,” I said. “You can stay there if you like—it’s empty right now. I just need to heat it. It takes about half an hour to warm up.”

Tyen smiled and took my hand. One of the clan—what were the odds?

“You have nice eyes,” she said. “They show what you’re feeling.”

“Sugar? Milk? It’s skim…”

“And your hair is the colour of the earth in Egypt.”